Fifty years ago today: I landed in this country...

In 1970 my field partner, Mark Gilreath (post Vietnam, the singer Marcus Leddy) introduced me to the song Boonie Rats. I included the song in The 13th Valley, which was published in 1982. The note in the original forward regarding the origins of Boonie Rats is erroneous. More on that in a moment.

The song begins: I landed in this country, one year of life to give, My only friend a weapon, My only prayer to live.

It is fifty years ago today, 13 June 1970, that I landed in Vietnam. To me, that calls for a celebration—at least a personal celebration. But it also call for a lot of reflection, a lot of memories, some regrets, some very deep sadness. Next verse and chorus:

I walked away from freedom and the life that I had known, I passed the weary faces of the others going home.

Boonie Rats, Boonie Rats. Scared but not alone, 300 days more or less, Then I’m going home.

Marcus wrote his own music to the song, recorded it, and sang it on a nationwide tour of backwater honky tonks and some pretty fine establishments. The original note in The 13th Valley states, “The words to the Boonierat Song in Chapter 7 were allegedly written by an M-60 machine gunner of the 101st under the double-canopy of the Ruong-Ruong Valley in the spring of 1970. He added music when his unit moved onto the Elephant Valley. In late October … The composer was allegedly killed in action.”

Marcus was one of perhaps two score of singers/composers who added their own music to Boonie Rats. Sometime around 1984 or 1985 Johnny Cash contacted me for permission to perform the song. I had to explain to him that I didn’t own it. We were treating it a a folk song. Singers were donating a portion of their income to veteran charities, as was I, in honor of their fellow troops who had not come home.

The first few days were hectic as I psyched my mind for war, I often got the feeling they’re trying to tie the score.

Some of the entertainers changed words, lines, to make the song fit their unit, or the occasion at which they were preforming. Of all the versions I heard, I always liked Marcus’ best. Together we attempted to chase down the true origin. For some time we believed the original composer was an ex-boonierat living in Maine, but the man said he didn’t remember writing it.

The air was hot and humid, The ground was hard and dry, Ten times I cursed my rucksack, And wished that I could die; I learned to look for danger, In the trees and on the ground, I learned to shake with terror, When I heard an AK round.

Several years ago I was invited to speak at the dedication of the John’s Creek, Georgia veteran memorial. And it was there that I received the attached audio, with The Boonie Rat Ballad sung, in 1970 in Vietnam, by the man who originally wrote the words and music. He is Ronald Jordan, and he served with Alpha Company, 1st of the 327th, 101st Airborne Division. I salute you Sir for all the pleasure the song has given me, and many others… now for nearly fifty years. If you listen to the end you’ll note that the song is dedicated to the City of San Mateo, California. San Mateo had adopted 1/327, and its residents sent care packages and letters to the soldiers of this battalion. Contrary to the current narrative, in 1970 not everyone was against the war.

Boonie Rats a legend, For now and times to come, Wherever there are soldiers, They’ll talk of what we’ve done.

They say there’ll always be a war, I hope they’re very wrong, To the Boonie Rats of Vietnam, I dedicate this song.

I wish Marcus had lived to learn the real story of The Boonie Rat Ballad. Hey Breeze, miss you man.

Memorial Day: Pawns or Patriots

[The following was delivered in Webster, MA on Memorial Day, 2015.]

I’d like to thank Jim Brinker, local veteran and author of West of Hue: Down the Yellow Brick Road, for inviting me to be here today; and thank all of you for allowing me to participate in honoring those who served, who sacrificed, who paid the ultimate price.

Emperor Minh Mang’s Palace, west of Hue, Vietnam: pillar detail

Memorial Day: It is a day to remember and to honor those Americans from long ago and from more recent times who paid the ultimate price—who paid with their lives, with their mortal existence—so that we may live as free citizens of this glorious nation,  and not as subjects of a regime.

To remember and to honor! How do we do that? How do we remember; what do we remember; and how should we behave so that our memories do indeed honor the fallen?

We seem to have short memories. Not just short, but shallow. Every day our memories are diluted with trivia as we are bombarded with gigabytes and terabytes of images and information about celebrity scandals, blips in the market, the newest and greatest gadget from Apple or Microsoft, or the most recent sale on cars, trucks, dishwashers or shoes.

We can barely recall last night’s news, but that makes little difference for it is soon be supplanted with tonight’s news. Seldom do we attempt to correlate items; seldom do we have the time or energy to check the validity or veracity of what is said.

So… Memorial Day… This day of remembrance…  this day to recall and to honor the fallen, this day to reflect upon the meaning of their sacrifice… Memorial Day… it becomes ever more important.

Yet amid the modern world’s massive assault upon our senses, even on Memorial Day, we tend to forget the perceptions and the reasons that were current at the time these men and women went to war.

That forgetfulness opens the door for politicians or political advocacy groups to tell us that we went to war without reason, or under false pretense. Some infer--if they do not overtly state--that the troops who fought were pawns in unwinnable conflicts; dupes in immoral conflicts; someone’s lackey used to enhance the personal power or wealth of others.

When we don’t recall history, we doubt ourselves, and that opens us up to accepting each new story… each new revelation… as fact. We then turn against those who sent our sons or daughters, our brothers or sisters, our mothers or fathers into harm’s way. And of the dead… though we may remember them as individuals, and though we may honor their courage… our forgetfulness allows us consider their lives as having been wasted, their sacrifices in vain.

What’s tripe!

As Jim mentioned, I served with the 101st Airborne Division (Airmobile) in Vietnam. The examples I’m about to use are related to that American engagement. Some of you might wish to extrapolate to more current conflicts, perhaps to the liberation of Kuwait, the fall of Ramadi, or to the slaughter of the Yazidi.

Over the past 35 years I have spoken in perhaps a hundred classrooms. A common question, particularly from younger students, has been, “Did you kill anyone?” My answer has always been: “You’re asking the wrong question. You should be asking, ‘Did I save anyone’s life?’ or ‘Did the soldiers with whom I served save lives?’”

We’ve all been told that the war was unwinnable; that we backed the wrong side; that our troops committed unending atrocities and “killed anything that moved.” Worse, we’re told that we went to war to protect French Imperialism, or so Lady Bird Johnson’s transportation company could make lucrative profits. If these accusations are true, what does that say about the deaths of 58,000 of our brothers and sisters? What does it say about the sacrifice made by so many?

Let’s back up and recall some of the basic events as they were unfolding.  With the defeat of Japan at the end of World War II, France reasserted control over its former colonies in Southeast Asia. From 1945 to 1954 they battled the Viet Minh… mostly in the northern areas of Vietnam known as Tonkin. Some recent textbooks tell us that the United States paid 80% of the cost of that war—and that we thusly supported French Imperialism.

In reality, the United States paid 0% of those war costs from 1945 to mid-1950; and did not begin to pay until after China fell to Mao’s communist forces in 1949, and after Red China invaded the Vietnamese island of Hainan in early 1950. These events happened on the heels of much of Eastern Europe falling under the dominance of Soviet communism; yet even then our role was limited. By the time Dien Bien Phu fell in 1954, America had become involved… but our actual piece of the war budget against the Viet Minh amounted to approximately 8% -- not 80%!

One might ask, “Doesn’t that still prove that the U.S. backed the return of colonialism?” The answer is, “No.” That’s not what we were backing; nor is that what the French were seeking. Indeed, in Cambodia where there was no significant communist insurgency, France granted that nation de jure independence in 1949, and complete independence in 1953. Only the battle against communist tyranny kept that from happening in Vietnam.

Do you recall—a decade later—repeatedly being told that America escalated the war? Why would we do that? Perhaps you know… perhaps not…  that in 1959, five years before the Marines hit the beaches at Da Nang, Hanoi’s politburo essentially declared war against the South by ordering the establishment of three infiltration routes to carry men and materiel from the north into the south. The routes were labeled 559, 759 and 959 for the month and year of their inception. Route 559, or May 1959, became the infamous Ho Chi Minh Trail.

Hanoi infiltrating agents began a terror campaign designed to disrupt the budding and burgeoning social and economic order in the Republic of Vietnam—that is, South Vietnam. In 1960, northern terrorists murdered approximate 100 South Vietnamese official—school teachers, hamlet elders, young village entrepreneurs—each month. These assassinations grew to 1,000 per month by 1962—12,000 murders and “disappearances” in a nation of approximately 11 million people in one year! That would be the equivalent of terrorist murdering 350,000 Americans in 2015. That was the terror campaign America opposed; that was the basic situation which convinced Presidents Eisenhower and Kennedy to send the first advisors and first troops.

Communist atrocities accelerated in ’63 and ’64, yet the story we usually hear of those years questions the veracity of a single incident in August 1964—the attack on the American ship, the C. Turner Joy in the Gulf of Tonkin… as if, somehow, that was the only justification for further engagement!

Infiltration route 559, the Ho Chi Minh trail, was strategic to the communist war effort. Early allied efforts were not enough to stop the flow of insurgent troops and supplies. This route—a complex of interlacing mountain roads and trails—ran down from the North, crossed the DMZ at scores of points, then entered the jungled mountains of our A. O., our area of operation, known as I Corps. The trail continued down through the broad and treacherous A Shau Valley, and south into the Central Highlands.  Jim and I, and thousands of Americans, fought here. Our mission in these sparsely-inhabited mountains was to find, engage and disrupt this heavily-armed, infiltrating force; and thereby to stop the terrorism and provide security for the civilian population in the densely populated lowlands.

That mission—from the time of the first Special Forces camp at Ta Bat, through the battles of Lang Vei, Khe Sanh, Dong Ap Bai (Hamburger Hill), Ripcord, and Lom Son 719… that mission—taken on by both American and South Vietnamese forces—despite tremendous hardship and significant loss of life—was highly successful. Every year communist forces had to escalate their efforts in order to keep up their terrorist attacks. Each year the Republic of Viet Nam grew stronger.

Some little known facts and figures: Following the 1968 Communist Tet Offensive, the South Vietnamese citizenry, previously untrusted by their government, was armed by their government. Over the next three years, while US forces were reduced by 58%, communist terror attacks (assassinations, abductions and bombings) on villages and hamlets dropped 30%, small-unit attacks dropped 41%, and battalion-size attacks dropped 98%! Armed citizens were the crucial factor.

At the same time, rice production increased by nearly 10%, war related civilian injuries dropped 55%, and enemy-soldier defections increased to the highest levels of the war. Armed, the South Viet Namese citizenry became an effective force in protecting themselves and their property from an organized terror campaign. Do you recall ever being told any of this? Do you know that more than 200,000 North Vietnamese soldiers defected to the South?

How do we remember and honor our dead if we don’t know what these men did; why they fought; what was the cause; who was the enemy, and why did we oppose that enemy? Let me also mention that knowledge—truthful knowledge, not politically correct propaganda—is a miracle elixir… It lifts the spirits, and ameliorates the suffering of PTSD.

But as it happened, by late 1968 our national focus shifted? In the defense of the civilian population from communist terrorism, and in the pursuit of freedom, errors and abuses had been made. Our national attention turned to these errors and abuses, and freedom and the defense of the defenseless were no longer in our sight.

Critics of the War in Vietnam called all American tactics into question. You may recall Ted Kennedy condemning U.S. military operations below the DMZ, in I Corps, in the A Shau valley, at Dong Ap Bia, and at Ripcord. Seemingly he had forgotten that terrorists were infiltrating via these very routes.

His focus, along with that of much of the media, had shifted. Recall the My Lai massacre where American troops killed some 300 South Vietnamese civilians. From exposure of that incident in 1969, to 1972, 473 nightly TV news stories—nearly 10% of all news coverage of the war from 1962 to 1975—focused on that one atrocity—yet not a single story was aired about the 6000 communist assassinations of South Vietnamese non-military, government personnel in 1970 alone! What did that skewed reportage do to the American psyche?! What did it to the image of American troops who served and who were still serving in Vietnam? How did it paint veterans of that conflict, how did it paint those who paid the ultimate price, for decades thereafter?

 If we perceive American troops as barbarians—as undisciplined baby killers or drug addicts; or if we are ignorant of the foes atrocious acts and ultimate aims—can we say we have kept faith with those who fell?

Errors and abuses were addressed. American ground forces were withdrawn by early 1972. The armed southern population carried the bulk of their own local defense, yet America’s focus remained on “American atrocities.”

This shift in the political momentum led to the abandonment of our allies, and the people of Southeast Asia. The abandonment can be inferred by economic support. The US budget for the war, adjusted for inflation, fell by over 95% from 1969 to 1974. Weapons and ammo in the South became relatively scarce. By comparison, Communist economic support for the North Vietnamese Army increased by 400%.

With highly limited funds the Army of The Republic of Vietnam was not able to keep up the fight in western I Corps, below the DMZ, down through the A Shau Valley and south into the Central Highlands. By 1974 Communist forces had rebuilt the roads and trails of Route 559, and had established oil and gas pipelines from the north all the way to Song Be city in the south.

The final communist offensive which toppled the Saigon government employed 500 Soviet tanks, 400 long-range artillery pieces and over 18,000 military trucks moving an army of 400,000 troops down through this corridor, through western I Corps, past Ripcord and Dong Ap Bia, through the A Shau Valley, and south. 400,000 troops!

U.S. abandonment of the South Vietnam lead directly to 70,000 executions in the first 90 days of communist control; to the death of millions in Cambodia, to a half million Boat People fleeing the new oppression—many of those dying at sea; to more than a million people being incarcerated in gulag re-education camps; and to the communist ethnic cleansing of Laos.

Do you recall my asking students to change their question. Did we save lives? The answer is yes. Our presence, our efforts, our sacrifices, saved millions of lives. And that’s the point. That’s what made the effort and the sacrifice not in vain.

To Remember and to honor means knowing these things. It means remaining vigilant when pundits and propagandists are stressing the errors or abuses that we, as a nation, have committed; yet simultaneously omitting the good, the honorable and the valorous that we accomplished. Even worse, is when they ignore the evil which we opposed.

So… on this Memorial Day, what we remember, how we remember, and how we act and react is important. There is no honor in remembering falsehoods; no honor in manipulating history for political or economic gain. And we cannot and do not honor our fallen by believing they were pawns.

Lastly, may I suggest, if you truly want to honor our dead, be the kind of person, the kind of citizen, the kind of American, worthy of their sacrifices.

Demise: An American Tragedy

DEMISE: An American Tragedy

By: John M. Del Vecchio

A story of the 1990s to be released by Warriors Publishing--Group Fall 2020

            Mitch Williams: The following scene is from the chapter titled Seneca Falls Indian Casino, Heartwood; Saturday 22 October, 9:18 p.m.  We are now well into the evening. Our group has left the casion and moved their gaming to a private club where the food is better and the drinks are stronger.

In this scene: Mitch Williams and Nick Panuzio, both Vietnam veterans, along with their  non-vet brothers Vern Williams and Johnny Panuzio, and other non-vet friends, have been playing poker. Mitch’s 18-year-old son, a high school senior, was shot and killed six weeks earlier. The crime has yet to be solved. This is Mitch’s first night out since. His brother and friends had wanted to keep the evening light and let him relax, but with drinks flowing and nerves raw the conversation has, at times, been highly contentious.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . .

"’A.” Mitch flicked his hand as if he were Rocco. “I don’t know.” His voice was thick, tired. “These things, when you read them in the papers, they remind me of Nam.”

“Vietnam?!” Brian disparaged.

“I know what ya mean,” Nick said.

“Yeah,” Mitch said. “I don’t mean what happened there. I mean how we approached what happened there. This is like Vietnam all over again. Like a domestic Vietnam.”

“What the fuck you talkin about?” LeRoy sneered. “Nobody here’s killin eighteen-year-olds.”

Johnny glanced at Mitch. Mitch kept his head down. Vernon was about to say something but Johnny nudged Vern’s leg with his knee. Vern bit his lip.

“That’s not what he means.” Nick banged his cards down on the table, added, “Jerk!”

“Well, what the fuck does he mean?” LeRoy shot back. “Asshole!”

“Gentlemen!” Large Larry interrupted. “House Rules…”

“He means,” Nick blurted, “the coverage of issues is lopsided. Despite the rhetoric, there’s little knowledge. It’s all partisan, not practical. Right?” Nick looked at Mitch. Mitch barely nod­ded. Nick continued. “There’s no will to deal with the real problem because the real problem’s been obscured by political bullshit. You can’t solve a problem if you can’t see it.”

“Who put a quarter in you?” LeRoy tried to break the tension, guffawed at his own joke.

“These two guys were there.” Johnny indicated Mitch and Nick.

LeRoy smirked. “Smokin dope.” He guf­fawed. “Rape, pillage, and plunder. I seen Platoon four times…”

“Fuck you!” Mitch pushed away from the table, paused, shot up. “Johnny,” he said, “I’m gotta take a leak. Then I’m hittin the road.”

“Yeah,” Johnny began. Before he could say more, LeRoy’s renewed guf­faw drowned him out. The men at the other table sensed trouble, hunkered closer together.

“Imagine…” Mitch focused in on LeRoy, bent forward, stared at his eyes. Mitch’s voice was thick, controlled anger. “Imagine a TV program. A cop show. One like that one with Don Johnson. Imagine that it’s edited to show the police apprehending people, breaking down doors, killing people. Now imagine they edited it, too, to cut out all the scenes where these crim­inals that Johnson’s after—cut out all the scenes where they do their nasty crimes, their standard TV list—extortion, torture, murder of innocents, rape. Imagine a show that gave you no antecedents as to why the police were chasing the criminals. What do you think your opinion of the police would be?”

LeRoy leaned forward. “Same as now. A bunch a Nazi control freaks.”

Mitch leaned in further, became more intense. “Except when they’re stoppin some guy from killing your kid.” The words came like high-pressure magma spewing onto the table.

“That’s different.” LeRoy shrank back. Suddenly he seemed afraid that Mitch was going to jump him. He wanted out of the topic.

“Gentlemen!” Large Larry huffed.

Mitch continued erupting. “That police example is what happened be­tween America, its veterans, and the goddamn press. You’re the viewer; we’re the police; they’re the editors. We destroyed homes. We shot people. We killed people. That they were communist soldiers became like saying, ‘Don Johnson killed some person because he was a used-car salesman.’ Consider this, asshole! Two-point-two million Asians were killed by the communists after we withdrew. How do you think you’d feel about the police if the salesman was shown to be a brutal rapist, a murderer, a molester of children, a crack dealer who extorted cruel payment from his addicts, forced them to decapitate their nonaddicted brothers—like the communists forced their neophytes to do to their own families if they didn’t join up? You’d probably see the police as heroes, wouldn’t you? You’d see their violence as justified. Wouldn’t you?”

Burning History: Winners & Losers; Memories & Nightmares

In America: Forgotten and Ignored Voices of Southeast Asians.

By John M. Del Vecchio

End plate from For The Sake of All Living Things: There is no understanding of the war without an understanding of the landforms and the peoples of Southeast Asia.

This post is a follow-up to the essays previously written on the Burns/Novick program. Since the Burns/Novick series ended I have received scores of emails, essays, notes and columns which illuminate various and specific aspects of the history of the Second Indochina War, or of this highly-flawed series itself. Four Southeast Asian voices are included below. At the end of this post you will also find links to a number of significant columns that have appeared in the past few weeks.

A Cambodian voice: The following email is from friend and advisor Saren Thach. In 1967 Saren graduated first in the officer’s class of Ecole Militaire Khmere, and a year later, again first in his class, from Ecole Militaire d’Application as an infantry officer in Prince Norodom Sihanouk’s Army.  By mid-1968 he was commanding Khmer units in the Parrot’s Beak, a salient of Cambodian territory protruding into what was then South Vietnam’s III Corps. His service continued in this area under Prime Minister Lon Nol after Sihanouk was disposed. In 1972, as a 1st Lieutenant, he became the Operations Officer for the 39th Infantry Brigade in Svay Rieng Province. Later that year he joined the newly formed Khmer Special Forces, eventually commanding five SF A-Teams in the Cambodian Highlands across from VN’s II Corps. He is a naturalized U.S. citizen, a founding member of the 1st U.S. Army Reserve Linguist Unit. In 1992 he returned to Cambodia using his language skills to aid in the search for missing American servicemen. For a dozen years he served as an analysist with the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency.

    Talking about nightmares and memories I have had ton of them and still have them now.  Ask my wife how many times she has had to wake me up in the middle of the night with me crying, sobbing…  Those things of four decades ago still live in me.

    The US started sporadic bombing of the border area in March 1969. At the time Prince Sihanouk was already unpopular in the country because, rightly or wrongly, he let the NVA/VC use the border area from I Corps all the way to IV Corps, for sanctuaries, weapon depots, R&R centers, and hospital complexes. In 1969 I was a 21 years old second lieutenant and was leading a Cambodian platoon in this NVA/VC infested area of Parrot Beak facing Vietnam’s Tay Ninh province in III Corp. [See map: The Cambodian province is Svay Rieng.]Backed up by the villagers’ militia, my platoon had frequent small scale fighting with mostly VC troops. The fighting intensified in May of 1970 when the U.S. began the menu bombings of the border areas by B-52.

    The strategic mistake that the U.S. kept on repeating in the final year… (and repeated by Bush and Obama administrations in Iraq and Afghanistan) was that President Nixon announced the American bombings, that the pursuit of fleeing NVA/VC would stop on June 1970, and the incursion would be limited to 20 km inside Cambodia. So to speak we disclosed up front to the enemy our ops plan. All the NVA/VC did was move deeper into Cambodia for safety, and wait until July 1st to move back into same areas.

    Tonight’s story (Burns’ episode 8: The History of the World) ignored the fact that NVA/VC used Cambodian territory to fight its neighbor, and that this was the main reason the Cambodian military and people had had enough, and decided to depose Prince Sihanouk on March 11, 1970.

    During my three years posting in the border area I witnessed all these events.  Sometime NVA/VC columns moved 50 km deep into Cambodia at night just to evade observation from the South Vietnamese side.

    In the 1996 Winter issue of Army Reserve Magazine Col. (Ret) Charles Doe wrote about Saren’s 1992 return to Cambodia to aid in the search for American MIA/POWs:  “As Major Saren Thach’s convoy entered Cambodia’s “Parrot’s Beak” salient on the Vietnam border, the rusting girder bridge it crossed stirred haunting memories of combat there almost two decades before. ‘The bridge was the only government position in the middle of Viet Cong territory,’ Saren recalled of his duty there as a Cambodian army lieutenant in late 1972. ‘My company was assigned to hold it at all costs.’”

    There are a lot of secrets that to my knowledge had not been told about the treachery of Prince Norodom Sihanouk.  My three years posting in dangerous border areas provided me with a lot of real, physical, observations, physical contacts and fighting with VC.  I keep the memory of my first hand combat experiences to myself, but I’m not afraid of any challenge to the stories.  Some can speculate all day long, but for me the facts are the facts.  The real war story shouldn’t need to be written or recited only by the left.

     [Today, Saren’s homeland, after a period of semi-democratic rule, is quickly reverting to despotic state. The leadership behind this regression have their roots in various communist factions of the past. http://www.latimes.com/world/asia/la-fg-cambodia-dictatorship-2017-story.html.]

The original of this article by Dr. Nguyen Ngoc Sang can be found at the following: http://maggiesfarm.anotherdotcom.com/archives/30521-Review-Of-Ken-Burns-Vietnam-PBS-Series.html. His comments on Winners and Losers are of particular interest.

    I was fortunate to be part of a joint PBS and local library panel to preview the Vietnam War Documentary by filmmakers Ken Burns and Lynn Novick who had spent ten years to complete the eighteen-hour series, which the PBS will air on September 17, 2017.

    Although being anxious before an audience of more than 200 participants (mostly American-born except for my young assistant, Dr. Gwen Huynh) I decide to continue with the discussion thinking it is an opportunity to express a Republic of Vietnam Armed Forces soldier’s view about the war inspite of my limited language skill.  After the presentation, each of the panelists was asked one question. The film features a North Vietnamese veteran named Bao Ninh who says that there was no winner during the Vietnam War. The moderator asked me to comment on the interviewee’s statement.

    To me, in order to determine who won and who lost the war, one needs to answer three fundamental questions: (1) What was the goals of the involved parties? (2) What price did they have to pay? (3) The overall assessment of the war.

A- Goals of Involved Parties

   1. According to the Pentagon Papers (Pentagon Papers is a nearly 4,000-page top-secret Pentagon study of US government decision-making in relation to the Vietnam War from 1945 to 1967. An American activist and former United States military analyst, Mr. Daniel Ellsberg, released it through the New York Times in 1971. The document was declassified on May 5, 2011, and has been on display at the Library of President Nixon in California. ), the US got involved in the Vietnam War was to encompass the Communist China, not to help defend South Viet Nam's independence, which was the ruse for the US containment strategy at the time.

   2. The North Vietnam’s goal was to "liberate" South Viet Nam by force and to use it as a springboard to spread International Communism throughout Southeast Asia, which was also Ho Chi Minh’s goal since 1932 when he was the leader of the Indochinese Communist Party. Le Duan, Secretary General of the Communist Party of Vietnam (CPV), who was believed to have said, "We fight the Americans for the USSR and China", must have followed this goal to the letter. If so, the statement represented the true mission of the Communist leaders.

   3. On the contrary, the goal of the South Vietnamese leaders was to defend the country’s independence and sovereignty. Since the North Vietnamese Communists enjoyed maximum supports from the USSR, China, the Eastern European Communist Block, and even Cuba, South Viet Nam had no other choice but accepted assistances from the United States and other capitalist countries to fight against the Communist invasion.

B. Casualties

   1. US casualties included 58,307 KIAs, 1948 MIAs, 303,604 WIAs, and $168 billion spent ($1,020 billion according to some other estimate) for the war. At the peak of the war, the number of the US forces in Vietnam reached 543,000. The other sad thing about the outcome of the war was that the very people who had welcomed the US soldiers who had taken part in other foreign wars would turn around and showed their disdains for the ones returning from Vietnam. Lately, efforts have been made to rectify the wrongs of the past, but the wounds that the Vietnam vets have endured are never going to completely heal.

   2. The NVA casualties included 950,765 killed in action, nearly 600,000 wounded, and an estimated 300,000 missing in action. During the war, North Vietnam was one of the five poorest countries in the world. The war also killed two million civilians in North and South Vietnams.

   3. The Republic of Vietnam’s casualties included 275,000 soldiers killed in action and about 1,170,000 wounded. The number of missing persons could not be tallied because the RVN had surrendered on April 30, 1975.

C. WINNER AND LOSERS

   1. From these observations, I concluded that the United States was the winner because she had achieved the strategic goal of containing Communist China, even by bargaining away the lives of others, including her own servicemen and women.

   2. From the same observations, I told the audience that North Vietnam was definitely the loser. After having spent a tremendous amount of human resources including the death of nearly one million soldiers, two million civilians, and almost six-hundred thousand soldiers wounded in action and three-hundred thousand missing North Vietnam ended up dragging the whole country down the poverty pit after the war had ended. Moreover, they lost because their attempt to help China subvert the whole Southeast Asia had failed.

   3. The Republic of Vietnam was the loser because it had surrendered unconditionally on April 30, 1975. According to an interview with General Frederick C. Weyand on June 12, 2006, however, the war had been lost not because of the incompetence of the ARVN, but because of the political leaders in Washington D.C. In other words, the RVN had won the battles but lost the war because of the Allies’ betrayal.

   4. In conclusion, I told the audience that both North and South Vietnamese people were the losers. The Vietnam War was actually a Communist proxy war initiated by Ho Chi Minh, an internationalist, who had played the role of an enforcer of the Communist ambition of world domination. The war caused unspeakable suffering to the Vietnamese People and deep wounds to the country that have not healed 42 years after the war had ended.

   To a participant’s question about the current psychological consequences of the war, I simply answered, "Forty-two years after the war has ended the winning side still considers the conquered their enemy."

    Despite the purported time spent on researching and collecting materials, the film still comes across as worn-out Communist propaganda. It still shows the picture of Major General Nguyen Ngoc Loan shooting the Viet Cong (VC) Bay Lop on the street of Saigon, the incident in which Lieutenant William Key ordered the massacre of 128 civilians, and the villagers burnt by Napalm bombs.

    My question is why didn’t the filmmakers show the scene of the VC shelling on March 9, 1974, that had killed 200 pupils of Cai Lay Elementary School and the massacre of almost six thousand innocent people of Hue during the VC ‘Tet’ Offensive in 1968? To the film’s claim that Napalm bombs produced by Dow Chemical Company were used to kill innocent villagers, my answer is that that was the unfortunate but unavoidable casualties of the war, any war. The Kim Phuc incident is not unlike the accidental bombing of the Chinese Embassy in Kosovo in 1999 or the "friendly fire" that killed the US and Allied forces in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Syria etc. In other words, mistakes in wars, though regrettable, are inescapable. The US mainstream media has chosen to ignore that fact and shamelessly piled on one lie after another. No wonder President Trump disdains them so much.

    After the seminar, historian Bill Laurie talked with me about the fact that Bay Lop had been a terrorist who had killed six relatives of General Loan’s subordinate just before the "execution" incident. To him, General Loan action did not violate the Geneva Convention.

    It would have been possible for the US to withdraw her troops from the Vietnam Theater before 1969 if the then Commander in chief of the US forces, General Westmoreland, had not applied the "search and destroy" tactics. Military commentators criticized General Westmoreland ("the General Who Lost Vietnam by the media) for his use of massive forces, tactics that are only effective when the enemy accepts the confrontation, to fight an elusive enemy who avoided large operations by moving deeper into the jungles or across the borders of Laos and Cambodia.

    Had skillful commanders such as General Harold K. Johnson and General Frederick C. Weyand been in charge, perhaps the American troops could have been repatriated sooner without more casualties, and the US would still have succeeded in the attempt to contain Red China. If that had happened, the casualties that both Vietnams suffered would have been less and the hatreds would not have lasted as long.

    Military aid for South Vietnam also reflects the US "washing off the hand" policy. The aid package that had been at $2.8 billion in 1973 was wound down to $1 billion in 1974 and $300 million in 1975, at a time when SVN more than ever needed all the helps it could get to fight against the NVA invasion. The story did not end there. In December 1974, the US Congress decided to cut off all aid, and the Republic of Vietnam, without means to continue the fight, succumbed to the enemy on April 30, 1975. Except for the Communist "Liberation Army" myth bragging about its soldiers "catching" the US airplanes with bare hands, no army in the world that I know of could win a war without necessary weapons and resupplies.

    No one can change the history. Those who waged wars on behalf of the international Communists must accept their responsibility for the destruction of the country. History will judge their actions and our descendants will know the truth despite the Communists’ efforts to skew the historical facts.

    In order to fight against China’s aggression, the Vietnamese Communists must harness the national strength by reconciling with the people as a whole, and their victims, in particular. Otherwise, they will be a party to the demise of the country.

    In conclusion, this is a one-sided, half-truth documentary unworthy of watching. My observation had been posted on Yahoo but was removed 15 minutes later. Let us hope that Mr. Burns and Ms. Novick would have a change of heart and be more factual in their next project about the Vietnam War.

 Mr. Ngoc Kim Trinh’s email was passed onto me by R.J. Del Vecchio (my second cousin, a founding member of Vietnam Veterans for Factual History). He began his comment with a quote from William Lloyd Stearman’s column Facts ‘The Vietnam War’ left out, which appeared in The Washington Times on 4 October 2017. Stearman served on the National Security Council under Nixon, Ford, Reagan and G.H.W. Bush. See: http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2017/oct/4/the-vietnam-war-documentary-left-out-certain-facts/

    Stearman: "Shortly after I arrived, I learned that in a nearby village two young women, a nurse and a teacher, had just been murdered by the Viet Cong. This convinced me that our cause was just. This was part of the Viet Cong’s intimidating all those who, like the two young women, represented a government presence. By 1972, more than 37,000 people in this category had been murdered by the Vietcong. This was never reported by our news media nor covered in the series."

    Mr. Ngoc Kim Trinh’s Story:  My father and 2 Uncles were kidnapped by VC from our village at the same night, Sept 14th, 1965 (by lunar calendar), and they murdered them, buried them at the same hole in the sand dunes in our village. I lived in a coastal village in Tam Ky, Quang Tin, about half way between Chu Lai and Da Nang.

    I was a little boy back then but still remember vividly that night. The VC came to our house, they told us: Invite my father to learn the policy of the revolution in few days and will be home.

    In Vietnamese: Mời Bác ̣đi học đường lối của cách mạng vài ngày rồi về.

    We knew they killed my father and 2 Uncles because of my father's jaw and his teeth, and the prescription of the wife of my uncle were found on the sand dunes in our village by a lady walking thru the sand dunes.

    Later by Chiêu Hồi, the VCs were caught, we learned that they killed my father and my 2 Uncles at the night they kidnapped them, and our 3 families discovered their remains.

    They did not shoot them, they beat them to death, and buried them in a shallow hole.

    My father and 2 Uncles, and many more civilians in the village, were murdered for intimidation reason. My father was just a merchant. My 2 Uncles were just farmers, but they were well-to-do in the village by local standard.

    As usual, I will broadcast/forwarding your emails/articles about this Vietnam War film that is so biased, very negative, and can be said: pro-commy!

     We need more articles like this in English, so we can educate our younger generation.

   I think this film has no effect on Vietnamese folks at our ages since they know very well about Communist and Communism, and core reason of conflict in VN from 1955 to 1975, but we are worried about our younger generation being brain washed in school by leftist teachers/professors in liberal schools/colleges. [my emphasis]

The following comments are from Mr. Hoi B. Tran. Mr. Tran “…fought in both Viet Nam wars. From the Dien Bien Phu battle in the North to the long war in the South, in various capacities…” One should note the passion of his critique of the Burns/Novick series. This is common amongst those who escaped the tyranny which befell the region.

To my dear Brothers-in-Arms, Vietnamese & American Veterans of the VN War, Ladies & Gentlemen,

    In mid-September 2017, I was extremely excited turning my TV on to watch the new Viet Nam War documentary directed by Ken Burns and Lynn Novick that my son informed me the previous week. Sadly, after watching only the first episode, I already had real bad impression with this new documentary film and wanted to quit. But I realized it would be unfair if I rate the entire 10 episodes through only the first one. So I tried hard to overcome my disappointment and to stay patient to watch the remaining 9 episodes in order to have a full understanding of this VN War film before expressing my feeling/opinion of its contents. After having watched all 10 episodes, I feel comfortable now to make some honest comments on this film.  I’ll be happy and ready to discuss with anyone, Vietnamese or American, who wants to refute the facts cited in my comments below including Ken Burns or Lynn Novick.

Comments on the new VN War series by Ken Burns and Lynn Novick through the eyes of a veteran of the Armed Forces of the Republic of (South) Viet Nam.

Hoi B. Tran – Oct 1, 2017

    It is no secret that the Viet Nam War was the most controversial and misunderstood war that the U.S was involved in. It was a war that deeply and bitterly divided the America. It was also a war that U.S veterans were denigrated and mistreated when returning home from Viet Nam after their tour of duty.  I remember that the late U.S Pres. Richard M. Nixon said in his book No More Vietnams published in 1985 as follows, and I quote: No event in American history is more misunderstood than the Viet Nam War. It was misreported then, and it is misremembered now. Rarely have so many people been so wrong about so much. Never have the consequences of their misunderstanding been so tragic. End of quote.

   As a soldier, I fought in both Viet Nam wars. From the Dien Bien Phu battle in the North to the long war in the South in various capacities. Now as a living witness, I feel compelled to refute the shameless lie by this Viet Nam War series when they praised and glorified Ho Chi Minh as a dedicated nationalist patriot. Additionally, I also want to erase the unjust stains smeared upon the U.S military annals by the bold-faced Vietnamese communist propaganda machine in North Viet Nam stupidly backed by the ignorant, left leaning news media and film makers in the U.S.

1 – Was Ho Chi Minh a true Vietnamese nationalist patriot who fought and ousted the French & restored independence for VN?

   On March 9th, 1945 Japanese Imperial forces in North Viet Nam staged a coup d’état and ousted the French Colonists, not Ho Chi Minh. The following day a Japanese envoy met Emperor Bao Dai and granted Viet Nam her independence within Japan’s Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere. Following this joyful event, Emperor Bao Dai appointed Prof. Tran Trong Kim to form a legitimate government. While the Vietnamese were enjoying their independence, the US dropped two atom bombs on Hiroshima & Nagasaki in early August 1945 forcing Japan to surrender to the Allied forces unconditionally on August 14, 1945.  The capitulation of Japan created a political chaos in North Viet Nam.  Ho Chi Minh promptly exploited the chaotic situation and used his armed propaganda units embedded in Ha Noi to seize power.  On Aug 28, 1945, he formally declared the country to be the Democratic Republic of Viet Nam (DRV), an independent nation & proclaimed himself President and Minister of Foreign Affairs concurrently. The following week, he and his cadres convened a meeting at the Ba Dinh Square to introduce his government and cited the Declaration of Independence. During this time I was a naïve 10 year-old Vanguard Youth Troop in Ha Noi, North Viet Nam. Along with my group I was very happy singing patriotic songs as indoctrinated by communist cadres to praise Ho Chi Minh in many events. 

   After becoming President of the DRV, Ho showed his true colors as a vicious communist and a boldfaced traitor. Ho overzealously followed Maoist’s doctrine and launched the inhumane Land Reform Campaign that slaughtered at least from 60,000 to 150,000 landowners that they labeled as wicked landlords and about 50,000 to 100,000 were imprisoned.  And with his death squads, Ho liquidated all political opponents if these people were nationalists or non-communist patriots.

   The above facts shows that Ho Chi Minh and his ragtag militia forces, the Viet Minh, and his so-called armed propaganda units in North Viet Nam contributed absolutely nothing in expelling of the French forces from Viet Nam and to end French colonial rule in 1945.

2 – Ho Chi Minh was a traitor, a treacherous egomaniac, not a patriot!

    A few months after extorting power from Tran Trong Kim’s government Ho showed his traitorous, egoistic character. On March 6, 1946, Ho compromised and signed an agreement allowing French forces to return to Viet Nam for five years and, in return France would recognize his DRV government. 

    Through this wily move, nationalist Vietnamese people considered Ho a traitor to the cause of revolution. If Ho Chi Minh did not sign that agreement, of course, French forces were not allowed to return to North Viet Nam.  If French forces were not in Viet Nam, there would have been no Dien Bien Phu battle in 1954 and Viet Nam was not divided at the 17th parallel after Ho’s forces, the Viet Minh, defeated French forces at Dien Bien Phu garrison. The fall of Dien Bien Phu garrison was because Gen. Henri Navarre, Commander in Chief of the French Expeditionary Forces in the Indochinese Theater, was not aware that the ragtag Viet Minh forces received two hundred heavy artillery pieces and the deadly Soviet built rocket launchers “Stalin Organs”, military advisors, technicians, gunners and troops from the PRC (People’s Republic of China).  

    The reason Ho Chi Minh received substantial military supplies and manpower from the PRC was because Ho kowtowed to Mao Zedong since Mao won the war and established the PRC in mainland China in October of 1949. Ho Chi Minh wasted no time and immediately sent his representatives to China asking for support and assistance. By January 1950, the PRC and Russia recognized Ho’s government and the PRC began to help Ho with military advisors, weapons and troops to ensure their satellite in Viet Nam would survive.

    The bottom line is: If Ho Chi Minh had been a true nationalist patriot, he should have contented with the independence that Viet Nam inherited bloodlessly at the departure of the Japanese after they were defeated by the US.  Ho must have known that he was very lucky to be at the right place at the right time to, all of a sudden, become president of the DRV.  Under the circumstances, he should live peacefully in North Viet Nam and committed all resources into rebuilding the war ravaged country as well as the dying economy in North Viet Nam at the time. He must have known that if he did not allow French forces to return to North Viet Nam, there was no Dien Bien Phu battle. Without the Dien Bien Phu battle, Viet Nam was not divided at the 17th parallel. Even after Viet Nam was divided, if he had a decent conscience, he should have recognized the RVN in the South as a separate, independent country like East and West Germany or North and South Korea. He should not be too egoistic, too greedy wanting to gobble up the South to satisfy his hegemonic dream. But as a devout communist and a power-hungry man, Ho Chi Minh fervently wanted to take over the South and place it under his control to satisfy his big patrons, the PRC and Russia.    

 3 - Sullied the United States and the Republic of Viet Nam (RVN).  

    During the war to conquer the RVN, Ho Chi Minh and the apparatchiks in North Viet Nam employed this motto incessantly on their propaganda machine to push people to go to war: “Fighting the Americans to save our country” and “Liberate our people in the South from the neo-colonial rule of the American Imperialist”. They smeared the RVN government and its Armed Forces as puppets or servants of the “American Imperialists.” They always portrayed the RVN government as a despotic and corrupt regime and the U.S as imperialist. In summary, the North Vietnamese communist leadership had endlessly tried their utmost best to vituperate, sully the U.S, the RVN and people in the South.

    Fortunately, history has eyes and time has certain way to bring truth to the surface.  Although the long overdue truth could not heal the profound psychological and physical wound the RVN and her ally, the U.S., had to suffer. But the truth did prove that the RVN and the U.S. were not as bad as propagated by the communist and distorted by the liberal U.S. news media and film makers.

    Only a few years in the post-war era, the world had a better understanding and a clearer judgment about the ability to govern, the morality and virtue of the North Vietnamese communists after they dropped their mask and exposed their true evil color. After the end of the war they could not survive with their communist doctrine and their dying economy and they shamelessly begged the “American Imperialists” for help.  At the present time in shopping malls, travel agencies, restaurants and hotels in Viet Nam most advertising signs are written in English, not in Chinese or Russian.  In Viet Nam, girls and boys everywhere, from the metropolitan area to the rural countryside, are mixing in their day to day conversation with the words OK and Bye-Bye to be in vogue.  They also celebrate Valentine Day and sing Happy Birthday in English to be fashionable.    

    The communist propaganda machine and the left leaning U.S news media always accused the former RVN as a corrupt regime. To be fair and honest, no one could deny that every country on this planet earth does have certain form of corruption. But if we compare the corruption between the former RVN and the communist party members and their cronies in the post-war years, the RVN appears amateurish.  The communist party members are much more skillful in bringing corruption up multifold through foreign aid and investments, kickbacks from newly authorized businesses and land expropriation!  They are much better than the RVN in that they invented the super human trafficking networks.  Under the skillful management of the communist regime, Viet Nam is now known as the largest source of providing girls and women to neighboring countries as sex slaves.  They sneered at the culture, all form of literary arts, books and music in the South as depraved and were aggressively scouring everywhere to confiscate these materials to discard and destroy them.  Sadly, after they took over the South, morality, good old Vietnamese traditions and virtues went into extinction!  Prostitution, pornographic materials, venereal diseases, HIV and drugs went rampant in this amoral, depraved society!  Communist members are no longer poor communists.  They have all become Red Capitalist!  These Red Capitalists and their children are living an ultra-luxurious life over their miserable and poor people in Viet Nam.  Never in the former RVN did I see politicians and high-ranking generals have multi-million dollar mansion or vacation houses like today’s Red Capitalists.  Never did I see children of high-ranking officials of the RVN driving cars that even in the U.S. only some affluent people could afford like Rolls Royces, Ferraris and Maseratis!  Just out of curiosity, I was wondering where are those journalists of the 1960 era?  Why don’t they come out to criticize the current cruel communist dictators, the corrupt and immoral Red capitalists like they did during the Ngo Dinh Diem or Nguyen Van Thieu government?  Where have these hypocrites been hiding? 

    Now, as a veteran of the former RVN who partook in the war, I want to say it clear to all my Vietnamese and American brothers-in-arms that the U.S. were never defeated militarily by the ragtag army of the North Vietnamese Communist. Through political negotiation in Paris our politicians settled with major world powers and the parties involved to end the war in Viet Nam politically.  Following orders, you must withdraw from Viet Nam. The last U.S. military unit left Viet Nam in March 1973.  The final collapse of the RVN occurred on April 30, 1975.  There is absolutely no doubt in my mind that the U.S. did not lose the war in Vietnam militarily. You have fulfilled the call of duty admirably and you have fought gallantly.  We salute you.  We thank you for your service and for helping us in Viet Nam.  Ironically, politics dictated the outcome.  Don’t be bothered; only ignorant or misled individuals would buy into the notion that America lost the war in Viet Nam militarily.  I clearly remember President Richard M. Nixon had said in his November 3, 1969 speech about the Vietnamization of the war: “Let us be united for peace. Let us also be united against defeat. Because let us understand: North Vietnam cannot defeat or humiliate the United States. Only Americans can do that.”  I cannot agree more with the late President. 

   It is outrageous to see some unconscionable people who reaped benefits and opportunities America afforded them to become rich and famous, yet for one reason or another they turned anti American. To these sick people, everything America does is wrong and the enemy is always right. The last advice I wish to convey to my younger generation is: “Never trust the Vietnamese Communists”!!!  They have been proven to be evils of the worst kind all through the last half of the 20th Century until the present! They have changed their name from the Vietnamese Communist Party to the Vietnamese Workers Party and from the Democratic Republic of Viet Nam to the Socialist Republic of Viet Nam.  They have transformed from poor peasants before 1975 to multi-millionaires and billionaires through plundering and stealing after April 30, 1975.  In the bottom of their soul, they have not changed.  They are still the inhumane, immoral, deceptive, dangerous, cruel and unpredictable communists. Don’t ever trust or believe them regardless of how sweet or conciliatory they try to convince you.

 Additional columns and presentations of interest:

A searing essay by Phil Jennings: http://www.nysun.com/national/justifying-betrayal-of-vietnam-emerges-as-raison/90094/.

Video of the Atlanta Vietnam Veterans Business Association Meeting – Oct 3d, 2017. Every presenter makes significant points. Of particular interest is veteran, now attorney, Cary King. His talk about “stacking witnesses” begins at 9:30. http://www.pba.org/veterans/.

A forum discussion from the Center for Strategic and International Studies may be found at the following: https://www.csis.org/events/discussion-landmark-documentary-vietnam-war-ken-burns-and-lynn-novick. Of the eight panelists three worked as advisors to the film. The discussion reveals a very diverse set of comments, some highly supportive of Burns, some very, very critical of the bias of the presentation.

This column by the daughters of President Nixon will give the reader a more balanced view to his presidency and war policies than those presented by Burns/Novick. Students might wish to compare these arguments with those of presenters in the CSIS video above who explain how the presidential recordings from JFK to Nixon were highly selective.  https://www.nixonfoundation.org/2017/09/letter-tricia-nixon-cox-julie-nixon-eisenhower/.

The Vietnam War Documentary: Doomed And Despair  is an analysis of the series by Bing West. https://www.hoover.org/research/vietnam-war-documentary-doom-and-despair.

Going beyond analysis of the series, Roger Canfield here explains “Why” these discussions are important: http://www.capoliticalreview.com/top-stories/why-ken-burns-vietnam-on-pbs-matters/.

And finally, the site for Vietnam Veterans for Factual History. There are hundreds of articles, documents and commentaries on this site: https://www.vvfh.org/index.php/news-and-events/burns-documentary.

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

John M. Del Vecchio is the author of The 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: The Fallacy of Inevitability and The Truncation of History

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

 By John M. Del Vecchio

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

The Fallacy of Inevitability

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

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

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

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

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

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

What would have been the reaction of the United States?

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

What would have been the reaction of the United States?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Truncated History

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

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

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

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

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

Conclusions

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

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

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

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

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

John M. Del Vecchio is the author of The 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.