Vietnam Thoughts
Dean
Neo-neo-con has some long and interesting thoughts on American viewpoints on the Vietnam war, written in response to a comment I left her. Click here to read it.
Her piece is good and deserves to be read in its entirety. But I do want to respond to one thing: I did not intend my comment to be read, as she put it, to mean "Where were you in the mid- to late-70s, oh bleeding-heart Vietnam War protesters? Didn't the terrible aftermath of the Vietnam War convince you that you had been wrong to work so hard for US withdrawal? And, if so, why not?" as she suggests. Not quite, anyway.
I think it's clear that there were basically five types of people who opposed the Vietnam war:
1) Isolationists of the "this is none of our business" variety.
2) People who just didn't want themselves or their brothers, husbands, and sons drafted.
3) Liberals who thought it was a lost, doomed cause.
4) Pacifists of the "all war is bad" variety.
5) Communists, communist apologists, and generally anti-American dips***s.
The only people I really hold in contempt are groups 4 and 5. Pacifism is immoral, selfish, and destructive. Communism is as evil as Nazism. But the others are people I can understand and respect.
What disturbs me is that, in retrospect, a lot of people just sort of accept as axiomatic an historical view which reads, "this was an evil racist immoral war fought becuase America was a bunch of bullies and/or wanted to fuel the military-industrial complex." Honestly, that's the only position I take strong exception to. That and the revisionist history that goes along with it, most of which seems to have been concocted by groups 4 and 5.
Ho Chi Minh was never, ever a "freedom fighter," nor even a home-grown hero. Nor was he ever a sincere revolutionary who wanted help from the Western powers and only turned communist because "we gave him no choice." All of that is pure commie propaganda bulls**t. He was a KGB stooge and Marxist-Leninist-Maoist radical from day one. And when he got into power, exactly what the anti-communists said would happen did happen: the bloodletting was horrendous, and the oppression incalculable. The much-maligned "domino theory" was also vindicated, as neighboring regimes quickly fell (or in some cases very nearly fell) to totalitarianism.
Now it may be that we never should have gone there in the first place. It may also be that we made the right choice in going but conducted ourselves poorly. All of that is debateable. Either way, it is fair to say that America cannot stop all oppression and genocide worldwide.
In retrospect, the only thing I find genuinely contemptible in our exit was that, after the U.S. troop withdrawl, we broke our promise to the government of South Vietnam. We suddenly, and with little warning, cut off all the funding we had promised to give them so that they could defend themselves--and then sat on our hands while hundreds of thousands were butchered in the camps and millions more fled for their lives, with quite possibly as many drowning or dying of exposure as died in Uncle Ho's "re-education" camps.
Indeed, even while all that was going on, some of the dips**t radicals here at home were still congratulating themselves and patting themselves on the back.
I also think we should have been working much harder from the beginning to hold free and fair elections in that country. Alas, the foreign-policy "realists," whose thinking is today mirrored by the so-called "reality based community," simply didn't think that was a priority, or didn't think that the Vietnamese could handle a real democracy anyway. So we did not get serious about trying until it was all but too late.
Ultimately I think the real lessons of Vietnam are not whether one side or the other was correct. The real lesson is that anyone who thinks there are easy and obvious answers in war or peace is being foolish. If you opposed American intervention in that area, that doesn't make you a bad person. On the other hand, if you can't acknowledge that by pulling out, we left those people to suffer a horrible fate, then you're either deeply ignorant or just plain dishonest. (And when I say "you" I don't mean anyone in particular. It's a generic "you.")
Maybe giving up and leaving was making the best of a bad situation. But it's wrong not to acknowledge what the cost of giving up really was.
Honestly, the only people who should apologize are those who accepted and helped spread communist propaganda--and who still haven't faced up to the monster that Ho Chi Minh really was all along.
Related Posts (on one page):
- Vietnam War Thoughts, Part II
- Vietnam Thoughts
3a) Conservatives who thought it was a lost, doomed cause.
I remember thinking that I wished the US would fight to win in Vietnam, but if we weren't going to do that, then we should get the hell out. Yes, I was disgusted by most of the anti-war protesters. Yes, when we finally did pull out and things went to hell over there, it was more or less the horror that I had been expecting all along; and I was horrified.
I remember what a number Vietnam did on the American psyche, back in the sixties and seventies. Yes, due in part to the actions and attitudes of those same despicable protesters; but it was nonetheless a reality. And it was one factor in the overall picture which led me to conclude that, as you put it, "Maybe giving up and leaving was making the best of a bad situation."
The scars left on the American psyche by our involvement in Vietnam, and even moreso by "the war at home," did not really begin to heal for some years after we pulled out. I don't think those scars have healed fully to this day. The history of the United States over these past forty years might have been far different, and far less polarized and dysfunctional, if we had decided early on in our involvement in Vietnam either to shit or else get off the pot.
Our enemies are always trying to judge if they can successfully take us on. Right now the Chinese are probably war-gaming various attack strategies on Taiwan. Part of that war-gaming will be different military and economic responses of the U.S.
Our retreat from Vietnam very likely encouraged our enemies all around the world. I believe they are still watching whether we'll succed in Iraq.
It's rather disingenuous to get all bent about liberals and "communists" who were against the war..and not look at the reasons why. Many, if not all, are valid to this day.
Ironically, this is about the only agreement I have ever found myself to have with Ayn Rand.
I was talking generally about those on the left, the "liberals" Neo-neocon was talking about.
But by the way, what's with the scare quotes around the word "communists?" You aren't foolish enough to believe that there weren't any communists in the anti-war movement are you? That's exactly what Tom Hayden was, and it's more or less what Jane Fonda was at the time (in a shallow, juvenile Hollywoodish way). It's who and what David Horowitz and a number of others were. Don't kid yourself: anyone who was running around at the time calling Ho Chi Minh a "heroic revolutionary" and comparing him to George Washington was aping communist propaganda. That's not an opinion, it's exactly the case. Ditto all those kids running around calling themselves Marxists and talking about how heroic the VC were and how deplorable the south vietnamese forces were.
But remember what the president of Singapore said -- that the 10 years we fought in Vietnam helped other Asian nations gain economic strength. We lost in Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam, but we may have won in Asia and ultimately won the Cold War because of our efforts in Vietnam.
There is nothing inherently dishonorable in losing. But a broken promise ... that's the disgrace. Nothing we did wrong there matches the broken promise to the South Vietnamese, and the broken faith with our and our allies' soldiers who fought.
I'm of the school that says there's probably nothing we could've done at the time to win and still have won the Cold War. Perhaps in the big picture we'll realize that the humbling of the United States has tempered us today. The military is certainly smarter.
Ultimately, the ghost of Vietnam won't be exorcised until there's a democratic government there. Perhaps one day there will be a real people's revolution and we'll see that. My guess is Vietnam will be one of the last nations to democratize. Irony, I suppose.
Still, it's probably fair to say that my phrasing was careless. Obviously, yes, there were moderates to conservatives who felt it a lost cause.
That said: Bill, you should post that entire comment verbatim on your blog. I agree with every word of it.
If you've got some evidence that Jane Fonda, Tom Hayden and David Horowitz were members of the Communist Party during the Vietnam era, pony it up.
If you don't..it's scare tactics and rhetorical wind breaking on your part.
Disagreeing with them is one thing. Labeling them to create boogeymen is quite another.
BK
BK
They need not be card-carrying members of the Communist Party to mouth communist slogans, support the actions of communists, cheer on communists, and otherwise help the communist nations and the Communist Party. They can also be fellow travelers and useful idiots, who are communists in all but name, whether they recognize that or not.
And while it may be different in this case, I have learned that it's not wise to challenge Dean to produce evidence. Can you say "deluge"?
I disagree. Often times, it's simply naive -- with results that are immoral, selfish, and destructive.
A lot of people are easily taken in by pacifism the ideal -- which I admire -- without recognizing that the practice of pacifism can allow evil people to destroy good people. I can no longer find it online; but in late 2001, the WSJ ran an essay by an NPR commentator (I think it was Daniel Schorr) who was a confirmed Quaker and a proud Vietnam War opponent. He was absolutely steeped in pacifism the ideal. And when he saw the Bosnian war up close and personal, he realized that peaceful, passive resistance always changes the world, but sometimes in ways you don't want: sometimes, that lets the evil people kill all the good people, so there's no one left who can resist.
But that is still a debatable point. The only reason the borders of those regimes even existed was because the French made them so. Mostly what the North wanted was a unified country. I think it's pretty clear they had no ambitions outside of the Indochina region.
Then I suggest you read the even more interesting Radical Son: A Generational Odyssy by David Horowitz, who was (a) an anti-Vietnam war activist, (b) very well known in the movement, and (c) a communist.
Why do I say they were communists? Because they'll tell you themselves that they were. Furthermore, they both knew people like Hayden and Abbie Hoffman quite well, and wrote of their experiences with them and any number of other well-known anti-war activists who were communists or communist sympathizers.
Now: I would appreciate a retraction for your slurs on my character. All I have done is stated something that is factually correct. You don't have to like it, but you don't have a right to slam my character simply for telling you something you didn't know.
The fastest and easiest (and most amusing) read is Radosh's book, although I recommend all three if you have the energy.
One of the best tricks that Hollywood and many authors from that period have managed to pull is portraying anyone who calls someone a communist as a fearmonger, a villain, or stupid. It's astounding when you think about it.
Yes, the war was conducted badly, though not as badly as some might like to think. And if our leaders were too timid to win it was partly because of the interference and obstructionism of those same activists. At best we should've kept our promises and won. At worst we should've all mourned together for the lives and opportunities lost. When you consider all the people who died when the US abandoned the South, there was nothing noble or proud about what they achieved or how they used their influence after the war was over.
Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI
Pile the bodies high at Austerlitz and Waterloo.
Shovel them under and let me work—
I am the grass; I cover all.
The blood is still very warm.
For those that remember,
They need no google search
Viet Nam, a terrible war:
Dear Alan Ginsburg,
‘I met you during the summer of 1972 in Miami Beach at the Democratic and Republican Conventions. We were there for a common purpose..to save lives that were being destroyed by Nixon's Vietnam War machine.
You inspired me to persevere in struggling against such a dark
force...you was hip Yiddishkeit to me..You was the hip rabbi of the
Haight who brought spiritual possivity to our forces during those trying
times..You along with Abbie, Jerry, John Lennon, Jerry Garcia, George
Jackson, Janis, Jim Morrison, Huey, Leary, Kunstler are all busy
organizing a Be-In in Hippies Heaven to remember our summer of love.’
Thank you Alan, you saved the war from Nixon pride.
Now, now children, let’s not forget Jane and John etched in our memories.
Then again, another story, somewhere, we don’t know,
Perhaps, Kishini barracks,Yokohama.
The blue blue skies of Yokohama and
Stryker frames, sad faces, injured soldiers US Army
We see you eye to eye. We rode the plane to Chanute
Green vomit and all. We cried your tears. Sorry,
Destination Walter Reed we could not go all the way.
But alas, only a dream after all these years.
And freedom, well freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose:
‘Busted flat in baton rouge, headin’ for the trains,
Feelin’ nearly faded as my jeans.
Bobby thumbed a diesel down just before it rained,
Took us all the way to new orleans.
Took my harpoon out of my dirty red bandana
And was blowin’ sad while bobby sang the blues,
With them windshield wipers slappin’ time and
Bobby clappin’ hands we finally sang up every song
That driver knew.
Freedom’s just another word for nothin’ left to lose,
And nothin’ ain’t worth nothin’ but it’s free,
Feelin’ good was easy, lord, when bobby sang the blues,
And buddy, that was good enough for me,
Good enough for me and my bobby mcgee.’
So sorry Janis, and sorry Alan and Jane but you got it all wrong,
So lets:
‘pile them high at Gettysburg And pile them high at Ypres and Verdun.
shovel them under and let me work. Two years, ten years, and
passengers ask the conductor:
What place is this?
Where are we now?
Nevermind,
I am the grass.
Let me work.
So far Iraq and Afghanistan have gone miles to refurbish that blot, but it will always be there. I don't hold the men and women in uniform accountable for it though. I hold the likes of Jane Fonda and her Hanoi Whore crowd, and all the politicans in D.C. that were willing to let Americans die, but weren't willing to to give them all the support needed to win (or to come home without being spat upon).
One of the best lessons from Vietnam I know of is that once a promise is given, you follow through with it even if it hurts. If you don't, the likes of Pol Pot and the Killing Fields will arrise. As much as I love my husband and don't want to lose him, if his death spares thousands of innocents, then that is what it called for (he feels the same way, by the way). If my death was called for to save thousands from the same fate, I would give it. There are some things far greater than yourself in this world, and the Hanoi Whores of that war only thought of themselves and what power they could wield...it has damaged the US for 30+ years now, and proves just how wrong they were (even though they won't admit it).
The war was the right war, at the right time and in the right place...but it was fought under parameters which made it nearly impossible for us to win; a win, by the way, would have been a fairly easy trick...sieze Haiphong through which almost all of NV's supplies came through and then wait for the VC/NVA in South Vietnam to whither on the vine...the political leaders were afraid of Russo-Chinese intervention, but at the time they had enough information to be aware that with China wracked by Cultural Revolution and Russia in no mood to go to war over distant Vietnam, the risks of such intervention were nil...our leaders were just afraid; and the worst part about it was that they weren't afraid of death and destruction, they were just afraid of losing...and so they fought not to lose, and so lost because a defensive battle always ends in defeat.
LBJ was a piece of work: it seemed that he thought he could win a war without quite being AT war, if that makes any sense. (Really, it doesn't.) Not only were the politicians involved in decisions they had no business making, there was also Johnson trying to make a "great society," and pretend nothing was really going on in Vietnam: "just a small skirmish going on over there. Pay no attention to your dead neighbors, sons, husbands, and brothers." WTF?
And the broken promises: the abandonment of the Vietnamese, the Cambodians at the mercy of the khmer rouge. There are other huge stains on our honor (some of our dealings with American Indians, slavery, and some of our behavior in the First Gulf War come to mind). But the killing fields make me want to cry.
I can't believe Carla didn't know Horowitz was a dyed-in-the-wool Communist. My husband calls him a "red diaper baby."
For a lot of kids, talk about "revolution" in those days was just sort of a cliche they used, but for the communist kids, it was very specifically a Marxist revolution they were talking about--and it was aimed straight at those people when John Lennon sang "You say you want a revolution, well you know..." Abbey Hoffman and all those crypto-communist radicals. He was specifically saying he wasn't one of them.
Once again, it's simply stunning what a job much of the media and press have done, making it so that if you just say someone was a communist, it evokes snickers or howls of outrage when it was simply a fact in many cases, no more remarkable or deniable than saying someone had brown eyes, or long hair.
Most of the anti-war protestors weren't communists of course. The communists and pseudo-communists pining for "the revolution" were absolutely crushed after Nixon ended the draft and left office, because to their horror and dismay, the anti-war movement all but evaporated. Turned out an awful lot of those kids really didn't mean they wanted a Marxist revolution after all, and the Marxists were appalled. Horowitz recounts a touching conversation about it that he had with Tom Hayden in the early '70s, with Hayden still in denial and saying we needed a new revolutionary idea to get the revolution restarted, and Horowitz just looked at him and said, "the revolution's never going to come, Tom." Hayden didn't want to hear it, but by then Horowitz had learned the truth: most of those people never wanted a Marxist revolution, didn't give a damn about the idea. They just didn't want to get drafted, or go fight in a war they didn't believe in, and that's all they ever meant.
Meditation: Viet Nam, Part II
“Honestly, the only people who should apologize are those who accepted and helped spread communist propaganda--and who still haven't faced up to the monster that Ho Chi Minh really was all along.”
I should think that comment merits further consideration. Cross sectioning the events of those years, it isn’t too difficult to propose that the Viet Nam War was NOT LOST in Viet Nam but rather right here in the USA specifically---THE WILL to win was drowned out largely by social events of which many are all well familiar.
Dropping acid, smoking pot, civil rights,Kennedy gets assassinated, a vacuum of leadership with LBJ, a summer of love, the Beatles, walk for peace and love and freedom. Rock rocks. MLK 1967— 400,000 March for Peace. Gotta get our rights right “ We don’t need no commie bull blather. Just truth. But
Wasn’t it great---for the Grateful Dead ? Joan Baez ? John Kerry ?
It’s all right here:
Guess what---who lost ?
Hey, check out 1975:
Apr 17 - Khmer Rouge takes over Cambodia
Apr 30 - Fall of Saigon North Vietnamese troops enter Saigon
Nov 20 - CIA and FBI charged with illegal surveillance of US Citizens and plotting to assassinate foreign leaders. Damn guvmint again.
Well, let’s just pick up our guitars:
“Freedom’s just another word for nothin’ left to lose,
And nothin’ ain’t worth nothin’ but it’s free,
Feelin’ good was easy, lord, when bobby sang the blues,
And buddy, that was good enough for me,
Good enough for me and my bobby mcgee.”
A Modest Proposal:
Let’s not start any wars we’re not prepared to finish in anything but victory not disgrace.
I suggest that rather than reading books which toss the word "Communist" around...you actually find out whether or not the people in question really are or were considering themselves Communists.
Just like I'm certain you'd be offended if someonhe called you a fascist, they could very well take offense to being labeled something they clearly are not.
It's much too lazy to go down this road..so don't do it. Take the time to actually research these people and their beliefs based on what they tell you..not what some third party person with an ax to grind has to say.
Allow me to note that I called Kerry on the "Moral Superiority" War about Vietnam when the Swifties came out.
On Michael Totten's blog I said that the US should apologize to the Vietnamese -- for not winning; for not learning how to do Vietnamization, right. (Starting with supporting THEM in doing security?)
I note in neo-neocon's excellent list of excuses, no mention of Nixon -- I think the Watergate scandal, "Nixon's the one", allowed most folk to blame ALL the bad outcomes on Tricky Dicky.
If you have recordings left over from before they cleaned that song up digitally, you can hear John quietly but very distinctly say "in" a half a beat after (he?) and Paul sing "when you talk about destruction, don't you know that you can count me out." He did it every time and in live recordings as well.
But when they digitally cleaned up the tapes for the Anthology release (and maybe the current CD version of the other records) John's rebellion was cut out. John was already dead, and clearly the guy who remastered the recordings got the last laugh.
I remember when the first CDs came out - in those days CD's were an accurate copy of the master tapes, hiss and all. Not anymore, the current generation has never heard tape hiss.
Face it: there were communists in the anti-war movement. Admitted communists. People who were up-front about it. Don't get in my face for telling you something you didn't know. It's just a fact. Which is why I gave them their own category, in order to separate them from the others.
You're making yourself look silly. Just admit you made a mistake. We all make mistakes. The test of character is whether you can admit it or not.
I'm silly? You call several very famous people "communists"..and when I ask you to show me where they were self identifying as members of the Communist Party...you point me to some books written by other people?
I suppose you'd be the expert on silly, eh? :)