Oliver Stone's New JFK Documentaries and the Vietnam War

[James DiEugenio]

Recall Dave, 7.3 million tons of bombs over an agrarian society, somehow that was not enough.

Also recall Dave, 540,000 combat troops was not enough either.

As for "abandoning" Vietnam, just watch this video.  It would have all happened sooner if JFK had lived.

 

[Calvin Ye]

On 11/2/2022 at 5:45 AM, Michael Griffith said:

First, let me quote what a former Viet Cong colonel, Pham Xuan An, had to say about the North Vietnamese Communists and Communist Vietnam decades after the war, and then I’ll discuss more problems with McNamara’s “secret debrief.” Colonel Pham Xuan An:

          All that talk about “liberation” twenty, thirty, forty years ago, all the plotting, and all the bodies, produced this, this impoverished, broken-down country led by a gang of cruel and paternalistic half-educated theorists. (Lewis Sorley, Review of A. J. Langguth, Our Vietnam: The War 1954-1975, Simon & Schuster, 2000, in Parameters: U.S. Army War College Quarterly, Autumn 2001, p. 169)

In addition to the strong evidence that JFK had no intention of abandoning South Vietnam regardless of the consequences, I see other problems with the claim in McNamara’s “secret debrief.” For example, why didn’t McNamara repeat the claim in his memoir? If JFK had truly told him he was going to withdraw even if it caused South Vietnam to fall to the Communists, you’d think that McNamara would have mentioned this monumental revelation in his memoir. But he says nothing about it therein, not even in the segment (in the appendix) where he argues that JFK planned on withdrawing all of our troops by the end of 1965 (In Retrospect, p. 399). You'd think that he would have mentioned JFK's alleged statement to bolster his argument.

Not only is there no mention of McNamara’s doubtful claim in his own memoir, but his ideological soul mate and primary deputy, John McNaughton, said nothing about the claim in his diary. In fact, not a single one of McNamara’s devoted “whiz kids” ever mentioned hearing McNamara claim that JFK had told him he was going to withdraw regardless of the consequences.

There is also the fact that there is no trace of any evidence that McNamara ever raised this issue with LBJ or with LBJ’s advisers. You would think that if JFK had truly said to McNamara what McNamara claimed he said, McNamara would have at least once argued, “Hey, JFK told me he intended to pull out even if South Vietnam was ‘going to be defeated.’ So how can we abandon that policy? Shouldn’t his former vice president honor that policy?”

Certainly one would expect that during McNamara’s famous/infamous recorded phone call with LBJ when LBJ criticized JFK and McNamara for having announced the 1,000-man withdrawal, McNamara would have replied, “Hey, look here. JFK told me that he was going to withdraw from South Vietnam no matter what. He didn’t just want to withdraw 1,000 troops. He wanted to withdraw all the troops, no matter what happened to South Vietnam after that.”

Of course, JFK was much closer to Bobby than he was to McNamara, and Bobby clearly knew nothing about any intention to abandon South Vietnam regardless of the consequences. In fact, Bobby denied there was any such plan in his April 1964 oral interview. The idea that JFK made such a crucially important statement to McNamara but never told Bobby is simply not credible.

The problem is that so many of my fellow conspiracy theorists have created this huge myth that JFK was killed because he was going to abandon South Vietnam no matter what. This was one of the key claims in Stone's 1991 movie, and, sadly, it is repeated in Stone's recent documentaries. It is hard to retract a major claim that you've made for decades, but if you care about the facts and about accurately portraying JFK's views and legacy, it must be done. 

I disagree with you. You need to understand that some people will always left out crucial information in memoirs to avoid potential consequences to retaliation in order to save face and reputation.

[James DiEugenio]

That is correct Calvin, but it not just that.

Look at the video above.  Does that look like an impoverished, broken down country? Lewis Sorley is one of the worst on this "Vietnam was a noble cause" crap.

As per McNamara, John Newman heard the tape and saw the transcript.

Is Mike going to say that was all faked?  I mean please.

As per the withdrawal, McNamara told his deputy, Roswell Gilpatric, that JFK had given him instructions to wind this thing down.  And that is what he was doing.  Galbraith told JFK that McNamara had gotten the message.  

Now, why McNamara? Kennedy was upset after the November debates over the issue, which resulted in the policy of no combat troops but more advisors and equipment.   At a meeting in late November, Kennedy expressed this frustration.  He literally said that when policy was decided, the people on the spot must either carry it out or resign. He then asked who was going to carry out his Vietnam policy.  McNamara said he would.

And that is why Kennedy picked him to carry out the withdrawal plan.  I mean, I don't see how it can be much more clear than that.  By the time of the May 1963 Sec/Def meeting in Hawaii, everyone there knew America was getting out. IIRC,  Earle Wheeler noted that any disagreement would not be tolerated.

 

 

 

[Michael Griffith]

McNamara's "secret debriefing" may well have been one of the false paper trails that McNamara was caught trying to leave from time to time. Admiral Sharp mentions two such incidents in his book Strategy for Defeat. In one memo, McNamara claimed that Admiral Sharp supported all of his recommendations, when in fact McNamara knew this was false. In another misleading memo, McNamara even represented his views as being shared by the Joint Chiefs, when in fact the Joint Chiefs sharply disagreed with them. The Joint Chiefs issued a strongly worded memo that corrected the record.

How many misleading memos did McNamara manage to push forward that were not detected by those being misrepresented?

I suspect that McNamara's "secret debrief" was another one of his attempts to create a false paper trail. This may explain why McNamara inexplicably said nothing about the debrief in his 1995 memoir In Retrospect. You would think that the debrief would have been McNamara's Exhibit A for his claim that JFK was going to totally withdraw from South Vietnam. Yet, oddly, McNamara did not even mention the debrief in his memoir, much less discuss its contents. A very strange omission indeed. 

 

[Michael Griffith]

On 11/8/2022 at 9:54 AM, Michael Griffith said:

McNamara's "secret debriefing" may well have been one of the false paper trails that McNamara was caught trying to leave from time to time. Admiral Sharp mentions two such incidents in his book Strategy for Defeat. In one memo, McNamara claimed that Admiral Sharp supported all of his recommendations, when in fact McNamara knew this was false. In another misleading memo, McNamara even represented his views as being shared by the Joint Chiefs, when in fact the Joint Chiefs sharply disagreed with them. The Joint Chiefs issued a strongly worded memo that corrected the record.

How many misleading memos did McNamara manage to push forward that were not detected by those being misrepresented?

I suspect that McNamara's "secret debrief" was another one of his attempts to create a false paper trail. This may explain why McNamara inexplicably said nothing about the debrief in his 1995 memoir In Retrospect. You would think that the debrief would have been McNamara's Exhibit A for his claim that JFK was going to totally withdraw from South Vietnam. Yet, oddly, McNamara did not even mention the debrief in his memoir, much less discuss its contents. A very strange omission indeed. 

Not only did McNamara oddly fail to mention the "secret debrief" in his 1995 memoir, but not one of his devoted "whiz kids," such as John McNaughton, seemed to know anything about it. If they did, it is odd that not one of them ever publicly mentioned it. McNaughton's diary turned up a few years ago, and it says nothing about the alleged debrief or about any intention to completely withdraw regardless of the consequences. McNaughton was McNamara's confidant and closest adviser. He practically worshipped the ground McNamara walked on, and McNamara trusted McNaughton implicitly and relied heavily on him. Yet, even in his diary, McNaughton said nothing about the debrief or about any unconditional withdrawal plans. 

And, it bears repeating that the "secret debrief" is powerfully contradicted by Bobby's April 1964 oral interview and by every public statement that JFK made on Vietnam in the last three months of his life, including statements he made or was going to make on the last three days of his life. 

 

[James DiEugenio]

John Newman and I have had more than one talk about this point.  

Everyone who knew McNamara said he was about at the breaking point in the winter of 1966.  There was a dinner with people like Galbraith and Goodwin  etc.  McNamara was very emotional, almost weeping when talking about his disputes with LBJ about the war.  In Tom Wells' fine book The War Within,  he writes further about this. He says that McNamara was so torn apart by Johnson's insistence on keeping up what he believed to be a hopeless, murderous crusade that some days he would come to work and do nothing.  He would then walk over to the window, stare out to the front lawn, and then start silently weeping.  At times he would wrap himself in the curtains as he sobbed.

Knowing this, that is how fragile McNamara was on what had happened and LBJ's futile folly, John had to coax him into admitting the split between JFK and LBJ.  As he said to me, "Jim, if you had been responsible for the death of 2 million civilians, you would have a hard time admitting it also."  I agree, but today the number is even more.

This is why McNamara did what he did with the Pentagon Papers.  It was his one way of getting out what he knew to be the truth about the war.  And the Pentagon Papers was a big step in showing the public and the MSM just how badly they had been mislead about the war.  

Edited November 14, 2022 by James DiEugenio

[Ron Bulman]

Since this thread is about Vietnam, I'll link this here.

The Story Behind The Infamous Viet Cong Photo That Shocked The World (msn.com)

[Michael Griffith]

On 11/17/2022 at 1:26 AM, Ron Bulman said:

Since this thread is about Vietnam, I'll link this here.

The Story Behind The Infamous Viet Cong Photo That Shocked The World (msn.com)

This is a good article. Under the Geneva Conventions, Loan had every right to execute the Viet Cong fighter. The fighter was not only a vicious murderer but was operating while in civilian clothes after ditching his uniform, so under the standard rules of war he could be executed on the spot when caught. When American and Allied soldiers caught German SS soldiers operating in Allied territory while not wearing their uniforms but posing as civilians, they would summarily execute them. 

[Michael Griffith]

On 11/17/2022 at 1:26 AM, Ron Bulman said:

Since this thread is about Vietnam, I'll link this here.

The Story Behind The Infamous Viet Cong Photo That Shocked The World (msn.com)

To follow up on my previous reply, I should mention that the Viet Cong soldier led an assassination squad and that he had just murdered a South Vietnamese family. Most American news outlets failed to mention these facts. Some news outlets presented the photo as evidence that "both sides committed atrocities." Yet, under the rules of war, the Viet Cong soldier forfeited his right to be treated as a POW by murdering civilians and by wearing civilian clothes while committing war crimes.

But, rather than focus on the horrible crimes the Viet Cong soldier had committed, many American news outlets falsely portrayed his execution as a war crime.

 

[Michael Griffith]

On 11/17/2022 at 1:26 AM, Ron Bulman said:

Since this thread is about Vietnam, I'll link this here.

The Story Behind The Infamous Viet Cong Photo That Shocked The World (msn.com)

The misleading, distorted way that many American news outlets covered General Loan's execution of the Viet Cong assassin is just one of many troubling examples of how most of our news media covered the war. Veteran journalist, and genuine Asia scholar, Robert Elegant discussed the news media's coverage of the war in his famous article "How to Lose a War: The Press and Viet Nam."

Here's a brief excerpt from this famous article:

          During the latter half of the fifteen-year American involvement in Viet Nam, the media became the primary battlefield. Illusory events reported by the press as well as real events within the press corps were more decisive than the clash of arms or the contention of ideologies. For the first time in modern history, the outcome of a war was determined not on the battlefield but on the printed page and, above all, on the television screen. Looking back coolly, I believe it can be said (surprising as it may still sound) that South Vietnamese and American forces actually won the limited military struggle. They virtually crushed the Viet Cong in the South, the "native" guerrillas who were directed, reinforced, and equipped from Hanoi; and thereafter they threw back the invasion by regular North Vietnamese divisions. Nonetheless, the war was finally lost to the invaders after the U.S. disengagement because the political pressures built up by the media had made it quite impossible for Washington to maintain even the minimal material and moral support that would have enabled the Saigon regime to continue effective resistance. . . .

          Instructive on a larger scale is the contrast between the coverage of the American massacre at My Lai and the Viet Cong massacre at Hue. At My Lai, a junior American officer allowed his men to kill dozens of presumably uninvolved farmers in full violation of standing orders. At Hue, the former imperial capital, the Viet Cong killed several thousand community leaders, including a number of Europeans, in accordance with standing orders to "destroy the bourgeoisie." The U.S. military's attempt to suppress reports of the My Lai massacre, of course, made it even worse when the story was finally released by the Dispatch News Agency, a curious organization that came into existence in Viet Nam with unknown financial backing and vanished once its purpose of opposing the war had brought Hanoi victory. But the Hue massacre was, somehow, uninteresting. Few correspondents reported that clear signal of the real policies the North Vietnamese would pursue once they had conquered the South. (Robert Elegant: How to Lose A War (wellesley.edu)

[Michael Griffith]

By the way, regarding the famous heart-wrenching picture that someone posted in this thread that shows the young South Vietnamese girl Kim Phuc fleeing and nude after being burned in an air raid, no Americans were involved in this incident. The planes doing the bombing were South Vietnamese air force planes flown by South Vietnamese pilots in support of South Vietnamese troops in the village of Trang Bang, who were trying to repel part of North Vietnam's massive invasion of South Vietnam in 1972. The South Vietnamese pilot who dropped the napalm bomb that accidentally and unintentionally burned Kim Phuc later moved to the U.S. Even the AP photographer, Nick Ut, who took the picture, was South Vietnamese. Needless to say, if the North Vietnamese had not launched the massive Easter Offensive in 1972, there would have been no battle at Trang Bang and the young girl would not have been burned by an errant napalm bomb.

News media reports that an American commander ordered the airstrike that burned Kim Phuc were incorrect. There were no Americans involved in the airstrike. And, again, the airstrike would not have been necessary if the Hanoi regime had not launched another massive invasion of South Vietnam in the spring of 1972.

 

Edited November 25, 2022 by Michael Griffith