Geesh, what Moonbattery!
On Fri, Dec 5, 2014 at 5:28 PM, plainolamerican <[email protected]> wrote: > > > > *Seeing the Reality of the Vietnam War---US interventionist failure is > quite easy to see.* > > On Friday, December 5, 2014 2:57:16 PM UTC-6, MJ wrote: >> >> >> >> *Seeing the Reality of the Vietnam War, 50 Years Late *Jonathan Schell >> and Tom Engelhardt, December 01, 2014 >> >> >> >> *Originally posted at TomDispatch <http://www.tomdispatch.com/>. >> Introduction, Sunday, November 24, 2014*: When I scanned the front page >> of the *New York Times *one recent morning and spotted this headline >> <http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/22/us/politics/in-secret-obama-extends-us-role-in-afghan-combat.html>, >> “In a Shift, Obama Extends U.S. Role in Afghan Combat,” I instantly wanted >> to pick up the phone. It was an urge I had to repress by reminding myself >> that no one would be at the other end. >> >> A lost friend is like a phantom limb. The remarkable Jonathan Schell died >> <http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/175824/tomgram%3A_in_memoriam%3A_jonathan_schell_%281943-2014%29/> >> eight months ago and yet there are still mornings like that one when I feel >> an almost overwhelming desire to talk to him about the latest developments >> on this strange planet of ours. I may no longer be able to do that, but he >> still speaks to me through the body of unforgettable work he left behind, >> including, of course, his various path-breaking books >> <http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175510/tomgram%3A_andy_kroll,_the_unlikely_oracle_of_occupy_wall_street/>. >> In this spirit, on a Thanksgiving Sunday when our longest war – not Vietnam >> but Afghanistan – is extending itself unendingly into the future, it seems >> appropriate to remember him by reposting the last piece he wrote jointly >> for this website and the *Nation* magazine. Its focus was *TomDispatch* >> Managing Editor Nick Turse’s bestselling, award-winning >> <http://www.beforecolumbusfoundation.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/ABA2014PR.pdf> >> *Kill >> Anything That Moves*. >> >> That I can write either “bestselling” or “award-winning” in front of a >> no-holds-barred book on American war crimes in Vietnam still stuns me. I >> edited *Kill Anything That Moves* at Metropolitan Books (where I co-run >> the American Empire Project series >> <http://www.americanempireproject.com/>) and in the years it was being >> written, I regularly told its author that, important as his work was, he >> should expect it, on publication, to fall off the edge of the Earth. How >> wrong I was. It’s useful for all of us to be reminded – especially in grim >> times – that the future is largely unknowable, that it regularly makes >> fools of us all, and that that’s the good news >> <http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/677/rebecca_solnit_acts_of_hope>, not >> the bad news. >> >> Reading *Kill Anything That Moves* >> <http://www.amazon.com/dp/1608463656/ref=nosim/?tag=antiwarbookstore>, >> Jonathan Schell was transported into his past and taken aback by the full >> picture offered of the American war he had covered so memorably >> <http://www.amazon.com/dp/0306809265/ref=nosim/?tag=antiwarbookstore>. >> He told me so at the time and then used the book, soon after its >> publication, to look back on his own Vietnam experience, and ours as well. >> Reposting his piece seems like an appropriate way to mark the extension of >> our present Afghan war yet further into the future. >> >> *~ Tom Original Introduction*: Forty-six years ago, in January 1966, >> Jonathan Schell, a 23-year-old not-quite-journalist found himself at the >> farming village of Ben Suc, 30 miles from the South Vietnamese capital, >> Saigon. It had long been supportive of the Vietcong. Now, in what was >> dubbed Operation Cedar Falls, the U.S. military (with Schell in tow) >> launched an operation to solve that problem. The “solution” was typical of >> how Americans fought the Vietnam War. All the village’s 3,500 inhabitants >> were to be removed to a squalid refugee camp and Ben Suc itself simply >> obliterated – every trace of the place for all time. Schell’s remarkable >> and remarkably blunt observations on this grim operation were, no less >> remarkably, published in the *New Yorker* magazine and then as a book, >> causing a stir in a country where anti-war sentiment was growing fast. >> >> In 1967, Schell returned to Vietnam and spent weeks in the northern part >> of the country watching from the backseats of tiny U.S. forward air control >> planes as parts of two provinces were quite literally blown away, house by >> house, village by village, an experience he recalls in today’s >> *TomDispatch* post. From that came another *New Yorker* piece and then a >> book, *The Military Half*, which offered (and still offers) an unmatched >> journalistic vision of what the Vietnam War looked like. It was a moment >> well captured in a mocking song one of the American pilots sang for him >> after an operation in which he had called in bombs on two Vietnamese >> churches, but somehow missed the white flag flying in front of them. The >> relevant stanza went: >> >> >> >> >> >> >> *“Strafe the town and kill the people, Drop napalm in the square, Get out >> early every Sunday And catch them at their morning prayer.” *If >> Afghanistan is the war we somehow haven’t managed to notice most of the >> time, even while it’s going on, Vietnam was the war Americans couldn’t >> forget and have never been able to kick, possibly because we never managed >> to come to grips with just what it was and what we did there. Now, so many >> years later, in a monumental essay appearing in print in the *Nation* >> <http://www.thenation.com/> magazine and online here at *TomDispatch*, >> Schell returns (via Nick Turse’s new book, *Kill Anything That Moves: >> The Real American War in Vietnam* >> <http://www.amazon.com/dp/1608463656/ref=nosim/?tag=antiwarbookstore>) >> to the haunted terrain he last visited so many decades ago*. *All of us, >> whether we know it or not, still live with the ghosts of that moment. >> >> *~ Tom * >> *How Did the Gates of Hell Open in Vietnam? *By Jonathan Schell >> >> For half a century we have been arguing about “the Vietnam War.” Is it >> possible that we didn’t know what we were talking about? After all that has >> been written (some 30,000 books and counting), it scarcely seems possible, >> but such, it turns out, has literally been the case. >> >> Now, in *Kill Anything that Moves* >> <http://www.amazon.com/dp/1608463656/ref=nosim/?tag=antiwarbookstore>, >> Nick Turse has for the first time put together a comprehensive picture, >> written with mastery and dignity, of what American forces actually were >> doing in Vietnam. The findings disclose an almost unspeakable truth. >> Meticulously piecing together newly released classified information, >> court-martial records, Pentagon reports, and firsthand interviews in >> Vietnam and the United States, as well as contemporaneous press accounts >> and secondary literature, Turse discovers that episodes of devastation, >> murder, massacre, rape, and torture once considered isolated atrocities >> were in fact the norm, adding up to a continuous stream of atrocity, >> unfolding, year after year, throughout that country. >> >> It has been Turse’s great achievement to see that, thanks to the special >> character of the war, its prime reality – an accurate overall picture of >> what physically was occurring on the ground – had never been assembled; >> that with imagination and years of dogged work this could be done; and that >> even a half-century after the beginning of the war it still should be done. >> Turse acknowledges that, even now, not enough is known to present this >> picture in statistical terms. To be sure, he offers plenty of numbers – for >> instance the mind-boggling estimates that during the war there were some >> two million civilians killed and some five million wounded, that the United >> States flew 3.4 million aircraft sorties, and that it expended 30 billion >> pounds of munitions, releasing the equivalent in explosive force of 640 >> Hiroshima bombs. >> >> Yet it would not have been enough to simply accumulate anecdotal evidence >> of abuses. Therefore, while providing an abundance of firsthand accounts, >> he has supplemented this approach. Like a fabric, a social reality – a >> town, a university, a revolution, a war – has a pattern and a texture. No >> fact is an island. Each one is rich in implications, which, so to speak, >> reach out toward the wider area of the surrounding facts. When some of >> these other facts are confirmed, they begin to reveal the pattern and >> texture in question. >> >> Turse repeatedly invites us to ask what sort of larger picture each story >> implies. For example, he writes: >> >> >> >> *“If one man and his tiny team could claim more KIAs [killed in action] >> than an entire battalion without raising red flags among superiors; if a >> brigade commander could up the body count by picking off civilians from his >> helicopter with impunity; if a top general could institutionalize >> atrocities through the profligate use of heavy firepower in areas packed >> with civilians – then what could be expected down the line, especially >> among heavily armed young infantrymen operating in the field for weeks, >> angry, tired, and scared, often unable to locate the enemy and yet >> relentlessly pressed for kills?” *Like a tightening net, the web of >> stories and reports drawn from myriad sources coalesces into a convincing, >> inescapable portrait of this war – a portrait that, as an American, you do >> not wish to see; that, having seen, you wish you could forget, but that you >> should not forget; and that the facts force you to see and remember and >> take into account when you ask yourself what the United States has done and >> been in the last half century, and what it still is doing and still is. >> >> >> >> *Scorched Earth in I Corps *My angle of vision on these matters is a >> highly particular one. In early August 1967, I arrived in I Corps, the >> northernmost district of American military operations in what was then >> South Vietnam. I was there to report for the* New Yorker* on the “air >> war.” The phrase was a misnomer. The Vietnamese foe, of course, had no >> assets in the air in the South, and so there was no “war” of that >> description. >> >> There was only the unilateral bombardment of the land and people by the >> fantastic array of aircraft assembled by the United States in Vietnam. >> These ranged from the B-52, which laid down a pattern of destruction a mile >> long and several football fields wide; to fighter bombers capable of >> dropping, along with much else, 500-pound bombs and canisters of napalm; to >> the reconfigured DC-3 equipped with a cannon capable of firing 100 rounds >> per second; to the ubiquitous fleets of helicopters, large and small, that >> crowded the skies. All this was abetted by continuous artillery fire into >> “free-fire” zones and naval bombardment from ships just off the coast. >> >> By the time I arrived, the destruction of the villages in the region and >> the removal of their people to squalid refugee camps was approaching >> completion. (However, they often returned to their blasted villages, now >> subject to indiscriminate artillery fire.) Only a few pockets of villages >> survived. I witnessed the destruction of many of these in Quang Ngai and >> Quang Tinh provinces from the back seat of small Cessnas called Forward Air >> Control planes. >> >> As we floated overhead day after day, I would watch long lines of houses >> burst into flames one after another as troops moved through the area of >> operation. In the meantime, the Forward Air Controllers were calling in air >> strikes as requested by radio from troops on the ground. In past >> operations, the villagers had been herded out of the area into the camps. >> But this time, no evacuation had been ordered, and the population was being >> subjected to the full fury of a ground and air assault. A rural society was >> being torn to pieces before my eyes. >> >> The broad results of American actions in I Corps were thus visible and >> measurable from the air. No scorched earth policy had been announced but >> scorched earth had been the result. Still, a huge piece was missing from >> the puzzle. I was not able to witness most of the significant operations on >> the ground firsthand. I sought to interview some soldiers but they would >> not talk, though one did hint at dark deeds. “You wouldn’t believe it so >> I’m not going to tell you,” he said to me. “No one’s ever going to find out >> about some things, and after this war is over, and we’ve all gone home, no >> one is ever going to know.” >> >> In other words, like so many reporters in Vietnam, I saw mainly one >> aspect of one corner of the war. What I had seen was ghastly, but it was >> not enough to serve as a basis for generalizations about the conduct of the >> war as a whole. Just a few years later, in 1969, thanks to the determined >> efforts of a courageous soldier, Ron Ridenhour >> <http://www.ridenhour.org/about_ron.html>, and the persistence of a >> reporter, Seymour Hersh <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seymour_Hersh>, >> one piece of the hidden truth about ground operations in I Corp came to >> light. >> >> It was the My Lai massacre, in which more than 500 civilians were >> murdered in cold blood by Charlie Company, 1st Battalion, 20th Infantry, of >> the Americal Division. In subsequent years, news of other atrocities in the >> area filtered into the press, often many years after the fact. For example, >> in 2003 the *Toledo Blade* disclosed >> <http://www.toledoblade.com/special-tiger-force> a campaign of torture >> and murder over a period of months, including the summary execution of two >> blind men by a “reconnaissance” squad called Tiger Force. Still, no >> comprehensive picture of the generality of ground operations in the area >> emerged. >> >> It has not been until the publication of Turse’s book that the everyday >> reality of which these atrocities were a part has been brought so fully to >> light. Almost immediately after the American troops arrived in I Corps, a >> pattern of savagery was established. My Lai, it turns out, was exceptional >> only in the numbers killed. >> >> Turse offers a massacre at a village called Trieu Ai in October 1967 as a >> paradigm. A marine company suffered the loss of a man to a booby trap near >> the village, which had in fact had been mostly burned down by other >> American forces a few days earlier. Some villagers had, however, returned >> for their belongings. Now, the Marine company, enraged by its loss but >> unable to find the enemy, entered the village firing their M-16s, setting >> fire to any intact houses, and tossing grenades into bomb shelters. >> >> A Marine marched a woman into a field and shot her. Another reported that >> there were children in the shelters that were being blown up. His superior >> replied, “Tough shit, they grow up to be VC [Vietcong].” Five or ten people >> rushed out of a shelter when a grenade was thrown into it. They were cut >> down in a hail of fire. Turse comments: >> >> >> >> *“In the story of Trieu Ai one can see virtually the entire war writ >> small. Here was the repeated aerial bombing and artillery fire… Here was >> the deliberate burning of peasant homes and the relocation of villagers to >> refugee camps… Angry troops primed to lash out, often following losses >> within the unit; civilians trapped in their paths; and officers in the >> field issuing ambiguous or illegal orders to young men conditioned to obey >> – that was the basic recipe for many of the mass killings carried out by >> army soldiers and marines over the years.” *The savagery often extended >> to the utmost depravity: gratuitous torture, killing for target practice, >> slaughter of children and babies, gang rape. Consider the following >> all-too-typical actions of Company B, 1st Battalion, 35th infantry >> beginning in October 1967: >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> *“The company stumbled upon an unarmed young boy. ‘Someone caught him up >> on a hill, and they brought him down and the lieutenant asked who wanted to >> kill him…’ medic Jamie Henry later told army investigators. A radioman and >> another medic volunteered for the job. The radioman… ’kicked the boy in the >> stomach and the medic took him around behind a rock and I heard one >> magazine go off complete on automatic…’ “A few days after this incident, >> members of that same unit brutalized an elderly man to the point of >> collapse and then threw him off a cliff without even knowing whether he was >> dead or alive… “A couple of days after that, they used an unarmed man for >> target practice… “And less than two weeks later, members of Company B >> reportedly killed five unarmed women… “Unit members rattled off a litany of >> other brutal acts committed by the company… [including] a living woman who >> had an ear cut off while her baby was thrown to the ground and stomped on…” >> * >> >> *Pumping Up the Body Count *Turse’s findings completed the picture of >> the war in I Corps for me. Whatever the policy might have been in >> theory, the reality*,* on the ground as in the air, was the scorched >> earth I had witnessed from the Forward Air Control planes. Whatever the >> United States thought it was doing in I Corps, it was actually waging >> systematic war against the people of the region. >> >> And so it was, as Turse voluminously documents, throughout the country. >> Details differed from area to area but the broad picture was the same as >> the one in I Corps. A case in point is the war in the Mekong Delta, home to >> some five to six million people in an area of less than 15,000 square miles >> laced with rivers and canals. In February 1968, General Julian Ewell, soon >> to be known by Vietnamese and Americans alike as “the Butcher of the >> Delta,” was placed in charge of the 9th Infantry Division. >> >> In December 1968, he launched >> <http://www.thenation.com/article/my-lai-month> Operation Speedy >> Express. His specialty, amounting to obsession, was increasing “the body >> count,” ordained by the high command as the key measure of progress in >> defeating the enemy. Theoretically, only slain soldiers were to be included >> in that count but – as anyone, soldier or reporter, who spent a half-hour >> in the field quickly learned – virtually all slain Vietnamese, most of them >> clearly civilians, were included in the total. The higher an officer’s body >> count, the more likely his promotion. Privates who turned in high counts >> were rewarded with mini-vacations. Ewell set out to increase the ratio of >> supposed enemy soldiers killed to American soldiers killed. Pressure to do >> so was ratcheted up at all levels in the 9th Division. One of his chiefs of >> staff “went berserk,” in the words of a later chief of staff. >> >> The means were simple: immensely increase the already staggering >> firepower being used and loosen the already highly permissive “rules of >> engagement” by, for example, ordering more night raids. In a typical night >> episode, Cobra gunships strafed a herd of water buffalo and seven children >> tending them. All died, and the children were reported as enemy soldiers >> killed in action. >> >> The kill ratios duly rose from an already suspiciously high 24 “Vietcong” >> for every dead American to a completely surreal 134 Vietcong per American. >> The unreality, however, did not simply lie in the inflated kill numbers but >> in the identities of the corpses. Overwhelmingly, they were not enemy >> soldiers but civilians. A “Concerned Sergeant” who protested the operation >> in an anonymous letter to the high command at the time described the >> results as he witnessed them: >> >> >> >> *“A battalion would kill maybe 15 to 20 a day. With 4 battalions in the >> Brigade that would be maybe 40 to 50 a day or 1200 a month 1500, easy. (One >> battalion claimed almost 1000 body counts one month!) If I am only 10% >> right, and believe me its lots more, then I am trying to tell you about >> 120-150 murders, or a My Lay [My Lai] each month for over a year.” *This >> range of estimates was confirmed in later analyses. Operations in I Corp >> perhaps depended more on infantry attacks supported by air strikes, while >> Speedy Express depended more on helicopter raids and demands for high body >> counts, but the results were the same: indiscriminate warfare, unrestrained >> by calculation or humanity, on the population of South Vietnam. >> >> Turse reminds us that off the battlefield, too, casual violence – such as >> the use of military trucks to run over Vietnamese on the roads, seemingly >> for entertainment – was widespread. The commonest terms for Vietnamese were >> the racist epithets “gooks,” “dinks,” and “slopes.” And the U.S. military >> machine was supplemented by an equally brutal American-South Vietnamese >> prison system in which torture was standard procedure and extrajudicial >> executions common. >> >> How did it happen? How did a country that believes itself to be guided by >> principles of decency permit such savagery to break out and then allow it >> to continue for more than a decade? >> >> Why, when the first Marines arrived in I Corps in early 1965, did so many >> of them almost immediately cast aside the rules of war as well as all >> ordinary scruples and sink to the lowest levels of barbarism? What chains >> of cause and effect linked “the best and the brightest” of America’s top >> universities and corporations who were running the war with the murder of >> those buffalo boys in the Mekong Delta? >> >> How did the gates of hell open? This is a different question from the >> often-asked one of how the United States got into the war. I cannot pretend >> to begin to do it justice here. The moral and cognitive seasickness that >> has attended the Vietnam War from the beginning afflicts us still. Yet *Kill >> Anything that Moves* permits us, finally, to at least formulate the >> question in light of the actual facts of the case. >> >> Reflections would certainly seem in order for a country that, since >> Vietnam, has done its best to unlearn even such lessons as were learned >> from that debacle in preparation for other misbegotten wars like those in >> Iraq and Afghanistan. Here, however, are a few thoughts, offered in a >> spirit of thinking aloud. >> >> >> >> *The Fictitious War and the Real One *Roughly since the massacre at My >> Lai was revealed, people have debated whether the atrocities of the war >> were the product of decisions by troops on the ground or of high policy, of >> orders issued from above – whether they were “aberrations” or “operations.” >> The first school obviously lends itself to bad-apple-in-a-healthy-barrel >> thinking, blaming individual units for unacceptable behavior while >> exonerating the higher ups; the second tends to exonerate the troops while >> pinning the blame on their superiors. >> >> Turse’s book shows that the barrel was rotten through and through. It >> discredits the “aberration” school once and for all. Yet it does not >> exactly offer support for the orders-from-the-top school either. Perhaps >> the problem always was that these alternatives framed the situation >> inaccurately. The relationship between policy and practice in Vietnam was, >> it turns out, far more peculiar than the two choices suggest. >> >> It’s often said that truth is the first casualty of war. In Vietnam, >> however, it was not just that the United States was doing one thing while >> saying another (for example, destroying villages while claiming to protect >> them), true as that was. Rather, from its inception the war’s structure was >> shaped by an attempt to superimpose a false official narrative on a reality >> of a wholly different character. >> >> In the official war, the people of South Vietnam were resisting the >> attempts of the North Vietnamese to conquer them in the name of world >> communism. The United States was simply assisting them in their patriotic >> resistance. In reality, most people in South Vietnam, insofar as they were >> politically minded, were nationalists who sought to push out foreign >> conquerors: first, the French, then the Japanese, and next the Americans, >> along with their client state, the South Vietnamese government which was >> never able to develop any independent strength in a land supposedly its >> own. This fictitious official narrative was not added on later to disguise >> unpalatable facts; it was baked into the enterprise from the outset. >> >> Accordingly, the collision of policy and reality first took place on the >> ground in Trieu Ai village and its like. The American forces, including >> their local commanders, were confronted with a reality that the >> policymakers had not faced and would not face for many long years. >> Expecting to be welcomed as saviors, the troops found themselves in a sea >> of nearly universal hostility. >> >> No manual was handed out in Washington to deal with the unexpected >> situation. It was left to the soldiers to decide what to do. Throughout the >> country, they started to improvise. To this extent, policy was indeed being >> made in the field. Yet it was not within the troops’ power to reverse basic >> policy; they could not, for instance, have withdrawn themselves from the >> whole misconceived exercise. They could only respond to the unexpected >> circumstances in which they found themselves. >> >> The result would combine an incomprehensible and impossible mission >> dictated from above (to win the “hearts and minds” of a population already >> overwhelmingly hostile, while pulverizing their society) and locally >> conceived illegal but sometimes vague orders that left plenty of room for >> spontaneous, rage-driven improvisation on the ground. In this gap between >> the fiction of high policy and the actuality of the real war was born the >> futile, abhorrent assault on the people of Vietnam. >> >> The improvisatory character of all this, as Turse emphasizes, can be seen >> in the fact that while the abuses of civilians were pervasive they were not >> consistent. As he summarizes what a villager in one brutalized area told >> him decades later, “Sometimes U.S. troops handed out candies. Sometimes >> they shot at people. Sometimes they passed through a village hardly >> touching a thing. Sometimes they burned all the homes. ‘We didn’t >> understand the reasons why they acted in the way they did.’” >> >> Alongside the imaginary official war, then, there grew up the real war on >> the ground, the one that Turse has, for the first time, adequately >> described. It is no defense of what happened to point out that, for the >> troops, it was not so much their orders from on high as their circumstances >> – what Robert J. Lifton has called “atrocity-producing situations” – that >> generated their degraded behavior. Neither does such an account provide >> escape from accountability for the war’s architects without whose blind and >> misguided policies these infernal situations never would have arisen. >> >> In one further bitter irony, this real war came at a certain point to be >> partially codified at ever higher levels of command into policies that did >> translate into orders from the top. In effect, the generals gradually – if >> absurdly, in light of the supposed goals of the war – sanctioned and >> promoted the *de facto* war on the population. Enter General Ewell and >> his body counts. >> >> In other words, the improvising moved up the chain of command until the >> soldiers *were* following orders when they killed civilians, though, as >> in the case of Ewell, those orders rarely took exactly that form. >> Nonetheless, the generals sometimes went quite far in formulating these new >> rules, even when they flagrantly contradicted official policies. >> >> To give one example supplied by Turse, in 1965, General William >> Westmoreland, who was made commander of U.S. forces in Vietnam in 1964, >> implicitly declared war on the peasantry of South Vietnam. He said: >> >> >> >> *“Until now the war has been characterized by a substantial majority of >> the population remaining neutral. In the past year we have seen an >> escalation to a higher intensity in the war. This will bring about a moment >> of decision for the peasant farmer. He will have to choose if he stays >> alive.” *Like his underlings, Westmoreland, was improvising. This new >> policy of, in effect, terrorizing the peasantry into submission was utterly >> inconsistent with the Washington narrative of winning hearts and minds, but >> it was fully consistent with everything his forces were actually doing and >> about to do in I Corps and throughout the country. >> >> >> >> *A Skyscraper of Lies *One more level of the conflict needs to be >> mentioned in this context. Documents show that, as early as the mid-1960s, >> the key mistaken assumptions of the war – that the Vietnamese foe was a >> tentacle of world communism, that the war was a front in the Cold War >> rather than an episode in the long decolonization movement of the twentieth >> century, that the South Vietnamese were eager for rescue by the United >> States – were widely suspected to be mistaken in official Washington. But >> one other assumption was not found to be mistaken: that whichever >> administration “lost” Vietnam would likely lose the next election. >> >> Rightly or wrongly, presidents lived in terror of losing the war and so >> being politically destroyed by a movement of the kind Senator Joe McCarthy >> launched after the American “loss” of China in 1949. Later, McGeorge Bundy, >> Lyndon Johnson’s national security advisor, would describe >> <http://www.amazon.com/dp/0805090878/ref=nosim/?tag=antiwarbookstore> >> his understanding of the president’s frame of mind at the time this way: >> >> >> >> *“LBJ isn’t deeply concerned about who governs Laos, or who governs South >> Vietnam – he’s deeply concerned with what the average American voter is >> going to think about how he did in the ball game of the Cold War. The great >> Cold War championship gets played in the largest stadium in the United >> States and he, Lyndon Johnson, is the quarterback, and if he loses, how >> does he do in the next election? So don’t lose. Now that’s too simple, but >> it’s where he is. He’s living with his own political survival every time he >> looks at these questions.” *In this context, domestic political >> considerations trumped the substantive reasoning that, once the futility >> and horror of the enterprise had been revealed, might have led to an end to >> the war. More and more it was understood to be a murderous farce, but >> politics dictated that it must continue. As long as this remained the case, >> no news from Vietnam could lead to a reversal of the war policies. >> >> This was the top floor of the skyscraper of lies that was the Vietnam >> War. Domestic politics was the largest and most fact-proof of the >> atrocity-producing situations. Do we imagine that this has changed? >> >> *Jonathan Schell, a fellow at The Nation Institute, a * TomDispatch >> <http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175871/tomgram%3A_jonathan_schell,_a_niagara_falls_of_post-9_11_violence/>* >> regular, and the peace and disarmament correspondent for the *Nation* >> magazine, died >> <http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/175824/tomgram%3A_in_memoriam%3A_jonathan_schell_%281943-2014%29/> >> on March 25, 2014. Among many other works, he was the author of * The >> Real War >> <http://www.amazon.com/dp/0306809265/ref=nosim/?tag=antiwarbookstore>*, >> a collection of his *New Yorker >> >> * reportage on the Vietnam War. This was originally a joint *TomDispatch >> */*Nation* article and appeared in print in the *Nation *magazine*. >> >> http://original.antiwar.com/engelhardt/2014/11/30/seeing- >> the-reality-of-the-vietnam-war-50-years-late-2/ >> > -- > -- > Thanks for being part of "PoliticalForum" at Google Groups. > For options & help see http://groups.google.com/group/PoliticalForum > > * Visit our other community at http://www.PoliticalForum.com/ > * It's active and moderated. Register and vote in our polls. > * Read the latest breaking news, and more. > > --- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "PoliticalForum" group. > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an > email to [email protected]. > For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. > -- -- Thanks for being part of "PoliticalForum" at Google Groups. For options & help see http://groups.google.com/group/PoliticalForum * Visit our other community at http://www.PoliticalForum.com/ * It's active and moderated. Register and vote in our polls. * Read the latest breaking news, and more. --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "PoliticalForum" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
