Vietnam Disinformation
Vietnam DisinformationLet’s get the history straight before we got there. Then the rest makes some sense. For you patriots, the government has admitted that the reason we were there was a lie. This part is no longer opinion.
Viet Nam is a strip on the east side of an appendix-shaped peninsula hanging south of China. Over the centuries, this little strip had an economically aggressive culture. Other countries jealous of this culture have attempted to own Viet Nam. Since the people of the Viet Nam strip were hostile towards each other, other countries thought they would be easy taking. This was never the case. Viet Nam people were never owned and countries attempting to do so lost a lot of people trying.
Last century, China tried. In this century the French tried. They failed. I mean they failed miserably. In Versailles, they signed a treaty. The French would immediately abandon everything north of a line. They had some time to abandon the remainder. There would be free elections within 3 years across the country to create a new government.
The United States did not sign the treaty. The President was Eisenhower. He listened to a friend named George F. Kennon. Kennon believed that the Soviet Communists needed to be contained. We had already given them Eastern Europe. We had to draw a line somewhere. Viet Nam seemed like a good place to start. After all the Vietnamese had to be getting their weapons to fight the French from somewhere.
So, under the auspices of the United Nations, we changed the rules. We declared that the surrender line actually created two separate countries. We defended this line and appointed a governor, Diem, to govern the newly created South Viet Nam. The governor was a sadist. The USA has a habit of supporting the worst possible governors. He tried to identify the Buddhists as the enemy and to make everyone a Catholic. The Buddhists start immolating themselves in the streets to get world attention. This is all they could do since they are the ultimate pacifists. I remember a burning monk on the cover of Life Magazine. I wondered what level of belief system would permit this. This is not the same as the homicidal murderers in Jerusalem.
So now what? Diem’s family visits the USA as he is removed. We start the war for real. We falsify a ship attack in the Tonkin Bay as our excuse to have a war with the country. The world has since bought our concept of two countries. They have bought the north fighting the south. The big lie. Hitler did not have that big of a lie. We fostered religious persecution. We violated the truce and the treaty. All of it. Our claim was we did not sign the treaty and so we did not have to abide by it. So the citizens of the winning side, who had no control of the country, were supposed to abide by a treaty that their invaders had not even signed?
The USA and the Soviets spent billions on this war. We had more. They gave up but the Chinese filled in. We forced the country to be Communist. We were the invaders and they had to accept the Communist terms to get the support.
We lost the battle but won the war: the Soviet Union was economically crippled. Integrity? Honesty? Kennedy was sending the Peace Corps. Johnson sent the Army.
While we are at it. Who do you think ended the war? We know we lost. We know a disenfranchised megalomaniac who held the Presidency claimed credit for ending it. No. Nixon surrendered. The President who ended the war was Carter, the Georgia Peanut Farmer. He is the one who let the citizens come home after the fighting ended. He did this by granting amnesty tot hose who did not fight.
Do I disparage the people who went? No. Those who returned? No. I hear some spat at the soldiers – even worse things. No one I know would have mocked or degraded a Viet Nam vet. Why? The soldiers bought into the lie. The liars were good. Some people have faith in their government. If no one did, this would be a terrible place to live. Sad. So much lost. So many people dead. All for political ambition. And many people still believe the lie even after it has been published as a lie.
Viet Nam was a disaster. Financially. Economically. Sociologically. It was a disaster in every place that mattered. What did we learn?
Our government lies to us. It does so with impunity when it thinks it can get away with it. The only way to get the government to not lie is to understand it and contribute to it. Heinlein had it right: a citizen accepts the responsibility for the health of the society. Read my Mifflin Street diatribe – especially about the guy who pasted the flag on my window.
I know you will misunderstand. We fought the Vietnam War because of lies but it had the bottom line of virtually bankrupting the Soviet Union. Afghanistan took the Soviet Union to its economic knees and Reagan cut of the Communist Soviet Union’s head. I did not like Reagan: I think that Mr. Gorbachov should be ranked higher on the History Channel’s most important men of the 20th century.
In other worlds, just because we did something with lies and excuses for the reason, good things can still come from them. I just wish that the government trusted its citizens. Clinton lied about Sex. Bush lied about weapons of mass destruction. I prefer Clinton’s lies.
Freedom costs. The costs are high. You have to participate or you lose it. We periodically elect a megalomaniac President. I put GW Bush and Nixon in this category. Both were elected because of campaigns of disinformation. Both fought wars based upon disinformation. Both had … What the heck, enough is enough.