The Kennedy Withdrawal: The Definitive New Book on JFK and Vietnam

[James DiEugenio]

The Gravel version of the Pentagon Papers, which is much more copious than the NY Times version, has a 42 page chapter entitled Phased Withdrawal, 1962-64.

Ellsberg has to know that.

[Michael Griffith]

2 hours ago, Joe Bauer said:

Interesting comments by Daniel Ellsberg regards Kennedy's policy on Viet Nam versus Eisenhower, LBJ and Nixon's.

Ellsberg lumps JFK's Viet Nam policy ideology in with the other 3 presidents as imperialistic.

See this JFK mention not long after the Amy Goodman "Democracy Now" interview of Ellsberg begins.

Jim Di...any comments?

Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg, who recently announced that he has been diagnosed ...

 

Daniel Ellsberg Warns Risk of Nuclear War Is Rising as Tension Mounts over Ukraine & Taiwan

133K views1 month ago

 

Democracy Now!

Ellsberg turned into a genuine loon, a mouthpiece for North Vietnam, the Soviet Union, and China. In the pro-communist documentary Hearts and Minds, Ellsberg uttered this piece of Communist propaganda:

        A war in which one side is entirely equipped and financed by foreigners is not a civil war. The only foreigners in that country were the foreigners we financed in the first part of the war and the foreigners we were in the second half of the war. (1:22:50-1:22:57)

If he had any remaining connection with reality, Ellsberg had to know better than this nonsense. By 1954, Communist China had tens of thousands of troops in northern Vietnam. Chinese generals essentially ran the Vietminh's military operations (including the assault on Dien Bien Phu). By 1965, China had over 100,000 support troops in North Vietnam. The Soviets stationed over 1,000 AAA technical advisers in North Vietnam to help operate the North Vietnamese SAM batteries and had special forces units there as well.

The Soviets and the Chinese provided North Vietnam with massive amounts of weapons and supplies (including tanks, SAM batteries, artillery, trucks, mortars, grenades, land mines, etc.). The Soviets and the Chinese literally kept North Vietnam from economic collapse with hundreds of millions of dollars in financial aid. The North Vietnamese Communists would have been a small footnote in history had it not been for the massive support they received from the Soviets and the Chinese.

[James DiEugenio]

My review of The Post in an oral manner.

There is a lot more in this review than was in the film.

James Goodale, the lawyer for The TImes, said that in the first draft of the script, Ellsberg was not in the film.

Edited June 5, 2023 by James DiEugenio

[Michael Griffith]

On 6/5/2023 at 3:33 PM, Joe Bauer said:

Interesting comments by Daniel Ellsberg regards Kennedy's policy on Viet Nam versus Eisenhower, LBJ and Nixon's.

Ellsberg lumps JFK's Viet Nam policy ideology in with the other 3 presidents as imperialistic.

See this JFK mention not long after the Amy Goodman "Democracy Now" interview of Ellsberg begins.

Another telling fact about Ellsberg is that when it became undeniable that North Vietnam was imposing a reign of terror on the South Vietnamese, he had nothing to say. All of his professed concern for human rights and peace went out the window when it came to North Vietnam's bloody reign of terror over the South Vietnamese. 

When reports began to surface that the Communists were executing large numbers of people and sending untold tens of thousands to concentration camps, every former anti-war liberal who commented on those reports dismissed them as exaggerations or fabrications. Some liberals said the reports were lies being peddled by former South Vietnamese "reactionaries" and/or by American right-wingers. When the evidence of the reign of terror became too voluminous and too powerful to deny, most liberals simply went silent.

A few honorable liberals did condemn the Hanoi regime's tyrannical treatment of the South Vietnamese, and one or two even expressed regret that they had been so uncritical of North Vietnam and so harshly critical of South Vietnam. But, again, the vast majority of liberals simply went silent when the scale and severity of the Hanoi regime's reign of terror became impossible to deny. To this day, very few liberal books on the war mention the war's terrible aftermath.