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[James DiEugenio]

As Mike Swanson has written about the subject, like everything else in the US political spectrum, and outside of it--like Xmas--the rise of the far right has made Vietnam into fodder for the constant, and ferocious phenomenon called "Culture Wars."  Which is really the manufacture of hate and resentment for political purposes: the creation and constant baiting of the angry white man.

There is also the concurrent trend that Ed Luttwak called, the "Rent a Scholar" program. That is, the rightwing think tanks have so much money that they will subsidize these Culture Wars, as long as one does their bidding e.g. Charles Murray, Losing Ground, The Bell Curve. You get your own office, a stipend, and resources.  Plus publicity when the product comes in as announced.

Moyar came up as part of the Agency for International Development (hmm), the CSIS at Georgetown (hmm) and the Foreign Policy Research Institute which was founded to counter Foster Dulles from the right. The guy who founded it, ended up being one of Goldwater's chief advisors on foreign policy in 1964. Moyar is the long version of the whole Lewy/Podhoretz school. (See also Max Boot.)

With that description  and job background, one can see how he came up with the above nonsensical observations. 

See, John Newman, when he wrote JFK and Vietnam, was not working with or for AID, CSIS, or any institute founded by someone who thought Dulles was not hawkish enough. He was an independent writer and researcher who was simply trying to discover if the whole historical paradigm of LBJ continuing Kennedy's policy in Vietnam was really accurate. That book is valuable historical revisionism.  It surfaced truths that LBJ himself had tried to cover up. Which is why, far from supporting him, his publisher sandbagged him.

Anyone who can postulate that DIem was an effective leader for all of VIetnam and the USA was correct to enter the war  because of the Domino Theory, that author cannot be trusted for the time of day, let alone what really happened in Indochina.

Unlike Newman, he is part of Luttwak's Rent A Scholar program

Edited September 23, 2022 by James DiEugenio

[Michael Griffith]

1 hour ago, James DiEugenio said:

 

 

Funny how your North Vietnamese sources essentially jibe with what the rightwing revisionists have been writing since the fall of Saigon.

Yes, I pointed out this fact to you about two weeks ago, i.e., that the NV sources starkly contradict the liberal of the war and support the conservative view of the war. I'm guessing you still, still, still have not bothered to read any of the sources I've linked or recommended. 

The comments about China are like what MacArthur was saying before hundreds of thousands of them poured across the border in Korea.

Huh? The Chinese and NV sources say that China was not going to intervene to save NV. Do you dispute this? How? I'm fairly certain you've read nothing about those sources, because liberal books either ignore them when it comes to issues such as this one.

Furthermore, the situation between China and North Korea was very different from the situation between China and North Vietnam. One of the reasons the Chinese were not going to intervene directly in North Vietnam was that they had suffered such enormous losses in the Korea War. Even when Ho Chi Minh begged the Chinese to intervene at the outset of the battle of Dien Bien Phu, they refused.

So after watching the  massacre of the PKI take place in Indonesia, Bejing was going to let Hanoi then fall to the USA?

See above.

And therefore everyone that Clifford talked to was wrong, as was Newman in retrospect and after studying the subject for 6 years. ANd Newman studed the VIetnam War under Kennedy for ten years.

Is this in response to my argument that Clifford's idea would have worked IF we had supported a ground assault with adequate air power? If the Chinese were unwilling to intervene directly with combat troops to help NV in the battle of Dien Bien Phu, they surely would not have been willing to do so post-1965 in the face of overwhelming American air power. China was in no condition to take us on at the time, and Mao knew it.

To give you idea of what Moyar's book is about, here are some of the major points, summarized by a sympathetic commentator. . . . [SNIP]

To give me an idea about Moyar's book???  I've read Moyar's book.

5. The US was on the verge of victory until the ouster of Diem. [one of the major points in Moyar's book]

Yes, absolutely. This is one of the facts that has emerged from NV sources. We know from NV sources that just before Diem was killed, Hanoi thought the war effort was not going very well.

It turns out that General Krulak's and General Harkins' 1963 assessments of the situation were correct. Most of us know about the famous incident when Krulak and State Department dove Joe Mendenhall returned from South Vietnam with very different situation reports, which led JFK to ask them if they had visited the same country. What most liberal books don't mention about this event is that Harkins then explained to JFK that Mendenhall had merely gone to three cities but that he, Krulak, had gone to the rural areas, where the war was actually being fought (see, for example, Sharp, Strategy for Defeat, pp. 21-23).

 

 

 

Edited September 23, 2022 by Michael Griffith

[James DiEugenio]

It is not a matter of liberal books.  John Newman is not a liberal.

The very idea that somehow DIem was on the verge of some great success is such utter nonsense that it is out of the Wizard Of Oz.  In late July of 1963 even Dean Rusk was taken aback by what Nhu had done with the Buddhist persecutions.  Consider the following State Dept message:

"On the basis of information from Saigon, it appears that the Government of the Republic of Vietnam has instituted serious repressive measures against the Vietnamese Buddhist leaders.  The action represents a direct violation by the Vietnamese Government of assurance that it was pursuing a policy of conciliation with the Buddhists. The United States deplores repressive actions of this nature."

As a result,  Nhu ordered the American Embassy's phone lines cut.  As Newman notes, at this point the Vietnamese generals "went to the embassy and asked if the US would support a coup." (Newman, p. 349, 2017 version) Meanwhile Madame Nhu was telling the press that the embassy had tried and failed to shut her up and she called for stronger actions against the Buddhists. (David Kaiser, American Tragedy, p. 222) 

 What was shocking about these raids is that Roger Hilsman was in the country at the time. He was the undersecretary for the Far East. He deduced that Nhu was going to try and crush the Buddhists in the interval between Nolting leaving and Lodge arriving as the new ambassador. (Kaiser, p. 223)  It was like the Nhu brothers were giving the State Department the finger.  Hilsman commented that the outgoing ambassador, Nolting, looked physically ill over the betrayal. On August 15th, two more Buddhists took their own lives. Three days later the Catholic rector at the University of Hue and 47 faculty members resigned in protest. (Kaiser, p. 226) In late August DIem ordered martial law.

As Halberstam and Sheehan observed in The Making of a Quagmire,  after this, things  got worse.  And by about late September, the Viet Cong attacks had now spread from the country into the cities. In fact, Saigon's Secretary of State was trying to get out of the country.  Nhu was actually creating fake coups in order to fortify his own position. Yet, even Rusk--a hawk until the end-- thought that Nhu had to go. (Newman, p. 389)

So where was the great victory in all this? 

 

Edited September 23, 2022 by James DiEugenio

[Paul Brancato]

The historical revisionist historians are very clever arent they? It all looks so real and well researched. But it’s bs.

[James DiEugenio]

As Ted Draper said Paul, the idea was to create a stab in the back concept.  

America did not really lose the war. Certain people somehow betrayed us and them.

The truth is, America should have never been there.

[Michael Griffith]

19 hours ago, James DiEugenio said:

Funny how your North Vietnamese sources essentially jibe with what the rightwing revisionists have been writing since the fall of Saigon.

I wanted to come back to this statement because it's a curious argument for a JFK conspiracy theorist to make. Surely you realize that in the eyes of academia, in the eyes of most "mainstream" historians, we JFK conspiracy theorists are "revisionists." 

As we both know, when a "mainstream historian" who accepts the official/orthodox version of the JFK case is presented with, say, post-1990 evidence of conspiracy, such as evidence that the autopsy x-rays have been altered and that the brain that Finck examined was not JFK's brain, he is usually incredulous and dismissive, because all the books he has read on the case either ignore this evidence or summarily and condescendingly dismiss it. The problem, of course, is that such scholars have only read one side of the story.

You are in exactly the same boat when it comes to the Vietnam War. You've only read one side of the story. Before we began to discuss the issue, I suspect you were unaware of the massive body of scholarship that rejects the liberal view of the war. It seems apparent that you were unaware of the mass of important new information revealed by North Vietnamese sources.

And speaking of whose view is the "revisionist" view, one could make a good case that your view is, in fact, the revisionist one. Only in the land of academia is your view the dominant view. Five U.S. Presidents have rejected the claim that the war was wrong and unwinnable (Nixon, Ford, Reagan, Bush I, and Bush II). Official U.S. Army, Air Force, and Marine histories of the war reject the view that the war was wrong and unwinnable. Numerous surveys show that the vast majority of Vietnam veterans did not/do not believe the war was wrong and unwinnable. 

Just some food for thought.

Edited September 24, 2022 by Michael Griffith

[Paul Brancato]

I don’t think this community is revisionist. The WC and LBJ administration rewrote history in real time, and we are trying to undo that damage.

I think your question about whether Vietnam was winnable is a false construct. Does comparing the evils of one government to another justify war? We see everything from our vantage point. But Vietnam is in China’s part of the globe, not ours. If China was arming Mexico we would see things differently. Colonialism is dying a slow and painful death. JFK was right to put Vietnam, Indonesia, Algeria in that context, instead of the Capitalist chess game with Communism. The question isn’t whether we could have won that war, it’s should we have been there at all? How many military bases do we have around the world? Close to 200 I think. Why? What is it that we fear? War is a racket. 

[Chuck Schwartz]

The withdrawal from Vietnam was engineered by 2 conservative republican presidents: Nixon and Ford .   

[Roger Odisio]

22 minutes ago, Paul Brancato said:

I don’t think this community is revisionist. The WC and LBJ administration rewrote history in real time, and we are trying to undo that damage.

I think your question about whether Vietnam was winnable is a false construct. Does comparing the evils of one government to another justify war? We see everything from our vantage point. But Vietnam is in China’s part of the globe, not ours. If China was arming Mexico we would see things differently. Colonialism is dying a slow and painful death. JFK was right to put Vietnam, Indonesia, Algeria in that context, instead of the Capitalist chess game with Communism. The question isn’t whether we could have won that war, it’s should we have been there at all? How many military bases do we have around the world? Close to 200 I think. Why? What is it that we fear? War is a racket. 

The US has about 750 military bases in 80 countries around the world, Paul (Quincy Institute study last year).  About three times as many as the rest of the world combined.  China has 5.

Yes, the logically prior question is should the US have been in Vietnam at all, let alone fighting a war there.  If the answer is no, as I believe it is, could we have "won" that war (whatever that means), disappears as an important question..

[Michael Griffith]

On 9/23/2022 at 3:27 PM, James DiEugenio said:

 

It is not a matter of liberal books.  John Newman is not a liberal.

The vast, overwhelming majority of scholars who support your view of the war are liberals, while the vast, overwhelming majority of the scholars who support my view are conservatives. John Newman is not a liberal, but does he agree with your view of the war? I've read his book JFK and Vietnam, but that book does not say much about the war itself; it's mostly about JFK's goals and intentions in South Vietnam.

The very idea that somehow DIem was on the verge of some great success is such utter nonsense that it is out of the Wizard Of Oz. 

I do not think you have not read enough about the war to be making such categorical statements. I would again point out that we know from North Vietnamese sources that at the time Diem was murdered, Hanoi did not think the war going very well. 

In your liberal echo chamber, this fact may seem "out of the Wizard of Oz," but such a comment only shows how one-sided your reading has been. Are you saying that Hanoi's leaders didn't know how their own war effort was going? 

In late July of 1963 even Dean Rusk was taken aback by what Nhu had done with the Buddhist persecutions.  Consider the following State Dept message:

"On the basis of information from Saigon, it appears that the Government of the Republic of Vietnam has instituted serious repressive measures against the Vietnamese Buddhist leaders.  The action represents a direct violation by the Vietnamese Government of assurance that it was pursuing a policy of conciliation with the Buddhists. The United States deplores repressive actions of this nature."

As a result,  Nhu ordered the American Embassy's phone lines cut.  As Newman notes, at this point the Vietnamese generals "went to the embassy and asked if the US would support a coup." (Newman, p. 349, 2017 version) Meanwhile Madame Nhu was telling the press that the embassy had tried and failed to shut her up and she called for stronger actions against the Buddhists. (David Kaiser, American Tragedy, p. 222) 

 What was shocking about these raids is that Roger Hilsman was in the country at the time. He was the undersecretary for the Far East. He deduced that Nhu was going to try and crush the Buddhists in the interval between Nolting leaving and Lodge arriving as the new ambassador. (Kaiser, p. 223)  It was like the Nhu brothers were giving the State Department the finger.  Hilsman commented that the outgoing ambassador, Nolting, looked physically ill over the betrayal. On August 15th, two more Buddhists took their own lives. Three days later the Catholic rector at the University of Hue and 47 faculty members resigned in protest. (Kaiser, p. 226) In late August DIem ordered martial law.

Yes, yes, I've read these same arguments many times in liberal sources. These arguments represent very selective cherry-picking. Are you aware of what the UN found when it investigated Diem's treatment of the Buddhists? Are you aware that 80% of the officials in Diem's administration were Buddhists? Are you aware of what we know from North Vietnamese sources about the Buddhist protests? Why don't you read chapters 4 through 11 of Dr. Mark Moyar's book Triumph Forsaken and chapters 1, 10, and 11 of Dr. Geoffrey Shaw's book The Lost Mandate of Heaven: The American Betrayal of Ngo Dinh Diem, and then deal with the evidence presented therein? 

By the way, would you care to discuss how the Buddhists were treated in North Vietnam? What do you suppose would have happened to North Vietnamese Buddhists who staged the same kinds of protests in North Vietnam that some South Vietnamese Buddhists staged in South Vietnam? 

As Halberstam and Sheehan observed in The Making of a Quagmire,  after this, things  got worse.  And by about late September, the Viet Cong attacks had now spread from the country into the cities.

Did you forget the fact that we now know that Halberstam and Sheehan were unwittingly getting a good chunk of their "news" from Communist agents? 

And, yes, the Vietcong did manage to carry out attacks in some cities. Do you know what happened in those attacks? Do you know what they accomplished? Again, did Hanoi's leaders just not know how well their own war effort was going?

If you're serious about learning about the war, break down and read at least three books that give the other side of the story, and then let's talk. 

In fact, Saigon's Secretary of State was trying to get out of the country.  Nhu was actually creating fake coups in order to fortify his own position. Yet, even Rusk--a hawk until the end-- thought that Nhu had to go. (Newman, p. 389) So where was the great victory in all this? 

Again, lots of cherry-picking here. If you leave out half or more of the story, you can seem to make a good case for almost any position. As I've said many times, South Vietnam's government was far from perfect, but it was a whole better than the Hanoi regime. 

Much of the information that JFK, Rusk, etc., were receiving about Diem, Nhu, etc., was distorted, selective, and lacked context. And much of that information was provided by leftist diplomats and officials who were determined to demonize Diem and Nhu. 

Have you done any reading about the South Korean government during the Korean War? We can thank God that the American officials and journalists who demonized Diem and Nhu weren't in a position to demonize the equally flawed South Korean government during the Korean War.

Finally, an interesting piece of information: In a Veterans Administration survey done among Vietnam veterans a few years after the war, 92% agreed with the following statement: "The trouble in Vietnam was that our troops were asked to fight in a war which our political leaders in Washington would not let them win."

Edited September 27, 2022 by Michael Griffith

[Michael Griffith]

On 9/27/2022 at 10:25 AM, Michael Griffith said:

The vast, overwhelming majority of scholars who support your view of the war are liberals, while the vast, overwhelming majority of the scholars who support my view are conservatives.

I should clarify that there are many scholars who do not completely fit into either of these two positions but who fall somewhere between them. For example, Max Boot argues that the Vietnam War might have been won if we had adopted the pacification/counter-insurgency tactics advocated by Robert Thompson and Edward Lansdale, and if we had not deployed large numbers of regular combat troops to South Vietnam, and if we had been more judicious in our use of force. 

Max Hastings acknowledges that North Vietnam’s government was worse than South Vietnam’s government, and, to his credit, he discusses North Vietnamese atrocities in great detail, but he concludes that both sides were so bad that neither deserved to win. Conservatives got a chuckle out of the mainstream news media’s reaction to Hastings’ book. Liberal reviewers gave the book glowing reviews but apparently did so without actually reading the entire book; they apparently did not realize that Hastings included an extensive discussion on NVA/VC brutality and atrocities and that Hastings acknowledged that South Vietnamese and American forces behaved better than did the NVA and the VC. 

Larry Berman--in No Peace, No Honor--presents a curious third position that contains some liberal elements, some conservative elements, and some other elements. Berman does not whitewash North Vietnam and admits that North Vietnam’s victory was a brutal tragedy for the South Vietnamese. Berman fixes most of the blame on Nixon, partly because Nixon promised Thieu that he would fiercely bomb North Vietnam if Hanoi launched another invasion after the Paris Peace Accords. Berman debunks the “decent interval” theory, pointing out that Nixon had no intention of letting South Vietnam fall. Berman explains that Nixon believed that Congress would only support more bombing if there were a peace treaty and if North Vietnam then violated the treaty and invaded again. Berman notes that Nixon was willing to bomb North Vietnam until the end of his second term (1976) if necessary. But, notes Berman, Watergate made it impossible for Nixon to keep his promise to Thieu to provide air support. Berman correctly notes that Thieu would not have agreed to the Paris Peace Accords if Nixon and Kissinger had not repeatedly assured him that the U.S. would respond with devastating bombing raids if Hanoi invaded again. 

In addition, there are varying points of view on some issues even among scholars who agree that the war was honorable and winnable. For example, Andrew Wiest, who is probably the foremost authority on South Vietnam’s armed forces, agrees that the war absolutely could have been won, but he disagrees with Harry Summers about how it could have been won. 

Lewis Sorley and George J. Veith both agree that the war was honorable and winnable but disagree about the level of support that we should have given to South Vietnam and about the degree of America’s and South Vietnam’s culpability for South Vietnam’s fall. 

H. R. McMaster agrees that the war was honorable and winnable but argues that the Joint Chiefs of Staff deserve more blame than anyone else for losing the war, a view that most other conservative scholars reject.