David Gelernter, in an OpEd piece in the LA Times, Nov 9, 2003, wrote of the "haunting" of Americans by VietNam, using spurious and invalid arguments to bolster his case with regard to U.S. involvement in both VietNam and Iraq. Although the two are not anomalous, the events that led to American involvement in each bear more than passing similarity which I believe is at the heart of the disquiet felt by an increasing number of Americans. This similarity is in the deceit and tangled motives evidenced by the perpetrators of U.S. entry into the Viet Nam internal politics in the waning years of the Eisenhower administration and the equally twisted machinations of the Bush administration as it sought ratification of its desire to intervene militarily in Iraq.
Gelernter referred to a "noisy, self-important narcissistic minority" that "talked" the U.S. (government, I might add as an aside, as there was never any popular support) into "betraying our allies"; so many mis-truths, half-truths and outright lies in one sentence! "We betrayed our allies and hurried home" he writes. He notes the war was nearly over when he graduated from high school. Lucky him! By that time, the draft had devolved from an insistent and ever-present requirement of young adulthood, to the lottery and finally to an all-but-abandoned practice before being completely discontinued, so he had no certain fears of being forced to “visit” (a no-frills tour with Grade Z accommodations, courtesy of his kindly Uncle Sam) that horrid little country in Southeast Asia where death walked in seven-league boots by day and on cat's paws all night long, as had countless teens in the preceding decade. How easy it is to discount the terrors of those tossed upon the cruel sea, when you are safely ashore!
The anti-war movement grew from a few voices lost in the lip-service (only) patriotic roar (following the so-called Gulf of Tonkin Incident, truly the 1st “Wag the Dog“ -type staged media event callously designed to sway public opinion), to a groundswell of clamor that rose from citizens of all ages, color and background. The history of US involvement in the VietNam conflict was written large in the blood of young men, punctuated by blundering, highlighted by a myopic lack of direction and outright stupidity. The voices of protest included a great many who had been there, including myself and quite literally dozens of my friends who had also survived the nightmare, as well as many thoughtful, and older, members of our society. As a group, we were outraged by the bloody, pointless mess and by the disregard our "leaders" displayed for the loss of young lives.
American involvement in the turmoil in Viet Nam rose phoenix-like from the death throes of the eighty year colonial rule by France. The colonial period of all western nations is a shameful recital of crimes against humanity and the French epitomized the worst of that excess during their occupation of Viet Nam. No sooner had the French been evicted, after a gloriously heroic (by the doomed Foreign Legionnaires) but no less humiliating defeat at Dien Bien Phu, and free elections held, than the U.S. and the putative U.N. stepped in to declare the elections void, dividing the country in two, along what came to be known as the DMZ. John Fosters Dulles, Secretary of State (eminence grise ala Cardinal Richelieu) in the Eisenhower administration, after signing the "Geneva Accord", in which we promised, along with the Russians, to not enter into any more mutual non-aggression treaties (such as NATO), immediately flew to Jakarta, Indonesia to sign the South East Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO). SEATO was the mechanism by which America was bootstrapped into a conflict in which the US had no national defense interests. We installed and supported a series of ever more unpopular puppet regimes, including one we (the CIA, under the direction of Allen Dulles, brother of you-know-who) "deposed" (read "killed in exceedingly bloody fashion"). As an 18 year old buck sergeant, I arrived "in-country" in January, 1968, nearly a month prior to "TET" (the one everyone talks about, with good reason); there were two (2) regimes that year alone, including the one headed by Ky, a vastly and deservedly hated piece of human you-know-what.
These regimes, poseurs of the worst sort, were not allies by any stretch of imagination, nor were we conducting a "war" as understood by any except the most deluded. The last thing any U.S. unit wanted was to be supported by "ARVN" troops. These troops were mostly boys rounded up in hamlets andvillages and impressed into unwilling, unreliable, and unprofessional military service. A friend of mine, sent to RVN in 1962 as an "advisor", was on patrol with an ARVN unit, when they were ambushed. Struck by six (6) machine gun bullets, one missing his groin by an inch, the ARVN's melted into the bush leaving him for dead and/or the VC. When the VC turned him over he was unresponsive; taking the wounds for fatal, "charlie" left him without administering a coup de grace. Later, the Green Berets came in to retrieve the bodies; taking him for dead they were rolling him over into a body bag, when he groaned. He was immediately "evac"ed to a hospital, saving his life. The Republic of VietNam fell not because we "betrayed our allies and hurried home", but because unlike the 58,000+ brave young men who gave the "last full measure" dying in a land far from their own, the VietNamese had almost no investment in the survival of a government despised and almost universally reviled. There were not more North VietNamese than South; the NVA represented the will of the people while the ARVN represented the will of those in power. All assets went to maintain the comfort of those at the top of the pyramid; US aid hardly reached the common folk, absorbed incrementally by those in power as a "droit de seigneur". The military and governmental hierarchy displayed daily their contempt for the people they were supposed to be representing and/ or protecting. The North VietNamese were no choirboys, by any means, often brutalizing rural villagers, but, then, they were supposed to be the bad guys!
Mr. Gelernter, your lack of understanding is compounded by your complete disregard for the sad and criminal actions by the military you laud. Watch the movie "Hamburger Hill" if you'd like some insight into the abject stupidity of military planning in Viet Nam. This fictionalized version stops short of the true story: it was actually much worse, as difficult as that may be to understand. The 101st Airborne took the same hill six (6) different times in a two month period, losing so many men in a meaningless exercise of "denial of territory," this storied and unquestionably brave unit was moved to the brink of mutiny. Repeatedly, the U.S. military put men in untenable positions and often failed to provide even the most basic support. Sit through "We Were Soldiers" for insight, read the book fora deeper grasp. Creighton Abrams, my CO for most of my tour, would hop into a helicopter he kept stationed 100 yards from his "hooch", on call 24 hours a day, and fly to 10,000 feet each time we were attacked with mortars and/or rockets. He was "directing the battle," as he put it, but that didn't seem to be the case to me, sitting as I was in the Division ‘comm’ center and listening to the sounds of battle, not to mention the sounds of explosions creeping ever closer.
You sir, are no historian, to paraphrase Lloyd Bentsen, merely an apologist without portfolio for an administration populated by former members of the Nixon, Reagan, and Bush "the First" administrations. Rumsfeld himself goes back all that way, and before, being, as he was, a congressional representative who may well have endorsed the early expenditures of men and materiel in Viet Nam. There's a line in the Simon & Garfunkel song, "7 O'Clock News/Silent Night" that says "former Vice-President Richard Nixon says Americans should plan on 5 more years of war in Southeast Asia." This song is on the album "Parsley Sage Rosemary and Thyme", released October 10, 1966. The war lasted 5 years after Nixon was elected president, two (2) years after the release of the song! His statement, as recorded in the song, ends, "opposition to the war is the single greatest threat"...This when the anti war movement numbered perhaps in the thousands. Six years later opposition to the war numbered in the hundreds of thousands (visibly) and, of those, only those just recently graduated from high school were self-important narcissists; the rest of us were clear-thinking adults, many of us veterans of a season in hell, all sick of self-aggrandizing, flag-waving psuedo-patriots.
A true patriot once said we are not obligated to obey a bad law, instead we are obligated to change the law. So said Thomas Jefferson, and it applies to "policy" as well. The government is obliged to obey the will of the people; only in an Orwellian world is the government above reproach by its citizenry. We danced entirely too near that particular abyss during the VietNam era and more than anything, THAT haunts Americans to this day. You would do well to read Jefferson, or Tom Paine, or Ben Franklin for a real patriot's take on the rights and responsibilities of citizens, than to disparage those who were willing to confront the entrenched powers-that-were who ruled America during the VietNam Era. The FBI investigated, draft boards were instructed to call up suspected resisters, a full court press media campaign was initiated to convince mainstream America that "communists" were behind the unrest. In the end it back-fired: ordinary Americans ridiculed the outrageous "body-count" figures, turning off the evening news and stepping out into the streets. We did not "hurry" out of Viet Nam, we crawled. The country "collapsed" behind us, because the military dictatorship that the VietNamese government had morphed into could not force its citizens into any further sacrifice. Many of those who raced out during and after the fall of the South were those who had stolen the most, or had committed heinous crimes against their fellow citizens, like the bright fellow who had his picture taken by a Life photographer cold-bloodedly murdering a "suspected Viet Cong". This image and the equally revolting photo of a small child running, screaming, aflame with napalm, spoke volumes as to the validity of the Republic of South VietNam. You, sir, are no American if you countenance atrocities such as these as "necessary", "regrettable", or " a misfortune of war". Volunteer to step into the shoes of those unfortunates, if you believe that claptrap, let us see what a MAN you really are! Betcha won't!
The misconduct in the treatment of prisoners at Abu Ghreib is a comparable but unflattering comment on US Military conduct, equal only to the venality of My Lai and the attendant attempted cover-up by the same military. The lessons learned obviously weren’t the ones we wanted ingrained in our military leadership! America does not start wars, we end them. American soldiers do not support tyranny, nor do they indulge in inhumane acts; the US military, prior to VietNam, enjoyed an enviable degree of respect for professionalism, courage and commitment to the highest ideals. Remember how much flack there was over Patton slapping a soldier for supposed “cowardice” or “battle-shock”. To countenance either My Lai OR Abu Ghreib is disreputable, inhuman and disgusting: in a word, UNAMERICAN!
We resisted the urge to support "regime change" in Iran during the waning days of the Shah's horrific rule; we ignored the need for "regime change"during the staggeringly inhumane rule of Idi Amin, as well as in Rwanda and today in Sierra Leone; Clinton was vilified for military incursions into Somalia for humanitarian aid and, after much delay, in Bosnia, where human monsters strutted the earth, modern-day Nazis acting like schoolyard bullies, daring us to cross a line. Do not wave the flag at us today and claim we need to stand by our "allies in Iraq." Our government supported Saddam Hussein when he used inhumane weapons on his OWN people, because he was our enemy's enemy. Rumsfeld has been photographed shaking hands with the man, after completing an arms delivery! We've been lied to about the provenance used to begin this military adventure, now we are being lied to about the lies.
You, Mr. Gelernter, are an educator in computer science, it says in the bio-tag with your article! You are obviously NOT a historian nor a logician, for there are glaring lapses in your recital of facts and you illogically connect the consequences of these events. The course of the Viet Nam War was less influenced by the anti-war movement than by the arrogance of the U.S. military, blinded as it was by the onset of technology and a mythic belief in its invincibility, coupled with the bankrupt policy of counteracting the "Domino Theory" from occurring in South East Asia. Perhaps that was the telling point of Eisenhower's farewell address when he decried the "threat of the military-industrial complex". That the monster again rears its ugly head, Hydra-like, should surprise no one. I suggest you keep to computer science and leave the social, logical, and historical sciences to those better qualified. You are entitled to your opinions; however, they are woefully uninformed and sadly bereft of logical construction. I suggest a season in a foxhole, bathing weekly at best, eating out boxes and cringing at otherwise innocent sounds. It wouls not bw long before you sounded like many who’ve been there, done that!
The Viet Nam debacle was an indefensible series of missteps, mistakes and misadventures set against the backdrop of a nightmare: the Keystone Kops meet Freddy Kreuger, in living (and dying) color, broadcast on the evening news. The military used horrific weapons with little regard for the consequences to innocent bystanders; politicians made promises paid forwith the lives of boys too young to vote; each glad-handed the other on their vigilant patriotism and their searing perspicacity. As the adventure leached out, we were left with desperate battles whose sole value was to retain a semblance of former glory, to stave off the damning hubris of defeat. Nixon's incursion into Cambodia, shrouded in secrecy, lied about before, during, and long after, was a cold-blooded waste of lives and probably the straw that broke the camel's (public's) back. After that, with each passing day fewer and fewer believed the propaganda issued by U.S. military sources.
Donald Rumsfeld was an under-secretary of Defense during the Nixon administration, in the waning days of the Viet Nam Conflict. Isn't it significant that he is hip-deep-and-sinking in this? His record of military service is as non-existent as that of the Chief Aviator. Do you really trust these people? Remember, P.T. Barnum once said, "No one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public." Are you among those he spoke of, Mr. Gelernter? Unable or unwilling to ask hard questions or think beyond single-themed, flag-waving pronouncements, no matter how improbable? Or are you one of the initiates, intent upon perpetuating the fraud, the shill whose responsibility it is to convince the mark the game is on the up and up? Or worse, are you one of those desperate types who've bought into the scam, unable to admit your unhipness, unwilling to confess that you cannot see the thread visible only to the truly discerning? Hey Mr. Gelernter, the emperor is naked!
