Posted on 02/20/2014 2:20:18 PM PST by icwhatudo
My child is doing a paper on the reasons we were unable to stop communism from spreading to South Vietnam. I was hoping you could suggest some good sources/websites/books for a young conservative interested in the real story of Vietnam.
I remember one site on FR years ago ("helicopter pilot" or something) that had all kinds of polls showing things were opposite from what Hollywood would have you believe like: support for the war was high, that service members were proud, that returning vets were less likely to use drugs/commit crimes, etc etc.
http://www.airpower.maxwell.af.mil/airchronicles/aureview/1974/jan-feb/hasdorff.html
Vietnam in Retrospect
An Interview with Ambassador Frederick E. Nolting, Jr.
I lived near there during that time. My dad was the guy in Saigon at the embassy, on the news every night, doing the press conferences, that some people called the “5 O’Clock Follies”.
A friend of the family wrote an e-book about that time that may have been the most dispassionate examination of life on the ground I have ever seen. His name is John Campbell and I think people should give a look at his write-up, which I believe was titled, “Are We Winning, Are They Winning?”. I don’t have it nearby to check the title.
I think a fundamentally underestimated book that says important things about the Vietnam War is Charles Kuralt’s autobiography, “A Life On The Road”. Everybody should read it that has not, to better understand what became of American TV news, but with respect to the Vietnam War, he makes a concise statement: something like, “I wonder what Lt. Soon might have said about that.” It would open your youngster’s eyes to read what Charles Kuralt, the guy that began CBS television news broadcasts, and what John Campbell, the guy that worked with A Teams, have to say about long-forgotten aspects of that terrible war.
Kuralt’s book is the most important book, with respect to explaining where we are today. It documents the rise of Cronkite and Rather, two guys that never did the leg-work for the “news” they spoke over the microphones. Kuralt became beloved as the folksy guy on Sunday morning, but most of us do not know that his shiny head didn’t work well on early TV and that he was the original news guy on TV that brought America actual news, by going into the field and gathering it. Kuralt lived in Vietnam and traveled with Lt. Soon’s unit, whereas, Cronkite sat in a bar in Saigon and declared the war lost, after the Tet Offensive, when the North Vietnamese effort had been devastated. For even-handed, gentle, analysis of a terrible subject, you could not do better than Kuralt and Campbell.
The Politically Incorrect Guide to the Vietnam War (The Politically Incorrect Guides) Paperback
by Phillip Jennings
This Time We Win: Revisiting the Tet Offensive
by James S Robbins
Lessons from the Vietnam War: Truths the Media Never Told You
by Leonard M (Mike) Scruggs
The Black Book of the American Left: The Collected Conservative Writings of David Horowitz
The Aggressors: Ho Chi Minh, North Vietnam, and the Communist Bloc
by Martin Scott Catino
Your child could learn something just by looking up these books on Amazon and reading the reviews. It’s a way to begin to travel deeper in to the question.
Another resource could be talking to vets who were there. Oral history and anecdotal evidence matter, too, as long as their limitations are understood.
I think the domestic USA response to the war (heavily influenced by Moscow) and the war itself have to be understood in terms of the global plans of communism. The tragedy of the 50’s, McCarthyism (McCarthy’s utter incompetence at handling the blowback from his efforts, as well as his failure to effectively manage his initiative in the first place), turned in to the travesty of the 60’s when people were weary and wary of the belief that communism was a threat.
Another excellent source for background atmosphere of the time, are the timeless papers written by Admiral Stockdale on Stoic philosophy and its value to him under brutal torture as a POW in the Hanoi Hilton. These essays are freely downloadable off the web (and already paid for with your tax dollars):
http://www.usna.edu/Ethics/_files/documents/stoicism1.pdf
http://www.usna.edu/Ethics/_files/documents/Stoicism2.pdf
But for you to suggest we weren't there to protect our allies is just, well, you're an idiot. Please tell me you're just a troll from Dummies Underground. I knew we had fools in the Repugnant party. I just didn't know we had stupid fools.
Don't bother to respond. You're on my ignore list.
Here is a collection of Gallup polling that might surprise people.
Your son should also know that Vietnam was overwhelmingly fought by volunteers, just as WWII was overwhelmingly fought by draftees.
- Nixon: A Life
- by Jonathan Aitken, MP
This may perhaps be a bit off-topic, but I found it quite interesting. The author is British, and was ordered by his boss (who was slated to meet Nixon) to write up a memo about who Nixon was and what he thought. This was after Nixon’s political defeats for the presidency in 1960, and his subsequent loss in his run for Governor of California, and Aitken just took his cue from the conventional wisdom, and wrote up a bunch of liberal cant. His boss set him straight, and to his credit Aitken took his cue and became very interested in Nixon. Subsequently he became a member of Parliament, and subsequently wrote this book.
I didn’t say I was there, dumb ass. I said I served, that means in the US military.
Apparently you don’t have to try hard to at all to be an ass hole.
Yes, do not forget Media bias, the fifth column:
Underlying the importance of such is the often quoted exchange between Colonel Harry G. Summers, Jr. and his North Vietnamese counterpart, Colonel Tu. During one of his liaison trips to Hanoi, Colonel Harry told Tu, “You know, you never beat us on the battlefield,” Colonel Tu responded, “That may be so, but it is also irrelevant.”[84]
The success of the propaganda war has seemed enigmatic to many. “If there is to be an inquiry related to the Vietnam War, it should be into the reasons why enemy propaganda was so widespread in this country, and why the enemy was able to condition the public to such an extent that the best educated segments of our population (that is, media and university elite) gave credence to the most incredible allegations.” (Final Report - Chief of Military History - U.S. Government)
CBS Evening News with Walter Cronkite regularly carried news reports from its Moscow Bureau Chief, Bernard Redmont. When peace negotiations commenced with North Vietnam in Paris, Redmont became CBS News Paris Bureau Chief. What Redmont never reported during the ten year conflict was, Redmont had been a KGB operative since the 1930s, and member of the notorious Silvermaster group.[87] Redmont was the only journalist to whom his fellow Comintern party member, and North Vietnamese chief negotiator, Mai Van Bo, granted an interview to bring the Communist point of view into American living rooms in what has been called, “the living room war.”
In addition to his biased reporting, FBI documents, obtained through a Freedom of Information Act by Yahoo news, evidence that legendary CBS News anchor Walter Cronkite collaborated with anti-Vietnam War activists in the 1960s, going so far as to offer advice on how to raise the public profile of protests and even promising that CBS News would rent a helicopter to take liberal Senator Edmund Muskie to and from the site of an anti-war rally.[88]
British “Encounter” journalist Robert Elegant stated,
For the first time in modern history, the outcome of a war was determined not on the battlefield but on the printed page and, above all, on the television screen. Looking back coolly, I believe it can be said (surprising as it may still sound) that South Vietnamese and American forces actually won the limited military struggle. They virtually crushed the Viet Cong in the South, the “native” guerrillas who were directed, reinforced, and equipped from Hanoi; and thereafter they threw back the invasion by regular North Vietnamese divisions. Nonetheless, the war was finally lost to the invaders after the U.S. disengagement because the political pressures built up by the media had made it quite impossible for Washington to maintain even the minimal material and moral support that would have enabled the Saigon regime to continue effective resistance....Never before Vietnam had the collective policy of the media sought by graphic and unremitting distortion, the victory of the enemies of the correspondents own side.
More: http://www.conservapedia.com/Vietnam_war#Media_Bias
Hope you have a nice day.
“Interesting then that when early independence was declared for Vietnam, major sections of the American constitution were incorporated into theirs. “
Constitutions mean nothing under Communist rule which Ho Chi Minh understood perfectly well. It was nothing more than propaganda designed to fool gullible westerners.
North Vietnam was a one party totalitarian state- if as you assume he was wedded to the American constitution then you must explain why he put none of it into practice. He didn’t because he never intended to. The USSR’s constitution also sounded good.
Two interesting takes on history. Oh, well. My good fortune came at the expense of others. Yet at least I was able to show the sorrow and the beauty of the place to my daughter thirty years later.
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