Re: Ken Burns' 'The Vietnam War' -- UPDATED with link to critical analysis

No. Just no.

Many who lived through the era are boycotting it. I'm one.

No apologies. No regrets.

Just. No.

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Here is a very rigorous and may I say righteous analysis of the series by the Trotsky-ites at WSWS:

https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2017/10/02/viet-o02.html

Patrick Martin watched it so I didn't have to -- and his analysis is pretty much what I would have thought.

This is not the sort of documentary about the Vietnam War we need at this time.

Ancient History -- Memorial Day Edition

When I lived in California, I would frequently go to the Vietnam Memorial in Capitol Park in Sacramento on Memorial Day where the names of thousands of Californians killed in the Vietnam War were engraved on a stone monument.

Image by Ron Fulks from Vietvet.org

I knew some of those listed on the memorial, several men and one woman who I'd gone to high school or college with, who'd been drafted or who volunteered because they were from a military family, or they felt a call of duty and didn't know what they were getting into, or maybe for other reasons.

I successfully resisted the draft. I had no intention of volunteering, not for that godforsaken and morally bankrupt war on a vibrant, blameless nation and its people. But I couldn't approach the monument in California's Capitol Park without bursting into tears, and I can't even look at a picture of it now without choking up. I knew some of those who died in Vietnam whose names are engraved on the monument, and I knew many Vietnamese, Cambodian and Laotian refugees who made their way to the US and tried to fit in as best they could in this deeply strange land rather than take the risk of staying in their ruined home countries.

Constantly I ask "Why?" Why did this monumental misadventure happen?

In 1963 or 64 I wrote a paper in a high school class defending the nascent war in Vietnam as something necessary for the good of the nation and the good of the world. Well, this was what the propaganda was telling us at the time. The conflict was small scale -- at least from the distance that Americans saw it -- and the outcome was supposed to be assured: a western-style democracy on the crescent of Indochina. Who could argue with that?

Then it started becoming clear that this whole thing was a lie. From the overthrow and assassination of Diem a few weeks before the assassination of President Kennedy, to the highly dubious Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, to the Tet Offensive and the hundreds of thousands and then millions of Vietnamese and Cambodians and Laotians slaughtered in their multitudes, the forests defoliated, the cities and villages flattened or burned to cinders with napalm, the refugees created, the survivors traumatized, the troops brutalized -- until they revolted, mutinied. It was monstrous. It was wrong.

I marched and chanted and carried signs against the draft and the war and on behalf of those who suffered from the oppression and injustice that this monstrous war represented. And ever afterwards, I have been dubious of any call to war by our August Leaders, for they have learned nothing from the Vietnam disaster -- well, nothing but how to keep the sights and sounds of war out of the public consciousness unless "victory" is certain.

Democracy Now! has run a Vietnam: the Power of Protest retrospective. It's good to remind ourselves.

Peace is more than the absence of war. It is the presence of Justice.



And so I still call for

DIGNITY  JUSTICE  COMMUNITY   

PEACE

On The Vietnam War Crimes Book

The chatter about Nick Turse's "Kill Anything That Moves" is sort of like an out of body experience in that there seems to be a belief abroad in the land that because of Powell and My Lai -- or something -- the government successfully covered up the many other atrocities and war crimes that characterized the Vietnam War and nobody knew what was going on over there.

Oh yes, we knew. The Vietnamese certainly knew as well. So did pretty much anybody around the world who bothered to pay attention.

We knew from the beginning that this was an atrocious, monstrous, vile thing going on in the jungles and on the riverbanks and in the rice paddies and in the cities of Vietnam, that it was criminally engaged in and chewing up thousands and thousands of Americans, and who knew how many Vietnamese (we couldn't find out the truth -- or anything close to it -- until after the war was over) in a slaughter and blood fest of gargantuan proportions, a campaign of almost unimaginable destruction and annihilation that seemed to go on forever.

We knew.

We even knew a lot of the details -- the many murders, rapes, and plunders that went unremarked on in the mainstream but were extensively reported in the alternative media of the day, "Ramparts" for example, or in "The Nation." We knew, too, because soldiers came back, broken and soul-destroyed, and told their stories, not just at "Winter Soldier" conclaves, but one by one, to families, friends, co-workers.

We knew.

We couldn't escape it.

Why do you think so many of us opposed this monstrous thing?

Of course not everybody did oppose it. And that's the key understanding about the Vietnam War and why it went on, despite the growing opposition, year in and year out with ever greater levels of crime and atrocity. In fact, most Americans did not opposed it at any time during the war, they applauded it. They cheered on the slaughter, the mayhem, the monstrousness of it all. As long as it was mostly Gooks getting their heads blown off and their nuts crushed, Yay! Americans loved that shit.

They still do.

To pretend that it went on -- and on and on -- because "we didn't know" is absurd. Of course we knew.

But many Americans who knew what was going on approved of it, heartily.

Killing The Other and taking their stuff -- or just killing and maiming them for sport -- after all, is as American as apple pie and motherhood. Vast ideological struggles don't enter in to it. It doesn't matter who the designated Other is or what they believe or where they are. What matters to many Americans is that they be exterminated and their goods and chattel seized. Period.

In other words, the crimes and atrocities in Vietnam -- which were no mysteries when they were going on -- weren't monstrous enough in the eyes of many Americans because the Gooks were still fighting back, they were still winning, and ultimately they won. And today they rule, and they are our best friends in Asia. Go figure.

Though it takes many fewer Americans in the various theaters and outposts of the Great and Glorious War on Terror, the crimes and atrocities of the Vietnam War are repeated on an even vaster -- and bloodier -- scale today. The wonder is not that it goes on, the wonder is that there is such muted opposition.

Of course Nixon's genius was to end the draft, not the war. Ending the draft pulled the rug out from the opposition to the Vietnam War, and once that was done, the thing could go on "quietly" in the background, and be ultimately be wound down and brought to a conclusion. The wonder too is that the Vietnamese "enemy" has never sought revenge for what was done to them.

Adam Curtis Explains It All For You -- Counterinsurgency, That Is

Counterinsurgency -- COIN as it's known -- is the next big thing. In fact, it is being practiced globally by American and mercenary forces and no doubt by others in a kind of cat-and-mouse game constantly churning in the background of more and more people's everyday lives.

Adam Curtis explores the modern and historical versions of COIN in the following film-and-essay for the BBC. It's illuminating and yet strangely antiseptic.

For one thing, Curtis fails to mention the counter insurgency programs including notorious death squads conducted in Central America by various outfits connected with the United States Government during the 1980's. They are generally believed to have been under the direction of John Negroponte (who of course denies everything). Those operations, I would say, were the direct model for the counter insurgency actions undertaken in Iraq under Stanley McCrystal and General St. David Petraeus (who now heads the CIA).

However, Curtis's earlier history of counter insurgency theory and operations as developed by the French and expanded by the United States in Vietnam is fascinating and horrifying. Being aware of the Algerian counter insurgency and Operation Phoenix in Vietnam is one thing, seeing it all laid out the way Curtis does it is something else again.

Another point that Curtis doesn't touch on is that counter insurgency tactics are being employing domestically in the United States and elsewhere in the suppression of political dissent, what's said to be drug crime, and to some extent even in political campaigns.

In other words, doctrines of counter insurgency -- which ironically grow out of Maoist revolutionary concepts -- have become so commonplace as to be taken for granted.

There are lessons to be learned...

HOW TO KILL A RATIONAL PEASANT

AMERICA'S DANGEROUS LOVE AFFAIR WITH COUNTERINSURGENCY

At the beginning of this year one of the weirdest characters ever to become involved in the present Afghan war died. He was called Jack Idema and he was a brilliant con-man. For a moment, during the early part of the war, Idema persuaded all the major TV networks and scores of journalists that he was some kind of special forces super-hero who was using all kinds of "black ops" to track down and arrest the terrorists.

In reality, before 2001, Idema had been running a hotel for pets in North Carolina called The Ultimate Pet Resort. He had been in prison for fraud, and had tried to con journalists before about being some kind of super-spy. But September 11th gave him his chance - and he turned up in Kabul dressed like this.

Continues at the link in the title. Well worth some time to explore.

And in conclusion, Curtis points out what many others suspect, that General St. David Petraeus has been groomed to be Our Next President But One. Though Curtis doesn't mention it, there are rumors circulating now that Petraeus will be Romney's #2, which would mean -- if previous patterns hold -- that if Romney gets to the White House, Petraeus would be in effective charge (much as Cheney was) and would be ruling through Romney.

"Sir! No Sir!"

Ready for Memorial Day?

When I visit the local Vietnam War Memorial I have a hard time controlling my emotions. I knew some of the people whose names appear on the memorial, but not a lot of them compared to the thousands and thousands listed. The abject horror of it all and the sorrow so many of us feel for those who suffered and died is enough to get me shaking with rage and grief.

Why? Why did it happen? We asked then, "Are governments really that dumb?"

The answer is yes, yes they are. Governments are perfectly capable of a kind of mechanistic thinking and behavior that's suited to military endeavors. Whether they are botched or not is beside the point. The point is the thinking process and the behavior it produced and produces.

This is why changing the players in the goon show doesn't significantly affect the show nor in many cases does it change the outcome. Once the commitment was made to "Vietnam" in 1950 -- ie: then still part of French Indochina -- to keep it free of Communist taint, the die was cast and the meatgrinder went into action, slowly at first, then with increasing speed and determination. Once put in motion, there was no stopping it, unless...

Unless the meat refuses to be ground.

That's what this film is about. When the troops -- most of them drafted -- refused to obey or in some cases actively resisted and or even from time to time liquidated their officers, the Vietnam War had to come to an end. There was -- and is -- no way to keep a war going if the troops won't follow command, or do so only in such a way as to make any semblance of 'victory' impossible.

It takes courage, a level of courage that is almost impossible to fathom these days, to go against the tide, to say "No," and to risk everything in the face of an implacable machine like the US military.

But enough men and women in uniform did so in the '60's to slow the war machine in Vietnam and ultimately bring it to a halt in the '70's.

Only to have it re-emerge in clandestine garb in Central America in the '80's, among proxy and private mercenaries, where guerrilla warfare raged for years, wiping out hundreds of thousands of mostly indigenous villagers who wanted nothing more than to be left alone with at least some shred of dignity and a modicum of justice. For wanting these things, they were tortured and murdered and their torturers and murderers were celebrated in the White House as "Freedom Fighters."

Yet even then, there were the courageous ones who say "No!"

And in our nation's current global war against the phantoms of yesterday, there are still troops -- not enough of them in my view -- who say... "NO!"

The Vang Pao Thing -- "The General, His Sisters, and Me"

This morning Doualy Xaykaothao presented a remarkable family history on NPR's Morning Edition that I cannot recommend too highly. One of her grandmothers was a sister of General Vang Pao, a Hmong general in the Royal Lao Army who was recruited by the CIA during the Vietnam Era to organize an anti-Communist resistance in Laos to complement the ongoing tragedy of American and South Vietnamese forces battling the NVA and Viet Cong.

The results weren't pretty. As we know, the Americans and their allies abandoned Indochina and the Indochinese peoples to their fate when the NVA and Viet Cong took over Vietnam and the Pathet Lao and the Khmer Rouge declared their own victories in Laos and Cambodia.

The Hmong people were squeezed out of Laos, many of them becoming refugees in Thailand, but many others coming to the United States as welcome and in many cases honored refugees.

The Hmong sacrificed everything to fight with the Americans. When the cause was lost, though, their peril was stark. Those Hmong who remain in Laos are not is very happy circumstances.

General Vang Pao, who had done so much to organize resistance in Laos became far and away the strongest organizer and personality among the Hmong refugees in the United States. Many of them had settled in California's Central Valley, but there were Hmong communities in many other areas of the country as well.

It was with considerable shock and outrage therefore when the General was arrested in 2007 and indicted in Federal Court, with nine others, for plotting to overthrow the government of Laos, a violation of the Neutrality Act.

It was almost immediately clear to anyone who was following the case that this was yet another instance of Federal justice officials setting up potential violations/violators in order to create a criminal situation and have arrests and a trial. The stories that came out of the investigation and the court were simply outrageous examples of misconduct. Ultimately, the case against the General would be dismissed, after intense protest by thousands of the General's supporters outside the courthouse and in many Hmong, Laotian and Vietnamese communities throughout the country.

Vang Pao died early this year, and his funeral was an extraordinary event.

Doualy Xaykaothao brings the story of her family and the General into sharp and very human focus, something rare in radio.

There are so many stories like this that don't get told in the media, and they need to be. Unless they are, Americans will continue to be ignorant of just how amazing the lives of people outside our own narrow sphere really are.

Stockholm Syndrome -- Excerpt from The Realist, March 1968

Click image to embiggen and go to The Realist Archives...

"In the first week of May, 1967, the International War Crimes Tribunal met in Stockholm, Sweden to hear evidence and render judgment on the US role in the war in Vietnam. The Tribunal was conceived in the fall of 1966 by Lord Bertrand Russell and was to have one primary function: to condemn the US for the war in Vietnam.

In Lord Russell's opening statement to the Tribunal he stated, "In Vietnam, we have done what Hitler did in Europe. We shall suffer the degradation of Nazi Germany unless we act... It is overdue that those without power sit in judgment over those who have it. This is the test we must meet, alone if need be. We are responsible before history.

To accomplish its task the Tribunal brought together some of the great intellectual minds of the West: Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, Issac Deutcher, as well as such European radicals as Lelio Basso, Italian Socialist; Vladimir Dedijer, former Yugoslav partisan; and Mehemet Ali Aybar, Turkish socialist.

From America came Dave Dellinger, Carl Oglesby, and Courtland Cox who sat in for Stokely Carmichael.

From the Far East came Ali Kasuri, chief prosecutor of Pakistan; Amado Henandez, former Huk and poet laureate of the Philippines; and a distinguished delegation of Japanese activists and lawyers. And from Cuba came Melba Hernandez, a national heroine and comrade of Fidel from the early beginnings of the Cuban Revolution in the Sierra Maestra.

[snip]

...yet few people in America or Europe are aware that there even was a Tribunal, not to mention the nature of the evidence collected by the Tribunal. The press simply blacked out most news about the Tribunal, as it was supposed to do by its very nature. Many Third World political activists viewed the Tribunal as did a diplomat from Mali who said: "What is the Tribunal going to do, give Johnson four years in jail?"

[snip]

The Tribunal's judgment was, of course, that the US was guilty of aggression in Vietnam... Having said that, what was said? The judgment had not changed the political reality, which was the war in Vietnam. The steel-pellet bombs and the napalm were being dropped as the Tribunal met as they are being dropped now. "

And so forth. The frustration and the sense of futility expressed by Julius Lester in this piece is palpable. And yet I think he was wrong. Out of this Tribunal came even more concerted action at home and abroad to shut the war down.

Johnson gave up the presidency in the hope that some way could be found to end the war -- if he was out of the way. Of course, what happened through the rest of 1968 ensured that the Indochina bloodbath would continue for five more years -- partly due to assassins' bullets, partly due to reactionary forces in the United States -- but the Tribunal itself brought forth so much information about the horrors that were being inflicted on the people of Vietnam in the name of "democracy," and so much of that information spread so widely, there was no way that war and domination of Vietnam could be sustained.

The Japanese made a documentary about their findings in North Vietnam that is still a powerful statement of what had to be done to end this vile war.

It's something we anti-war folks can learn from today: