Oliver Stone's New JFK Documentaries and the Vietnam War

[James DiEugenio]

The reason JFK wanted the initial withdrawal to be low key is because he wanted the ability  to adjust the flow.

Why?  As Newman explains, its because he and McNamara were not sure Saigon would not fall before the election of 1964.  (p. 419, 2017 edition)This is why JFK ordered an evacuation plan in November of 1963.  But the Pentagon wanted to hold his feet to the fire, so MAAG announced it in Saigon. ( Ibid p. 435)

As for the whole Nixon inspired "there was a huge massacre of over 50,000 people in the south" afterward. Those numbers have been disputed by both Gareth Porter and Edwin Moise.  The actual number is maybe one quarter of that, even less.  I'm not excusing it, but I want to present what I think is the real number.

Now, if one compares that number with the 5.8 million who perished in Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos due to the escalation and expansion of the war under LBJ and RMN, I think its pretty obvious what the correct policy was. 

Edited August 31, 2022 by James DiEugenio

[Michael Griffith]

I've mentioned the fact that LBJ, through McNamara and then Clifford, imposed absurd, dangerous restrictions on our air operations against North Vietnam. If you didn't know better, you'd think the restrictions must have been drafted in Hanoi. If someone had suggested similar suicidal restrictions in WW II or the Korean War, they would have been laughed to scorn, if not suspected of either insanity or treason. These restrictions are a matter of record; they were included in operations orders, and they have been discussed in many books on the war (although liberal books on the war rarely mention them). Here are some of the restrictions:

-- Our aircraft could not attack surface-to-air missile (SAM) sites unless the missile sites fired first.

-- Our aircraft were not allowed to attack SAM sites that were under construction.

-- Some areas of North Vietnam (NV) were placed off limits for aerial attack. Naturally, the North Vietnamese built MIG airfields in those areas. Our fighter jets could not even overfly those prohibited areas. This insane restriction was not lifted until 1967.

-- Our aircraft could not attack NV Navy ships within 3 miles of the coast unless they fired first.

-- Until early 1967, American aircraft flying near MIG airfields could not use their weapons until the MIGs took off from those airfields and fired at them.

-- The first several iterations of the Rolling Thunder bombing operation were not allowed to bomb any targets north of the 20th parallel, even though *all* of the important, high-value targets, the targets that would have done done great damage to NV's war effort, were above the 20th parallel.

-- After loud protests from senior field commanders and the JCS, LBJ and McNamara finally allowed very limited bombing above the 20th parallel, but it was so limited that it had minimal impact.

-- LBJ and McNamara micromanaged the air war to such a shocking degree that they took it upon themselves to produce target lists. These target lists rarely included even medium-value targets. Even worse, LBJ and McNamara imposed time limits on the target lists, regardless of the time of year or  weather conditions. The result of this idiotic restriction was that many of the targets on those lists were never attacked because bad weather prevented aerial attack until after the time limits had expired.

-- LBJ and McNamara refused to allow extensive use of the B-52 in any of the Rolling Thunder operations for fear of causing Soviet and/or Chinese intervention (a fear that was proved groundless when Nixon began massive use of B-52s). This meant that F-4 and F-105 fighter-bombers had to do most of the air strikes over North Vietnam; this led to the needless loss and capture of many pilots because those aircraft had to bomb from lower altitudes that put them in range of conventional anti-aircraft artillery, whereas B-52s could only be brought down with SAMs. Also, those fighter-jets could carry far fewer bombs than a B-52 could carry: they carried a maximum load of nine 500-pound bombs, while a B-52 could carry 108 such bombs.

-- For a time, LBJ and McNamara imposed a downright criminal restriction that our aircraft could not fire back at anti-aircraft sites if the sites were located at ostensibly "civilian" airfields, even if the sites were firing at them. One pilot remembered losing a friend while attacking a railroad bridge in NV because his flight was forced to overfly Gia Lam International Airfield before hitting the primary target. Anti-aircraft artillery and SAM sites at this airfield fired at his flight all the way into the target area, but the rules of engagement forbade him from firing back, and he was shot down and killed. 

LBJ, McNamara, and then Clifford also imposed equally self-defeating restrictions on our ground forces, but that's a subject for another day.

Oh, and I did not say that JFK signed or authored NSAM 273. As we all know, it was prepared by McGeorge Bundy on 11/21/63 to be submitted to JFK when he returned from Texas, but of course he never returned from there (not alive anyway).
 

Edited August 31, 2022 by Michael Griffith

[Michael Griffith]

20 hours ago, James DiEugenio said:

The reason JFK wanted the initial withdrawal to be low key is because he wanted the ability to adjust the flow.

Why?  As Newman explains, its because he and McNamara were not sure Saigon would not fall before the election of 1964.  (p. 419, 2017 edition)This is why JFK ordered an evacuation plan in November of 1963.  But the Pentagon wanted to hold his feet to the fire, so MAAG announced it in Saigon. ( Ibid p. 435)

As for the whole Nixon inspired "there was a huge massacre of over 50,000 people in the south" afterward. Those numbers have been disputed by both Gareth Porter and Edwin Moise.  The actual number is maybe one quarter of that, even less.  I'm not excusing it, but I want to present what I think is the real number.

One, you are missing the point about the NSAMs. The point is that nowhere do they even hint at a total disengagement regardless of the situation on the ground. On the contrary, they specify that the U.S. would continue to provide support to South Vietnam until it was able to stand on its own. I don't know anyone can avoid this obvious fact.

Two, if you are accurately representing Porter and Moise, then they do not know what they are talking about, and they must not be aware of the research that Asian scholars have done on this issue. Indeed--again, assuming you are accurately conveying their views--I have to wonder if they have read any of the numerous oral histories of survivors of the camps.

No, Nixon was not the one who originated the 50,000 figure, and 50,000 is almost certainly an underestimate. Scholars who specialize in the subject put the figure at over 60,000. In a study published earlier this year, Nathalie Huynh Chau Nguen puts the number of South Vietnamese executed after the war at 65,000, and this is not counting the untold thousands who died in the detention (aka reeducation) camps (Detention Camps in Asia, Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2022, p. 160). Jacqueline Desbarats and Karl Jackson likewise put the number of executed at around 65,000 (“Vietnam 1975-1982: The Cruel Peace,” The Wilson Quarterly, 8:4, July 2009, pp. 169-182).

And, again, this is not counting the thousands of South Vietnamese who died in the reeducation camps. Nguyen:

After Vietnam was reunified in 1975, the re-education camp system became an extensive network spread throughout the country. One million South Vietnamese soldiers and civil servants were interned in the gulag in 1975. An unknown number died in the camps. Based on two oral history projects conducted in Australia in 2005–2015, this chapter explores the memories and experiences of men and women who were interned in the Bamboo Gulag after 1975, and survived to become refugees and resettle in Australia. While several memoirs of internment by Vietnamese men have been published in English and in French, few women have written about their camp experience. The narratives of South Vietnamese female veterans examined here are among the few accounts by women of their experience in the gulag. Detainees reveal details of camp life including forced ‘self-confessions’, malnutrition, hard labour, and witnessing the deaths of other inmates. (Detention Camps in Asia, p. 156)

Of the one million South Vietnamese who were imprisoned in these camps, we have the oral histories of thousands of them, and those histories describe the brutal conditions in most of the camps, and they also describe numerous cases of prisoners being killed by various means, ranging from beatings and forced mine-clearing to malnutrition and deliberate deprivation of medical care (Detention Camps in Asia, pp. 158-172). A prisoner in one camp remembered having “to bury one or two prisoners every day” (Detention Camps in Asia, p. 170).

Based on the survivors’ accounts, a very conservative estimate for the number of prisoners who died from various forms of abuse in the camps would be 5,000.

Three other sources on the horrors of the reeducation camps are Tran Tri Vu’s Lost Years: My 1,632 Days in Vietnamese Reeducation Camps (Berkeley: University of California, 1988), Nghia Vo’s The Bamboo Gulag: Political Imprisonment in Communist Vietnam (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2006), and Nguyen Van Canh’s Vietnam Under Communism, 1972-1985 (Stanford: Hoover Institution Press, 1983).

Nathalie Nguyen cites numerous other references on the camps, but I have not read them, whereas I have read Canh’s book and have read sizable extracts from Vu’s and Vo’s books.

 

 

[James DiEugenio]

Michael:

I guess you do not read English.  Kennedy was getting out all of the advisors. How were we going to support the south with no advisors and no combat troops?

I am not going to argue Porter and Moise vs whoever you want to bring up.  That is clearly what you want to do.  I mean why stop at 50,000? Right.  But isn't it odd how Hanoi left the  school of banking in Saigon open, after the city fell  in 1975?  Was this part of re education? We will have this guy on BOR soon.

 I will reply to your previous point about air bombing, which I think is revealing.

You really do ally yourself with the LeMay camp.  You really wanted an all out WW2 style war in Vietnam.  In other words, if you have to do a Dresden type bombing of Hanoi, fine.  If you want to firebomb Haiphong, fine.    If you want to invade Laos and Cambodia fine. 

That is utterly remarkable to me.  See, in WW 2, there was an excuse for these atrocities.  The Axis countries did have an industrial base. And Tojo and Hitler and Mussolini literally threatened the fate of the world.  They had even mapped out plans for world domination.  Therefore, things like the Manhattan Project, and LeMay's carpet firebombings were done under that rubric. (Although the USA knew the Germans were never close to an atomic bomb.) 

How did that poor agricultural country in Southeast Asia, with almost no industrial base, threaten the world?  So, for you, dropping more bomb tonnage on Indochina than in WW 2 was not enough. You  really think that if we had to destroy the country then that was justified.  Whew.

Mike, the USA should have never been in Vietnam. It was Nixon and Eisenhower who got us there, helped by the Dulles brothers. If America had not broken the Geneva Accords, the country would have been peaceably reunited after an equally wrong French recolonization effort.   As Gullion told Kennedy, the age of colonialism was coming to an end. The war in Vietnam was not about communism vs free enterprise.  And it was not about democracy since Diem was a US backed dictator. it was about nationalism and independence vs colonialism and imperialism..  And we were on the wrong side. Period. JFK knew that.  Its why he was getting out. It is also why he helped get the film of The Ugly American made.  The authors of that book said that if all America had to offer in the Third World was anti communism, we should pack up and go home. 

There is no point in arguing with you anymore on this.  I now see where you are coming from.  You really are in the LeMay camp.  The guy who flew secretly into Washington that night and broke orders on where to land so he would not have to reply to any questions as to why he was there.

Bye Mike.

 

Edited September 1, 2022 by James DiEugenio

[Michael Griffith]

5 hours ago, James DiEugenio said:

Michael:

I guess you do not read English.  Kennedy was getting out all of the advisors. How were we going to support the south with no advisors and no combat troops?

I am not going to argue Porter and Moise vs whoever you want to bring up.  That is clearly what you want to do.  I mean why stop at 50,000? Right.  But isn't it odd how Hanoi left the  school of banking in Saigon open, after the city fell  in 1975?  Was this part of re education. We will have this guy on BOR soon.

 I will reply to your previous point about air bombing, which I think is revealing.

You really do ally yourself with the LeMay camp.  You really wanted an all out WW2 style war in Vietnam.  In other words, if you have to do a Dresden type bombing of Hanoi, fine.  If you want to firebomb Haiphong, fine.    If you want to invade Laos and Cambodia fine. 

That is utterly remarkable to me.  See, in WW 2, there was an excuse for these atrocities.  The Axis countries did have an industrial base. And Tojo and Hitler and Mussolini literally threatened the fate of the world.  They had even mapped out plans for world domination.  Therefore, things like the Manhattan Project, and LeMay's carpet firebombings were done under that rubric. (Although the USA knew the Germans were never close to an atomic bomb.) 

How did that poor agricultural country in Southeast Asia, with almost no industrial base, threaten the world?  So, for you, dropping more bomb tonnage on Indochina than in WW 2 was not enough. You  really think that if we had to destroy the country then that was justified.  Whew.

Mike, the USA should have never been in Vietnam. It was Nixon and Eisenhower who got us there, helped by the Dulles brothers. If America had not broken the Geneva Accords, the country would have been peaceably reunited after an equally wrong French recolonization effort.   As Gullion told Kennedy, the age of colonialism was coming to an end. The war in Vietnam was not about communism vs free enterprise.  And it was not about democracy since Diem was a US backed dictator. it was about nationalism and independence vs colonialism and imperialism..  And we were on the wrong side. Period. JFK knew that.  Its why he was getting out. It is also why he helped get the film of The Ugly American made.  The authors of that book said that if all America had to offer in the Third World was anti communism, we should pack up and go home. 

There is no point in arguing with you anymore on this.  I now see where you are coming from.  You really are in the LeMay camp.  The guy who flew secretly into Washington that night and broke orders on where to land so he would not have to reply to any questions as to why he was there.

Bye Mike.

How could we have supported South Vietnam with no advisors in country? Is this a serious question? Have you heard of the U.S. Navy and the U.S. Air Force? We could have provided air support from fighters and bombers from Navy aircraft carriers and from our air base in Taiwan. We could have provided weapons, ammo, and logistics by Navy ships, just as we did throughout most of the war. 

If you could ever break free from your far-left ideology and research the matter objectively, you would find that, except for left-wing anti-war historians, there is broad agreement that at least 50,000 South Vietnamese were executed by the communists after the South fell, and that's not counting the thousands who died from abuse in the "reeducation" camps. Are you ever going to ready any of the sources I cited on this issue? 

Your comments about my supposedly siding with LeMay show you haven't bothered to read any of the sources I've recommended and/or linked, and that your reading on the subject has been very limited. Admiral Sharp, the CINCPAC, the man in charge of overseeing and executing the bombing missions, never recommended LeMay's vicious and immoral style of bombing. He only recommended hitting valid military targets, which included POL sites, major railroads, major highways, weapons factories, major harbors where Russian and Chinese war materials were being offloaded, etc., in addition to military bases. 

Your comments about the Geneva Accords, colonialism, and American intervention likewise indicate that your reading on the subject has been very limited. You are literally repeating communist propaganda.

If anyone violated the Geneva Accords, it was North Vietnam. Have you read the Geneva Accords? What does Article 24 say? The communists began violating Article 24, among other provisions, almost as soon as the ink was dry on the accords. 

If we had not intervened in South Vietnam, the communists would have imposed their brutal tyranny on South Vietnam in a year or two after the Geneva Accords. I cannot fathom how any rational, humane American could think that that would have been a good thing. Have you read what JFK said about North Vietnam and the Geneva Accords?

Finally, it is truly sad to see you whitewash and minimize the brutality that the communists imposed on South Vietnam. It is almost obscene to try to minimize that brutality by noting that the communists left open a school of banking in Saigon or that they later allowed some Western businesses to operate in the country. Again, Russia and China have done the same thing. Are you going to tell us that Russia and China really are not brutal regimes that suppress basic human rights just because they have schools of banking and finance and allow some Western businesses to operate within their borders?

How does the fact that Hanoi allowed a school of banking in Saigon to stay open explain or mitigate the brutality that Hanoi imposed, the 50K-65K executions, the hundreds of thousands of people imprisoned in detention camps (some for many years), and the suppression of basic human rights to this day? And you call yourself a "liberal"?

 

Edited September 1, 2022 by Michael Griffith

[Sean Coleman]

 

MTG, this quote makes it sound like Vietnam was a success? There was intervention, it didn’t work, and when the dust had settled was brutal tyranny imposed? Definitely no domino effect…

I’ve been to Vietnam and the most brutal imposition I found was that you can’t hire a car.

Edited September 4, 2022 by Sean Coleman

[Michael Griffith]

1 hour ago, Sean Coleman said:

MTG, this quote makes it sound like Vietnam was a success? There was intervention, it didn’t work, and when the dust had settled was brutal tyranny imposed? Definitely no domino effect…

I’ve been to Vietnam and the most brutal imposition I found was that you can’t hire a car.

But the intervention most certainly did work--until the Democrats refused to honor our promise to aid South Vietnam if North Vietnam invaded after the Paris Peace Accords. What made the Democrats' betrayal especially immoral was that they knew North Vietnam was still getting large amounts of weapons and supplies from the Soviets and the Chinese. I am almost tempted to ask if you folks are upset that we intervened to keep South Korea free, and to ask if you think it would have been a good thing if North Korea had been allowed to annex South Korea. 

If we had kept our word and provided South Vietnam with air support, weapons, and supplies, South Vietnam would be another South Korea today, and the horrors that the North Vietnamese communists imposed on the South Vietnamese after the war never would have happened. But some of you folks don't want to acknowledge the brutality that the South Vietnamese suffered because it was your party that betrayed South Vietnam and allowed the communists to win.

 

[Sandy Larsen]

12 hours ago, Michael Griffith said:

One, you are missing the point about the NSAMs.

 

Since you are trying to make a point about JFK's intentions, you shouldn't refer to "NSAMs" in the plural. NSAM 263 was JFK's, NSAM 273 wasn't... as you acknowledged.

 

12 hours ago, Michael Griffith said:

The point is that nowhere do they even hint at a total disengagement regardless of the situation on the ground. On the contrary, they specify that the U.S. would continue to provide support to South Vietnam until it was able to stand on its own. I don't know anyone can avoid this obvious fact.

 

NSAM 263 does not specify the continuation of support to the South Vietnamese beyond 1965.

It includes only the equivocation, "It should be possible to withdraw the bulk of U.S. personnel by that time," with "that time" referring to the presumed 1965 withdrawal date.

But there is absolutely no promise that that U.S. would provide ANYTHING beyond 1965.

 

[Sandy Larsen]

22 minutes ago, Michael Griffith said:

But some of you folks don't want to acknowledge the brutality that the South Vietnamese suffered because it was your party that betrayed South Vietnam and allowed the communists to win.

 

This has nothing to do with politics. Do you forget that some Democrats are hawks?

This has everything to do with facts and truth.

 

[Sandy Larsen]

27 minutes ago, Michael Griffith said:

I am almost tempted to ask if you folks are upset that we intervened to keep South Korea free, and to ask if you think it would have been a good thing if North Korea had been allowed to annex South Korea.

 

Well if you want my  opinion...

If one country invades another, I am for supplying arms to the invaded country if the people show solidarity in engaging the aggressors. But only if an assessment shows they can win. Ukraine is a good example.

In addition, if the aggressor has no nuclear capability, I would be for using cruise missiles, drones, and any other such unmanned device and means to directly fight the aggressor.

 

[Chuck Schwartz]

Vietnam is doing business with many US companies..https://www.vietnam-briefing.com/news/why-vietnam-has-become-promising-alternative-for-us-businesses-in-asia.html/.  South Vietamese just wanted to do business deals and not  fight a war against North Vietnam.   The North Vietnamese were fighting for their freedom (from non -Vietnamese).  That is why North Vietnam won. When America fought the British for their independence, Americans were fighting against a major world power, but yet won.  The Americans were fighting for their freedom while the  British were fighting for economic reasons- that is why America won.  

[Michael Griffith]

3 hours ago, Sandy Larsen said:

 

This has nothing to do with politics. Do you forget that some Democrats are hawks?

This has everything to do with facts and truth.

I'm talking about documented, undisputed facts and truth. The Democrats had large majorities in Congress in 1972 to the end of the war. The Democrats used their huge majorities to slash badly needed aid to South Vietnam and then to pass the treasonous Case-Church Amendment after the Paris Peace Accords, which guaranteed North Vietnam that the U.S. would not intervene to stop another invasion of the South. Nixon lobbied furiously against the amendment, but he was too badly damaged by Watergate to stop it. Then, in 1975, when the final North Vietnamese offensive was in full swing, President Ford literally begged Congressional Democrats in a joint session of Congress to allow him to resupply South Vietnam's army, but the Democrats said no. Some Democratic congressmen even got up and walked out during Ford's speech. A few weeks later, communists tank rolled into South Vietnam's capital and 18 million South Vietnamese fell under communist tyranny. 

[Pat Speer]

51 minutes ago, Michael Griffith said:

I'm talking about documented, undisputed facts and truth. The Democrats had large majorities in Congress in 1972 to the end of the war. The Democrats used their huge majorities to slash badly needed aid to South Vietnam and then to pass the treasonous Case-Church Amendment after the Paris Peace Accords, which guaranteed North Vietnam that the U.S. would not intervene to stop another invasion of the South. Nixon lobbied furiously against the amendment, but he was too badly damaged by Watergate to stop it. Then, in 1975, when the final North Vietnamese offensive was in full swing, President Ford literally begged Congressional Democrats in a joint session of Congress to allow him to resupply South Vietnam's army, but the Democrats said no. Some Democratic congressmen even got up and walked out during Ford's speech. A few weeks later, communists tank rolled into South Vietnam's capital and 18 million South Vietnamese fell under communist tyranny. 

It was a simple matter of cutting strings. We had been propping up South Vietnam for 20 years, to the detriment of the most everyone. Our incursion into that country had damaged the U.S. both internationally, and internally. 

You just don't get the context, Michael. The American people, by and large, never wanted to go in there. While a popular myth holds that lefty college kids were afraid to fight and turned the country against the war, the reality is that the war at the outset was more popular on college campuses than in working class America. Factory workers never understood why their kids had to go off and fight in some jungle for some people they'd never even heard of before. It just never made sense to them. And when their kids came home in a box or maimed physically and mentally, it made even less sense to them. LBJ knew the war would lose the Dems their mandate (based on their support of the civil rights movement vs. the Republican support of state's rights--code for Jim Crow) so he tried to get out with dignity. And Nixon saw this as well and connived to keep the war going for years under the false promise he had a secret plan to win the war. Well, after Nixon's ouster, most everyone in America wanted to get the heck out of Nam. Period. We just didn't care anymore. We'd been lied to enough. Enough people had died. The Pentagon papers had proved that much of our supposed reasons for being there were nonsense. The Gulf of Tonkin incident was a hoax. The Tet offensive showed the North was willing to fight to the death. And the My Lai incident (and related incidents) and, yes, Nixon's Christmas bombings had caused America to question whether or not we had the moral high ground. So what were we doing there? It was time get out.

So we did. Could it have been less messy? Probably. But you keep insisting that if only we'd stayed another 20 years and killed another 5 million or so people we would have "won". And you seem angry that some lib-tards tied Ford's hands so he couldn't drag us back into the war in disguise as yet another "police action."

John Kerry famously asked "How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake?" Your answer seems to be that you don't ask a man that, you order him, and that you then make sure many many more people die after him so he won't be the last man. 

 

 

 

[Sandy Larsen]

49 minutes ago, Michael Griffith said:

The Democrats used their huge majorities to slash badly needed aid to South Vietnam and then to pass the treasonous Case-Church Amendment after the Paris Peace Accords, which guaranteed North Vietnam that the U.S. would not intervene to stop another invasion of the South.

 

Support for the Vietnam war had been declining for years and there was very little remaining when the Democrats took control of Congress in 1972. The war would have been ended no matter who was in power.

 

 

[James DiEugenio]

Everyone should read that article Chuck posted.  Its really important to understand the situation as it was and is.

Here is one takeaway:

Since formalizing diplomatic relations, the US and Vietnam have strengthened their relationship with bilateral trade increasing from US$450 million in 1994 to US$77 billion in 2019. The US had become Vietnam’s largest export market with Vietnam becoming the US’ quickest growing export market.

 

It goes on to say that the trade volume today is well over 100 billion!.  This is far left?  This is pure capitalism at work.  It would have happened decades earlier if America had not violated the Geneva Accords, or if LBJ had not reversed Kennedy's policy.