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Burning History: The Fallacy of Inevitability and The Truncation of History

Final Thoughts: Paradigm shifts regarding the meaning of unwinnable, and the phrase the war ended, are imperative.

By John M. Del Vecchio

At the home of one of our interpreters in 1970: “Ronnie” with his eldest son, his beautiful daughter with his youngest son. Twelve years later--11/11/82: Me, my wife Kate and eldest son Nate during the dedication of The Wall in Washington, D.C. At Ronnie’s home we were served steak and shrimp fondue, paper thin slices we cooked in boiling alcohol and sugar. It was delicious. Few of the Americans appreciated the great sacrifice our host made—likely costing him a month’s wages. This, perhaps, was symbolic of American attitudes throughout our involvement. 

The Fallacy of Inevitability

The war was unwinnable. This is the underlying motif in every episode, the main message of the entire series. And it is a fallacy. The theme begins with episode 1, Déjà Vu which ends with the devastating loss by the French at Dien Bien Phu, but never tells us why the base is there in the first place or that the North Vietnamese and Chinese communist were attacking in Laos in an attempt to widen the war. Déjà Vu is meant to be an omen that what happened in 1954 will inevitably reoccur in 1975. Burns hammers at this point through the following nine episodes, sometimes subtly other times blatantly, through four American presidents, through edited clips showing only their fears, skepticism, pessimism and duplicity.

But to claim inevitability and the un-winnability of the war for the allied side is to also infer that the communist side with all its aggression, coercion and tyranny somehow had a moral superiority or a mandate from the fates.

The theory of the unwinnable war rests on the fact that the war was not won. Because it happened this seemingly gives one arguing from that perspective the right to claim inevitable, but a change in any precursor might have produced a very different history. After the fall of Vientiane, Phnom Penh and Saigon, one may claim the war was unwinnable but at any point prior to the actual collapse that claim is untrue.

And if politicians didn’t see the possibility of winning the war, thousands, perhaps millions of American and South Vietnamese soldiers did. In the aftermath of the fall of Saigon, it became common to hear American veterans say, “We were winning when I left.” Think about what that means, about the significance it represents. Men knew the area in which they fought. They knew when it was “hot,” when there were large enemy forces present, and when that presence had been subdued.

Camp Eagle (101^st Abn Div basecamp) sat close to Highway 547, the main road from the populated coastal lowlands to the mountains and jungles of the A Shau Valley. The first firebase west of Eagle was Birmingham. Through the spring of 1970 Americans only went to Birmingham via 547 in armed convoy. By late summer of that year the trip was often made by two guys in a jeep. Or recall Hue during the Tet offensive of ’68. Two and a half years later we would sightsee in Hue and the surrounding villages, and because it was peaceful GIs not on duty were not allowed to carry their weapons.

Imagine if the North Vietnamese communists had ameliorated their aggression in 1956; if they had realized their overly zealous slaughter of “land owners” was counterproductive to a healthy society; if they understood that fostering factions of the Indochina Communist Party and promoting wars of national liberation throughout Southeast Asia was not speeding the end of colonialism but was inducing the west, America in particular, to react to this spreading tyranny. Imagine if they stopped.

What would have been the reaction of the United States?

Imagine had the communists stopped in 1960 shortly after declaring war on the South, and after opening Routes 559, 759 and 959 which carried men and materiel—terrorists, assassins, political community organizers, and assault weaponry—because they realized this violent approach might create massive destruction in both North and South, and that recognizing the South might lead more quickly to reconciliation and unification— nationalistic goals versus dominance and hegemony by the party which were international communist goals.

What would have been the reaction of the United States?

Imagine if the North Vietnamese politburo had concluded after Tet 1968 that the price paid was not worth the desired aim, that a different approach might work better and not be as costly in blood and treasure; imagine had Le Duan said, “We have suffered too greatly, we must now seek reconciliation with the South and with the Americans. Imagine that same decision after the NVA offensives of Mini-Tet, the summer offensive of 1969, or the Easter Offensive of 1972?

Imagine had they not re-instigated and elevated their aggression after the Paris Peace Talks were concluded in 1973, but instead had withdrawn their 145,000 troops back to the North. [Burns talks about ceasefire violations by both sides as if this created a moral parity, but fails to mention that no South Vietnamese unit attacked a city or village or military installation in North Vietnam.]

At any of those times had the North stopped and sought reconciliation with the South and with the United States, and had asked for aid to rebuild their country, what would have been the reaction of the United States?

When you are imagining all this recall how the United States treated Germany and Japan after WWII. Would America have agreed to rebuild and reconstruct the infrastructure in the North if that nation had been open and no longer a threat to all other nations in the region?

Imagine also, at each step along the way, that the American “anti-war” movement, with many of its leaders having ties to the international communist movement, had not garnered its high degree of influence over the American media; and imagine too that JFK, LBJ, Nixon and Ford were not continuously reacting to public pressures created by the incomplete and slanted narratives these groups produced.

Imagine in ’67 or ’68 or ’70 had riots not erupted in American cities and on American campuses. Would LBJ, and then Nixon have been so defensive? Would they have developed their bunker mentalities? Would Nixon have ordered the break-in to the DNC headquarters in the Watergate complex? Regarding war decisions, would they have better reflected the realities on the ground and in the skies of Southeast Asia, and might they have been less based upon internal politics and provoked public opposition?

Any one of the above items and thousands more, had they happened, would have changed the outcome of the history of this war. Nothing is inevitable until after it has occurred.

Now also imagine the homecoming for veterans had they not be tarnished by skewed press stories leading many Americans to believe that Vietnam had turned them into savages, that they were all baby-killers, that they burned villages, raped women and young girls, and committed repulsive atrocities.

Imagine totally different homecoming scenarios and general attitude toward their service; and imagine the effect on the development of Post-Traumatic Stress disorders.

Truncated History

After Saigon fell one of the voices in the Burns documentary declares, “The Vietnamese people could finally live normally.” What?! Hello!!! Also said, “…no blood bath.” How many people have to be executed for a documentarian to label an action “a blood bath”? I guess 60,000 murders in the first 90 days after the fall does not qualify. If one adds in the number of people who died in the gulags of re-education, does that push it into the category of blood bath? Some 1.5 million South Vietnamese men and women were treated to these communist camps—approximately 10% of the population of that country. Many were tortured. Many were starved. Many were worked to death.

Can we add in the South Vietnamese who attempted to escape the tyranny by sea—the boat people? More than a million tried to flee. Tens of thousands died in small, rickety coastal craft not designed for ocean voyage. Many more were captured and killed by pirates. Can we add any of them to the “no blood bath” equation?

What about the deaths in Cambodia and Laos. In both countries Ho Chi Minh was instrumental in establishing communist insurgencies. In both countries, long before the “end of the war,” Hanoi’s troops and agents controlled great tracts of land. Pol Pot’s faction of the Cambodian Khmer Rouge was born from Ho’s Indochinese Communist Party, but broke from Hanoi like a rebellious teenager from domineering parents. 1.7 million of 6 million Cambodians died after “the war was over.” Not a bloodbath, Mr. Burns? Francois Bizot, in his 2003 book The Gate “…understood the true nature of the Khmer Rouge long before other outsiders. Decades later, his frustration remains: ‘What oppresses me, more still than the unclosed eyes of the dead who fill the sandy paddy fields, is the way the West applauded the Khmer Rouge, hailing their victory over their brothers in 1975. The ovation was so frenzied as to drown out the protracted wailing of the millions being massacred…’”

This is a personal side bitch: Burns show American veterans returning to Vietnam years after the war, hugging and reconciling with North Vietnamese soldiers who had opposed them on the battlefield. The occasions are joyous, friendly, healing. All-well-in-good, BUT what about showing Americans reuniting with ARVN soldiers who were their allies? That’s not shown. And it’s not shown for a reason. ARVN vets are still second class citizens in Vietnam. There are numerous accounts of U.S. charities attempting to aid these men, many of whom still suffer physically from war wounds. Communist cadre always take a percentage of whatever is donated. Sometimes they take it all. Medical equipment meant to help these men is diverted to hospitals for communist party members. Americans who have pushed for fairness have become persona non grata.

And these nations, which we might have helped become Asian economic miracles, languished amongst the most politically repressive states on the planet with low per capita income and high per capita rates of disease and death. Religious and ethnic minorities are still repressed. Only a month ago two bloggers were arrested and jailed for posting items uncomplimentary of the party. The list of human rights abuses, for anyone following them, seems to be unending.

Conclusions

From the very first fallacy of accepting communist propaganda portraying Ho Chi Minh as a nationalist, then repeating it in multiple variations to make it a “fact,” this series has been intellectually dishonest; slanted toward a fake left-wing narrative for what purpose I do not know? Just a quick reminder: a true nationalist does not murder all his nationalist allies because only his sect of nationalism is acceptable.

Now I think, “Thank God that series is over.” But it’s not over. This series will likely be picked up by thousands of school districts and colleges across the country and around the world, and used to indoctrinate the next generations of young minds. This should be opposed. The series is offensive not only to millions of American veterans who served honorably and with pride, but to anyone who still believes in truth and academic integrity.

The war in Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos did not end in 1975. More Southeast Asians died in the following ten years due to fighting and communist tyranny than died during the ten years of active American involvement. The repression in all three nations continues to this day.

With all the promise and potential, with all the wonderful presentations, the incredible photography and the moving musical scores, the slanting by choice of material and by massive omission renders this series not history but propaganda.

This is the eighth in a series of eight essays on the Burns/Novick program. Please like, forward and share this essay. For the earlier essays, or for more on the need for paradigm shifts in the way we view history and other aspects of our culture, visit: www.peakingat70.com/lets-talk-america/ .

John M. Del Vecchio is the author of The 13^th Valley and other works on Vietnam, Cambodia, Iraq and veterans issues. He is currently working on: Peaking At 70: Rediscovering America and Self. www.peakingat70.com.

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Burning History: Covering Up Original Sins

The Ambassador, The Newsmen, and the Imperative for American Conventional Military Intervention.

By John M. Del Vecchio #VietnamWaronPBS; # VVFH-Burns. 

In the late 1990s at a dinner sponsored by actor Charlie Pfeiffer, I had occasion to talk with David Halberstam at some length about mechanical issues of the writing trade. At the time I was correcting transcripts of interviews with survivors of Kham Duc and Ngok Tavak, a battle which took place in May 1968, just prior to the opening session of The Paris Peace Talks. KD/NT was the core battle of the Communist offensive often referred to as Mini-TET. To say the least I was terrible frustrated with the transcriptionist.

Photo by the author: Sampans on the Perfume River: In 1963 few Americans understood Vietnamese culture.

As a historical novelist I have always been sensitive to the ers and ahs, the pauses and jumps in speech. One might consider them to be the metadata connecting or disrupting connections in thoughts or story patterns… perhaps telling as much about the speaker as the words themselves. So, I want to see these blips noted in a transcript. The KD/NT pages, however, contained none, and indeed were much worse. Not only was the metadata missing, so too were many negatives. That’s right—flipping the meaning of the sentence 100%.

In response to my plaints, Mr. Halberstam offered: I don’t have that problem.

I said something like: Oh, you must have a great transcriptionist.

Halberstam: No. Just my secretary.

Me: She must be very good to get the transcript right.

Halberstam: I don’t use a recorder.

Me: Then you must take careful notes.

Halberstam: No. I just jot down keywords. Then she types up the list of the words I’ve jotted.

It was hard for me to imagine that this man, this newsman and historian, worked from nothing but a list of keywords he’d scribbled on a pad. What license?! I thought. What freedom to recall conversations and to quote officials however one wish! Perhaps he was lying to me. I took him at his word. After reading the below, you can gage for oneself the relevance of this anecdote.

Airing tonight, Riding The Tiger, episode two of the Burns series, covers the years 1961 through 1963. We’ll recap and grade episode one at the end of this piece, but first let’s think about what’s coming.

I have not seen episode two, but the most relevant occurrences of the period are the assassinations of Ngo Dinh Diem (11/1), and John F Kennedy (11/22). I’ve a feeling Mr. Burns will bring this episode to a crescendo around these events. The build-up to these deaths should exposes original sins.

Late evening, August 22, 1963, newly appointed Ambassador to Vietnam Henry Cabot Lodge deplaned at Tan Son Nhut airbase. He ignored General Paul Harkins, commander of MAG (the precursor of MACV), and other officials, “and headed straight for a group of U.S. newsmen.” [A detailed story of the days preceding this moment, and the following seventy-two days leading up to the demise of Diem, can be found in Dr. Mark Moyar’s Triumph Forsaken: The Vietnam War, 1954-1965. Quotes here and below are from Chapter 10 of that book unless otherwise noted.] The significance of this action cannot be overstated. The U.S. newsmen that evening, and at a following “lengthy dinner” arranged by Lodge, included Neil Sheehan, UPI’s Saigon Bureau Chief, Malcolm Browne, AP’s Chief Correspondent for Indochina, and David Halberstam, a full-time reporter for the New York Times.

The situation into which Lodge deplaned was one of apparent chaos, at lease according to news reports. The focus of episode two should be on the South Vietnamese, on their society, economy, government and security in the period leading up to the assassinations. Recall that South Vietnam was dealing with the terrorist equivalent in today’s U.S. of approximately 400,000 killed and another one million “disappeared” in the preceding three years. [Just for exercise, imagine if you can 8,000 people in your state, and in every other state, killed by militants from 2015 to today. How would you react? That’s what South Vietnamese society was dealing with.

Along with the killings and disappearances communist cadre were running a successful agitprop campaign. The term agitprop dates back to 1917 Russia, and is a combination of agitation and propaganda. It is a method of sowing dissent and dissatisfaction in the general public, originally through the arts (literature, film, plays), but later expanded to what we might call interest groups from unions and religious sects to social clubs and academia. Agitprop mechanisms and machinations include cadre (or true believers) gaining influence and leadership of traditional cultural organizations, then covertly steering those organizations into a coalition aligned with the communist cause.

If the Burns’ analysis emphasizes this theme we’ll be watching history. On the other hand, if episode two focuses on an interpretation of culture seen through the eyes of a few influential newsmen, once again know you are watching a skewed and flawed presentation.

1962 and 1963 are the years of Buddhist unrest in South Vietnam. Other segments of society were also being agitated. The conventional and flawed narrative talks about President Diem, a Catholic in a Buddhist country, ruthlessly suppressing the Buddhist uprising, and suggests that had he ceded to the political demands of this and other interest groups, all would have returned to normal. In Diem’s words, “I cannot seem to convince the (U.S.) embassy that this is Vietnam, not the United States of America.” His reference is to long-ingrained cultural norms: in the U.S. over 200 years of democratic processes at local levels versus in Vietnam not simply a hundred years of colonial rule, but a thousand years of subservience to various forms of autocracy.

Diem also could not convince the American newsmen that this was not Kansas, that inherent factionalism and communist scheming were tearing the nation apart, or that only strong and fair leadership could keep it from splintering further. Nor could he convince them that the Buddhist Movement was a small yet vocal agitprop faction within the Buddhist community.

From Triumph Forsaken:

American reporters in Saigon would contend that Nhu (Ngo Dinh Nhu, Diem’s brother) had alone master-minded the pagoda raids, a claim that the journalists would use first to promote a coup and then afterwards to justify their promotion of the coup. Opposition to the government, Hlaberstam maintained in his dispatch, “is acknowledged to be extremely widespread.” In addition, Halberstam claimed to have received reliable reports of mass defections among troops of the Vietnamese Army’s Second Corps because of the “attacks” on the Buddhists. All of the foregoing information from Halberstam’s August 22 reporting came from unnamed sources in Saigon whom Halberstam had been too eager to trust, and all of it was false. (my emphasis)

This is just one example of many, many incidents of fake news from that time influencing political events; and only one example of many showing Halberstam and other journalists were more interested in promoting a political agenda than in reporting without bias. The cumulative weight of this false reporting, and Lodge’s complicity, led to tragic consequences.

Let’s step back for a moment and consider the new American ambassador, his motivations, proclivities, and political placement. Henry Cabot Lodge, the vice presidential running-mate of Richard Nixon, came out of the 1960 national elections as a potential contender to oppose President Kennedy in 1964. Kennedy’s political instincts were to marginalize this opponent, and how better to do so than to exile him to a small nation on the other side of the earth where he would be unable to consolidate a political organization. Lodge likely understood the double-bind of the ambassadorial offer: accepting could side-line him, yet declining might prove he had little interest in supporting U.S. foreign policy or American allies threatened by the creep of communism. His decision to accept this great responsibility must be qualified by his political motivations, his pandering to the press, and the resulting calamities which ensued. These misdeeds and errors need to be added to the list of original sins.

When I said in the earlier blog post that the standard narrative covers up sins of the left, this interaction between Lodge and the newsmen is to what I was referring. In the 72 days from the time Lodge landed in Vietnam, he and the newsmen pushed hard to oust Diem. When South Vietnamese generals finally responded by arresting the president and offering him to Lodge to be flown out of the country, Lodge declined. That’s when the generals had Diem killed.

What followed the coup and assassination of Diem was more than three years of political and military turmoil within South Vietnam. This event signaled the North that the South was vulnerable, and it triggered Hanoi’s sending of conventional units (battalions/divisions) to the southern battlefields. It was these large conventional units that were first encountered in the Ia Drang Valley (see: We Were Soldier… Mel Gibson movie). The point is that the disruption caused by the killing of Diem threw SVN into chaos, destabilized both military and civilian/government entities, invited in enemies, and created the imperative for American conventional military intervention. Had Diem not been assassinated, chances are there would never have been the need for the massive U.S. build-up in ’64-65 to keep SVN from falling under communist control.

Thus one wonders, had the newsmen not succumbed to the communist agitprop of the time, and had the ambassador not played to the newsmen but instead had focused on American State Department and military advisors, and on the South Vietnamese officials in the trenches combatting the insurgents and terrorists, how differently the next twelve years might have been.

An aside: Are we in a relatively similar situation domestically today? Do we have politicians playing to the press, the press pushing an agenda driven by false narratives, and a loose coalition of issue-oriented interest groups agitating for the removal of a president? And are there enemies lurking at the gates, looking for openings to come in and wreck havoc?

Episode One Report Card: Ken Burns, Lynn Novic

1) Ancient State: Was this covered? No. Series begins with French colonization.

2) Mention of Crown Dominion Lands? No. Also very little mentioned about Laos, Cambodia.

3) Ho Chi Minh’s nationalism? Overstated. All communist terrorist activity shifted to other communist leaders to preserve Ho’s purity, but communist terror is mentioned.

4) French attempting to regain Empire? Very one-side presentation; some of the accusations against the French are well deserved, other factors ignored.

5) Dien Bien Phu and Laos terrorism? Nothing mentioned about Chinese and Vietnamese communist attacks in Laos being reason DBP was established. Myth of Vietnamese bringing guns to DBP by selves—as Chinese labor was parmount.

6) ’54-’56 Land Reform Pogrom? Surprise, this was covered. But not quantified! No analysis of extent or equivalence to today’s U.S. population. Viewer may believe this was minimal.

7) Geneva Accords and Elections? Standard flawed narrative. No mention that U.S., S VN, ­and N VN did not sign the agreement (i.e.: there was no agreement).

8) Hanoi’s 1959 Declaration of War on South and ensuing terrorism? Surprise again! This is mentioned, but again not quantified. Shown is a photo of three terrorist negotiating a very difficult section of jungle trail. It took a lot more than three to kill 18,000 officials.

Prior to seeing the episode I was prepared to give Burns/Novickan ‘A’ for cinematography and an ‘F’ for history. The program was better than I’d expected, but the filming was worse. To me the most offensive segment was showing one American Marine from 1967 talking about how much he hated the Vietnamese. Nothing is offered to balance this perspective. As a novelist, one recognizes inclusions like this as set-ups for future elements of the story. Look for it to be replayed in later episodes when talking about American atrocities. Report Card: for Cinematography: ‘B’; for History ‘C-“.

Please feel free to forward or share this essay. For more on this and for the need for paradigm shifts in the way we view history and many other aspects of our culture, visit: www.peakingat70.com/lets-talk-america/

John M. Del Vecchio is the author of The 13th Valley and other works on Vietnam, Cambodia, Iraq and veterans issues. He is currently working on Peaking At 70: Rediscovering America and Self. www.peakingat70.com

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This article was sent to me by one of our members, Joe deSantos. I think it's especially appropriate now, since the Ken Burns/Lynn Novick documentary, 'The Vietnam War', has once again raised the issue of My Lai and other atrocities committed by American forces. More than 2.5 million men and women served in Vietnam. The vast majority of them were honorable professionals, who went about their jobs quietly and with dedication and do not deserve to be tarred with the brush of the few aberrations that deserve every condemnation we can pour over them.

There are times in our lives when all we can do is shake our heads, admit that someone has dishonored our group--attorneys, police officers, clergymen--and gently remind anyone who will listen that they should refrain from painting us all with the same brush.

Simplistic thinking? Perhaps. But it is human nature to defend ones honor.

"Every group has its bad apples."

That was sent to me by a former Special Forces officer and Vietnam veteran after having endured several days worth of media outlets telling us that a deranged, murdering bigot, who had killed three innocent people in Kansas last week, was once a "Green Beret" in Vietnam.

To be sure, the most important elements of this tragic story are the deaths of three ordinary Americans who did nothing to deserve their fate. Nobody would disagree with that and we should all remember them.

But there is another element of this tragedy that is worth mentioning, too.

While the media has correctly reported that the murderer was in fact a Vietnam Special Forces veteran, many who have donned the beret that marks them as men of honor are cringing at the thought that such a vile individual is being associated with them. Worse, this murderer's Special Forces affiliation has been a central part of the story, even though he served in an administrative position in a Special Forces unit during the war. He was no Rambo, although media outlets want him to be. A Vietnam Special Forces veteran goes on an anti-Semitic killing spree? Why, that seems normal; after all, Rambo was crazy in all eleven films he did.

But let us talk reality.

I have had the great privilege to have known and associated with many Vietnam-era Special Forces veterans. They have been great friends and have always shared their stories and time with me. I have been with them at reunions, meetings and on long trips. I have yet to meet an unpleasant SF man, though I know they exist. I have not yet met the unpleasant one because they are hard to find. The ones I have met neither look like Rambo nor act like savages. They are extraordinary men without letting you know who they are and what they have done. They are "The Quiet Professionals" and they like it that way.

So when a former SF man embarrasses them, or worse, takes innocent lives for the most contemptible of reasons, they are quick to point out the obvious--we are not like that.

Simplistic thinking? Yes.

But the men I know who wore the green beret in Vietnam still want to remind the world that they are by and large men of integrity and principles.

So do not paint them all with the same brush.

Like the victims in Kansas, they deserve better.

As we discuss the events that took place in Vietnam, please don't forget that the sins of the few should not tar the many. Most US military in Vietnam behaved honorably and did not deserve the label of 'baby killer' that so many antiwar protesters smeared them with.

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Burning History: Slogging Through… 

Twilight Zones, Alternative Dimensions, Truth, Justice and The American Way.

By John M. Del Vecchio

Firebase Whip: On the southern edge of the A Shau Valley October 1970. Photo by the author.

Perhaps I live in an alternate dimension, or perhaps the film makers of this series (and many of those they have chosen to interview) live in the twilight zone. Of the 60 or more events portrayed in episodes 7 and 8, I’ve opted to address three using passages written years ago. I believe they’re pertinent. They also demonstrate the duration of divergence of thoughts on issues and narratives. With all the scholarship that followed the “end of the war,” the repetition and reinforcement of disproven narratives is disturbing. Worse, it opens old wounds.

Before we jump into some nit and grit, I wish here to openly thank leaders and commanders of 101^st Airborne Division (Airmobile) units from platoons to brigades for their leadership which was so vastly superior to what I’ve seen portrayed by Mr. Burns and Ms. Novick. Surely I was blessed to soldier under such NCOs and officers. Then again, perhaps others, in other units, had experiences like mine. The video at this link (made in 2012 for the 30^th Anniversary edition of The 13^th Valley) explains my education in this regard: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dUxlt_-qEhI . Note, when I first wrote The 13^th Valley I was writing strictly about the 101^st. I had been appalled by news reports I’d read describing American troop activity in Vietnam, and I was out to set the record straight for the 101^st. After publication I received thousands of letters… well, watch the video. It’s about two minutes.

Hamburger Hill, The Truong Son Corridor and Ted Kennedy: The below passage is from the Author’s Note to the 1988 edition of The 13^th Valley. Please note the last line (emphasized). Burns/Novick have been beating the drum continuously that the war was unwinnable. It is true that some politicians believed this theory, or were at least skeptical about the chances for success. Others were more realistic, and less fatalistic. Success or failure were not predetermined but would hinge upon definitive actions of the various parties. American actions were affected (and finally perverted) by the building false narrative.

The strategic importance of the battle at Khe Ta Laou along with all the other battles fought in that expansive area of operation beginning in 1962—Ta Bat, A Shau, Lang Vei, Khe Sanh, Dong Ap Bai (Hamburger Hill), Ripcord, and so many others—lies in blocking and/or cutting the enemy’s logistical lifeline to communist units fighting in South Vietnam. Americans who fought there understand, but politicians of the time had different agendas. In 1969 Senator Ted Kennedy (D, Mass) criticized battles in this region in a speech before Congress: “I feel it is both senseless and irresponsible to continue to send our young men to their deaths to capture hills and positions that have no relationship to ending this conflict.” (my emphasis)

     Contrary to Kennedy’s assessment, these battles had everything to do with potentially ending the conflict. Disrupting the flow of men and materiel through the Truong Son Corridor from North Vietnam meant the enemy was harder pressed to threaten security and tranquility within South Vietnam. With the withdrawal of U.S. forces from the corridor, and the ensuing withdrawal of U.S. economic support for the South Vietnamese Army, the NVA moved unchallenged and unobstructed into the South—extending gasoline and oil pipelines down from Lang Vei, through the A Shau Valley (past Khe Ta Laou and beneath Hamburger Hill), south through Kham Duc and Dak To, all the way to Loc Ninh. This gave them a super highway with no cops and no speed limits along the way.

Mobility along this western corridor… gave the PAVN the ability to mass forces against comparatively sparsely defended points. In late ’74 and early ’75 the northern army stormed southward down this road, using hundreds of Soviet-supplied tanks and artillery pieces, and 18,000 military trucks transporting arms, ammo and supplies for 400,000 troops. This represented a logistical operation larger than most Axis movements of World War II, and it paved the way for North Vietnam’s Final Offensive in 1975. Without that corridor a PAVN victory was impossible; with it, conquest was inevitable.

My Lai, American atrocities, and the making of a narrative: Nothing in the passage below should be construed as an excuse for the actions of the Americans who perpetrated the crimes at My Lai, or those who covered up those crimes. The following passage is from Chapter 32 of my novel Carry Me Home. In this chapter the veterans at High Meadow have staged a mock trial as an educational exercise. The chapter is titled: Opening and Closing Arguments and Highlights of The Great Media Trial. It was written in 1991.

After the break the Myth Busters altered their tactics. “Americans were animals at My Lai but that incident was minor in the scope of the war. Yet of a total of 9,447 network evening news stories about the war that were aired between 1963 and 1977,” Al Palanzo testified, “473 dealt with the atrocity at My Lai. The media focused and fixated on this single incident which represented three of every one hundred thousand war deaths. The NVA assassinated six thousand Saigon government civilian personnel in 1970. That did not receive one minute of American television air time. Not one minute!

       “The ramifications of this reportage are the labeling of allied soldiers as baby killers, and the dissolution of the moral rightness of the cause. By the way,” Al added, “these media figures have never been made public, and are not now in the public record. They have been derived from an internal network report.”

       That caught Sherrick and the defense off balance. He questioned Palanzo at length about the source and how the information had been obtained. Then he requested that the evidence be declared inadmissible.

The numbers, indeed, are exact, and were derived from an internal report produced by ABC, NBC and CBS which listed and graded every story aired on evening news broadcasts from 1963 to 1977 that in any way involved the war in Vietnam. Important, but not said in the novel, the revelation regarding My Lai do not break until November 12^th, 1969, approximately six years from the first story listed in the report, and less than six years from the fall of Saigon. Those 473 stories about My Lai represented approximately 10% of all TV evening news coverage from the moment of revelation to the final collapse. There are other major communist offensives, communist atrocities which dwarf the numbers at My Lai, Paris Peace Talks, POWs, communist offensives in Cambodia which lead to over 40,000 civilians being locked in gulag-camps that were precursors to the Khmer Rouge and the Cambodian Holocaust, yet ABC, NBC and CBS continued to focus on My Lai. Story builds narrative. My Lai became a plank in our national narrative far beyond its actual significance, and it is still a plank with extensive personal, social and political ramifications.

Cambodia prior to the Menu Bombings: The following passages are from Historical Summation, Part 1, in the novel For The Sake of All Living Things. The title of the work was derived from the Buddhist vow: I will become enlightened for the sake of all living things.These paragraphs were first written in 1986.

Sihanouk also controlled the national “Buddhist-oriented system of voluntary contributions”—that is, taxes. To earn merit and achieve a better station in the next life, a Buddhist must be charitable. Sihanouk argued that because the rich were all devout Buddhists their contributions would support the poor and the state. In reality, the rich gave little to the poor and almost nothing to the state. The merchant or middle class, though taxed, was tiny, and state income from it amounted to little. This left only farmers to support the state, and they were heavily taxed, even though farmers as a percentage of the population had shrunk from nearly 80 percent to about 50 percent. Payment from them was usually in rice, which the government sold on the export market. By 1966, two thirds of the peasants were burdened by indebtedness, loans which carried interest rates of 12 percent per month. New population pressures, the tax-caused indebtedness, and the feudal order combined to create unstable land tenure conditions. In 1950, only one in twenty-five Khmer farmers rented his land; by 1968 the figure was one in five.

Without broad-based taxes the government had no money with which to modernize the state, to improve or maintain the transportation and telephone systems, or to raise, equip and train a viable national army. Cambodia, from 1954, was an ever-increasing low-pressure area—a power vacuum—a nation unable to ensure domestic tranquility, much less the integrity of its borders…

There were four major Communist factions operating in Cambodia in the late 1960s—the Viet Cong… the North Viet Namese, the Khmer Viet Minh, and the Khmer Krahom. … By 1968 the NVA, by far the strongest force in Cambodia, had transformed the Northeast—Ratanakiri, Mondolkiri and portions of Stung Treng and Kratie provinces—into their own uncontested base area. In a different manner, they also controlled large portions of the South and Southeast. They were entrenched—through bribery, through corruption, through threat of force, and through assassination—in every area along the Sihanouk Trail from Kompong Som (Sihanoukville) northward to Phnom Penh and eastward along coastal Highway 3 through Bokor and Kampot, to the border regions. Indeed, in many of the villages in Svay Rieng, Prey Veng, Kandal, Kompong Speu, Takeo and Kampot provinces the North Viet Namese maintained at least a parallel governing administration to that of Sihanouk’s government. In portions of the southeastern provinces, especially along the border, they controlled the economy so completely they printed their own currency and forced local inhabitants to us it instead of the Cambodian riel. In addition, the NVA had established a (military) front headquarters just outside Angor Wat in Siem Reap Province in the Northwest.

These were the conditions in South Vietnam’s neighboring state—conditions brought on by the launch of Hanoi’s War of Hegemony over all of Indochina. That war, as mentioned in an earlier essay, was initiated in the late 1940s and reinforced every year in Laos, Cambodia and beyond. Without Vietnamese communist tutelage there is no Khmer Viet Minh, no reactionary Khmer Rouge, no Cambodian Holocaust. Declarations of neutrality were at best ripples in a vast lake. We heard less about this from Burns than I had anticipated. Treating the topic of the war as if it only involved North and South Vietnam and not all of Southeast Asia leads to many misunderstandings. The reaction on college campuses to the Cambodian Incursion occur in a knowledge vacuum, not unlike the power-vacuum created by Prince Sihanouk. Nothing good came from either.

I feel compelled to return to my opening thoughts. I recognize all the America troops—soldiers, Marines, airmen, etc.—interviewed for this series by Mr. Burns and Ms. Novick. I don’t mean individually. I mean I knew men like them in Vietnam. And I’ve known vets like them in the years after the war. But it seems to me, in general, this is not who we were in Vietnam. This is a small and skewed fraction. So who were we? In so many ways we were the best of the generation, the ones willing to meet the challenge, to repulse an enemy, and to secure the land of a people we barely knew. Many of us, even if we didn’t wear this on our sleeve, were willing to “bear any burden… oppose any foe…” in support of liberty… willing to die in support of the right to peace, to freedoms and to self-determination free of communist tyranny. Believing we were betrayed, angry at the government or the command, or believing in the cause, our discipline differed from many of those portrayed in the documentary. That’s just who we were. The most basic characteristic of the American soldier was his unexpressed support for Truth, Justice and The American Way.

[Corrections to essay #6: The family assassinated in Saigon on 1 Feb 68 identified as that of Gen. Loan’s brother should have read a friend of Loan’s; the woman visited by Bill Ehrhart at Hue may not have been a professional, but more tragically a young mother pushed by circumstances to trade sex for c-rations.]

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John M. Del Vecchio is the author of The 13^th Valley and other works on Vietnam, Cambodia, Iraq and veterans issues. He is currently working on: Peaking At 70: Rediscovering America and Self. www.peakingat70.com.