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Re: Burying Vietnam, Launching Perpetual War
Excellent piece, Thai. Thanks for posting it.
This might sink any chance Nick's book might have among the Tulipers, but I highly recommend his book “Kill Anything That Moves: The Real American War in Vietnam.” It's one of the most important books ever written about the Vietnam War.
Also of critical important is Peter Davis' Academy Award winning documentary, "Hearts and Minds." Reading the article you posted motivated me to take advantage of this night's insomnia and watch it again. That last reel still overwhelms me, even after all these years. It's a masterpiece.
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Re: Burying Vietnam, Launching Perpetual War
Vietnam still relevant?
On April 28, 1955, every time the fighting subsided in Saigon, elements belonging to neither side fired shots, which reanimated the battle. These "snipers", christened as "The Third Force", were rumored to be Vietnamese General Trinh Minh The’s men. However, neither these mysterious shooters nor their commanders were ever positively identified. Likewise, the identity of the Ukrainian "Maidan snipers" remains a mystery.
(the so-called "shooters" who killed 14 policemen, wounded some 85, and killed 45 protesting civilians in the Ukrainian capital were outside third-party agitators. Many witnesses, including police officials, believe these foreign elements were introduced by pro-Western factions)
Life Magazine said on May 13, 1957, "Just how Ngo Dinh Diem came to power has never been divulged." But later on, in A Bright Shining Lie, Neil Sheehan called the legendary covert operator Edward Lansdale the "father of South Vietnam". The identity of the "father of modern Ukraine" is yet to be revealed: it may take decades to get the right documents declassified, or it may happen earlier, courtesy of yet another Snowden.
Whoever the "father of modern Ukraine" is, or whoever they are, they probably learned Lansdale's advice, "You can … get away with almost anything." Lansdale's other trademark piece of wisdom, "Don't let the little formalities of life stop you", also appears applicable to the ongoing events in Ukraine.
Sergei Blagov, who was a reporter in Vietnam for six years, is the author of Honest Mistakes: The Life and Death of Trinh Minh (1922-1955)Comment
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Re: Burying Vietnam, Launching Perpetual War
thanks for posting the movie, definitely a well done documentary.Comment
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Re: Burying Vietnam, Launching Perpetual War
Bert Schneider was equally responsible for "Hearts and Minds".
His Oscar acceptance speech(after Peter Davis' bit) is interesting:
"It is ironic that we are here at a time just before Vietnam is about to be liberated. I will now read a short wire that I have been asked to read by the Vietnamese people. It is sent by Ambassador Dinh Ba Thi, who is the chief of the Provisional Revolutionary Government's delegation to Paris, the Paris political talks. It says: "Please transmit to all our friends in America our recognition of all that they have done on behalf of peace and for the application of the Paris Accords on Vietnam. These actions serve the legitimate interest of the American people and the Vietnamese people. Greetings of friendship to all the American people." Thank you very much."
Bert Schneider also harbored and funded a fugitive murderer.......while the North Vietnamese conducted a conventional invasion of South Vietnam after a massive buildup by Soviet Union and China and total US abandonment of South Vietnam. Where they proceeded to exterminate all opposition to total communist rule.
The narrative of "The US only lost in Vietnam because the hippies back home made us quit" is as dangerously flawed as people like Bert Schneider and Jane Fonda who are at worst guilty of sedition, at best VERY high profile useful idiots who played substantial roles in the unconventional total war being conducted by the communist Vietnamese, communist Chinese, communist Soviets, communist Cubans, and communist Warsaw Pact.
It's ironic that some can point out how easily manipulated so many are by neo-cons, but completely fail to see themselves as equal pawns and just as susceptible to perception shaping.Comment
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Re: Burying Vietnam, Launching Perpetual War
You have got to be kidding.Originally posted by lakedaemonian View PostComment
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Re: Burying Vietnam, Launching Perpetual War
Thai, are you forgetting the Red Chinese army that massed, and remained hidden for years, just over our border with Mexico . . . .Originally posted by Thailandnotes View PostComment
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Re: Burying Vietnam, Launching Perpetual War
It is always interesting when a valid question is raised; but never answered. We need to think this through. As I understand it, German journalists reported that they were convinced that the Kiev snipers were acting out a repeat of the CIA techniques used in the overthrow of Allende in Chile; that they were similarly trained and operated by the CIA. We have not heard any report, from any source, that has stepped forward to refute that report. Total silence.Originally posted by don View Post
On the other hand, assuming that the report was entirely false; one would assume someone would have been keen to refute; would have stepped forward with a detailed explanation of what actually occurred. What we got was silence.
My instinctive reaction has been to believe that the German report was essentially correct. To have tried to refute when there was a real possibility that someone could step forward and rubbish that attempt would be the worst of both worlds.
That it is always better, when your hand is in the pudding, (so to speak), to say nothing that could later be used against you.
I have said this before here in the UK in a previous comment in The Times; perhaps the best indication was Obama turning up very shortly afterwards at West Point to declare his support for his troops; who might have been inclined to a Coup de ta against the Obama administration for effectively destroying the credability of the US in permitting such action.
History will tell us what we may never find out for certain within anyone's lifetime here on iTulip.Comment
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Re: Burying Vietnam, Launching Perpetual War
It is always interesting when a valid question is raised; but never answered. We need to think this through. As I understand it, German journalists reported that they were convinced that the Kiev snipers were acting out a repeat of the CIA techniques used in the overthrow of Allende in Chile; that they were similarly trained and operated by the CIA. We have not heard any report, from any source, that has stepped forward to refute that report. Total silence.Originally posted by don View Post
On the other hand, assuming that the report was entirely false; one would assume someone would have been keen to refute; would have stepped forward with a detailed explanation of what actually occurred. What we got was silence.
My instinctive reaction has been to believe that the German report was essentially correct. To have tried to refute when there was a real possibility that someone could step forward and rubbish that attempt would be the worst of both worlds.
That it is always better, when your hand is in the pudding, (so to speak), to say nothing that could later be used against you.
I have said this before here in the UK in a previous comment in The Times; perhaps the best indication was Obama turning up very shortly afterwards at West Point to declare his support for his troops; who might have been inclined to a Coup de ta against the Obama administration for effectively destroying the credability of the US in permitting such action.
History will tell us what we may never find out for certain within anyone's lifetime here on iTulip.Comment
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Re: Burying Vietnam, Launching Perpetual War
standard agency response to charges they care not to or can't refuteWe have not heard any report, from any source, that has stepped forward to refute that report. Total silence.
that doesn't make it true, just adds to the suspicion, along with the Chavez coup shooters, etc.Comment
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Re: Burying Vietnam, Launching Perpetual War
You might want to familiarize yourself with the highly coordinated actions between communist forces during the period.Originally posted by Thailandnotes View Post
21 January 1968 Blue House Raid by North Korea to decapitate South Korean leadership
21 January North Vietnamese attack at Battle of Khe Sanh(trying to replicate Dien Bien Phu 1954)
23 January 1968 USS Pueblo seizure
30 January 1968 Tet Offensive conducted
The Pueblo was seized to facilitate Soviet penetration of US communications in combination with the take from the Walker Spy Ring.
South Korea was the 2nd largest foreign combatant force in Vietnam at the invitation of South Vietnam after the US.
It doesn't take a rocket scientist to identify tactical/operational/strategic coordination amongst allied communist forces over a 9 day period in two theatres of operations.
And it doesn't put into context the relative military/economic balance of power between North/South Korea THEN(completely unlike today), nor does it include a near identical South Vietnamese decapitation strike(which also failed), and it doesn't include increased aggressive posturing by Warsaw Pact forces to inhibit the ability of the US to easily withdraw and rebalance force structure in support of Vietnam.
I'm not going to say all communists were perfectly aligned to destroy all capitalists(akin to saying all muslims are perfectly aligned to destroy all infidels...sound familiar?), we know now there were BIG fractures(some with big body counts Soviets/Chinese, Vietnamese/Chinese), but this was a case where communist alignment and coordination actually came to fruition...if only for a period.Comment
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Re: Burying Vietnam, Launching Perpetual War
For those who want to balance the product of what the communists would refer to as a "useful idiot" in the form of Bert Schnieder's work on their behalf(pretty clear with his Oscar speech), I'd strongly recommend Black April:
http://www.amazon.com/Black-April-So...owViewpoints=0
The best book I've ever read about Vietnam.
Absolutely excruciating, painful, and necessary read of the final 2 years in Vietnam, which has had so very little coverage.
It's neither hard right war-hawk insanity, nor is it leftist "useful idiot" tripe. Pretty good balance, pretty horrible stuff all around.
I've mentioned it a while back in reference(and relevance) to both the Soviet withdraw of Afghanistan in 1989 and now the pending withdraw of the US/ISAF from Afghanistan.Comment
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Re: Burying Vietnam, Launching Perpetual War
The love child of Roy Cohn and John Edgar Hoover could not have said it better.Originally posted by lakedaemonian View Post
The noble cause of Vietnam never was and no rehash of discredited propaganda or revisionism about that little evening in '75 can change the facts of history. We negotiated a peace with the DRV and the telegram was a gesture of friendship from the emissary of a country we attacked under false pretenses, whose country we devastated and whose people we killed in the millions.
It didn't say “Up with Ho” or “Yankee Imperialist Dogs.” It was a greeting of friendship and given the nearness of their suffering and loss, a remarkable gesture of diplomacy. Of course it was lost on Hope and Sinatra. They couldn't stand it and it was they who turned the night into a political event with their little pro-Nixon speeches.
No one can lay a finger on the documentary, least of all with discredited domino theory and irrelevant anecdotes about a Hollywood film producer whose biggest creative contribution was writing checks and watching dailies.
A century from now - if we've recovered our own hearts and minds by then, I pray - when all the facts about that time are finally known, Davis' documentary will be just as powerful and just as meaningful. It is a gift to the ages. It is an affirmation of life and truth in the face of the death mongers and war lovers. And that's why they hate it so passionately.
Here are a few things you might want to familiarize yourself with. Things like..
French Colonialism.
Vietnamese nationalism.
Ho's presence at the Versailles Conference and his rebuff by Wilson and House.
Vichy French control of Vietnam and collaboration with the Imperial Japanese.
American and Nationalist Chinese support of the Vietminh during WWII.
Archimedes Patti's OSS mission in support of the Vietminh.
Ho's paraphrase of the US Declaration of Independence at the founding of the DRV.
The Vietminh's overwhelming popular support following the defeat of the IJA.
Roosevelt and Stilwell's determination to end French control.
Britain's rearming the Japanese and using them to return Vietnam to French control.
The Vietminh's electoral victory in the center and north of the country.
Ho's attempt to negotiate for recognition of the DRV as a free republic under the French Union.
The French rebuff of Ho's negotiations.
The French ouster of the popular Vietminh civil government
The British turnover of the south to French forces that led to the start of the First Indochinese War.
The Americans footing the bill for the French.
Operation Vulture and the proposed use of nukes to save the French.
The French defeat at the hands of General Giap.
And the American's violation of the terms of the Geneva Conference, our takeover from the French as imperialists, the Gulf of Tonkin lie and our walk into that dark jungle of deceit.
How could it be that the martinets, the spy vs. spies, and summer soldiers failed to take advantage of knowledge gained at the cost of upwards of 2 million dead Vietnamese, Cambodians and Laotians and 56,000 dead Americans? A look around today and the only lessons learned by the militarists and their cloak and dagger snoops are..
How to prosecute a war without popular support
How to propagandize their people into a stupor
And how co-opt the media to make sure the truth of war is never again exposed as it was by Vietnam.
On these they achieved a virtuosity unseen in modern history. Little wonder we begin 2015 as our 14th year of perpetual war.
I wore the uniform, I lost a family member in the war. And we all lost the country. So give it a rest and go sell it somewhere else. Nobody believes the lies anymore. One can be a patriot and a soldier and still stand up for the truth.
Tell 'em, Kris:
Last edited by Woodsman; February 11, 2015, 06:01 PM.Comment
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Re: Burying Vietnam, Launching Perpetual War
Fu Manchu: Still Inscrutable?
I haven't ordered Michael Pillsbury's new book about China's plot to take over the world (The Hundred-Year Marathon: China's Secret Strategy to Replace America as the Global Superpower. Instead, I obtainedSax Rohmer's 1913 novel on the same subject, which can be had gratis from Amazon in a Kindle edition. "The Insidious Dr Fu Manchu" portrays a Chinese genius who plans a rising of the East to overwhelm the West. It has the double advantage of being more entertaining and free.
Michael Pillsbury, a former defense and intelligence official now at the Hudson Institute, claims that China has planned a "hundred-year marathon" since the days of Mao Zedong culminating in world domination. The difference between Rohmer's fantasy and Pillsbury's scholarship is that Pillsbury may turn out to be right after the fact. China may dominate the world, and future historians well may reconstruct China’s intent to dominate the world from the same sort of documents that Pillsbury cites.
But China is not planning to take over the world. It doesn't want the world. It doesn't like the world - that is, the world outside of China. Unlike Greeks, Romans, Muslims, and European imperialists, it does not want to plant its flag outside its borders, send its young men to conquer and defend new territories, or subject other peoples to colonial rule. Nonetheless, it may inherit the world, reluctantly and by default.
If China does emerge as a world power, it will not be the first time that an empire had greatness thrust upon it. Many of the great world conquests of the past were not conquests at all, but migrations into ruined and depopulated territory. Rome conquered a Greece whose population had imploded between the 5th and 2nd centuries B.C.E., as I reported in my 2011 book How Civilizations Die.
Most of the great battles fought in the so-called Muslim conquest never happened, Yehuda Nevo and Judith Koren argue convincingly in the 2003 book Crossroads to Islam. Arab auxiliaries of the Byzantine army, rather, moved into territory abandoned by the Eastern half of the Roman Empire during the great depopulation of the 7th and 8th centuries.
If China becomes the dominant world power, it will happen because the United States abandoned the role.
After its blunders in Iraq and Afghanistan, the United States has lost the will to assert power in the world's trouble zones. And after the collapse of the tech bubble in 2000 and the mortgage bubble in 2008, it has lost interest in innovation except in the sterile fields of design (Apple) and social media (Facebook).
I wrote in 2013, "We [the United States] are a disruptive, bottom-up economy driven by entrepreneurship, and we look with contempt at China's clumsy, top-down model. The trouble is that we haven't done much innovation since the 1980s. A new generation of well-educated and eager Chinese may assimilate our past innovations and pass us by." And last September, I warned in the British monthly Standpoint that China may outstrip the West at innovation.
America, to be sure, still possesses far more intellectual firepower than China, but the gap is closing. China now mints twice as many science and engineering doctorates as the United States. China’s high school math curriculum makes the proposed Core Competence program look pathetic. Most importantly, China’s capital markets are far more likely to bet on young entrepreneurs with a new technology than American capital markets. Young Chinese innovators have a better chance of getting rich in China than in the US.
American policy towards China, Michael Pillsbury avers, was based on a set of false assumptions. Here he is right on the money. Among these assumptions were the belief that China is on the road to democracy; that China"wants to be - and is - just like us"; and that "engagement brings complete cooperation". China has had an emperor for 3,000 years, and the present dynasty (the Communist Party) has increased household income 16-fold since 1987. As the distinguished China watcher Francesco Sisci argues, the present dynasty represents a "golden age" by Chinese criteria.
China is investing massively in high-tech military capacity: satellite-killing missiles, high-velocity cruise missiles, anti-ship missiles, and so forth, as Pillsbury observes. In fact, China’s efforts to move up the value-added chain in manufacturing involve dual-use technologies, that is, military R&D with civilian implications. That is well documented, for example, by Dr Michael Raska at Singapore’s Rajaratnam Institute of Strategic Studies. China wants to be impregnable within its borders and a few hundred miles from its coastline.
What China is not doing, though, is just as informative. The People’s Liberation Army owns not a single ground-support aircraft like America’s A-10 Warthog or Russia’s SU-25. It neither buys them nor builds them. It is not building a land army for regional conquest; it is investing in high-tech capacity with many defense as well as civilian applications to challenge America’s edge in military technology.
This should be something of a Sputnik movement for the United States, a wake-up call like Russia’s 1957 launch of the first satellite into space. Pillsbury is right to call attention to China’s rise, but wrong to attribute Fu-Manchu-like motives to China’s leaders.
On the contrary: China leaders are bemused by America’s sudden and unexpected withdrawal from strategic responsibility, for example, in the Persian Gulf, and struggling to devise a response that would ensure the security of oil supplies without entangling alliances and risky military commitments. It is a comedy of errors rather than a conspiracy, as I wrote in this space last November 10.
America should be concerned, and should respond. But the appropriate response is to restore funding to the gutted military R&D budget, and reform the tax and regulatory environment to encourage investors to risk money on the commercialization of new technologies. China will wake up and take notice if the United States pulls ahead of it in the technology race. If the US fails to do so, anything else it chooses to do will be futile.
by David P Goldman. He is Senior Fellow at the London Center for Policy Research and Associate Fellow at the Middle East Forum
my apologies for the formatting - the 'tulip posting mechanics border on the insane . . . .Comment
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Re: Burying Vietnam, Launching Perpetual War
Yes, China and India graduate a lot of science and engineering doctorates, and other lower degrees but are we comparing apples and apples?
http://issues.org/23-3/wadhwa/
An additional view:
http://engineeringchallenges.org/cms/7126/7639.aspx
Interesting statistics:
http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/seind1....cfm/chapter-2
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