“This is not a fact.”

Well, rather belatedly, but it was originally (vis-a-vis the Geneva treaty which ended the French Indochina war) intended to be a temporary accord with Vietnam-wide elections to be held in July of 1956. But when the North evidenced systematic bad faith, it became a de facto sovereignty/border dispute which eventuated in the protracted conflict.

Neo and the rest:
The bloodbath was made by Pol Pot in Cambodia. Which surprised everybody in the States. The Vietnamese were the ones who put an end to it. So the bar of what constitutes a bloodbath was set high.

And the Vietnamese were perceived to have preferred the Communist government over the US-backed government. The pain the government inflicted was seen (by us) as being legitimate in the eyes of the Vietnamese. The US has 2 million people in jail now, but it is largely seen as legitimate by the American people. A good essayist (especially outside the US) could make it seem as horrible as we see the Vietnamese re-education camps today.

Also, not known, the “South Vietnamese” government was deeply infiltrated by the communists and was inneffective, for that and other reasons. This is supported by a pretty good book by Neil Sheehan “A bright and shining lie”. Well worth reading. The book is about the war and an American officer John Paul Vann. Vann didn’t write the book, he was dead by then.

Reagrading the “myths” you cited from Thomas Lipscomb (NYPost):
The 1954 Indo-china Cessation Of Hostilities Agreement hammered out in Geneva can be found under Command Paper 9239, Great Britain Parlimentary Sessional Papers, XXXI. London, 1953/54, pp.9-11, also 27-38, also the follow up Internaional Control Commision reports on the monitoring of the Cease-fire zones. I would ask you not to believe me, or Mr. Lipscomb, but to get a copy and read it yourself.

Firstly the Agreement guaranteed Vietnam’s territorial integrity throughtout, referring repeatedly to the demarcation line as “provisional”, pending elections”.
Neither the North or South were ever “sovereign countries” as you state, as they were never accepted into the U.N. Being an internationally brokered Cessasation of Hostilities Agreement, ending a terribly ugly international conflict, any threat to it would constitute a “threat to peace” under international law, a war crime. France and Representitives of the North, the Viet Minh, signed the document because they were the belligerents in the Cessastion of Hostilities Agreement. Just because “we” didn’t sign it didn’t mean we weren’t bound to it under international law. We didn’t have to sign it, because we weren’t one of the belligerents, we weren’t at war (yet anyway). Again, any threat to the agreement would constitute a threat to peace, a war crime. Not America’s first. You can read the ICC monitoring reports yourself, documenting in detail infringements of the cease-fire agreement.

Neither do I see the logic in starting yet another war “to save 10,000,000 people from slavery”, as it was as false a statement then as it is now, a McCarthy era demonization that has no place in justifying our crimes then or today. That perhaps those non-catholic Vietnamese that wanted to feed their people (a third of Vietnam’s population died of starvation in W.W.II under French-japanese collaboration, feeding two armies) and break the chains of colonial slavery were anything other then devils to American’s is more a testimony to U.S.-Cold war brain-washing techniques then what actually happened in North Vietnam, or any other communist country for that matter.

Lipscomb is not the first either to remind us of Vietnamese “voting with their feet” in their mass migration south, into the French zone, undeniable proof the Vietnamese were refuting Ho Chi Minh. Firstly, most Catholics were in the North, as Hanoi was the administrative capital of their Colonial Administration. And almost all those regrouping were Catholic. In addition it would be negligent to overlook the fact that the U.S. military was running an enormous scare campaign, dropping leaflets identifying where we were going to drop Atom bombs on the North for instance, and horrific stories of Communist atrocities to come. The message: “get out while you still can”, Ho Chi Minh was going to cut the babies out of pregnant mothers and eat them (I’m not making this up). These U.S. militry scare tactics are documented, and one can easily access them from U.S. military archives, if you care to look. Having said that there were few Viet Minh southerner’s in the North, and many saw no need to go north because the zones were to be united soon anyway. Besides, if we were so sure of ourselves we would have had a ballot count, not a foot count (and a U.S. tax payer scare campaign).

I will not respond to “Ho Chi Minh’s Maoist liquidations and despotic regime in general, prior to Geneva”, ..because I don’t have time. But you can be sure I will

In the meantime perhaps you can look up “The Myth of the Bloodbath”, by D. Gareth Porter, International Relations of East Asia,, Cornell University, Interim Report No.2, September 1972. Also “Land Reform in China and North Vietnam”, Edwin Moise, Assistant Professor of History (now professor), Clemson University, University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill and London, 1983.

“Origins of the Sourthern Resistance (the NLF) will have to wait for another sitting as well. I hope we can “read the whole thing” together, for I believe it is you who is “given to vacantly repeating the historical dogmas of the would-be betters” ..on the Right.

Until then.

I did not say you “have a dislike or hatred” for me. I said you had some rage and some anger. I differentiated that from a personal hatred for me. And I based my statement about rage and anger on the fact that you came in here accusing me of two pretty nasty things: the first, that I was only against the Vietnam War originally because it was “cool” at the time (therefore accusing me not only of lying here, but of being shallow and thoughtless), and the second, having lied about ever having been a “leftist.” Both statements demonstrate anger on your part, I believe–an anger that you have backed off from quite a bit in subsequent posts.

Your statement that I (and my fellow neocons) don’t have to rewrite my past or erase it is beyond puzzling; it simply makes no sense in the context of these posts. What I am actually doing here is writing about and facing my past, which is the opposite of rewriting it (changing the story) or erasing it (eliminating the story).

Where did you get the idea that I have a dislike or hatred for you or that I thought you had the same for me? On the contrary, I think we might get along quite well if we don’t discuss politics.

My little “aside” on hate was based on your agreement with another poster on how much you both hate Kerry. I believe the comment was something like. “oh, I really hate that man!”

And, I agree that I misused the term Leftist… I meant to use liberal.

With that, I leave you all to your attempts to justify your converstion to rightwing politics. I just wish you would realize that you do NOT have to erase your past nor do you have to rewrite it. Why not simply view today as TODAY?

Just because you think the Iraq war is justified does not mean you HAVE revise your thoughts (and the history) of Viet Nam. Why on earth do you think you have to do that? Neo, with your educational background, do you see a problem here?

Anyway, have a good future as neocons (could this be, gasp, a HUGE FLIP FLOP?) and maybe we’ll see you back on the other side in a few years.

But, in the interests of clarity, I am writing to correct a misapprehension of yours: I have never said that I was a leftist at any point in my life. You are absolutely correct in saying I was not a leftist, but you are incorrect in thinking I may have ever insinuated that I was. In fact, I have tried to take pains in previous posts to differentiate leftists from liberals. I was a liberal. If you care to go back and read what I wrote in Part 4A, for example, you’ll notice I use the word “liberal” over and over to describe myself, and mention the differences between my point of view and those of my friends who were leftists. I have tried to make that point very clear, because I agree that there is a real distinction between the two.

In addition, I never accused you of hating me. I mentioned rage and I mentioned anger, both of which I am guessing you feel, although of course I have no way of knowing. It may be a subtle distinction, but I think feeling rage and anger are quite different than feeling personal hatred towards a person.

And, yeah, they had a DMZ during the war, which they militarized and we didn’t (being rule guys and all)

So if they had one during, there’d probably have been one after. Considering how the nations split post-war arranged things, that is certainly the way to bet.

You don’t know if Bush spoke out. My point is that if he did, there is every reason to think there is no record. The difference is that Kerry made it a point to lie about the US effort there to discredit it as much as possible and so he arranged as much publicity as he could.
Bush, whatever his ideas, apparently didn’t think there was anybody who wanted to hear them. That was pretty much everybody’s view in the service.

I got into the subject in exactly one letter, to a girl I knew who was concerned about her fiance’s upcoming Marine boot camp. After telling her it wasn’t as tough as they made it out to be, I went a bit into the subject. I didn’t say that in the Army we thought the jarheads thought eccentric belligerence trumped tactical competence. But he survived, they married and he turned out to be as big a butthead as I’d thought and she dumped him within a year. Couldn’t stay home, which, considering her, was astonishing.
Getting letters from guy acquaintances is not the thing to do when engaged, so I presume she trashed the letter and that’s the end of my speaking out on the subject, as recorded for history.
This is not to say I didn’t endlessly think and speak (verbal) about it.
Which is to say that there is no reason to think Bush didn’t do the same.
I have no idea whether Bush is deep or wide, but he’s doing mostly what I would like to see him doing, so it doesn’t matter. Being easily distracted by on-the-other-hand is not a virtue in a leader.
Something done well is better than meetings to think about doing something perfectly.
You can probabaly find dilettantes and procrastinators in the nearest faculty lounge–where they should stay.

One commentator said the reason he likes Bush is that Bush gets up in the morning, scratches himself and says, “F—it. Let’s kill some terrorists.” That’s probably an exaggeration, but it’s the right view.

Anyway, this started out with neo-neocon about to tell us how she changed her mind after 9-11, and where she was prior to that.

“What I want is liberty for my people.” The question now, he said, “is how to make regime change in Vietnam.” For democratization of his country, he added, “support from the rest of the world is important.” Specifically, he wants Hanoi’s decaying communist party to “put forward a timetable for free and fair elections.”

You mention Occam’s Razor but make so many assumptions. Where do you find conspiracy in my posts?

My thoughts on GWB are simple as is he. I think he is a rather single faceted guy, no depth, no introspection, no reflection on matters that do not directly impact him.

My reason for questioning the posters on the BLOG about GWB’s Viet Nam war opinions is to, hopefully, point out to those who so venemously spit at Kerry that, at least he spoke out. They may not like what he had to say BACK THEN, but, at least he spoke out no matter how unpopular his statements were. GWB, on the other hand, did not.

Interesting concept regarding the separation of North and South… you really think we would have had a DMZ? A wall? I figured, if we won, we would have taken over the North, united the country and let all the people of Nam be free. Go figure.

Missing records: Apparently there are none. In fact, there are so many extant that didn’t tell the desired tale that CBS had to fake some up.

And Bush’s actions regarding his thoughts on the war are not recorded. Thus, he looks exactly like almost everybody else who served. We weren’t writing op-eds and letters were for other purposes.

My mother died some time back and we discovered a cache of letters my father had written from Europe. No thoughts on the war–he had her convinced he was a chaplain’s assistant in the rear until the first time he was hit–but no long thoughts on the war.
There have been no letters from my brother or me discovered about the house, despite my father’s preparation to move out. So, even if I had expressed something, posterity will not benefit.
So Bush’s situation is exactly like millions of others and your view of Occam’s Razor is that it was a Conspiracy.

Richard Aubrey

My, my, you are a bitter sort of guy…

Do you recall reading of Mr. Bush’s missing military records? (and pleeeeeeease, I am not rehashing that silly debate) Where was he? He was working on a political campaign. Was his Father involved in politics? Did his family have political friends? Was he a member of the infamous Skull and Bones club? Is his brother a politician? Is his father a politician? Is HE A POLITICIAN? Wow… I guess he wasn’t actually plannnnnning on running for office. Gee, maybe the whole family woke up one morning and thought, “Hey, why don’t we get elected to something?”

And, as for that line between the North and South if we would have won…. I’m sure that would have stopped those people looking for revenge for the murder of their family members right in their tracks!

PUH-LEASE… time for YOU to get a clue. While your at it, get a sense of humor, too.

Prove his grooming for political office.
Try to keep the Rosicrucians out of it.

If we had “won” the war, there would have been no reprisals by the South against the North, since the object of the war was to keep the border where it was and both sides out of each other’s territory.
So we have an impossibility, a hypothetical, hauled in to offset a reality.
Cool.
Also…clueless.

At least, if you wish to think anybody believes this…clueless.

Richard Aubrey

I just have to say I’m really intrigued by this debate. I was born four years after the war ended, so my experiences with Vietnam are entirely based on historical review. Anyway, I appreciate the reasoned discourse, and as a 25-year old liberal hawk, I understand the complexity of your political evolution, although being only half your age, you’ve undoubtedly had a much broader approach.

Iraq is not Vietnam (the stakes are much higher in Iraq), but a lot of the debate seems to mirror a lot of the debate over Nam. Many on the ant-war Left still cannot fathom how horrible it would if we pulled out of Iraq now. Debating this war with a lot of them is sometimes like debating a brick wall.

Being in the that camp of Kerry voters who still supported the war, I know what it’s like to make tough choices.

Anyway, great post.

Mr. Aubrey, you are surely aware that GWB was being groomed for the political arena just as Kerry was. The answer to my question is simple: Bush made no statements, took no stands. (My snide remark… no one TOLD him what stand to take)

Of course your thoughts are not recorded… you are as insignificant as I. My horror at learning of the death of my cousin, was not newsworthy. The despair I felt when a dear friend returned maimed and disfigured was frankly just par for the course. The loss of another friend, then another and another…. well, what can I say? I was not from a political family, a wealthy family or a famous family. My opinions only mattered to me and my friends.

But, as far as the loss of my friends in that war, I didn’t think the war was worth their lives then and your revisionist history will not convince me it was worth their lives now. Sorry.

You want me to feel badly because we abandoned the South Vietnamese. I have read the comments regarding the horrors they faced after we withdrew. Well, they faced horrors while we were there… they faced horrors before we came.

Do you really think, if we had “won” the war, there wouldn’t have been retribution by the South Vietnamese against the North? The “what ifs” I am reading in these posts seem to miss that point. War brings pain and suffering to civilians. It fosters hate and the aftermath is sometimes more painful than the war itself. It doesn’t matter who wins, someone always loses and the losers always suffer. People die. You all are saying that it is preferrable that north vietnamese civilians die instead of south vietnamese?

So, Mr.Aubrey, do not call me clueless. I have, at least, one clue and that is that Mr. Bush was either oblivious to the suffering of our soldiers and the vietnamese people or, he was not allowed to publically express his opinion. After all, he was working for a Republican’s election committee at the time.

Now, when it comes to the popularity of VW minibuses, I truly haven’t a clue….

It was impossible to not have had thoughts of the subject at the time.
To challenge somebody to produce them or be thought a nullity is really, really to be without a clue.

As I expected, NO COMMENT. Neoneo… you comment on my hostility toward you and make an assumption that I base it on your “leaving the fold”. I suppose my sarcasm was unwarranted and I do appologize. I will be direct. I do not believe that you were ever a leftist. That is not meant to be an attack nor is it hostile. Just as you have your opinions on the beliefs and opinions of others, I have mine of you. Please accept my opinion as only that. I bear you no hostility, hate or other emotion. Hell, I don’t KNOW you and find it silly to say I would hate someone I don’t know.

Likewise I don’t HATE Bush as I do not personally know him. I do not like his philosophies, ideas or tactics and I am truly embarrassed that he is my president. But I do not hate him. Just as I do not LOVE people I don’t know. Those kind of emotional responses to public figures are childish, don’t you think?

I am just curious… why do you and some of your commentators make references to Kerry but not one of you will refer to Bush and his thoughts on this most important part of American history?

Could it be that Bush HAS NO THOUGHTS? Or, that Bush had no opinions on the war or that he sat on a fence, refusing to take a side?

Please, would one of you Bush fans tell me what Mr. Bush said of Nam? You have many quotes from Kerry, as he was outspoken, whether or not you like or hate what he said. Let’s hear what our president said. I am betting you can find NOTHING.

Allow me to note that I called Kerry on the “Moral Superiority” War about Vietnam when the Swifties came out. Some of the rage of both sides is over the moral high ground.

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 your 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.

There is a kind of bias against the crude, brisk approach. In part, it’s because it takes no account of the words of the people of words. In part, because those who live by words get really scared. See “The Nightingale’s Song” where the author makes the same point.

The Gordian Knot was so complicated that nobody could untie it. Some folks would prefer to remember its complexity; others its fate.

The Vann book is interesting in itself, but the signature fight, Ap Bac, was redeemed many times over by the ARVN. To use Ap Bac as an exemplar is phony.

Richard Aubrey
raubrey@sbcglobal.net

One could certainly cut-and-paste a few thousand undistilled words in reply, but in an attempt to be more direct, more substantial and more incisive, the following:

First, to be clear, both a negative critique (against prevailing Leftist conceptions, informed by a variety of sources and ideological interests) as well as a limited positive critique is being suggested. The more limited positive critique was offered herein at NNC in a related thread here, which essentially suggests the strategic interest was entirely, not only understandable, but also justified within the overall Cold War strategy of containment. Comparisons and analogies with other trouble spots on the Pacific rim are made with Korea, also with Taiwan here, in that same thread.

As regards Daniel Ellsbergs “Secrets, a Memoir …”, I’ve read it as I’ve also read the entirety of the Senator Gravel edition of the Pentagon Papers. One startling omission throughout this apologia pro Ellsberg is that the motives and murderous campaigns of the communists, both those strictly indigenous to Vietnam as well as the COMINTERN, Soviet and Maoist links, are never seriously taken into account. A wee bit of an omission, that. Further, one of Ellsberg’s primary Vietnam era contacts, perhaps the primary contact, was, coincidentally, John Paul Vann, previously mentioned in this thread as the subject of A Bright Shining Lie by Neil Sheehan. Vann himself, by accounts I’ve read and despite his severe and on-going criticisms of tactics used during the war, concluded the conflict was warranted and that it could have been won if better tactics had been applied.

Re, David Elliott’s lengthy monograph, if such be the right term, have not read it. It is billed as something of a historical and ethnographic study, focusing on a single province in VIetnam along with the various revolutionaries, internecine revalries, etc. that occured in that province. From this, if reviews are to be trusted, he infers broadly that it was a nationalist conflict only, at least virtually so, and further that it was unwinnable.

However, without at all dismissing the work for its undoubtedly valuable historical and ethnographic research per se, such a far ranging inference fails to account for a great deal indeed. For example, Uncle Ho’s lengthy, enduring and committed relationship, since at least 1920, with various Marxist/Leninist, Stalinist and Maoist programs. It also elides the fact that Ho initiated Stalinist styled purges against rivals for the leadership in the North in addition to Stalinist and Maoist purges against the peasantry itself, pre-Geneva in the early 50’s. It further elides the million+ Vietnamese killed post-1975, e.g., the “boat people,” among many, many others.

Thank you, it was thoughtful of you to acknowledging the points made. Vietnam is a beautiful, beautiful country and the people of Vietnam are to be much admired, I respect them tremendously and am much humbled at what they have endured. Too, I do not doubt your own sincerely held views as one who obviously cares for his country, his long history and his people; I appreciate and admire that as well, very much so.

However, we will simply have to disagree when it comes to Ho Chi Minh, which is not to say I don’t appreciate the forces of history he was facing. Nonetheless, by all verifiable historical accounts, Ho was a committed Marxist ideologue and has a long record in the French Communist Party, the ComIntern, Stalin’s program and Mao’s as well, then additional Soviet alliances after Stalin. That history dates back prior to 1920. After WWII, it continued through to his death in 1969. On Feb. 14, 1950, in Moscow, Joseph Stalin, Mao Zedong and Ho Chi Minh banqueted together, helping to cement their relationship, and I doubt the conversation consisted solely of the caviar served that evening. In my humble opinion that reflects virtually a life-long committment on his part.

But whether we agree or disagree as regards Ho’s ideological and more practical social/political interests, many warm regards and thank you for your reply.

It seems to me that so many of the revisionist arguments posted here in these comments are based on the fact that all the horrors (inflicted by us for their own good, and inflicted by them on themselves, north and south) happened to THEM. Nobody is very interested in what the Vietnamese have to say about it.

I’d say that the fact that they fought for 30 years is one way they registered their opinion. Yes, I know, it was a communist dictatorship, but you can’t fight that kind of war with a population that is totally against it. I imagine if you went to Vietnam, they’d have a different point of view about who’s to blame for what, even though they are more generous towards the USA than we are to them. (Some here still accuse them of holding POWs for heaven’s sake!)

Your comment reminds me of the intellectual sludge that was dished out during the Cold War. You could always find some Russian emigre who thought that we should nuke the USSR. Great way to study history - find the people who agree with you and run with it.

“…still have not confronted the brutal reality of what our leaving that conflict wrought. The death camps, the millions of refugees who barely made it out alive, the horrors perpetrated on the people by Ho Chi Minh once he was victorious…”

Ho Chi Minh was dead years before. Thousands of boat people, especially ethnic Chinese - a terrible human situation, but “death camps?” Evidence please. Horrors perpetrated? No doubt there were many, but were they anything approaching saturation bombing by B-52s, Agent Orange, ‘pacification?’

Several million Vietnamese were killed in the war by our weapons. Isn’t that a horror? What horrors did we prevent by being there?

Did I read correctly in this post, or another, that the Vietnamese were responsible for the killing fields of Cambodia?!! As I recall, it was an invasion by the Vietnamese that ended the regime of Pol Pot. (Of course, they had their reasons, but facts are facts.)