Oliver Stone's New JFK Documentaries and the Vietnam War

[Benjamin Cole]

11 hours ago, Michael Griffith said:

Ben, let me first address something James said in the reply after yours:

General Giap claimed Khe Sanh was never of particular importance to the North Vietnamese. 

So now you're relying on a murderous communist thug like Giap? If Khe Sanh was "never of particular importance" to the NVese, why did Giap commit 40,000 troops to it and divert large numbers of artillery pieces that would be sorely missed during the Tet Offensive? (Some put the number of Giap's forces at closer to 100,000). If you had bothered to read the articles I linked, you would have read a refutation of the NVese claim that they didn't really care about Khe Sanh.

In fact, the NVese also later claimed that they were not even trying to take the base but were merely trying to tie down American forces there, a laughable claim given the number of suicidal ground assaults they launched against the base.

Ben, now to your reply:

Yes, I watched the film I posted, that's why I posted it 

But you forgot to mention that the film said we won a resounding victory at Khe Sanh, and that when we counterattacked and pursued them, they were forced to leave behind huge amounts of war material, something they usually never did. 

The film, produced by the US Marines, describes Khe Sanh as under constant fire, so much so supplies were air-dropped. 

No, it does not. It includes several segments that show periods when Khe Sanh was not under fire. Will you ever watch the two-part AIM documentary Television's Vietnam, which includes a long segment on Khe Sanh? It includes interviews with soldiers who were at Khe Sanh during the battle. They were able to take leave and come back. Journalists were able to fly in and out. We had complete control of the air over Khe Sanh. Etc., etc., etc.

The NVese fired a huge amount of shells at Khe Sanh. Yes, certainly, there were times when the shelling made the air strip "hot" and forced our troops to take cover, but there were also plenty of times when firing was minimal or non-existent. There were frequent long breaks in the shelling because we had destroyed so many NVese artillery pieces and it took time for them to bring in more artillery pieces. And, as mentioned earlier, many of their shells were off target and landed too far away to do any damage at all, because they were forced to fire from less-than-optimal ranges.

I should add that we purposely allowed Giap to surround Khe Sanh. This was a conscious strategy to bait him into committing a large force to try to take the base:

Khe Sanh was a purposely orchestrated event by General William C. Westmorland
designed as bait to entice General Vo Nguyen Giap into a classic set-piece battle in an effort to destroy his army. (https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/pdfs/AD1019240.pdf, p. 4)

Oh, and the film was not made by the Marines but by the Air Force. If you watch the film, the opening credits state that it was made by the Air Force (0:01 to 0:06 in the film).

Here is a very good Marine Corps video on the battle of Khe Sanh: Click Here.

In 1967, the NV/VC were routed, and retreated---but came back.

The battle occurred in 1968. The NVese hastily fled when we launched a ground counterattack.

Oh, yes, the NVese came back, after they saw that we were leaving, and they were careful to keep their distance when they came back, and they came back in much smaller numbers than they had during the battle.

Also, after the ammo dump got hit, our troops dug a huge complex underground to house the new ammo dump, a hospital, etc., and key parts of the base were connected by a series of tunnels and deep trenches. This was one reason that our casualties were so low.

To appreciate the ineffectiveness of the NVese artillery, we should consider the number of flights--both fixed-wing and helicopter--and the amount of supplies they delivered during the battle:

Throughout the siege, the smaller C-123s and C-7s landed on the airstrip to deliver their supplies and evacuate the wounded. All told, 12,430 tons of supplies were delivered and 4,250 passengers transported by USAF aircraft in 1061 sorties. In addition to these numbers, Marine helicopters transported 14,562 passengers and 4,661 tons of cargo keeping the overlooking hilltops in Marine’s hands.(https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/pdfs/AD1019240.pdf, p. 7)

The final chapter, not in the contemporary film, is Marines abandoning the base under gunfire. 

This is the same distortion that North Vietnam and our news media peddled. If you want to call the long-range shelling that the NVese did while we were dismantling the base after we had chased their forces out of the area--if you want to call that "abandoning the base under gunfire," that's your prerogative. Strictly technically speaking it's accurate, but it's also misleading.

Even after the bulk of our forces were gone and we had only a small force on Hill 689, the NVese did not dare launch any major attacks but only minor harassing attacks. Why do you suppose that was?

Moreover, our forces continued to patrol the entire Khe Sanh plateau for over a year after we dismantled the base. Also, later that year, in October, we reoccupied the area for two weeks with South Vietnamese forces, and they encountered only minimal opposition. Now, why do you suppose that was?

But that's not all. The Marines continued to hold Hill 950 overlooking the Khe Sanh plateau until September 1969. What happened when the NVese launched a major assault on the hill? Well, they never did that. Why do you suppose that was?

Khe Sanh is in many ways a small version of the whole war---the insanity, with Westmoreland suggesting nuclear arms were needed to secure Khe Sanh, which was absolutely vital to the war effort.

More distortion. Westmoreland never said nukes were needed to secure Khe Sanh. You are talking about Westmoreland's internal statement that IF the situation at Khe Sanh or near the DMZ severely deteriorated, low-yield nukes "might" need to be used. But the situation never even got close to that point.

And I suspect that this will shock you, but dropping one or two low-yield nukes around Khe Sanh would not have been the end of the planet. The blast radius of the low-yield nukes at the time was about 8,000 feet, and the worst destruction would have occurred within about 4,000 feet of the center of the explosion, gradually and substantially tapering off from that point. I am not suggesting that we should have done this, but I am saying that it was not a crazy, reckless option when talking about areas that were miles away from any sizable populations.

Then the US retreating from the Khe Sanh base later.   

Okay, I'm guessing you didn't bother to read any of the articles I linked, right? We did not "retreat" from Khe Sanh. In military terminology, our withdrawal from Khe Sanh was not a "retreat." We left Khe Sanh because the NVese changed their tactics in the area after incurring such a terrible slaughter when they tried ground assaults. Plus, we no longer needed a fixed base such as Khe Sanh because we now had enough helicopters in the area to carry out mobile operations in the region. And, I repeat that we continued to patrol the entire Khe Sanh plateau for over a year after dismantling the base, and that we held Hill 950 until September 1969 for recon purposes because the hill provided a view of the entire plateau.

Another reason that we closed the base--actually, the main reason we did so--was that General Abrams had taken over command of U.S. forces in Vietnam, and closing the base was part of his successful Vietnamization strategy. Westmoreland recommended maintaining the base, but Abrams did not believe in Westmoreland's search-and-destroy approach. Therefore, he saw no need to maintain a base that was far removed from population and whose function could be done without maintaining it.

The huge US military advantage, incredible losses for the other side, but ultimate defeat. 

That was the warped spin put out by the communists, our news media, and our anti-war movement. How was Khe Sanh a "defeat" when we continued to patrol the entire plateau at will and held a key observation point overlooking the plateau for over a year after slaughtering Giap's forces when they tried to take the base?

"American commanders considered the defense of Khe Sanh a success, but shortly after the siege was lifted, the decision was made to dismantle the base rather than risk similar battles in the future. On 19 June 1968, the evacuation and destruction of KSCB began. Amid heavy shelling, the Marines attempted to salvage what they could before destroying what remained as they were evacuated."---Wikipedia

Of course Wikipedia repeats the leftist line on Khe Sanh. "Amid heavy shelling"? Well, amid heavy long-range and ineffective shelling. This was more harassing fire than anything else; it did not impede our dismantling and withdrawal operations. And, incidentally, that "heavy shelling" was intermittent because Giap had to keep moving his artillery periodically to avoid the kinds of devastating air attacks he had suffered during the battle. 

As for the claim that we did not want to "risk similar battles in the future," this was a PR-based statement because of the media-hyped negative perception of an American base being surrounded and cut off, even though we purposely allowed the base to be surrounded, and even though we inflicted horrendous losses on the enemy. In actuality, our commanders would have been only too happy to have had "similar battles in the future" where we baited the NVese to surround a position and then decimated their forces with air and artillery attacks and forced them to flee so quickly that they left behind massive war supplies. 

One of the reasons we withdrew from and dismantled the Khe Sanh base was that we realized that Giap was not going to be dumb enough to try a ground assault on the base again. But liberal sources never mention this; instead, they prefer, for some reason, to repeat communist talking points about Khe Sanh. Liberal sources also never mention that we continued to patrol the entire Khe Sanh plateau and held a key observation point for over a year after the battle.

Kissinger summed it up, when he said the problem with guerrilla warfare is the bad guys never do what you want them to. They fade when weak, they attack where vulnerable. 

Kissinger's comment has nothing to do with Khe Sanh. Giap's assault on Khe Sanh was not "guerilla warfare" but a traditional set-piece attack.

Much as I loathe, detest and revile communist dictatorships (including the one in Beijing toasted by US multinationals, academic and financial elites). . . .

I certainly agree with you on this point, but a few folks argue that brutal communist regimes are actually not all that bad if they have KFC, Domino's, McDonald's, and have schools of banking and finance.

what can you say about the NV/VC soldiers? Do you suppose they showed a lot of determination? 

Actually, NV/VC soldiers surrendered whenever they had the chance to do so, i.e., if they could surrender without being shot by their officers while trying to escape. You should read the accounts of former NV/VC soldiers about the draconian discipline imposed on them by their officers. During the war, over 200,000 NV/VC soldiers surrendered and became POWs.

In addition, it is worth noting that during the battle of Khe Sanh, NVese soldiers deserted in large numbers. Documents captured when we overran Giap's positions revealed that his desertion rate was an astounding 20-25%. This is mentioned in the Marine Corps documentary on Khe Sanh.

If the US ultimately loses in Khe Sanh...what does that tell you? If US soldiers (understandably) just want to serve their tour and get out, what does that tell you? If Khe Sanh is a US victory....

It is Orwellian spin to say that we "lost" at Khe Sanh. If you were to get 10 military experts in a room and describe the events at Khe Sanh as a hypothetical scenario, I'd bet good money that every one of them would say that the force that occupied the base, that decimated the attackers, that forced the attackers to flee, and that continued to do recon patrols in the area at will was the force that won.

As for the argument about U.S. soldiers, that is a sad head-shaker. Of course, of course, of course, most of our soldiers just wanted to serve their tour and get out. The same was true of our soldiers in the Civil War, in World War II, and in the Korean War. Most soldiers in any war, especially the draftees, do not want to be in a combat zone any longer than required, and naturally they are anxious to get back to their civilian lives. This universal reality does not change the fact that Khe Sanh was a resounding defeat for the North Vietnamese. 

 

MG--

Well, like Vietnam debates of 50 years ago, we could go on forever. 

However, as a parting comment, I would like to say you are right to caution others not to accept "propaganda." 

When you define NV/VC troops as demoralized and deserters---is this not propaganda, too? 

Something does not add up.

The US side, with all the logistical, material and intel advantages, and by a wide margin. 

The other side, vastly inferior in all regards, and with demoralized troops.

But they prevail. 

This VW loss was due to left-wing media? Some newspaper headlines and a CBS special? 

This does not hold water. 

The fact that NV/VC soldiers were on the wrong side (by my lights) does not mean they lacked resolve. Give credit where credit is due.  

The official count seems to be 1.1 million NV and VC died in the VW.  Pretty easy to sit in an armchair and say those guys were not tough.

The NV/VC were always fighting losing battles, militarily speaking, year after year.  Some had been fighting since the 1950s.

In my book, that is tough. When you underestimate your enemies....

 

 

 

[Kirk Gallaway]

On 9/3/2022 at 5:03 PM, Sandy Larsen said:

Michael Griffith said:I don't think you folks realize how bad it sounds to many Americans when you talk as though it would have been a great and wise act of statesmanship if JFK had handed over 18 million South Vietnamese to communist tyranny after he was reelected.

What do you say to a guy, who had such titanic aspirations for complete victory in Vietnam and despite 50 years of history to learn from, still is convinced as to the possibility everything could have gone completely right, and now 50 years later seems to have massive regret?

Sandy's answer to this I thought was correct. But i recall the average response to the buildup in Viet Nam was "where's Viet Nam?"

Paul::Do you think there would be military victory possible anywhere in the world now? Afghanistan? Ukraine? Taiwan?

This is a great question, because IMO, it doesn't seem  that you've learned much in the last 50 years, Michael..

But to your general outlook that we could have made a great difference for many years to come. I do think there were more complete, lasting  victories during WW2 , because as time went on, the stakes got greater, and so much was invested that the losers just had to be bombed into complete submission, and by that point the parties were so exhausted with war, they were ready to carry on with the new world.

But even as early as the Korean War. It started becoming obvious complete victory was an illusion.

Having lived through it, but apart from living through it,  I think the Vietnam war was a terrible mistake, ending in great loss of life and displacement for generations to come..

I remember we spent a lot of time here reviewing Ken Burn's "Viet Nam" and I didn't find some of the personal reviews here that accurate and found some people sort of skewing info to their personal narrative. But I'm probably not presupposed to do much research on it,so who am I to say?  Similarly in your case I'm not presupposed  to spend time taking book tips to become more informed about how we could have won the Vietnam War.  Because in this situation, it is just one author against another author and what your outlook is.

But I commend that you do, Michael, you've obviously spent so much time on this subject. Despite it obviously being a topic of some consternation for you. If I may ask, What's your stake here? Does your family have a military background? Did you have to contend with a draft?or was this before your time? Why such interest?

Thanks

 

Edited September 7, 2022 by Kirk Gallaway

[Michael Griffith]

7 hours ago, Kirk Gallaway said:

What do you say to a guy, who had such titanic aspirations for complete victory in Vietnam and despite 50 years of history to learn from, still is convinced as to the possibility everything could have gone completely right, and now 50 years later seems to have massive regret?

Sandy's answer to this I thought was correct. But i recall the average response to the buildup in Viet Nam was "where's Viet Nam?"

Paul::Do you think there would be military victory possible anywhere in the world now? Afghanistan? Ukraine? Taiwan?

This is a great question, because IMO, it doesn't seem  that you've learned much in the last 50 years, Michael..

But to your general outlook that we could have made a great difference for many years to come. I do think there were more complete, lasting  victories during WW2 , because as time went on, the stakes got greater, and so much was invested that the losers just had to be bombed into complete submission, and by that point the parties were so exhausted with war, they were ready to carry on with the new world.

But even as early as the Korean War. It started becoming obvious complete victory was an illusion.

Having lived through it, but apart from living through it,  I think the Vietnam war was a terrible mistake, ending in great loss of life and displacement for generations to come..

I remember we spent a lot of time here reviewing Ken Burn's "Viet Nam" and I didn't find some of the personal reviews here that accurate and found some people sort of skewing info to their personal narrative. But I'm probably not presupposed to do much research on it,so who am I to say?  Similarly in your case I'm not presupposed  to spend time taking book tips to become more informed about how we could have won the Vietnam War.  Because in this situation, it is just one author against another author and what your outlook is.

But I commend that you do, Michael, you've obviously spent so much time on this subject. Despite it obviously being a topic of some consternation for you. If I may ask, What's your stake here? Does your family have a military background? Did you have to contend with a draft?or was this before your time? Why such interest?

Thanks

Kirk,

I was not of draft age during the Vietnam War, but I had friends whose older brothers were drafted. My family does not have a military background, but I was in the U.S. Army for 21 years. The Vietnam War has been a research interest of mine for over 20 years.

When I went through Army basic training, I had no views about the Vietnam War. A number of my drill sergeants had served in Vietnam. It made an impression on me when all of them said that the war was an honorable endeavor and that they were proud of their service in it. 

I do not believe the war was a terrible mistake. I believe it was a valid, noble effort to keep 18 million people from falling under communist tyranny. I believe it was every bit as valid and noble as our effort to keep South Korea free. I believe the evidence is undeniable that the Vietnam War was entirely winnable. 

I think it is sad and repulsive that so many American liberals minimize or deny the brutality and terror that North Vietnam unleashed on the South Vietnamese after the war. I suspect they do this because they don't want to acknowledge the terrible consequences of the betrayal of South Vietnam.

I find it especially sad to see American liberals repeating communist talking points about the Geneva Accords, about who violated those accords more severely, about who the aggressor was and who the victim was, and about key events during the war. I find that, virtually without exception, liberals who repeat those talking points are unaware of what we have learned from released North Vietnamese archives and from the writings of former North Vietnamese and Vietcong officials and officers. 

 

Edited September 6, 2022 by Michael Griffith

[Pat Speer]

2 hours ago, Michael Griffith said:

Kirk,

I was not of draft age during the Vietnam War, but I had friends whose older brothers were drafted. My family does not have a military background, but I was in the U.S. Army for 21 years. The Vietnam War has been a research interest of mine for over 20 years.

When I went through Army basic training, I had no views about the Vietnam War. A number of my drill sergeants had served in Vietnam. It made an impression on me when all of them said that the war was an honorable endeavor and that they were proud of their service in it. 

I do not believe the war was a terrible mistake. I believe it was a valid, noble effort to keep 18 million people from falling under communist tyranny. I believe it was every bit as valid and noble as our effort to keep South Korea free. I believe the evidence is undeniable that the Vietnam War was entirely winnable. 

I think it is sad and repulsive that so many American liberals minimize or deny the brutality and terror that North Vietnam unleashed on the South Vietnamese after the war. I suspect they do this because they don't want to acknowledge the terrible consequences of the Democrats' betrayal of South Vietnam.

I find it especially sad to see American liberals repeating communist talking points about the Geneva Accords, about who violated those accords more severely, about who the aggressor was and who the victim was, and about key events during the war. I find that, virtually without exception, liberals who repeat those talking points are unaware of what we have learned from released North Vietnamese archives and from the writings of former North Vietnamese and Vietcong officials and officers. 

 

Thanks for that bit of background, Michael. My parents were divorced when I was 7. My father wasn't around much. But my uncle and his Marine buddies used to come up from Pendleton on the weekends and they became, in effect, my surrogate fathers and older brothers. A couple of these guys had been to Nam. They used to show me Polaroids they'd taken of dead "gooks". One of them gave me a hat that he'd worn in-country, that had "Sorry About That, Vietnam" stitched into the side. Being around these young men, and seeing how it affected their psyches, led my mom to reject the war. To this day, she can't say "McNamara" without her face scrunching up with scorn.

But my point is that these guys themselves never denounced the war. Most of them were drafted to fight in a war they didn't believe in, but through their military training they came to see themselves not as expendable cannon-fodder for the military-industrial complex, but as soldiers--modern day warriors designed to kick-ass. The movie Full Metal Jacket depicts this brilliantly, IMO. 

So my larger point is that people who serve--even those drafted into serving--come away believing there's a military solution for everything...and sometimes even that their newly-acquired skill set and training is applicable to everyday life. Well, our founding fathers--presumably Washington himself, knew this. That is why the Secretary of Defense is a civilian. Because the military, while willing to do what must be done, is not properly equipped to decide what should be done. They just aren't. Their answer is always more soldiers, more firepower, more death, more war... 

Now, as this pertains to Vietnam. The U.S. military establishment are the sorest of losers. They never came to grips that they "lost" a new kind of war. They have since day one alibi-ed that they could have won if only they'd been given the ability to do so. And this is largely irrelevant. And kinda embarrassing... OF COURSE we could have "won" if we'd given the butchers more knives and more meat to cut. But someone somewhere had to make a decision when to cut and run. Someone somewhere had to take a look at the BIG PICTURE, and see where the war was leading, if not more and more slaughter. After 20 years, South Vietnam had become less stable, and North Vietnam had become a heroic little nation with some mighty big friends, that showed no signs of going anywhere. Our continued presence in SE Asia had damaged us internationally, created a rift internally, and blackened the souls of a generation of young men...who used to dream of sports cars and surf boards but who now delighted in showing 7 year-olds Polaroids of dead "gooks". Enough was enough. 

And that is where congress comes in... Bowing to the will of the people, congress restricted the military's ability to resurrect the war, and prolong the slaughter. This is what they were supposed to do. They deferred to the wishes of President Johnson, and President Nixon, but when it became clear a third President was itching to throw more meat on the fire, they said "NOPE!" 

And that was a good thing. Almost everyone now thinks so... Almost everyone now knows so... Although some perished at the hands of the North Vietnamese, it is not nearly the number that would have perished should the war have continued... And may very well not have been nearly the number that would have perished at the hands of a "friendly" South Vietnamese government. In the guise of supporting strong anti-Communist governments, after all, we have propped up many a murderous regime, some no doubt more murderous than the current regime in Vietnam.

 

 

[Larry Hancock]

What you said about the combat troops in Vietnam is certainly true to some extent Pat but it didn't apply to all of them:

https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/vietnam-veterans-against-the-war-demonstrate

Some of my friends who went into combat over there - after training - were not turned on to the fighting either (others  just tolerated it until their time was up).

I went into the service and overseas but not to Vietnam and not into combat   myself but few of the guys I knew in the service were at all eager to deploy there - well our drill instructor in BMT said he was because we were so pitiful in training but we sort of questioned that at the time.

Beyond that not all the military were on board with the escalation and strategy approved by LBJ - Westmoreland was warned before he went over that his tactics would not work - but as an old artillery guy he ignored the officers who had already been on the ground there.

Perhaps the most astonishing thing recently though was the resurgence  and recycling of Vietnam "gurus" offering advice on how to take the counter insurgency programs from Nam to Afghanistan....really....and people actually listened to them.

 

[Michael Griffith]

2 hours ago, Pat Speer said:

Thanks for that bit of background, Michael. My parents were divorced when I was 7. My father wasn't around much. But my uncle and his Marine buddies used to come up from Pendleton on the weekends and they became, in effect, my surrogate fathers and older brothers. A couple of these guys had been to Nam. They used to show me Polaroids they'd taken of dead "gooks". One of them gave me a hat that he'd worn in-country, that had "Sorry About That, Vietnam" stitched into the side. Being around these young men, and seeing how it affected their psyches, led my mom to reject the war. To this day, she can't say "McNamara" without her face scrunching up with scorn.

But my point is that these guys themselves never denounced the war. Most of them were drafted to fight in a war they didn't believe in, but through their military training they came to see themselves not as expendable cannon-fodder for the military-industrial complex, but as soldiers--modern day warriors designed to kick-ass. The movie Full Metal Jacket depicts this brilliantly, IMO. 

So my larger point is that people who serve--even those drafted into serving--come away believing there's a military solution for everything...and sometimes even that their newly-acquired skill set and training is applicable to everyday life. Well, our founding fathers--presumably Washington himself, knew this. That is why the Secretary of Defense is a civilian. Because the military, while willing to do what must be done, is not properly equipped to decide what should be done. They just aren't. Their answer is always more soldiers, more firepower, more death, more war... 

Now, as this pertains to Vietnam. The U.S. military establishment are the sorest of losers. They never came to grips that they "lost" a new kind of war. They have since day one alibi-ed that they could have won if only they'd been given the ability to do so. And this is largely irrelevant. And kinda embarrassing... OF COURSE we could have "won" if we'd given the butchers more knives and more meat to cut. But someone somewhere had to make a decision when to cut and run. Someone somewhere had to take a look at the BIG PICTURE, and see where the war was leading, if not more and more slaughter. After 20 years, South Vietnam had become less stable, and North Vietnam had become a heroic little nation with some mighty big friends, that showed no signs of going anywhere. Our continued presence in SE Asia had damaged us internationally, created a rift internally, and blackened the souls of a generation of young men...who used to dream of sports cars and surf boards but who now delighted in showing 7 year-olds Polaroids of dead "gooks". Enough was enough. 

And that is where congress comes in... Bowing to the will of the people, congress restricted the military's ability to resurrect the war, and prolong the slaughter. This is what they were supposed to do. They deferred to the wishes of President Johnson, and President Nixon, but when it became clear a third President was itching to throw more meat on the fire, they said "NOPE!" 

And that was a good thing. Almost everyone now thinks so... Almost everyone now knows so... Although some perished at the hands of the North Vietnamese, it is not nearly the number that would have perished should the war have continued... And may very well not have been nearly the number that would have perished at the hands of a "friendly" South Vietnamese government. In the guise of supporting strong anti-Communist governments, after all, we have propped up many a murderous regime, some no doubt more murderous than the current regime in Vietnam.

 

 

 

2 hours ago, Pat Speer said:

Thanks for that bit of background, Michael. My parents were divorced when I was 7. My father wasn't around much. But my uncle and his Marine buddies used to come up from Pendleton on the weekends and they became, in effect, my surrogate fathers and older brothers. A couple of these guys had been to Nam. They used to show me Polaroids they'd taken of dead "gooks". One of them gave me a hat that he'd worn in-country, that had "Sorry About That, Vietnam" stitched into the side. Being around these young men, and seeing how it affected their psyches, led my mom to reject the war. To this day, she can't say "McNamara" without her face scrunching up with scorn.

But my point is that these guys themselves never denounced the war. Most of them were drafted to fight in a war they didn't believe in, but through their military training they came to see themselves not as expendable cannon-fodder for the military-industrial complex, but as soldiers--modern day warriors designed to kick-ass. The movie Full Metal Jacket depicts this brilliantly, IMO. 

So my larger point is that people who serve--even those drafted into serving--come away believing there's a military solution for everything...and sometimes even that their newly-acquired skill set and training is applicable to everyday life. Well, our founding fathers--presumably Washington himself, knew this. That is why the Secretary of Defense is a civilian. Because the military, while willing to do what must be done, is not properly equipped to decide what should be done. They just aren't. Their answer is always more soldiers, more firepower, more death, more war... 

Now, as this pertains to Vietnam. The U.S. military establishment are the sorest of losers. They never came to grips that they "lost" a new kind of war. They have since day one alibi-ed that they could have won if only they'd been given the ability to do so. And this is largely irrelevant. And kinda embarrassing... OF COURSE we could have "won" if we'd given the butchers more knives and more meat to cut. But someone somewhere had to make a decision when to cut and run. Someone somewhere had to take a look at the BIG PICTURE, and see where the war was leading, if not more and more slaughter. After 20 years, South Vietnam had become less stable, and North Vietnam had become a heroic little nation with some mighty big friends, that showed no signs of going anywhere. Our continued presence in SE Asia had damaged us internationally, created a rift internally, and blackened the souls of a generation of young men...who used to dream of sports cars and surf boards but who now delighted in showing 7 year-olds Polaroids of dead "gooks". Enough was enough. 

And that is where congress comes in... Bowing to the will of the people, congress restricted the military's ability to resurrect the war, and prolong the slaughter. This is what they were supposed to do. They deferred to the wishes of President Johnson, and President Nixon, but when it became clear a third President was itching to throw more meat on the fire, they said "NOPE!" 

And that was a good thing. Almost everyone now thinks so... Almost everyone now knows so... Although some perished at the hands of the North Vietnamese, it is not nearly the number that would have perished should the war have continued... And may very well not have been nearly the number that would have perished at the hands of a "friendly" South Vietnamese government. In the guise of supporting strong anti-Communist governments, after all, we have propped up many a murderous regime, some no doubt more murderous than the current regime in Vietnam.

Pat,

I think it is a vast exaggeration to say that "almost everyone now thinks" that the war was a mistake and that it was a good thing we did not keep supporting South Vietnam. I'm sure that "almost everyone" in liberal circles thinks this way, but they don't constitute "almost everyone" in the population as a whole. Go to any of the major online forums that discuss the Vietnam War and you'll see that a great many people disagree with the liberal view on the war. Scholarly books that defend the Vietnam War continue to be published. 

I would answer your other comments by making the following points, which I think your comments avoid:

-- North Vietnam was the aggressor. South Vietnam did not invade North Vietnam, but North Vietnam repeatedly invaded South Vietnam.

-- For all its faults and problems, South Vietnam's government was far less corrupt and oppressive than North Vietnam's government. It is sadly ironic that so many VC/NLF/PRG members realized this only after South Vietnam fell.

-- We could have won the war in a matter of months, if not weeks, if our military had not been hamstrung by so many ridiculous rules of engagement that placed suicidal restraints on our operations. We know from North Vietnamese sources that when Nixon allowed a reasonable and effective use of our air power in Operation Linebacker II in late 1972 for just 12 days, Hanoi's defenses were on the verge of collapse and Hanoi's leaders were desperate and were considering capitulation. This fact alone destroys the leftist myth that the war was unwinnable.

-- Even during Linebacker II, we made every reasonable effort to minimize civilian casualties. Our air raids, even Linebacker II, did not violate the standard rules of war and were nothing like the criminal air raids that LeMay launched against Japan.

-- In the first two to three years after South Vietnam fell, the North Vietnamese executed over 60,000 South Vietnamese and killed a bare minimum of 5,000 others in the brutal "reeducation" camps. In contrast, during our 12 years in Vietnam, we lost just over 58,000 troops.

-- Some former reeducation camp prisoners argue that well over 100,000 South Vietnamese died in those camps, based on their personal observations that in the camps where they were kept, the death rate among prisoners ranged from 1 in 20 up to 1 in 6, due to the harsh conditions and cruel treatment (see, for example, reeducation camp survivor Quang Hong Mac's book The Bloody Experiences in Hell's Reeducation Camp) . If we take the lowball figure of 800,000 for the number of prisoners in those camps and assume that "only" 1 in 20 died, that gives us a death figure of 40,000.

-- The Communist Bloc, especially North Vietnam, China, and the Soviet Union, carried out a massive worldwide propaganda campaign from 1954 until the end of the war in order to smear South Vietnam and the U.S. war effort, and most American and European media outlets uncritically repeated much of that propaganda. To this day, liberal books on the war repeat many of the talking points that the communists put out during the war.

-- Every argument that critics make against the Vietnam War can also be made against the Korean War--and I mean every single argument. The difference was that we did not impose suicidal restrictions on the use of air power in Korea, and that our news media did not smear the war effort and did not demonize the South Korean government.

 

[James DiEugenio]

Am i the only one who is really getting an aching back over these rightwing talking points straight out of Guenther Lewy and Norman Podhoretz?  

If you are not aware of who those two men were, let me explain. When the Neocons were triumphing in the Ford administration, that is Rumsfeld and Cheney had sidelined Kissinger in their power play to bring in Team 2--in order to build up the Russian threat--that was really the first manifest triumph of Nitze and the Neocons.

Lewy's book was called America In Vietnam and was published in 1978. (Lewy later also questioned if the extermination of the American Indians was a genocide.) Podhoretz then wrote a book in 1982 called Why We Were in Vietnam.  It was pretty much an echo of Lewy's book.  Theodore Draper devastated the Podhoretz book, and to a lesser extent Lewy's book, in a long review in The New Republic.  Reportedly, Podhoretz was taken aback by the ferocity of Draper's critique.

Draper's main point, and why he was so much up in arms was this: what these two men were doing was rewriting history in a fundamentally pernicious and dangerous manner.  To Draper, it was the equivalent to the mythology the Nazis had created  after WW I: Germany did not really lose the war, it was stabbed in the back by certain politicians and high officials in the military.

The mythology was furthered by Mr. "I don't remember Iran/Contra", Ronald Reagan, who--in pure John Wayne style-- then called Vietnam "a noble cause".  (Can't you just see Wayne with those little Asian boys prancing on the beach at the end of The Green Berets?)

There was no noble cause, which Novick and Burns slide over at the beginning of their quite poor series.  France wanted to recolonize Indochina after the Japanese had taken it over and Paris had fallen to the Germans.  Ho Chi Minh wanted his country to be independent, in keeping with FDR's pledge. Truman, the British and Acheson decided to side with France.  And this started the first Indochina war.  in 1951, both Gullion and Topping told JFK that France was not going to win. Mainly because the Viet Minh were so fired up about independence and not going back under European colonization..  But Foster Dulles was so determined in his effort to aid  France, he actually authorized Operation Vulture to bail out DIen Bien Phu. The Brits would not sign on to atomic warfare. So Dulles personally extended the nukes to the French, who said, those will kill as many Frenchman as Vietnamese. (Atomic weapons in the jungles of the Third World?)

The French lost at Dien Bien Phu.  But now Dulles answered Kennedy's 1953 series of questions.  One of which was, what do you plan on doing if the French fail?  Well, we now know.  It was to ease the French out, not listen to General Collins who thought DIem was doomed, subvert the Geneva Accords by cancelling elections, and prop up our own fascist dictator.  Burns and Novick said that all these guys who did this--Nixon, the Dulles brothers, Lansdale--these were all honorable men.  🤮

BTW, Sec Def Wilson recommended getting out early: honoring the Geneva Accords and leaving the country. He was right.  But Kennedy had the second best idea.  Hoisting the other side on their own petard of victory. And then leaving. That would have saved over 7 million tons of bombs and 5.8 million lives. 

The bomb tonnage figure is astonishing since it exceeds what the Allies dropped over Japan and Germany. Those two countries had industrial bases.  There was no such base in Indochina. This was even more true about Cambodia than it was in Vietnam.  To give one example, during the Xmas bombing, over 2500 civilians were killed, whole neighborhoods were wiped out.

Edited September 6, 2022 by James DiEugenio

[Joseph McBride]

Michael, have you listened to the audiotapes

online of President Johnson in 1964 discussing the

war with Sen. Richard Russell? Johnson admits

the war cannot be won but that he is powerless

to stop escalating it. You should ask yourself

why. And Russell accurately predicts the

US involvement would last 10 years and that

we would lose 50,000 troops and the war.

[Kirk Gallaway]

I had 3 brothers who served in the Arm services. I knew one person from high school who died in Vietnam, and one of my older brother's classmates also died. But I had a number of friends and acquaintances who were in combat in Vietnam and lived to tell about  it. Some were drafted, some enlisted,  None of them liked it. a few later demonstrated against it.

My closest friend who served in Vietnam as a Marine came back on leave, during the summer of my senior year in high school and said if "they are going to throw Calley in jail (for the massacre of civilians in My Lai,) then kill me. I've killed civilians."  I mentioned the conversation over the dinner table and my Mother got very upset, and my Father turned very serious. My dad was a Republican, we lived on the SF peninsula and my dad had thrown a Republican campaign fundraiser for a Veteran Marine Republican Congressman named Paul Mc Closkey who  later turned against the war and became the first Republican congressman to call for Nixon's impeachment, which my Dad was not happy about. But later came around.

Michael: I think it is sad and repulsive that so many American liberals minimize or deny the brutality and terror that North Vietnam unleashed on the South Vietnamese after the war.

In the 70's, i used to hear  people who came back say the argument that we could have won the war but we tied our hands behind our backs. But in the last decades,  I haven't heard many people come out about this like you do, but I'm sure there are many.

I know you tend to couch this as a liberal/ conservative issue. But I don't  think there's an overwhelming consensus of conservatives who are as repulsed as you and are as driven to asking the "what if" questions about the war  that you do. But  I could see that there would many be among conservative veterans, but I don't think it's really human nature for most people to want to second guess a failed 50 year old war.

Do you regret that because we lost the war, we couldn't have pursued a more aggressive military  foreign policy and could have freed more people from communism in the future? If so where would that be?

[Michael Griffith]

On 9/5/2022 at 4:58 PM, James DiEugenio said:

 

When Harry Summers told Giap that the NVA never defeated the Americans on the battlefield, Giap replied: "That may be true, it is also irrelevant." Don't you understand anything about Vietnam Mike?

You keep making these superficial arguments and keep missing the key points. Why did our battlefield success end up being irrelevant? Here are the main reasons this happened:

(1) Congress, under your party's control, drastically cut our aid to South Vietnam at the same time that the Soviet Union and China were still pouring in massive amounts of weapons and supplies to North Vietnam. 

(2) Congress, under your party's control, gave North Vietnam a big flashing green light to invade by passing the Case-Church Amendment barely six months after the Paris Peace Accords, even though the Soviets and the Chinese were still giving North Vietnam massive amounts of military equipment and supplies.

(3) When, in plain violation of the Paris Peace Accords, North Vietnam launched a massive invasion of South Vietnam in late 1974, Congress, controlled by your party, refused to honor our promise to aid South Vietnam if the North invaded again. As the situation grew worse, President Ford, to his great credit, called a joint session of Congress and publicly pleaded for Congress to allow him to at least give South Vietnam weapons and supplies, but Congress said no.

If your party had not sided with North Vietnam, the Soviet Union, and China and had not betrayed South Vietnam, our battlefield success would have been very relevant; South Vietnam would be another South Korea today; and the horrors that the communists inflicted on the South Vietnamese never would have happened.

Giap was not trying to get a battlefield victory.  That was not central. The main point was to sap the will of the American army and, through that, to wreck the political consensus behind the war at home. Giap did both.

Giap most certainly was trying to win on the battlefield, but he also soon realized that people who shared your views in our press and on our college campuses were powerful allies because they could be counted on to turn American victories into perceived defeats and propaganda coups, because they could be counted on to demonize South Vietnam's government while whitewashing North Vietnam's murderous regime, and because they could be counted on to smear the American war effort. 

Giap's army got decimated in the 1972 Spring Offensive, even though all the ground fighting was done by South Vietnam's army (ARVN). The Spring Offensive proved that we could keep South Vietnam free without having troops on the ground but just by providing air cover and war material. It proved that ARVN could hold their own against, and even defeat, Giap's army, as long as we provided air cover and continued to resupply them as needed. It was a great testament to how much ARVN had improved.

Take a look at the book Kill Anything that Moves by Nick Turse.  In that book, he shows how the Pentagon worked out a secret plan to hide a plethora of war atrocities.  There were many; into the hundreds.  There was also the study of the rising incidence of fraggings.  Which, by about 1970, there were  over two hundred yearly.(Col. Robert Heinl, July 1971 Armed Forces Journal)  How does one conduct a war with that many mutinies?

Or take  the two Winter Soldier conferences in Detroit and Washington. About 109 veterans ended up testifying about war crimes. 

Oh, wow. Turse? The Winter Soldier stuff? 

Even if we were to assume, for the sake of argument, that every claim you make here is valid, the conduct of our soldiers in Vietnam would still be far better than the conduct of the North Vietnamese army (NVA) and the VC. For every single real or alleged American war crime, there were three or four NVA/VC war crimes. This gets back to the point that every criticism of the Vietnam War can be made against the Korean War and World War II.

Have you actually read Turse’s book? I have. Have you read any of the critical reviews of Turse’s book, about Turse’s selective, misleading use of his sources, and about his narrow, one-sided approach? Will you ever read any works that defend the conduct of our soldiers in Vietnam, such as Burkett’s Stolen Valor: How the Vietnam Generation Was Robbed of Its Heroes and History or Scruggs’ Lessons from the Vietnam War: Truths the Media Never Told You, or Moyar’s Phoenix and the Birds of Prey: Counterinsurgency and Counterterrorism in Vietnam, to name a few books that could be cited?

It is especially revealing that you would cite the Winter Soldier conferences. Do you have any idea how many of those 109 were exposed as outright frauds, were exposed as not having served where they said they served, or who refused to provide verifiable specifics when asked to do so? No. Because you’ve only read one side of the story and refuse to read the other side.

For starters, I would invite you to read Vietnam War scholar Phillip Jenning's section on the Winter Soldier claims in his book The Politically Incorrect Guide to the Vietnam War. 

And, it should be noted that those 109 Vietnam vets constituted a tiny fraction of the 2.7 million American military personnel who served in Vietnam.

So in the face of this, how can anyone call anybody else a thug?  I mean the cover up about Calley was kind of sickening, don't you think?

So you can’t even admit that Giap was a murderous thug? Yikes. What you clearly seem to be saying here, and elsewhere, is that our military in Vietnam was just as bad as the NVA and the VC, which is a slanderous, baseless position.

There was no specific “cover-up about Calley.” Initially, there was a cover-up of the My Lai Massacre, which was an inexcusable crime in which Calley played a role. Calley and the few dozens of other soldiers who took part in the massacre deserved to be punished, but it was shameful that Calley was singled out for punishment while his equally guilty commanding officer, Captain Medina, was not prosecuted. (And, no, I do not agree with Nixon’s pardon of Calley.)

Why don’t you ever talk about the far bloodier Hue Massacre carried out by the VC at the end of the Tet Offensive? Why don’t you talk about the other massacres and war crimes committed by the NVA and the VC? Our troops behaved like Boy Scouts compared to theirs.

This gets back to the point about selectivity and balance. Every attack you can make on the Vietnam War can be made against the Korean War and World War II. Some American soldiers committed war crimes during those wars. Yet, no rational person would argue that our soldiers in the Pacific were as barbaric as were Japanese soldiers, or that our soldiers in Europe behaved as badly as did SS soldiers (or Soviet soldiers), or that our soldiers in Korea committed anywhere near the number of war crimes that North Korean and Chinese soldiers committed.

And please do not give me that stuff about abandoning Vietnam to communism.  I don't see how Ben and Jerry's, Bank of America, McDonald's, a banking university etc constitute communism. 

HUH???! That “stuff about abandoning Vietnam to communism”? FYI, that “stuff” happens to be undeniable historical fact. What in the world are you talking about? I can honestly say that in all the hundreds of online discussions I’ve had on the Vietnam War, you are the first person I’ve encountered who has denied that the U.S. abandoned Vietnam to communism. Perhaps you misspoke.

I can’t believe you are still repeating the bizarre argument that a brutal communist regime isn’t really a brutal communist regime if it allows some Western fast-food chains and banks to operate within its borders. Would you apply this amoral logic to Russia and China? It is as if you’re saying, “Never mind the suppression of basic human rights. Never mind the murdering and jailing of dissidents. Never mind the lack of justice and due process. Never mind the control of the news media. Just never mind all that because they allow some Western restaurants and banks to operate within their borders!”

Again, go read the Human Rights Watch report on current-day Vietnam. The last time I checked, nobody has ever suggested that Human Rights Watch is a right-wing organization.

And it would have all happened decades earlier if the US had not broken the Geneva Accords. A point you wish to ignore. For what reason?

I’ve addressed this old communist talking point, but you just keep repeating it. Again, the country that most egregiously violated the Geneva Accords was North Vietnam, not the U.S. and not South Vietnam.

I asked if you knew what JFK himself said about the Geneva Accords, but you never replied. Here is some of what he said on the subject in 1956, two years after the Geneva Accords had been enacted:

I include in that injunction a plea that the United States never give its approval to the early nationwide elections called for by the Geneva Agreement of 1954. Neither the United States nor Free Vietnam was a party to that agreement – and neither the United States nor Free Vietnam is ever going to be a party to an election obviously stacked and subverted in advance, urged upon us by those who have already broken their own pledges under the Agreement they now seek to enforce. (Remarks of Senator John F. Kennedy at the Conference on Vietnam Luncheon in the Hotel Willard, Washington, D.C., June 1, 1956 | JFK Library)

And, tell me, what would have “all happened decades earlier”? 60,000-plus South Vietnamese executed? Thousands more killed via forced labor, starvation, and lack of medical treatment in communist concentration (“reeducation”) camps? Plunging the South into the same poverty as the North? At least 800,000 people fleeing for their lives rather than live under communist tyranny?

The basic difference between us boils down to this: You regret that South Vietnam did not fall to communist tyranny decades earlier, whereas I regret that South Vietnam did not remain free.

Edited September 8, 2022 by Michael Griffith
fixing annoying typos

[Pat Speer]

6 hours ago, Michael Griffith said:

 

The basic difference between us boils down to this: You regret that South Vietnam did not fall to communist tyranny decades earlier, whereas I regret that South Vietnam did not remain free.

Here is a more accurate version of your final summation...

"The basic difference between us boils down to this: You regret that South Vietnam did not fall to communist tyranny decades earlier (which would have saved millions of lives), whereas I regret that South Vietnam did not remain free (at the cost of millions of lives)."

 

It's easy to be an armchair general, Michael, and assume the loss of millions of lives would be preferable to America's acknowledging its failure... But I live in Southern California, with a substantial Vietnamese population. I spent much of last year in a hospital, and had a dozen or more Vietnamese nurses. While waiting to see if I was gonna die, I killed a lot of time by chitty-chatting with my nurses about their backgrounds. And not a one of them said that they wished the war had continued. A number of them, in fact, told me that they or their immediate family had recently returned to Vietnam to visit relatives. This idea of yours that Vietnam is a hell-hole that would have been worth millions of lives to avoid, is just not a thing with them. While some said their family was devastated by having to leave their homes, they never once said "Yeah, if only the U.S. had bombed more civilians in the north, the south would still be free today" or anything even close to that. There was no sense among them that the U.S. had betrayed the trust of their people by refusing to escalate the war. It's just something that a tiny percentage of pretend "conservatives" cling to so they can delude themselves into thinking they are "real men" and that only "pussy Democrats" lose wars. It's total garbage, and indicative of the bubble some wish to hide in.

Edited September 7, 2022 by Pat Speer

[James DiEugenio]

Nice one Pat.  😃

BTW, is Mike now calling me a commie symp?

The USA agreed to the Geneva Accords in an oral manner, which was legally binding.

If JFK said what you say he did, then he was wrong at the time.  But he learned his lesson later.  Which is more than I can say for people like Nixon.

My point is not to say that only the USA committed atrocities.  I am saying that neither side can call the other a thug in this case.  Because both sides did it. 

I have no doubt that Turse's book was attacked since redeeming VIetnam has become an industry these days.  

[James DiEugenio]

As per the Winter Soldier event, I guess Mike never read my article on Neil Sheehan, Mr. Vietnam Cover up artist par excellence.

 

The exposure of My Lai caused many other veterans to come forward and tell stories about other atrocities. In 1971, Mark Lane helped stage what was called the Winter Soldier Investigation.  This was a three day event held in Detroit and broadcast by Pacifica Radio. There, many others told similar stories about what had really happened in Vietnam.

The Nixon administration was not at all pleased with the event. White House advisor Charles Colson, with the help of the FBI, went to work on discrediting the witnesses. (Mark Lane, Citizen Lane, p. 218) Since Lane helped with the event, he knew many of the men and interviewed them. He turned the interviews into a book called Conversations with Americans. Some of the veterans expressed fear of reprisal for what they told the author.  So in the introduction, Lane explained that some names had been altered to protect the witnesses from the military. (Lane, p. 17) Lane then placed the actual transcripts with the real names at an attorney’s office in New York; a man who had worked for the Justice Department. (Citizen Lane, p. 219)

Six weeks after the book was released, the New York Times reviewed it. The reviewer was Sheehan. In cooperation with the Pentagon, Sheehan now said that a number of the witnesses were not genuine and Lane had somehow fabricated the interviews. (Citizen Lane, p. 220) Sheehan did this without calling the lawyer in New York who had the original depositions with the real names.  It is hard to believe, but Sheehan did a publicity tour for his article. Yet he refused to take any of Lane’s personal calls or answer any of his letters.  When Lane finally got to confront Sheehan on the radio, Sheehan said that in three years of covering the war in Vietnam he had never found any evidence of any such atrocities.  When Lane asked him about My Lai, Sheehan said these were just rumors. (Citizen Lane, p. 221) Recall, this was very late in 1970 and in early 1971. The story had broken wide open in late 1969, including photos of the victims in Life magazine and the Cleveland Plain Dealer.

 

Here is a link to that article which I am quite proud of and could only have been done at K and K.  https://www.kennedysandking.com/obituaries/neil-sheehan-in-retrospect

One last point which I made on BOR last week. 

 Sheehan's buddy, Halberstam, in The Best and the Brightest, tried to downplay his previous support of an escalation of the war. While also essentially ignoring Kennedy's actions to leave the war.

How bad did this get?  Halberstam actually cut sections out of The Making of a Quagmire, published before The Best and the Brightest, in its reissues so he could soft pedal his previous hawkishness. When one considers that both men worked at the NY Times, you can see why the reaction to JFK was so violent, especially at the Times.. Not only did the MSM miss the story about JFK's murder, they also missed the epic disaster that occurred after, which he was trying to escape. But the MSM essentially encouraged.

Edited September 7, 2022 by James DiEugenio

[Joseph McBride]

In a Gallup poll taken after the My Lai Massacre was

revealed, half of Americans said they approved of it.

I have found over the years that this split among Americans is

not uncommon on important issues. During the depths

of the illegal Bush/Cheney regime, around 70 percent

of Americans, or more, said they approved of torture.

And note our current impasse.

Edited September 7, 2022 by Joseph McBride

[Sandy Larsen]

On 9/6/2022 at 2:12 AM, Kirk Gallaway said:

On 9/3/2022 at 6:03 PM, Sandy Larsen said:

Michael said:

I don't think you folks realize how bad it sounds to many Americans when you talk as though it would have been a great and wise act of statesmanship if JFK had handed over 18 million South Vietnamese to communist tyranny after he was reelected.

Sandy's answer to this I thought was correct.

 

Thanks Kirk.

But would you go back and edit your post to reflect what I inserted in red, above. I don't want to be associated with that statement.

Thanks bud!