By Col. Andrew R. Finlayson, USMC (Ret.)*
“Amateurs talk about tactics; professionals talk about logistics.”
An old military proverb
By Col. Andrew R. Finlayson, USMC (Ret.)*
“Amateurs talk about tactics; professionals talk about logistics.”
An old military proverb
Sometimes you read articles that seems plausible on the surface - until you think about the position the author is taking. Such is this rather silly article titled Putin Should Study Lyndon Johnson's Folly.
The author finds parallels between what LBJ did in Vietnam and what Putin is currently doing in Ukraine.
A president elected by a record-setting margin stumbles into an ill-advised war. Soon, he is abandoned by allies foreign and domestic. His army -- once considered to be one of the best in the world -- lapses into chaos. An antiwar movement advises young men on how to avoid the draft by various means, including leaving the country. If this sounds like Vladimir Putin, it is. But it could also describe Lyndon Johnson's fate a half-century ago.
LBJ was elected in a free election in a republic. Putin was elected in a rigged election in a communist country. LBJ involved his country in a failed effort to defend a free people against invasion by a determined communist force. Putin leads a communist force determined to swallow up a free country.
A more accurate parallel should be drawn between Putin and Ho Chi Minh. Both leaders weren't concerned about the loss of large numbers of their military to achieve their objective. Both leaders were unconcerned about world opinion and allowed vicious war crimes to be committed, then used propaganda to claim they never happened. Both leaders counted on the free world losing patience or becoming unwilling to continue sacrificing to defend the innocent. Both leaders sought to overthrow a democratic free country and subsume it under their control and authority. And both leaders counted on the fools ot the free world to think that they could be reasoned with.
The reason the Republic of South Vietnam no longer exists is because the United States' leaders were either tricked into thinking that they could reason with communists or naive enough to think that they could be reasonsed with and that they could trust them to keep their promises. That is one of the lessons of the Vietnam War that has never been learned and continues to be ignored today.
by Terry Garlock
Published on Wed Jan 30, 2019 in The Citizen, a Fayette County GA newspaper.
Well into the autumn of my life, I am occasionally reminded the end is not too far over the horizon. Mortality puts thoughts in my head, like “What have I done to leave this world a better place?”
There actually are a few things that I think made my existence worthwhile. I will tell you one of them because so many of you need to hear it.
No matter how much this rubs the wrong way, I am quite proud to have served my country in the Vietnam War. Yes, I know, most of you were taught there is shame attached to any role in the war that America lost, an unfortunate mistake, an immoral war, an unwise intrusion into a civil war, a racist war, a war in which American troops committed widespread atrocities, where America had no strategic interest, and that our North Vietnamese enemy was innocently striving to reunite Vietnam.
Readers note: This information was given to me by Bill Laurie, who has a photocopy of the original in his possession. I imagine more than a few Afghans are feeling very similar pain if they are still alive.
The following open letter printed in 17 April 1975 Saigon Post, an English language newspaper in Viet Nam. It was a very chaotic time and the Republic of Viet Nam only had 13 days to live as the battle for Xuan Loc raged, as NVA divisions, engorged with abundance of modern weapons and munitions, moved in on Saigon. The letter was written by an American who'd spent multiple tours in Viet Nam. He preferred to remain anonymous and his identity remains unknown. I kept the piece and to my knowledge no other copy of made it out of Viet Nam. Herewith is exact verbatim text of letter:
----------Letter Begins Here--------
"An Open Letter to the People of Viet Nam and America: I will never forget."
The month was August, the year of 1966. I was a young man of 20 years with a mind filled with American school book ideals and feelings of patriotism swelling my my heart as I walked down the ramp of the 707 that had brought me all the way from my safe and easy life in America to the sweltering hot tarmac of Tan Son Nhut airport, Viet Nam. Little did I know then that this small country and its people, in the year to come, would put a hold on my soul, and later would become a part of my heart, and also, a lot of my personal pain.
By Lewis Sorley
From my perspective the Burns production had one objective, to reinforce the standard anti-war narrative that the Vietnam war was unwinnable, illegal, immoral, and ineptly conducted by the allies from start to finish.
It went about making this case by—contrary to the claims of Burns and his associates that theirs was a historically respectable and unbiased account—skewed and unrepresentative content and commentators, lack of context, and crucial omissions.
Omissions
Crucial omissions are a damaging flaw in the Burns opus. The great heroes of the war, in the view of almost all who fought there (on our side), were the Dustoff pilots and the nurses. We don’t see much of them. Instead we see repeatedly poor Mogie Crocker, who we know right away is destined to get whacked. We see over and over again the clueless General Westmoreland, but learn nothing of his refusal to provide modern weaponry to the South Vietnamese or his disdain for pacification. We see precious little of his able successor, General Abrams. We see (and hear) almost nothing of William Colby and his brilliant work on pacification. And so on. These are serious failings in a film that bills itself as “a landmark documentary event.”
This is a book review authored by VVFH member David Hanna.
Land Wars: The Story of China’s Agrarian Revolution, by Brain DeMare; Stanford University Press, 2019 (e-book version), $15.69.
Brian DeMare is a cultural historian and teacher of modern Chinese history at Tulane University in New Orleans. In his first book, Mao's Cultural Army(2015), he found the cultural revolution ‘to be a profoundly theatrical event.’ It was also a profoundly murderous event and DeMare’s second book, this time on Mao’s agrarian revolution, depicts similar excesses but does not sufficiently condemn them for what they were: a politically self‑serving democide inflicted upon the Party’s potential opposition in the villages of rural China.
Coined by Professor R. J. Rummel whose research provides voluminous statistics on governmental killing, ‘democide’ involves acts of genocide, politicide and mass murder. By necessity, the self‑protective despotism of communist one‑party rule entailed all three of the above. While DeMare’s narrative does little to emphasize this point explicitly, his recounting of the Maoist bastardry which savaged rural China will do much to support that contention.
DeMare foregrounds Mao’s intuitive conviction that the Chinese peasantry could make or break the revolution, and the author’s varied research and narrative style make Land Wars a highly informative and readable account of how a communist mastermind artificially induced that revolution in the countryside. ‘Historians,’ writes DeMare, ‘must engage Mao’s narrative of revolution in order to understand what truly occurred in rural China as the Communists came to power.’
At the height of the Vietnam War, Ralph White tried to join the U.S. Marine Corps but was turned down because of an eye injury he had sustained playing tennis. As the fighting drew to a tumultuous close in April 1975, however, 27-year-old White was in Saigon, acting true to the leatherneck motto “Semper fidelis” – only by civilian means.
By cajoling, twisting arms and cleverly bypassing red tape, White found an ingenious way to rescue 112 Vietnamese employees of Chase National Bank and their family members: he simply adopted all of them in the presence of U.S. justices of the peace on emergency duty at Saigon’s Tan Son Nhat Airport. In the face of an impending defeat of the United States’ South Vietnamese ally, this American civilian who had wanted to be a Marine achieved a small but remarkable victory.
Four days later, on April 30, Soviet-made T-54 tanks completed the communist conquest of South Vietnam by bursting through the gate of the presidential palace in Saigon. Inside, newly appointed South Vietnamese President Duong Van “Big” Minh offered to transfer power. North Vietnamese Col. Bui Tin replied, “There is no question of your transferring power ... You cannot give up what you don’t have.”
To me, a German, these words sounded identical to the terms the Allies imposed on my country in 1945 when I was still a child: unconditional surrender. The irony was that while at the end of World War II a manifestly evil government was forced to surrender this way, the opposite was true 30 years later in Saigon: a totalitarian regime with deeply inhumane features bullied a much more humane – though faulty – opponent into capitulating unconditionally, and the world cheered.
Having covered Vietnam for West Germany’s largest publishing house over a period of five years, I concluded that the wrong side had won. There was no reason to rejoice. Yet when President Gerald Ford proclaimed at Tulane University in New Orleans that the Vietnam War “is finished as far as America is concerned,” one week before South Vietnam was finally crushed, he received a standing ovation.
A Critical Review by Nicholas Warr
Despite its recognition as a New York Times bestseller, the receipt of many awards, and the recognition and praise from the literary world Mark Bowden has received since the publication of Hue, 1968, this book is filled with way too many misconceptions, flaws, critical omissions and dozens of outright errors and falsehoods to be taken seriously. In my opinion, this book gets nowhere near the status of “factual history.” While it brings forth many valid events of the battle, it also pushes a regurgitation of anti-war, anti-American rhetoric.
At this point, you, the reader, may ask, “Who is this guy, and how can he possibly make these statements?” Let me illuminate you.
My callsign was “Charlie One Actual.” I was a Marine 2ndLieutenant assigned as the platoon commander for 1stPlatoon, Charlie Company, 1stBattalion, 5thMarines (C/1/5). I was there, in the middle of the battle from the initial assaults on 13 February 1968 to the bitter end in early March. I saw what happened, up close and ugly. I know there was plenty to criticize about our high-ranking leadership’s decision-making, but Bowden got most of the important points wrong. In fact, this book reads more like anti-war, anti-American leftist revisionism than factual history.
Although I counted nearly 80 significant errors, omissions or outright falsehoods in this book, I will focus on the three I feel are the most egregious.
PBS has responded to VVFH's demand that they correct the errors in the Burns/Novick documentary, The Vietnam War. Here is what they wrote.
November 28, 2017
R.J. DelVecchio
Executive Secretary
Vietnam Veterans for Factual History
Dear Mr; De! Vecchio;
Paula Kerger asked me to respond to your November 7, 2017 letter regarding the recent broadcast of Ken Bums and Lynn Novick's film, THE VIETNAM WAR.
As you know, the film generated a tremendous amount of attention, from the public, members of the military community and veterans, nearly all of which praised the film's respect for our soldiers and its balance. Maybe more poignantly, not a day goes by when I do not hear from veterans of the war about how thankful they are for the film, helping them speak about their experience with family and friends, something they had rarely done before.
Ken and Lynn went to great lengths to include diverse voices in the film. We did the same in our outreach across the country, meeting with veterans' groups, Vietnamese-Americans and those who opposed the war, as well as with a wide-range of historians and military experts. The film was extremely well received at the Air Force and Naval Academies, the Army Command and General Staff College, as well as at the Pentagon.
Nearly 34 million people watched some portion of the film. And all ten episodes of the series have been streamed more than 8 million times (over 600,000 times in Vietnam), a record for streaming on PBS.
Much of what is covered in the film is of course unsettled history and I appreciate that there may be. areas: where you disagree with the filmmaker's emphasis, and aspects of the narrative that you think deserved more attention. We appreciate your feedback and believe 'The Vietnam War' has provided a timely opportunity to continue the discussion around this important topic.
Sincerely,
Jennifer R. Byrne
Vice President, Corporate Communications'
Do you believe that "nearly all" of the veteran community "praised the film"? If not, why not consider joining us in our efforts to correct the record.
Some will find the whole bloodbath debate unreal. What future possibility could be more terrible than the reality of what is happening to Cambodia now? Anthony Lewis "Avoiding A Bloodbath" New York Times March 17, 1975
If we really want to help the people of Cambodia and the people of South Vietnam, is it not wiser to end the killing? Since most credited analysts of foreign policy admit that the Lon Nol regime cannot survive, won't the granting of further aid only prolong the fighting and, with it, the killing? Representative Bob Carr Congressional Record March 13, 1975
It is hard to predict in an exact sense what would happen if the United States reduced its commitment to Lon Nol. . . . There is a possibility that more moderate politicians would take over in Phnom Penh, and that the insurgents would be content to negotiate with these people. An actual insurgent attack and takeover of Phnom Penh is far from a certainty, as an assault on a city requires large expenditures of resources which the Khmer Rouge would not be likely to want to make. Michael Harrington "Limiting Aid to Cambodia" Congressional Record August 12, 1974
I say that calling the Lon Nol regime an ally is to debase the meaning of the word as it applies to our true allies. . . . The greatest gift our country can give to the Cambodian people is not guns but peace. And the best way to accomplish that goal is by ending military aid now. Representative Chris Dodd Congressional Record March 12, 1975
It is time that we allow the peaceful people of Cambodia to rebuild their nation . . . (T)he Administration has warned that if we leave there will be a "bloodbath." But to warn of a new bloodbath is no justification for extending the current bloodbath. Representative Tom Downey Congressional Record March 13, 1975
This is the Congressional testimony of a Jesuit Priest who lived in Vietnam for nineteen years and remained after the communist takeover for fifteen months. Judge for yourself whether the communist takeover was good for the people who were unable to escape.
This is the fate America left to its allies, a people who trusted us to help them defend their country from communist takeover.HEARINGS BEFORE THE SUBCOMMITTEE ON INTERNATIONAL ORGANIZATIONS OF THE COMMITTEE ON INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES NINETY-FIFTH CONGEESS FIRST SESSION JUNE 16, 21, AND JULY 26, 1977
STATEMENT OP REV. ANDRE GELINAS, JESUIT PRIEST, PAR EASTERN PROVINCE OE THE JESUIT ORDER
Father Gelinas. First, a word of introduction on my sources of information for the facts that I am about to describe.
I am a Canadian, a Jesuit Priest, as has already been stated. I came to Vietnam in 1957 as a professor of Chinese history at the University of Saigon. Starting in 1963, and for 13 years without interruption, I was on the staff of the Alexander-de-Rhodes Student Center, which has been for all these years the largest and most influential center of activities for Vietnamese University students.
After the Communist takeover, I stayed on at the center for 15 more months, moving around freely within the borders of Gia Dinh Province. My information on conditions outside of Gia Dinh Province comes from these hundreds of Vietnamese students and families that I dealt with daily.
I might add here that most of these were Buddhists and Confucians, only one-third being Christians.
Now, the facts. Let me start with the most obvious, the expected: the complete suppression of the freedom of speech, press, and information. Before the Communist victory. South Vietnam published 27 daily newspapers, 22 in Vietnamese, 3 in Chinese, 1 in French, and 1 in English. It also produced some 200 scholarly journals, scholarly, technical, or literary, and a number of popular magazines. It had three TV channels and some 2 dozen radio stations.
In May 1975, every single one of these newspapers, serials, and stations were suppressed. Back issues of magazines, books, records, and cassettes were confiscated from homes and from libraries and burned in the streets in huge bonfires. From then on, our only source of in-formation was one TV channel owned by the Government, on the air for 2 hours only, from 7:30 to 9:30, and concerned exclusively with propaganda.
Also, two radio stations and three dailies providing the same propaganda, the same editorials, and the same selection of biased news items dictated by the unique party-controlled news agency.
No one was allowed to listen to short-wave radio, and any person aware of this crime in his neighborhood and failing to report it could be deported to the work camps with his entire family.
It was also the duty of every citizen to report ali private conversations deemed contrary to the spirit of the revolution. I hurry to add, however, that at least in Saigon this often repeated threat failed to curb the curiosity of the people. News items from the daily bulletins of the BBC and of the VOA were eagerly sought after, and spread through the population like brushfire.
Another basic human right which has been wiped out by the Communist victor is the freedom of movement. Without a special pass from the police, no one is allowed to go from place to place, not even to the next village or suburb. These official passes are not always easy to obtain, and often they can be had only through bribery.
It goes without saying that permission to travel abroad is restricted to official envoys of the Government. Thousands of Vietnamese Americans can testify to this who are hopelessly separated from their wives, children, and parents.
Another basic right ignored in Vietnam is the right for a court of law, or at least for a hearing before condemnation. Some 300,000 men have been imprisoned in reeducation camps for over 2 years now, and not one of them has ever been judged, condemned, or even accused of any. crime.
In Saigon, someone disappears nearly every day, and note that I am not talking on hearsay. Many of my friends have seen their daughter, their son, their husband fail to come home for supper. After frustrating inquiries from one police station to another, they were invariably told that if they want to stay out of trouble, they should mind their own business, or that the police does not know where this person is, but if he or she was not a criminal, he would surely be home by now.
Arrests are usually made in one of the following four ways, all of which I have personally witnessed. First, the person is called to report to the police station, and is never heard of since. Many priests have disappeared in this way. Second, the person is quietly kidnaped by the police patrol car while walking back home on the street or walking to work or walking to the market. This seems the most often-used method.
To list only the big names, Father Minh, Father Loc, Father Thanh were arrested in this way.
Third, the house is raided, usually at dawn. All the occupants are ordered out, and a search conducted without witness by a swarm of troops invariably produces some damning evidence, guns, documents, U.S. dollars, and so on.
Fourth, the house is searched at night, and the person is carried away during curfew hours. It is impossible to know how many persons are presently in jail. All I know is that all jails are crowded, that at least two large new ones have been built near Saigon, and that almost all U.S. BOQ's and BEQ's are now used as houses of detention, as many as 26 persons occupying the average GI single bedroom. I know this from the report of prisoners who have come back to tell me.
Now, not everyone is sent to jail, and only men with a high school education are kept in reeducation camps, but every single South Vietnamese, young or old, man or woman, is submitted to the triweekly sessions of political brainwashing, which often drag on from 7 o'clock to midnight. Everyone has to show his contrition for past crimes, his hatred for Americans who, among other crimes, used to cook and eat Vietnamese babies, so it is said, and his love for the Marxist-Leninist society.
Everyone is threatened with deportation to the work camps if he does not join in the campaign of denunciation against his neighbor, if he clings too hard to religious convictions or if, in any way, he fails to cooperate fully with the new regime. The right to one's own convictions is another one that has been banished from Communist Vietnam.
The list could go on and on, but I think my time is over, and I may say more under the questions.
The Last Days in Vietnam is an Oscar-nominated documentary covering the very end of South Vietnam, in April, 1975. Rory Kennedy’s dramatically sad and horrific documentary is both difficult (for a Vietnam Veteran at least) to watch and a chronicle of American compassion and angst. The fall of a democratic society to Communist tyranny should be lamented by Americans, who sacrificed greatly in their defense. It is a film of pathos, frustrating and yet strongly uplifting at times as American soldiers, diplomats and newsmen risk their careers and their lives to save Vietnamese friends from the invading North Vietnamese Army.
Uplifting, unless you’re Associate Professor Christoph Giebel of the University of Washington, Seattle. In a review of the film posted to the website of Vietnam Scholars Group (sic) by Professor Giebel, the film is “dangerously simplistic,” and “much more of a commentary on current US culture—steeped in nationalistic discourses of exceptionalism, thoroughly militarized, and narcissistic—than a reflection of its actual quality.” In fact, the film “is the worst attempt at documenting the war (he) has seen in a long time.”
Aside from the obvious fact that the film is not attempting to document the war but the final American evacuation from the war, Professor Giebel’s statement that the first twenty five minutes of the documentary “quickly abandon all pretense of historical accuracy or balance” quite adequately describes his own (following) rant about the Vietnam War.
[Background: In the spring of 1975, two years after U.S. combat units had left Vietnam, twelve divisions of the North Vietnamese Army invaded South Vietnam. The U.S. Congress refused to re-enter the war, although it had pledged to do so in the event of massive violations of the Paris Peace Agreements. Although many South Vietnamese units fought valiantly and brilliantly, they were no match for the Russian-armed North Vietnamese troops and heavy weapons. In April, 1975, the North Vietnamese overran Saigon and took over the country. The Americans were slow to evacuate thousands of South Vietnamese who had worked with them and who were in mortal danger from the Communists. Panic and anger overtook the final days of the war.]
Giebel posts six “main issues” with the documentary:
By Phillip Jennings
President Obama said this week in Laos that sometimes Americans “feel lazy and think we’re so big we don’t have to really know anything about other people.” [1. http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/07/world/asia/obama-laos-bombs-war.html?_r=0] He then addressed America’s “secret war” in that country, and proved what he didn’t know. What went on in Laos was hardly a secret, and was not much of a war either, except for those of us who fought it.
When President Dwight D. Eisenhower met President-elect John F. Kennedy in the Oval Office prior to passing the reigns of the presidency, he warned the young Prince of the dangers of war in Southeast Asia. In Laos to be exact. Over first months of the tragically short Kennedy administration, the communists – Soviet, Chinese and North Vietnamese -- kept their aggressive pressure on the small nation as only communists seem able to do; through killings, kidnappings, thievery and rabid control of all aspects of life.
Kennedy sent U.S. Marines to the southern border of Laos, with a warning to the communists to get out and stay out. The bluff worked, and in July 1962 fourteen nations signed another in a long line of Geneva accords, this one guaranteeing Laotian neutrality. The buck was passed to South Vietnam to become the whipping boy for communist aggression in Indochina.
Kennedy, meanwhile, made a rookie mistake which haunted and inhibited America’s commitment to keep Ho Chi Minh’s brutal troops out of Saigon over the next decade; he ceded the eastern third of “neutral” Laos to the communists. And that strip of jungle and Annamite foothills became the Ho Chi Minh Trail. The trail – actually a superhighway -- was built using Laotian slave labor to wage war in South Vietnam. The locals were under constant attack from tens of thousands of North Vietnamese regulars.
After North Vietnamese troops moved into Laos, the Marine helicopters in northern Thailand mysteriously lost their MARINES markings and ended up being flown by civilian (mostly former Marine) pilots in what would become part of a company known as Air America. And in late 1967, I became one of those former Marine pilots who flew the former Marine helicopters in and around Laos for the next three years.
The war in the countryside was brutal, but small and mostly contained. The Americans who trained and led the anti-communist troops were among the gutsiest our country has ever produced. There was less than a thousand of them in-country at any one time. They were primarily CIA (we called them customers) and U.S. Army. They worked alone in the country- side, depending on the locals for everything but air support, which was aptly supplied by Air America, the U.S. Air Force Ravens, and the sometimes available American fighters and bombers for close air support when things got really dicey. This small band of warriors and their local counterparts kept Laos from being overrun by the North Vietnamese divisions until South Vietnam fell and Laos became a domino.
It was tragic that the Laotians were caught in the middle of the North Vietnamese invasion of South Vietnam. But it is not dismissing the tragedy to point out that the overwhelming majority of American bombs fell on unpopulated areas along the Ho Chi Minh Trail. Most of the Laotian population live in the lowlands, and near the Mekong River which was the western border for much of the country. The cities of Houi Sai, Luang Prabang (the Royal Capital), Vientiane, Savannakhet, and to the far south, Pakse, were never bombed, and lay as peacefully in the Indochinese sun when the Americans left as when they had arrived.
Good Soldier Obama rightly commented that the U.S. has a moral obligation to continue, and in fact intensify, the efforts to find and defuse/destroy the unexploded ordnance scattered mostly over the eastern one-third of Laos. This is a noble and necessary effort the Americans who fought there, and most Americans at large, would whole-heartedly support.
Obama did not mention the greater moral obligation the Americans have to the remaining Huang/Meo people who gave up a large percentage of their population fighting the communists in Laos on our behalf, led primarily by the great Lao general, Vang Pao. When the Democrat U.S. congress abandoned the South Vietnamese in 1973, they also abandoned our friends and allies in Laos. The communists then slaughtered, bombed, gassed and exiled them from their native lands. It is to our shame for betraying our friends and allies. I would not have expected Obama to bring this up while he was kow-towing to the existing Laotian communist government, and he met my low expectations.
Yes, there was a war in Laos (I was shot down more than once) and the Laotian and American deaths at the hands of the communists were tragic and often extremely brutal. Was it a secret? Absolutely, unless you read The Bangkok Post, The New York Times, or any one of dozens of newspapers and magazines constantly reporting on the war in Laos. I myself was interviewed for articles in Time and the Wall Street Journal while I was “under cover.”
We fought the good fight in Laos. A small, neutral country was being invaded, and we were providing the barest of support. We were enforcing a Geneva Convention mandate, and worked with the indigenous people who carried the brunt of the fighting, and the casualties. Given what we had, we did a respectable job.
The left at the time could find nothing to protest in what we were doing, but they did anyway. Leftists have an innate desire to blame America for all the world’s evils. It was obvious to me, hearing our President speak about Laos, that he was one of the people who hadn’t taken the time to learn about our history and sacrifice in that very gracious and beautiful land. His speech inferred that the United States inflicted massive airstrikes and ruined cities. He expressed regret about the brutality of bombing a peaceful country. He used all the old clichés and leftist tropes (e.g., more bombs than on Europe in World War Two). He all but apologized for our attempt to defend Laos from the communists. And if he knew the first thing about the war we actually fought, he kept it a secret.
Phillip Jennings is an investment banker and entrepreneur, former United States Marine Corps pilot in Vietnam and Air America pilot in Laos. He was also an agent for the Central Intelligence Agency in Central and South America. He is the author of two novels and one best-selling non-fiction book, and received the Pirates Alley Faulkner Prize for fiction in 1999.
Co-authors: Dr. Roger Canfield, R.J. Del Vecchio
From July 8 - 22, 1972, the American actress Jane Fonda visited North Vietnam at the invitation of the "Vietnamese Committee of Solidarity with the American People." During this period, she recorded at least 19 propaganda interviews that were broadcast by Radio Hanoi. Twelve of the speeches focused on American servicemen as their primary target. Fonda's key themes included: demands to halt U.S. bombing of North Vietnam, allegations that the Nixon Administration was "lying" about the war, endorsements of the Viet Cong "7 Point Peace Plan," claims that the U.S. military was violating international law and committing "genocide" in Vietnam, and statements of confidence in North Vietnam's continued resistance and ultimate victory over America.
Listed below are all available transcripts of Jane Fonda's Hanoi broadcasts, as recorded by the CIA's Foreign Broadcast Information Service (FBIS). Slightly redacted versions of several broadcasts also appear in the Congressional Record for Sept. 19-25, 1972, "Hearings Regarding H.R. 16742: Restraints on Travel to Hostile Areas." The transcripts are listed by the dates on which they were originally broadcast by Radio Hanoi.
"Brave heroes of the war would come back from Indochina and I was told that it is we who committed crimes, it is we who burned villages and massacred civilian people and raped the Vietnamese women. It is we who did it and we are sorry, and we want the American people to know what is being done in their names."
The following article is taken from a statement by Bill Bell (pictured right) which he gave before the Vietnam Subcommittee on Trade of the Committee on Ways and Means in the U.S. House of Representatives on June 18, 1998.
Prior to 1989 our government's most important issue concerning Vietnam was the achievement of a viable settlement in war torn Cambodia.
Subsequent to the withdrawal of a politically acceptable number of Vietnamese forces from that country our focus shifted to the accounting for our missing and dead from the Vietnam War.
At that time the policy of the Bush Administration dictated that the recovery of missing American servicemen was a matter of the "highest national priority".
This high priority supported a strategy of strict reciprocity at the national level, and a high quality investigative effort on the ground in Vietnam. This proactive, yet cautious approach to addressing the important POW/MIA issue precipitated Vietnam's realization that no matter how difficult the effort, our persistence and perseverance would not diminish and only genuine cooperation would be acceptable by our government.
A man sees in the world what he carries in his heart.”
Goethe, “Faust”
If there is truth in Goethe’s quote, author Mark Bowden believes in his heart that the American efforts in Vietnam were at best immoral and at worst verging on genocidal. In his new book Hue 1968: A Turning Point of the American War in Vietnam (Atlantic Monthly Press, 610 pp.), Bowden casts the U.S. Marine Corps as the moral mirror of the tens of thousands of communist troops sent by a tyrannical, oppressive cadre of thugs in Hanoi to perpetrate a bloody, maniacal attack on the peaceful citizens of Hue, South Vietnam.
Hue was the second largest city in South Vietnam, a picturesque town on the Perfume River in the northern part of the country. It was safe, peaceful, and prosperous prior to January 31, 1968, the beginning of the TET holiday, even in the midst of the war. Roughly thirty days later, the city lay in ruins, with as many as ten thousand citizens dead. Schools, churches, historical buildings and thousands of homes were rubble. This was the inarguable result of the invasion by the North Vietnamese Army, aided by the local Viet Cong.
The book begins with the inspiring and heart-warming story of a young girl in Hue as she becomes a tool of the communists, assisting them in smuggling arms into the city. As you read, keep in mind that she is living in a free land, attending good schools, and surrounded by a loving family and friends. She apparently set all this aside and chose to aid and abet an invading army who will destroy the city and slaughter its citizens.
Bowden’s factually challenged and sloppily edited (including paragraphs repeated verbatim in separate chapters) diatribe against the actions of the U.S. and South Vietnamese military during the battle is an almost laughable attempt to give the communists – a number of whom he interviewed — a chance to tell “their side of the story.” Almost laughable because it is difficult if not impossible to find humor in the greatest atrocity in the Vietnam War, namely the communists’ systematic murder of thousands of noncombatants, buried alive in mass graves or executed with a shot to the back of the head. In the most staggering and shameful comparison in the book, Bowden speculates that twice as many citizens were probably killed by U.S. and ARVN artillery and bombing, with absolutely no factual basis for that statement.
Yes, and hunting accidents probably killed innocent people the same day the Manson family slaughtered Sharon Tate. Let’s let the Mason family tell their side of the story.
Apologists for the communists know no bounds when it comes to manufacturing moral equivalencies which condone atrocities. Make no mistake, people like John Kerry, Tom Hayden, Jane Fonda and now Mark Bowden forgive and explain away communist evil if it serves the cause of denigrating the American war effort. It is meaningless to condemn acts of North Vietnamese and Viet Cong brutality if in the next breath the exact condemnation is used to describe Americans.
In Hue, for example, U.S. forces fought under strict rules of engagement that limited destruction and unintended civilian casualties. The communists had rules of engagement too — to slaughter and intimidate with inhumane acts against the helpless civilians on the death lists they brought to Hue, as well as anyone who looked like they might give the revolution a hard time in the future. The “crimes” committed by the people of Hue included allegiance to the government in Saigon, teaching children, healing the sick, managing the city government, being Catholic, being a child or elderly, and other such capital offenses.
Bowden is clearly impressed with the enemy. He fawns over North Vietnamese discipline and prowess. He’s “impressed with the enemy’s skill and resolve.” The “marines” (a term Bowden refuses to capitalize, an affront to me and every other Marine) on the other hand are described with terms like petrified, shaking with fear, crying, bawling like babies, bewildered, worn out, scared, mutinous, terrified, frightened, and unnerved. He presents vaguely substantiated accounts of random Marine cruelty toward civilians, such as an alleged instance of deliberately running over a woman with a tank, and an officer supposedly attempting to shoot an unarmed teen civilian until stopped by an enlisted troop. His descriptions are slanderous, libelous and cowardly given the Marines depicted are likely deceased by now.
Bowden also repeats the highly discredited idea that the communists weren’t really defeated because they were not actually trying to win. All North Vietnamese planning documents for TET, which Bowden somehow missed in his diligent research, assumed that once the communists showed up in South Vietnamese cities the populace would rally to their side, pick up arms and drive out the Americans and their running dogs. But in Bowden’s account all the attackers, from the NVA grunt to the highest Red official, repeat the losers’ propaganda mantra—we never meant to capture and hold Hue anyway. The implication is that the NVA could have whipped the Marines, if they wanted to. Tell me another one.
Bowden, best known as the author of Blackhawk Down, writes combat scenes as well as any writer of the day. He has an innate understanding, it seems, of tactics, combat mind-set, motivations and weaponry. However, he also promotes the relentless false left-wing Vietnam War history taught in so many U.S. universities, as well as in communist countries. He believes, for example, that the Vietnam War was a purely domestic civil war, a communist trope devised in Moscow to discredit western intervention. And he inadvertently slips up when he admiringly describes a North Vietnamese soldier as having acquitted his skills after spending six years fighting in Laos. The good people of Laos would be surprised to learn they were engaged in the civil war in Vietnam.
Finally, nothing is quite so distasteful as attributing vast strategic wisdom and patriotism to North Vietnamese soldiers, while belittling the U.S. troops for their supposed lack of understanding and indifference to the reasons for their deployment to the battlefields of Vietnam. First, the North Vietnamese peasantry had absolutely no choice whether or not to join the parade to the slaughterhouse of South Vietnam. They did what they were told or were executed.
However American troops by and large understood why we were in Vietnam, whether or not they agreed with Johnson administration policies. Histories such as Bowden’s downplay or ignore the basic humanity, Judeo-Christian ethics and fundamental morality of the American forces. From birth, these young men were told that America’s destiny and obligation as a great power was to help others to be free. They heard it in President John F. Kennedy’s call to arms in his 1961 inauguration speech, and they lived it in the streets of Hue.
Phillip Jennings is an investment banker and entrepreneur, former United States Marine Corps pilot in Vietnam, Air America pilot in Laos, and founding member of VVFH. He is the author of The Politically Incorrect Guide to the Vietnam War and other books.
By Robert Elegant
Reprinted from Encounter (London), vol. LVII, No. 2, August 1981, pp. 73-90
The author has given VVFH permission to reprint here.
IN THE EARLY 1960s, when the Viet Nam War became a big story, most foreign correspondents assigned to cover the story wrote primarily to win the approbation of the crowd, above all their own crowd. As a result, in my view, the self-proving system of reporting they created became ever further detached from political and military realities because it instinctively concentrated on its own self-justification. The American press, naturally dominant in an "American war," somehow felt obliged to be less objective than partisan, to take sides, for it was inspired by the engagé "investigative" reporting that burgeoned in the United States in these impassioned years. The press was instinctively "agin the government"—and, at least reflexively, for Saigon's enemies.
During the latter half of the fifteen-year American involvement in Viet Nam, the media became the primary battlefield. Illusory events reported by the press as well as real events within the press corps were more decisive than the clash of arms or the contention of ideologies. For the first time in modern history, the outcome of a war was determined not on the battlefield but on the printed page and, above all, on the television screen. Looking back coolly, I believe it can be said (surprising as it may still sound) that South Vietnamese and American forces actually won the limited military struggle. They virtually crushed the Viet Cong in the South, the "native" guerrillas who were directed, reinforced, and equipped from Hanoi; and thereafter they threw back the invasion by regular North Vietnamese divisions. Nonetheless, the war was finally lost to the invaders after the U.S. disengagement because the political pressures built up by the media had made it quite impossible for Washington to maintain even the minimal material and moral support that would have enabled the Saigon regime to continue effective resistance.
By Paul Schmehl
Whenever discussing the Vietnam War, one of the topics that comes up is that the OSS worked with Ho during WWII, Ho requested help from the US by sending both letters and telegrams to President Truman and Ho quoted the American Declaration of Independence in his own declaration of independence.
While all these things are true, they often lead to a false conclusion. It is argued that because the US ignored Ho, he turned to China and Russia for help with his nationalist movement. Nothing could be further from the truth, but that doesn't stop people from arguing it. Ho was a committed communist and skilled deceiver, as our lengthy treatise establishes thoroughly. He had no intentions of turning Vietnam into an American-like republic. His assignment, as a member of the Soviet Comintern, was to establish communism in Indochina. To that end, he established the Indochina Communist Party in 1930 and worked assiduously to strengthen it to seize power when the opportunity presented itself.
The vacuum created by the end of World War II provided his opportunity, and he seized it.
It is also claimed that Truman ignored Ho Chi Minh's entreaties because he wanted the French to re-establish their colony in Indochina. However, the text of telegrams sent to the consulates in Saigon and Hanoi by the Secretary of State and Acting Secretary of State demonstrate that the Truman administration was not fooled by Ho's claims of nationalism. Ho's entreaties were ignored because they were known to be deceitful.
In February 1946, the US Secretary of State of the Truman administration sent a telegram to the Ambassador to France asking to be kept up to date on whether "Leclerc the intransigeant and uncompromising colonial-minded and d’Argenlieu the conciliatory and moderate" had the support of the French government. [1. https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1946v08/d21]
In his response two days later, the US Ambassador indicated that it was his belief that the French government was inclined toward “a liberal and progressive colonial policy in Indo-China” [2. https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1946v08/d23]
Ten days later, the Assistant Chief of the Division of Southeast Asian Affairs cabled the US Secretary of State and stated, “It seems certain that Annamese plan desperate resistance to French.” [3. https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1946v08/d24]
Two weeks later, the Consul of Saigon cabled the Secretary of State that “there were additional incidents last night including the sacking of house of one of the signers of a “motion” calling for Vietnam independence and cessation of hostilities. He himself was severely beaten by the military.” [4. https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1946v08/d30]
On August 9th, the Chief of the Division of Southeast Asian Affairs cabled the Director of the Office of Far Eastern Affairs and informed him that “Recent developments indicate that the French are moving to regain a large measure of their control of Indochina in violation of the spirit of the March 6 convention. The evidence, as set forth below, suggests that the French are attempting to gain their objective by manoeuvres designed to confine and weaken Viet Nam. In the event that Viet Nam decides to resist these encroachments, which is by no means unlikely, widespread hostilities may result.” [5. https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1946v08/d65]
The March 6 agreement to which he refers is the modus vivendi signed between the French and the Viet Minh government (Ho Chi Minh), and the reason for the rising animus was that the Viet Minh felt that they should have the right to Cochinchina, including the Mekong Delta, Saigon, and Cholon, and the French disagreed. They were willing to recognize Ho’s government but did not what to give up the rich, fertile lands of the South.
He closed with this: “In conclusion, it is SEA’s view that the Annamese are faced with the choice of a costly submission to the French or of open resistance, and that the French may be preparing to resort to force in order to secure their position throughout Indochina. It may not be advisable for this Government to take official notice of this situation during the Peace Conference,56 but the Department should be prepared, SEA believes, to express to the French, in view of our interest in peace and orderly development of dependent peoples, our hope that they will abide by the spirit of the March 6 convention.”
So, in 1946, the US was opposed to the French reoccupation of Indochina (at that time Annam, Tonkin, Cochinchina, Cambodia, and Laos.
On September 11, the Ambassador in France cabled the Secretary of State and reported that he had met with Ho Chi Minh, who had requested assistance from the US in his failing negotiations with the French. He wrote, “The principal point on which they failed to reach agreement concerns Cochin China: the French representatives insist that Cochin China be an “independent” entity in an Indochinese federation, while the Viet-Nam representatives insist that one central government in Indochina must dominate the whole country. He said that he and his party aspired to Viet-Nam “independence” in an “Union Franchise”. He said that they would like to receive some “help” from us, but did not specify what he meant by that. He took occasion to say that he was not a communist.” [6. https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1946v08/d72] Ho was, of course, a paid Comintern agent at the time and lied to the US Ambassador.
On September 17, the Ambassador reported that Ho had signed a modus vivendi with the French. [7. https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1946v08/d75]
One of the elements of that agreement was that all fighting in Cochinchina would stop. It did not, of course, and this became the second diplomatic agreement that Ho violated. In point of fact, Ho violated every international agreement he signed. He refused to agree that the armed forces in Cochinchina would disarm.
In October, State cabled Saigon asking for an explanation of Ho’s flag, particularly the use of a gold star in the center of a red field since that clearly hinted at communism. [8. https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1946v08/d76]
In December, the Secretary of State cabled various missions abroad informing them that the nature of the government in Vietnam was communist. [9. https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1946v08/d92]
So, before the end of 1946, the US was already aware that Ho and his government were communist, not nationalist, and US policy proceeded accordingly.
In January 1947, the Secretary of State cabled the Embassy in France asking them to convey US consternation with French attempts to “place US in partisan position” and asked that they contact the French Foreign Office and request a retraction. [10. https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1947v06/d66]
So, even after becoming aware that Ho was a communist and his government was communist, the US still refused to take a partisan position regarding the unrest in Annam, Tonkin and Cochinchina.
On January 15, 1947, the Ambassador cabled the Secretary of State to update him on affairs in Indochina. He wrote regarding Ho’s government, “the small Communist group which now dominates, and which is composed, he says, of a coterie of Moscow-trained young men.” [11. https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1947v06/d72]
By January 15,1947, the US was well aware that Ho and his government were Soviet-trained communists.
FOREIGN RELATIONS OF THE UNITED STATES – TRUMAN - 1946 100
851G.00/7-746: Telegram
The Acting Secretary of State to the Consul at Saigon (Reed)
SECRET WASHINGTON, September 9, 1946— 2 p.m.
Intelligence reports of uncertain reliability state USSR (a) anxious to see Ho Chi Minh succeed unite three Kys under Viet Nam for possible eventual weapon against National Govt China and (b) has instructed French Communists manoeuvre reliable French Officers to Indochina, for training cadres future Viet Nam army. Keep Dept informed indications subservience to Party line by Ho and other leaders, relative strength Communist and non-Communist elements Viet Nam, and contacts with Communists other countries.
Inform O’Sullivan.Sent Saigon. Repeated
Paris59 for info.
CLAYTON
— — — — — — — — — —
59 As Telegram 4680
FOREIGN RELATIONS OF THE UNITED STATES – TRUMAN - 1946 108
851G.00B/10-946: Airgram
The Acting Secretary of State to the Consul at Saigon (Reed)
SECRET WASHINGTON, October 9, 1946.
A.29 Reference Department's telegram Number 241 of September 9 and Consulate General's telegram Number 374 of September 17.
Department would appreciate information on the origins and significance of the use of a gold star in the center of a red field as the Vietnam flag. The flag of the Malayan Peoples Anti-Japanese Union forces in Malaya (an organization undisguisedly controlled by Chinese Communists) was red with three gold stars in the upper right corner. Three stars were used to symbolize the three races in Malaya. Although the MPAJU has been disbanded, the Communist movement in Malaya is still known as the three-star movement. The official Vietnam explanation of the Vietnam flag would be especially interesting in view of Ho Chi Minh's denial of Communist orientation on the part of his government, since the Vietnam Government must, certainly realize that the use of a gold star on a red field will inevitably lead nationals of other countries to form conclusions which the Vietnam Government would apparently not wish them to form
ACHESON
— — — — — — — — — —
FOREIGN RELATIONS OF THE UNITED STATES – TRUMAN - 1949 54
851G.01/5-1149: Telegram
The Secretary of State to the Consulate at Hanoi1
SECRET WASHINGTON, May 20, 1949— 5 p.m.
Reur informative tel 36:2
In talks Xuan and reps his govt you may take fol line as representing consensus informed Americans: In light Ho's known background, no other assumption possible but that he outright Commie so long as (1) he fails unequivocally repudiate Moscow connections and Commie doctrine and (2) remains personally singled out for praise by internatl Commie press and receives its support. Moreover, US not impressed by nationalist character red flag with yellow stars. Question whether Ho as much nationalist as Commie is irrelevant. All Stalinists in colonial areas are nationalists. With achievement natl aims (i.e., independence) their objective necessarily becomes subordination state to Commie purposes and ruthless extermination not only opposition groups but all elements suspected even slightest deviation. On basis examples eastern Eur it must be assumed such wld be goal Ho and men his stamp if included Bao Dai Govt. To include them in order achieve reconciliation opposing polit elements and "national unity" wld merely postpone settlement issue whether Vietnam to be independent nation or Commie satellite until circumstances probably even less favorable nationalists than now. It must of course be conceded theoretical possibility exists estab National Communist state on pattern Yugoslavia in any area beyond reach Soviet army. However, US attitude cld take acct such possibility only if every other possible avenue closed to preservation area from Kremlin control. Moreover, while Vietnam out of reach Soviet army it will doubtless be by no means out of reach Chi Commie hatchet men and armed forces.
1 Repeated as 84 to Saigon and 1713 to Paris and in 379, May 24, 5 p.m., to New Delhi, 286 to Bangkok, and 636 to Manila.
2 May 11, p. 25. [0524]
By Paul Schmehl
This is a subject that is little known or discussed among the so-called experts on the war but had a significant impact on its outcome. While it is well known that Washington micromanaged the war (thus the famous story about LBJ boasting that the military couldn't bomb an outhouse without his approval [1. Broughton, Jacksel, and John D. Lavelle. "Air Force Colonel Jacksel 'Jack' Broughton & Air Force General John D. 'Jack' Lavelle: Testing the Rules of Engagement During the Vietnam War." HistoryNet. History.net, 12 June 2006. Web. 26 Dec. 2016. <http://www.historynet.com/air-force-colonel-jacksel-jack-broughton-air-force-general-john-d-jack-lavelle-testing-the-rules-of-engagement-during-the-vietnam-war.htm>.]), the details of what that meant are not as well-known. When viewed through the lens of military strategy they border on the insane.
The rules of engagement were drawn from three different sources; the President and Secretary of Defense, through the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the Commander of the Military Assistance Command and the Commander-in-Chief, Pacific Command. Except if you were operating in Laos. Then the State Department set the rules.[2. Emerson, J. Terry. "Making War Without Will: Vietnam Rules of Engagement." The Vietnam Debates: A Fresh Look at the Arguments. New York: U of America, 1990. 161-70. Print.] [3. USAF Ops from Thailand Jan 67 - Jul 1968 (Part 1), Undated, Folder 01, Bud Harton Collection, The Vietnam Center and Archive, Texas Tech University. Accessed 23 Dec. 2016. <http://www.vietnam.ttu.edu/virtualarchive/items.php?item=168300010948>.] [4. Congressional Record - Senate on "U.S. Rules of Engagement in Vietnam War - 1969-1972", 1985, Folder 05, Box 52, Douglas Pike Collection: Unit 03 - Legal and Legislative, The Vietnam Center and Archive, Texas Tech University. Accessed 23 Dec. 2016. <http://www.vietnam.ttu.edu/virtualarchive/items.php?item=2185205001>.]
There are two primary facets to the rules of engagement; the air war and the ground war. The following are lawful targets according to the laws of war. [5. Parks, W. Hays. "The Bombing of North Vietnam and the Law of War." The Vietnam Debates: A Fresh Look at the Arguments. New York: U of America, 1990. 172-73. Print.]
At dawn, the streets of Hanoi were absolutely silent. The usual patriotic wakeup music was missing. The familiar street sounds, the horns, all gone. In prison, interrogators and guards would inquire about our needs solicitously. Unprecedented morning coffee was delivered to our cell blocks. One look at any Vietnamese officer's face told the whole story. It telegraphed accommodation, hopelessness, remorse, fear. The shock was there; our enemy's will was broken. The sad thing was that we all knew what we were seeing could have been done in any 10-day period in the previous seven years and saved lives of thousands, including most of those 57,000 dead Americans. [9. Parks, W. Hays. "The Bombing of North Vietnam and the Law of War." The Vietnam Debates: A Fresh Look at the Arguments. New York: U of America, 1990. 179. Print.]
Mr. GOLDWATER. Mr. President, I ask this because I think it 1s very, very necessary for the Members of this body. the public, the press, and media to understand fully the restrictions that were placed upon aU of our forces in South Vietnam.
It is absolutely unbelievable that any Secretary of Defense would ever place such restrictions on our forces. It Is unbelievable that any President would have allowed this to happen.
I think on the reading of these restrictions, members of this body will begin to understand in a better way just what happened to the American military power in South Vietnam. As I say, it is unbelievable.
I am ashamed of my country for having had people who would have allowed such restrictions to have been placed upon men who were trained to fight, men who were trained to make decisions to win war, and men who were risking their lives. I daresay that these restrictions had as much to do with our casualties as the enemy themselves.