oh ... so you think the Vietnam police action was a success? what moonbattery!
On Friday, December 5, 2014 5:36:03 PM UTC-6, KeithInTampa wrote: > > Geesh, what Moonbattery! > > > > On Fri, Dec 5, 2014 at 5:28 PM, plainolamerican <[email protected] > <javascript:>> 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] <javascript:>. >> For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. >> > > -- -- Thanks for being part of "PoliticalForum" at Google Groups. 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