Burning History: Preparing the Battlefield; Preparing the Viewer’s Mind

Story creates self-image, and cultural story creates cultural self-image. Behavior is consistent with self-image. If you can control the story, you can control behavior.

 By John M. Del Vecchio

When a typhoon hit the northern part of South Vietnam in late 1970 many of the combat operations in western I Corps were suspended while troops from the 101st Airborne Division aided villagers in the lowlands. Photo by the author.

Let’s jump right in to the anomalies of Episode 5, This Is What We Do (July 67-Dec 67) . Then we’ll look at how this is being used to set up Episode 6, Things Fall Apart (Jan 68-May 69). Errors of omission are immense; interpretation of the limited story told is erroneous.

The reason for leaving a hill or a battlefield after the battle is over, is not “to give” the hill back to the enemy. The declaring that abandonment of the terrain makes the combat losses in vain shows zero understanding of the dynamics of the conflict. NOTE: The NVA also left virtually all these battlefields after the battle was over. It would have been virtually impossible for allied troops, even with ten times their numbers, to maintain a presence on all territory. Again, this is also true of the NVA.

Think of it this way: In a high-crime urban area do police forces continually cover every house and every business establishment, or do they patrol areas in the hopes of deterring crime by their intermittent presence or stopping violence if they can reach it as it occurs? In Vietnam, particularly in the border regions, we patrolled. This, or course, became necessary when LBJ and McNamara rejected Westmoreland’s Op York strategy (see previous blog) and force ARVN and allied troops to interdict only after enemy troops infiltrated into South Vietnam.

We did not have a Maginot Line; we policed the neighborhood. We did not occupy all spaces at all times. The criticism [we’ll see it repeated for Dong Ap Bai, Ripcord and other battles] about leaving a hill after a battle, and claiming the battle thusly being in vain is invalid. Criticizing the strategy that forced these tactics is valid.

In Episode 5 we were told that Le Duan’s strategy of late ’67 and going into ‘68 was to have the NVA instigate a series of border battles to lure Americans away from the cities, thereby leaving the populated area vulnerable to attack. This indeed is the proper set up for what’s coming at Tet ’68. Not said, however, is that this is the repeat of the strategy used in 1954 at Dien Bien Phu. The part of that strategy not explained in Episode 1 is that coupled with pulling French troops to that remote outpost, the communists then instigated hundreds of terrorist incidents in the population centers of the North. General Giap referred to this part of his op plan as a “gnat swarm” technique designed to drive government officials and citizens mad. The Tet Offensive (Jan-Feb 68) and the Mini-Tet Offensive (May 68) both follow this pattern. Khe Sanh was to be the Tet Dien Bien Phu; and Kham Duc the same for mini-Tet.

One major difference that North Vietnamese planners did not fully appreciate was that American mobility was far superior to French mobility. That does not mean that the battles were not fierce. It means the Northern strategy, not adjusted for new realities, was flawed.

Significant resultants of the flawed NVA strategy—overlooked by many historians—are that the attacks caused adjustments in American military strategy, moving it a step closer to what Westmoreland conceived. From mid-68 forward American forces were more heavily concentrated in the northern provinces south of the DMZ and along the Laotian border, in order to more effectively interdict troops and materiel coming from North Vietnam. When Abrams takes over for Westmoreland he continues and expands this strategy. This disposition of forces allowed for greater use of South Vietnamese Regional and Provincial forces to secure lowland population centers, and lead to the most peaceful period in South Vietnam. There are still nasty battle to come, but both better American strategy and the continued development of the ARVN, produce conditions unfavorable to the North and cause the North to question its commitment to continuing the war. The American political atmosphere and Soviet and Chinese pressure keep them going.

Let’s take a quick look at how Burns portrays American vs. communist troops. In battle, in defensive positions or pinned down while patrolling, Americans are seen crouching in foxholes or bunkers or depressions in the ground. They are the bait the command has used to attract an attack in which enemy forces can be destroyed by artillery or air power. The picture is grim. American troops are embittered. Certainly there were times when this was accurate. Being shot at or bombarded with artillery is scary. But note how NVA soldiers are portrayed as they prepare a battlefield to lure Americans to attack their temporary position (as said, they didn’t hold territory either), or while the battle is in progress. They also hunker down, but they’re eager to engage the fight. They are not bait used by their commanders, but are courageous.

First, know that all film from North Vietnamese sources was taken by NVA “armed propaganda teams” not by members of a free press. Secondly, realize that these NVA soldiers were very often scared, that they often felt forced to be where they were, that many were disheartened, and that very many disliked their command--particularly hating the political officers which were attached to all NVA units. [Kind of sounds like troops in any war, huh?] During the war some 20,000 northern troops defected to the south. That is a very significant number and should tell the reader more about NVA morale than Burns projection of happy patriots willingly and eagerly entering the maw. As to insurgents indigenous to South Vietnam (the VC), so disenchanted with the communist side, and so convinced the allied side was winning, some 180,000 defected to the South! American defections to the North are single digit; and ARVN defection to the communist side are minor (although, it was a problem for the ARVN that troops left their units to “go home” where they often served with either local Regional or Popular force units.)

Why, Mr. Burns, have you not shown this? To portray NVA soldiers, Asian boys, as happily and willingly giving their livesfor “the cause,” as if Asians don’t value life in the same way Americans do, is subtly racist.

The first week is complete, the second week is about to start. It feels like we’ve had a semester break (and personally I’d like to get back out climbing). Episode 5 has been the set-up for where we’re going—the Tet Offensive, The Paris Peace Talks. Will we see the realities of what happened on the ground in Vietnam, or will we see Vietnam mostly through the eyes of U.S. and world politicians, and the anti-war movement?

Things do fall apart in 1968, but militarily they fall apart far more for the NVA and VC than they do for the ARVN, Americans and allies.

Please forward and share this essay.  For more on this, and for 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 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.

Burning History: Understanding The Roots of Perversion

Op Plans York, El Paso 1, El Paso 2… If you don’t have a clue to what went on behind the headlines, you have no moral authority to produce a cultural-story altering documentary. Shame on you!

 By John M. Del Vecchio

Photo by the author: Interdicting  Infiltration—from this hilltop in western I Corps one could look across the northern end of the A Shau Valley and into Laos.

Where to start? Episode 4, Resolve (Jan 66-Jun 67), was by far the most emotional. Toward the end, one would have to be awfully hardhearted to watch the resolution of the Denton W. Crocker, Jr. storyline and not be in tears. A master storyteller sets these things up, and Burns has been setting this element up since at least episode two. We’ve come to like and admire not just Denton but his mother and sister. More than like and admire, we identify with them. By his demise Denton has become our son, our brother, our friend. This is very powerful. Exactly what is needed to convince a viewer who might be skeptical of Burns’ historical perspective, to essentially throw in the towel. Don’t! Just as Burns wants you to empathize with the plight of American troops yet despise American involvement, I’m asking you to honor the courage and sacrifices of American troops, but also to understand the greater story and thereby not deny meaning to their courage and sacrifices.

I am no fan of Lyndon Johnson or Robert McNamara. Their strategic handling of the war—both in the war zone and on the home front—reeks of irresponsibility and ineptitude. Their meddling in day-to-day tactical decisions was ludicrous. And most upsetting to me, and not a word of this in the Burns documentary other than a very general statement that it was denied, was their active ignorance of General Westmoreland’s clear-sighted op-plan to stop Northern infiltration and turn over in-country fighting of domestic terrorists (VC, though this is not fully accurate as we’ll see below) to the Army of The Republic of Vietnam (ARVN).

As early as 1965 Westmoreland recognized the interdiction inadequacies of the system he’d inherited, and he’d surmised the war could not be won by simply defending South Vietnamese territory and killing invaders thereof. He knew that to control a defensive border—a line running from the tip of the Mekong Delta north along the borders with Cambodia and Laos then east across the DMZ to the South China Sea, a distance of over 700 miles—would take upwards of 1.5 to 2 million troops. He summed up his solution, laid out in Op Plan York, as such:

I continued for long to hope for an international force to man a line below the DMZ and across the Laos panhandle… From the first I contemplated eventually moving into Laos to cut and block the infiltration routes of the Ho Chi Minh Trail, and in 1966 and 1967 my staff prepared detail plans for such an operation.

Below the DMZ, from the South China Sea to the Mekong River and border with Thailand is approximately 125 miles. This is approximately one sixth the length of border Johnson’s strategy required defending. It would have required approximately one sixth the troops, somewhere in the order of 300,000 to 350,000. Johnson, McNamara, and other’s in that administration turned the general down. Westmoreland repeated his request with Op Plans El Paso I and El Paso II. U.S. Ambassador to The Republic of Vietnam, Ellsworth Bunker, backed Westmoreland.

Politically-imposed restrictions on military operations were not just casing inefficiencies and increasing casualties, they were perverting the operations themselves. Sweep and destroy missions in or close to population concentrations were Plan-B expediencies. Think of it this way: a group of armed crazies forms up outside your condominium complex. They enter the property. They kill your neighbor’s dog. They demand that all owners support them with food and funds. You are restricted by law from physically opposing them. Then they enter your  neighbor’s unit. You hear violence, panic. They break into your house, begin raping your wife and daughter, and are about to kill you. At this point the restrictions are lifted and you are allowed to shoot. The problem now is how to shoot without harming your wife and daughter, and without collateral damage going through your walls into adjoining units of even burning the complex to the ground.  

Johnson and McNamara enforced the use of Plan-B and attempted to offset it with a bombing campaign in the next town over. Combat roles became twisted.

Westmoreland continuously attempted to convince LBJ that it was better to meet the horde before they entered the property. “…it was essential for me to plan ahead,” he wrote in A Soldier Reports, “to develop contingency plans… A staff section known as J-5 developed multiple plans… I was particularly pleased with three plans developed for Laos. I am convinced two, and probably the third, would have succeeded, would have eliminated the enemy’s steady flow of men and supplies through the Laotian Panhandle, and would have materially shortened American involvement in the war.”

In 1967, to account for increased enemy infiltration, Westmoreland modified the York plan. As the year progressed, activity levels and intelligence reports indicated a new enemy offensive was about to unfold.

“The enemy’s aggressive tactics…” Westmoreland wrote, “...at Dak To (3-22 November) and elsewhere contrasted sharply with an article by (NVA) General Giap published in September 1967… in an official North Vietnamese journal. Giap proclaimed (the need) for a protracted war of attrition and urged conserving forces.” Westmoreland, matching the article with captured enemy documents, recognized Giap's use. By the end of the year he was anticipating a major offensive, the communist’s “long heralded ‘final phase’ of the war.” Still Johnson kept Westmoreland’s strike plans in limbo. Anticipating approval, and hoping to preempt the suspected enemy offensive of 1968, Westmoreland ordered his staff to update Op Plan York. 6000 Marines loggered at or near the Special Forces camp at Kham Duc near the Laotian border because the base had the best air field—equipped with all-weather radar and navigations aids—in the border zone of the northern provinces. Approval for the operation never came.

Critics might scoff at Westmoreland’s York planning, but two additional factors should be considered before one decides. 1) A modified form of York was the basis for Operation Lam Son 719 launched  in January 1971 under General Creighton Abrams (Westmoreland’s successor) and approved by President Nixon; 2) North Vietnamese commander Bui Tin, after the war, stated that what the Northern leaders feared most was a strategy which would permanently cut the trail. At the time Lam Son 719 (also called the Laotian Incursion) was approved, American forces were being withdrawn from Vietnam. All of the ground fighting was turned over to South Vietnamese troops, although they were transported into battle on American helicopter, had American air cover, and were supplied up to the border by American convoys. North Vietnamese intelligence had discovered the plan, and massive troop movements brought men and materiel not only from all over Laos, but units that had been stationed in South Vietnam, Cambodia and North Vietnam joined the fight.

One must wonder: What if?! What if Johnson had backed Westmoreland’s plan in 1965? Or 1966? Or 1967? What if there was never a need to count bodies because territory was being held? What if only the ARVN (plus RF/PF forces) dealt with indigenous insurgents? [As to the claim of being indigenous—by 1970 Northern troops comprised 95% of all VC unites, and from years earlier, 100% of the VC political cadre and military command was Northern.] That situation did, by the way, pretty much come to pass by 1970, and the indigenous insurgents proved to be no match for the ARVN. In fact, and this is a major flaw in episode 4, the ARVN which every year became a more accomplished fighting force, is only mentioned in a few negative incidents.

There is so much more real material on the events covered in the last episode it will take a book, or many books, to cover in any sort of depth.

Mr. Burns and Ms Novick, shame on you! You either don’t have a clue to what went on behind the headlines, or you have chosen to present a very lopsided story designed to alter a far more accurate cultural-story.

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.

Burning History: Deceptions and A Teaspoon of Sand

Errors or abuses in the pursuit of freedom are not justifications of the abandonment of that pursuit.

 By John M. Del Vecchio

Monday’s episode, Riding The Tiger, was wonderfully produced propaganda. It was technically better than episode one, but it was also far more manipulative. I’m trying to be nice here. Other words come to mind. If I did not have a bit of more background info from years of studying and writing about Southeast Asia, Burns would have me convinced that Diem, the autocrat, was far worse to his people than Uncle Ho. Diem, the Catholic strongman ruling a gentle Buddhist nation, cracked down on Buddhist homes of worship. Ho, the sweet old man, who, despite other leaders in his faction having gotten a bit out of hand by murdering between 50,000 and 500,000 of their countrymen, was far more a gentleman. Socialist excesses aside, Ho was beloved, Diem was despised.

Photo by the author: Confucian Order

Burns is very convincing. I cannot imagine anyone other than those with relatively deep subject knowledge, not being completely taken in by everything shown. We were softly set up by episode one, in episode two the filmmaker skillful weaves the story and sucks us further in. Episode three was worse yet. Those with original sin became narrators crafting stories to forever cover their tracks. Even with some depth of background in the subject, I had to recheck some of my sources to make sure I wouldn’t overstate my case because I found the programming so convincing. After spending hours rereading, my anger at his omissions and skewing of story grew to near rage. My working sub-title for today’s essay was: The Art of Lying. Perhaps I should have retained it.

Let’s quickly grab some balancing trends, and look at some real numbers:  Not shown--life, freedom and prosperity in the South from 1955 was on the rise. By 1962-63 the South was blooming. The following passage is from Lost Victory by William Colby:

…political legitimacy of the Diem regime was growing. The development of a Constitutional form, the loyalty of the Army and the bureaucracy, the regime’s success at extending its administrative writ throughout the countryside, growing international acceptance and support, and the visible progress of the economic and modernization programs were all roots feeding that growth.

Diem had successfully taken the political initiative against the divisive forces in South Vietnam while the North was diverted and not yet ready to contest him. By Tet of 1959, it was plain that a nationalist and non-Communist Vietnam was firmly established. It was also becoming apparent that its future was, if anything, more promising that the gray and regimented society in the North. The potentialities of this contrast did not escape the watchful men in Hanoi.

Or this passage from The U.S. Department of State’s 1961 Blue Book report titled A Threat to the Peace: North Viet-Nam's Effort To Conquer South Viet-Nam:

The years 1956 to 1960 produced something close to an economic miracle in South Viet-Nam. Food production rose and average of 7 percent a year and prewar levels were achieved and passed. While per capita food production in the North was 10 percent lower in 1960 than it had been in 1956, it was 20 percent higher in the South. The output of textiles in the South jumped in only 1 year from 68 million meters (in 1958) to 83 million meters. Sugar production in the same I-year span increased more than 100 percent, from 25,000 metric tons to 58,000 metric tons.

Despite the vastly larger industrial plant inherited by the North when Viet-Nam was partitioned, gross national product is considerably larger in the South. In 1960 it was estimated at $110 per person in the South and $70 in the North. Foreigners who have visited both North and South testify to the higher living standards and the much greater availability of consumer goods in the latter. (my emphasis)

Economically, the North, under draconian rule (alluded to but only the South’s Diem was “autocratic”) is often described as “gray,” a society on life support. What Burns shows of life in the North are clips from the North’s military propaganda films made to convince their captive population that things were better elsewhere in the country, and that improvements would come to all. In the South improvements were tangible to all.

Diem and the Pagoda Raids:  Let’s put some figures to what Burns portrayed as a near universal Buddhist uprising against Diem’s government, and Diem’s crackdown raids against Buddhist pagodas. Let’s also establish some characteristics of Vietnamese social and economic culture from 1955 to 1963 so as to understand this segment.

Vietnamese culture was Confucian, then Buddhist, or Catholic or any of various other sect religions. Confucianism is a philosophy and basic system of ethical and moral beliefs which does not restrict adherents from belonging to an additional religion, or religions or no-religion at all. It is a philosophy compatible with many religions, and certainly one compatible with traditional democratic principles. Vietnamese Buddhism generally is Mahayana (greater vehicle), versus Khmer and Lao Buddhism which tended to be Hinayana (lesser vehicle). Mahayana Buddhism emphasizes deep intense self-discipline. Hinayana is generally more laid-back (the Buddhism popularized by the hippie movement). Confucianism and Mahayana Buddhist, like Christianity, are ‘active’ religions in the Western sense, compatible with science, commerce, personal freedoms and economic progress. The importance of this is apparent in the economic growth, once colonial restrictions were removed, cited above.

Numbers: The Pagoda raids of August 21st, 1963 hit Xa Loi temple and other key locations in the Saigon area, along with “many” pagodas in the city of Hue. “In all,” writes historian Dr. Mark Moyar, “government forces seized thirty of the nation’s nearly five thousand pagodas, and arrested a couple of thousand people, most of whom were returned promptly to areas from which they had come… In an after action report… General Dinh (in charge, at the tactical level, of the Saigon raids, Dinh, like many of Diem’s top commanders, was Buddhist) …noted that government forces had discovered weapons and Viet Cong documents in several of Saigon’s pagodas, which he said proved the Buddhists had been colluding with Communists.” (my parenthetical and emphasis)

Thirty of nearly five thousand! Approximately 6/10th of 1%! Moyar again: “Militant Buddhist activity fell off dramatically after the clearance of the pagodas on August 21, and during Diem’s lifetime it did not regain its force.”

The raids were conducted mostly by Buddhists troops, led by Buddhist officers, against a radical and ruthless fringe element that had taken over a tiny fraction of the Buddhist community. Lyndon Johnson and some of his key advisors put great credence into reports by international journalists regarding the origins and depths of “the Buddhist uprising.” Listening to Neil Sheehan tell the story during the show, I could not help but think the fox was telling the story of his raid on the henhouse.

Next there was a thematic chorus repeated by Burns in various ways: The Geneva Accords… The Agreements… The Elections were not lived up to by Diem or the Americans. This myth has been a mainstay of the narrative established by left-leaning elements going back at least to the early 1960s, and it is a lie. The Agreements were essentially two documents; and yes, they were written. Free elections, to be supervised by the UN, are mentioned. The division between North and South at the 17th parallel is laid out. Much like the Korean Peninsula, two nation-states were recognized. However, the first document, The Accords, were only signed by a French general and a representative of the Viet Minh. The second, The Final Document, was not signed—by anyone! The U.S. was not a party to it; nor was Diem or his government; nor were the Viet Cong; nor was Ho Chi Minh. Not mentioning this pertinent fact is a major lie by omission. Not being signed means it was not agreed to. There was no agreement! No agreement for free elections, no agreement to seek reunification. This being the case, North Vietnam’s assault upon the South by sending thousands of troops and political cadre, plus tons of war materiel, into the south to run a terror campaign designed to overthrow the government of the South and to gain rule over that land, can only be seen as an attack upon a sovereign nation by another nation.

More elements, more skewed history: It’s easy to agree with Burns’ presentation of Lyndon Johnson. Many people I know consider him to have been the worst war-time president ever. The 3d episode, The River Styx, reinforces this perception. But Johnson being venal and inept does not negate the evil of the bastards on the other side. Obviously a similar statement should be made about Diem and Ho. Diem as autocratic does not negate Ho has butcher. Diem’s crackdown on agitprop agents who had infiltrated some pagodas does not negate Northern pogroms against ‘rich landowners.’

Additional thoughts and omissions: 1954-56: 900,000 refugees came into the South between 1954 and 1956. This is the equivalent of 25 million refugees settling in the U.S. in the past two years.  Approximately half of these refugees were settled in the Central Highlands on the lands of the indigenous peoples (Montagnards) or in the Mekong Delta on lands of the Khmer Krom (Lower or lowland Cambodians) who populated the Delta long before Vietnamese expansion into the area. The resentment fostered by this resettlement played into the propaganda of the communist agents as they encouraged all blame be placed on the Saigon government without acknowledging that there would have been no refugees and no resettlement onto those lands had Hanoi’s terror campaign not instigated attempts by nearly one in ten Northerners (only 900,000 were successful, an equal or greater number many have been killed while attempting to escape) to flee their homeland.

More on Diem vs. Ho Chi Minh and use of the word autocratic: This is classic manipulation. Diem and his regime are referred to at least four times as autocratic. The word is never used with Ho Chi Minh. The documentary does mention the communist party instigating a ‘land reform campaign’ and the ensuing annihilation of ‘rich landlords’ (many who had supported the communists against the French, and many who were not rich). Also mentioned is the 5% quota the communists set for elimination. This was a classic form of communist cultural memory destruction. Still, somehow, Ho got a pass from Burns on the autocratic issue. The inference is that Diem was an illegitimate ruler in the South, but kindly Uncle Ho, although far, far, far more ruthless, was legitimate in the North. Go figure!

Paradigm Shifts: Understand that none of this happens… let me repeat that, NONE OF THIS HAPPENS… if communist leaders in the North do not send agents and troops into the South. The Battle of the Ia Drang doesn’t happen. Plei Me doesn’t happen. The agitprop resistance against Diem doesn’t happen. The self-immolation by Buddhist monks don’t happen. Most of the difficulties, most of the violence, most of the killings do not happen. The problems that first Kennedy and then Johnson faced, and as Burns accurately portrays did not solve or solved poorly, would not have happened withoutHanoi’sleadership first murdering not just those Northerners opposed to them but those most capable of passing on cultural memory.

There is the repeated theme that Hanoi’s communists were motivated by a desire to reunite the country.  We mentioned earlier that viewers of episode 1 should be on the outlook for this as it would be a set-up for expanding a falsehood. Now we must again ask, “Reunite what country?” Recall, Indo-China was not one country, or even three countries, under the French. It was administered as six regions (Laos, Cambodia, Tonkin, Annam, Cochin China and the Crown Dominion Lands). Vietnam was not one country before the French. In the previous millennium it was united for perhaps 30 years. Most of this unification refers to unifying the area north of the Red River with that of the area south of the Red River—all of that territory being within what became known as North Vietnam. It does not refer to the area from the border with China in the north to the tip of the Ca Mau peninsula in the south or west to the mountain border areas with Cambodia and Laos. That had never been one country. There was nothing to reunify. This is not analogous to the American Civil War. This was not a nation that was split by colonialism, by war or by agreement.

Here, one properly should make a paradigm shift. Instead of calling it the Vietnam War it should be recognized as Hanoi’s Communist War of Hegemony to Rule All of Southeast Asia. The planning goes back to the 1920s; the implementation begins as WW II ends and accelerates for the next thirty years. As we will see later, it does not abate in 1975 but morphs into heightened terror, death camps and genocide in Cambodia, Laos and the new nation of Vietnam. The concepts reunification and Vietnam War are political constructs produced to enable and enhance propaganda, to justify losing the will to oppose tyranny, and to burn history.

A teaspoonful of sand: Does anyone recall the Jim Roan anecdote about achieving a good life, where he compares it to baking a cake. One, he said, should put in all the very best ingredients: the best eggs, the best milk, the best flour; and if possible they should be included in perfect proportion. The oven is preheated just so, so cooking time can be precise. But then, at the very last moment before popping the pan into the oven, some people put add to the batter a teaspoonful of sand. The results turn out to be something completely inedible. This is what Burns has done with his series. There are many good elements included, many accurate stories told, but it is as if into every episode he has added a teaspoonful of sand.

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.

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

Burning History: Ossifying the False Narrative

Pretending to honor those who served while subtly and falsely subverting the reasons and justifications for that service is a con man’s game.

By John M. Del Vecchio

The Vietnam War, a new 10-episode, 18-hour documentary series by Ken Burns and Lynn Novick, will begin airing on PBS stations in less than a week. From a cinematic perspective it will be exceptional. Burns knows how to make great scenes. But through the lens of history it appears to reinforce a highly skewed narrative and to be an attempt to ossify false  cultural memory. The lies and fallacies will by omission, not by overt falsehoods.

The Little Dragon: Detail carved into a column at the sepulcher of Emperor Minh Mang (1820-1841). Photo by the author.

Here’s what to look for in Episode 1: Deja` Vu (1858-1961):

·         If the episode indicates the ancient state of Vietnam was one nation prior to 1858, it’s not history; it’s a set up for skewing the story. Although there were periods (totaling approximately three decades) when North and South were united, what was then North and South included limited coastal and river population centers, and did not include the Mekong Delta, the highlands, or any of the territory that became border lands between Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia. Wars between North and South dominate Vietnamese history, but many of the wars are between the area north of the Red River (Haiphong/Hanoi) and south of the river. The ancient capital city of Hue was established at approximately the same time as the ancient city of Philadelphia.

·         If the episode mentions the French colonial administration of Tonkin, Annam and Cochin China but does not include The Crown Dominion Lands, it’s not history, it’s a set up for skewing the story.

·         If it mentions Ho Chi Minh’s nationalism, his quoting from the American Declaration of Independency, and the allies arming “his” Viet Minh at the end of World War II; but does not mention that the allies armed resistance movements in virtually all countries occupied by either Germany or Japan during the ‘40s, and that in all those countries (including Italy and France) the nationalistic resistance groups attacked the occupiers while the communists attacked the other resistance groups, it’s not history, it’s a set up for skewing the story.

Regarding Ho’s nationalism, this paragraph is from VN scholar William Laurie: “In 1945 Ho Chi Minh launched a veritable pogrom against any anti-French, non-communist nationalist groups. Hundreds were killed. Members of nationalist anti-French parties such as Viet Nam Quoc Dan Dang, Dai Viets, Dong Minh Hoi, Hoa Hao, Cao Dai were all targeted. Ho Chi Minh, a Stalinist adherent, even had VN's Trotskyites killed. Non-political, moderate, anti-French independence people such as Bui Quang Chieu and Pham Quynh were also assassinated. This political blood-lust is not the hall mark of a ‘nationalist.’”

·         If the episode mentions that the First Indo-China war was fought to preserve French colonialism, but does not mention France granting Cambodia de jure independence in 1949 and full independence in 1953, or why that is relevant, it is not history, it is propaganda. The war in Vietnam was pursued by the French in a manner consistent with fear of genocide in the international communist prevailed. Recall that much of Eastern Europe fell behind the Iron Curtain in the early post-WW II years, and that China fell to the Red Chinese in 1949. In an attempt to forestall a repeat of the human rights abuses and mass execution reported from all countries which fell to communism, the French opposed the Viet Minh. In Cambodia, where that threat did not exist, France pursued a far more peaceful reversion of power to legitimate native administrations. North Vietnamese Colonel Bui Tin, the man who, in 1975, received the surrender of Saigon, and who had been a cohort of Ho Chi Minh’s from the 1940s, lamented a few years ago in an interview published in a Vietnamese language paper in France, that independence could have been achieved earlier and with much less bloodshed had Ho Chi Minh been willing to work with non-communist anti-French groups.

·         If the episode mentions how France lost at the 1954 battle of Dien Bien Phu, but does not mention the Chinese army and artillery being the deciding factor, it is not history, it is propaganda. In 1952 the French established the base at Dien Bien Phu along the main road from Hanoi to Vientiane, Laos because a year earlier Vietnamese and Chinese communist armies had begun a terrorist campaign in northern Laos with the intention of overthrowing the Lao government. The supply route from the Hanoi, through Dien Bien Phu and south through Laos later became communist Route 959 (see relevance below).

·         If the episode mentions Ho consolidating power in the North after 1954 but does not mention the murderous Land Reform Campaign of 1954-56, it is not history but is propaganda. Historians have debated the number of land owners and merchants killed during this period, some claiming 50,000, others doing their best to reduce the number to 5,000. The prior number was confirmed by North Vietnamese scholars during the short period in the late 1980s when their archives were open, but even if one chooses to use the lowest estimate that needs to be placed in context. At the time North Vietnam’s population was approximately 12 million, 1/30th of today’s U.S. population. The atrocities would be the equivalent of 150,000 (or up to 1.5 million) farm and home owners being summarily executed in America in a two-year period.

·         If Burns mentions that the Geneva Accords were not lived up to by America or South Vietnam without mentioning that neither government signed those accords (indeed no party from either sidesigned the Final Declaration), it’s not history, it’s propaganda. How often have we been told that the U.S. blocked the proposed 1956 election to reunify the country as if that had been a previous agreement? No agreement existed. That the North, by 1956, was a closed, highly controlled and completely terrorized society was of paramount concern.

·         Finally, if the episode indicates the North sought unity, but does not mention the tacit Declaration of War produced during the 1959 winter-spring session of Hanoi’s Politburo, it is not history but is propaganda. It was during this session that infiltration routes 559, 759 and 959 were authorized. The numbers indicate the date of inception: 559 being May 1959, etc. Route 559 came to be called by most western sources the Ho Chi Minh Trail; 759 was the sea route to bring men and materiel along the coast from Dong Ha down around the Mekong Delta all the way over to the Cambodian port of Sihanoukville; and 959, as mentioned above, was the route west through Dien Bien Phu and south along the Mekong River through Laos into Cambodia. In 1960 insurgents (today we’d call them terrorists) began an assassination campaign which murdered approximately 18,000 South Vietnamese hamlet, village and province officials by the end of 1962. Another 50,000 individuals were “disappeared.” Government officials included hamlet chiefs, school teachers, and often their families. Again using equivalent U.S. population figures, this would equal nearly 400,000 terrorist murders in three years, or 1.5 million if those who were abducted and never heard from again are included. This was the situation that the U.S. responded to at the end of the Eisenhower and beginning of the Kennedy years. Not understanding the magnitude of the humanitarian crisis may lead one to assume all justifications for American intervention were neo-colonial. That’s a set up worthy of a great scam artist not a great filmmaker.

A few thoughts; a few questions:

                Why have Mr. Burns and his backers chosen to present these events in this manner? What is their motivation? What is behind that motivation? Who is behind that motivation? Who financed the work? What do those who created or backed this series gain, or seek to gain, by slanting history via massive omissions?

                Is the purpose of burning history a desire to ossify an existing, highly-skewed narrative, and to cover-up the “sins” of the “anti-war” left? Or might it be more? Without the skewed base-narrative the rationalization and justification for much of the left’s agenda at the time and since, simply falls apart.

I believe that few people who support that agenda are cognizant of the covert motivations at its very foundation; nor do they recognize the unseen machinations that driving it forward. Most people are motivated by the positive messages. Most people want to do good. They are not looking to destroy freedoms or the American dream. Indeed, they believe they are doing the opposite. They believe they are enhancing freedom for all, and that they are opposing people, organizations and/or movements that are anti-freedom. But factors driving the agendas—as we have seen in all countries taken over by fascist or communist regimes over the past century—may be something quite different than hyped or broadcast. One must ask: Why destroy history? Why destroy cultural memory? Why supplant that which is verifiable with that which is partisan? One does not honor the sacrifice of those who served by supplanting the meaning and justification behind that service with falsehoods. Why, Mr. Burns, have you chosen to go this route?

False narratives create aberrant behavior and cultural complications. 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; also video at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A0slD-jQr8w&feature=em-subs_digest.