Why Must Not Death Itself Be Redefined?
The President is going to argue that after the US pulled out of Southeast Asia, millions of people died.
One more time. Millions of people died while we were there. A fair proportion of them were people we ourselves killed. In any reckoning of the costs of intervening and withdrawing from Indochina, those people count too. It’s a bizarre, narcissistic blind spot to imagine otherwise.
Which brings us to Iraq, per the President’s insistence. It is possible that if we leave, hundreds of thousands will die and millions be displaced. That has already happened under our government’s tender and expert care. There is no short-term prospect that it will stop happening. But I guess if you die while the US is around, you have the comfort of knowing we were trying.
Comment by cleek —
August 22, 2007 @ 9:03 am
this is just preaching to the base, who all believe the Dems lost Vietnam. it’s just the Reps’ way of generating a little more anti-Dem feeling among the die-hards as election season approaches. “Remember when the Dems lost Vietnam? Don’t you hate them for that? Well, don’t let it happen with Iraq! Keep the Dems out of power!”
historical accuracy isn’t necessary. it’s sheer demagoguery.
Comment by Donald Johnson —
August 22, 2007 @ 11:34 am
“It’s a bizarre, narcissistic blind spot to imagine otherwise.”
This is America. What’s your point?
Comment by Hesiod —
August 22, 2007 @ 11:40 am
Wait. I thought analogizing Iraq to Vietnam was supposed to be a no no?
And, technically, the millions who died were mostly in Cambodia. A country we only bombed, but did not occupy.
In any case, don’t we have mostly normalized relations with Vietnam now? Aren’t they a new hot tourist destinatio for baby boomers? And, aren’t they liberalizing tehir economy?
Comment by Hesiod —
August 22, 2007 @ 11:51 am
I just read the headline for this story over at the ABC news website. “Iraq Like Vietnam says President Bush.”
Ouch!
I’m not sure this is going to work quite as well as the White House thinks.
Comment by Ian —
August 22, 2007 @ 11:58 am
If the Lancet study is correct, 650 000 were dead in Iraq last year. That’s a little more that 200k/year to that date, keeping in mind that the first year of the occupation was relatively quiet. Over the past year, fighting has intensified, not least because of the surge. If only 100K people were killed in year 1, and if there were an extra 50k killed in the past year (I take these to be reasonable ballpark estimates, conservative if anything) then ~300k people have been killed since the Lancet study was completed.
Saying “hundreds of thousands have died” diminishes the scale of this catastrophe. If the Lancet study of last year is a good estimate of the death toll (and it seems to be the best data we have) approximately one million people have now been killed in Iraq. And counting.
In 2007, Iraq’s population is 27.5 million. So, ~3% of the country’s population is dead, and a further ~%14 of the population has been displaced (2.2M to other countries, 2M internally). Thank goodness they have American protection.
Comment by Thoreau —
August 22, 2007 @ 12:52 pm
See, this is what happens when evil genius Karl Rove leaves. If Rove hadn’t left, there’s no way in hell that Bush would be allowed to utter the word “Vietnam” in any context even remotely related to Iraq, let alone make a comparison with Vietnam.
Comment by Crusader AXE of the Lost Causes —
August 22, 2007 @ 1:03 pm
You know, my heart breaks when I read or listen to folks who have lost
> family or limbs and life to this awful war. However, the existential void
> that some people face if they say the war was a mistake is greater than
> perhaps it is fair to ask them to step into. Sartre made the point that
> authenticity and freedom are not necessarily a good time…
>
> Then there’s the idea that we lost Vietnam. Err, China. Eastern Europe.
> Russia, goddamn it, if Wilson had just put the Marines into St
> Petersburg…Canada. We lost Canada when Madison made peace. If we’d only
> held out longer, we’d have conquered Canada. Bullshit. We were defeated in
> the attempt to conquer Canada, and held our own soil largely due to Brit
> exhaustion. We had no hope in the Russian intervention, and the west was
> exhausted after WWI. Eastern Europe was conquered by the Red Army. We didn’t
> lose it. Roosevelt didn’t give anything away — would any rational critic
> expect Stalin to just hold free elections? There are certain historical
> consequences — you face them or you fantasize.
>
> We turned against the Iraq war pretty quickly. Iraq and the war on terror
> are two seperate things; Vietnam was at least part of a coherent strategy –
> go anywhere, pay any price, bear any burden as JFK put it. The problem was
> in our inability to say, well, that was a bad idea. Iraq wasn’t part of
> anything but bad ideas. We’d have been better off invading Jamaica and
> taking out the Rastafarian menace — it would to some extent have been the
> Reagan response (they blew up the Marine Barracks in Beirut; quick, let’s
> invade a Carribean country nobody ever heard of…)
Comment by Donald Johnson —
August 22, 2007 @ 1:41 pm
There was a poll earlier this year that found considerably more Sunnis than the 20 percent–I think 30 something percent. There’s a discussion at the link below. Scroll halfway down.
People who’ve followed the arguments over the Lancet2 paper will remember skeptics saying that the response rate seemed high, while defenders said it wasn’t unusual. For whatever reason, the response rate for this particular poll I’m citing was much lower.
I’d stick to “hundreds of thousands”. We don’t know if the Lancet survey was right, but the death toll almost certainly is at least “hundreds of thousands”–if you believe the Lancet2 number and extrapolate then maybe it’s about 1 million. (Bill Clinton gave his own number a couple of months ago–300 to 400 thousand in a talk that made it into a Youtube clip. I’d like to know if he pulled this out of his ass or if there’s secret US data his wife knows about.)
http://abcnews.go.com/US/story?id=2954886
Comment by snidely —
August 22, 2007 @ 1:51 pm
hey ian, get your terminology right. that’s 1 million iraqis beyond the reach of tyranny.
Comment by Eric Martin —
August 22, 2007 @ 2:08 pm
Ian,
Didn’t the Lancet study measure excess deaths, and not necessarily those killed in violence?
Comment by Ugh —
August 22, 2007 @ 2:38 pm
Karl doesn’t leave until the end of the month, IIRC.
Comment by mds —
August 22, 2007 @ 3:28 pm
Exactly. This pushes certain well-worn buttons with the current Republican base, to try and get them outraged about leftist “surrender” that will be a damaging blow to our global power, or something. So this could still be Rovian. Remember, they’re already laying the groundwork for the inevitable sharp pivot from “the war is going swimmingly” to “We would have defeated Terror if Democrats hadn’t stabbed our troops in the back.” What better way than to blame McGovern again? Hell, this is all geared to people who think the loss in Vietnam was John Kerry’s fault.
Comment by Patrick —
August 22, 2007 @ 3:50 pm
Bush might just be doing the legwork for his own re-writing of history. Gotta get it into the narrative early that the war’s failure is not his fault.
It helps when his sidekick claims, and will continue to claim until Jan 21, 2009, that we are making progress in Iraq.
Comment by Hogan (not matthew) —
August 22, 2007 @ 3:56 pm
Vietnam was at least part of a coherent strategy –
> go anywhere, pay any price, bear any burden as JFK put it.
Whatever else you want to say about that phrase, it’s no more a “coherent strategy” than “We don’t negotiate with evil, we defeat it.”
Comment by Ian —
August 22, 2007 @ 5:45 pm
Eric, it’s true that Lancet was measuring excess deaths in general, not violent deaths in particular, but I’m not sure that that fact makes a difference. If some combination of doctors becoming refugees and casualty stuffed emergency rooms causes an increased number of people to die of heart attacks, the war is responsible for their deaths.
Donald, point taken. Statistical information collected in a warzone is not optimally reliable. Lancet aside, at this point it would be hard to dispute in good faith that hundreds of thousands of people are dead. Perhaps I shouldn’t quibble too much about the numbers — hundreds of thousands of deaths are surely enough to damn anyone.
Comment by Donald Johnson —
August 22, 2007 @ 6:46 pm
“Ian,
Didn’t the Lancet study measure excess deaths, and not necessarily those killed in violence?”
The October 2006 Lancet paper found 650,000 excess deaths (the confidence interval was something like 400-900, but I’m too lazy to look it up). It found 600,000 deaths from violence (with a roughly similar range for the confidence interval).
Comment by Donald Johnson —
August 22, 2007 @ 6:49 pm
I didn’t notice Ian’s post–that’s true. Presumably all the excess deaths are war-related. In fact, the relatively low number of nonviolent excess deaths in the Lancet2 report was a bit of a surprise, given the state of Iraq’s infrastructure and its medical system. If the study did turn out to be wrong it wouldn’t surprise me if the nonviolent number was too low and the violence part too high and the total still way up in the hundreds of thousands.
Comment by barrisj —
August 22, 2007 @ 7:26 pm
“The Dems lost Vietnam”??? Gosh, and all along I thought it was Kissinger/Nixon who sold out the “freedom-loving people” of South Vietnam…surely you all remember Henry the K picking up his Nobel Peace Prize in recognition for inserting firmly and with great vigour the “peace agreement” up the bum of our “democratic ally”? And, how ’bout all those poor sods getting kicked off the helos lifting off the US Embassy?
Trackback by bastard.logic —
August 22, 2007 @ 7:40 pm
You Knew This Was Coming…
by matttbastard
Stabbed. In. The. Back.
With a tough battle with Congress over the future of the war expected to come in September, President Bush offered a rousing defense of his Iraq policy today, declaring that he envisions an American victory t…
Comment by Badtux —
August 22, 2007 @ 9:14 pm
I think the reason why we here in the reality-based community are having a hard time wrapping our heads around this whole speech by Dear Leader is that Dear Leader’s translation of “dolchstosslegended” from the original German was somewhat incomplete. Most translations from a foreign language end up rather unsatisfactory that way. But hey, we’re not allowed to call them Nazis even if they’re using the exact same rhetoric as Nazis, because that would be, err, strident.
Alrighty, then!
- Badtux the Strident Penguin
Comment by Joe —
August 23, 2007 @ 7:40 am
Might I suggest an outstanding historical review of the Vietnam war, 1954 – 1965, Triumph Forsaken. It might change your view of the drivel put out by Halbertam and Neil Sheehan, a least one of whom was miffed at Ngo Dinh Diem’s wife because she shut down the prostitution joints in Saigon (neither of them went to the field much to generate their reporting).
Mark Moyar has done a specular job of research, particularly from the view of the North (along with China).
Actually, I met a Chinese fellow in Nanning, capital of Guangxhi, last month who told me he was awarded a medal when his missle battery shot down an American F-111. I mentioned to him I didn’t realize we were at war in 1974, and he smiled. So much for the peasant liberation of South Vietnam, huh?
Comment by Donald Johnson —
August 23, 2007 @ 9:04 am
Nobody claims that a peasant uprising ended South Vietnam in 1975. Another strawman goes up in flames.
Triumph Forsaken. Has this nice stab in the back sound to it. I looked at some reviews–the author is highly critical of the overthrow of Diem. Good for him. We shouldn’t be in the business of overthrowing governments or intervening in other country’s multi-sided civil wars. Apparently he thinks we could have “won” in Vietnam. Yeah, whatever. No doubt if we’d killed different people, or more of them, or supported the right set of torturers the outcome might have been different. Some other group of torturers would have triumphed.
Comment by Michael B —
August 23, 2007 @ 12:19 pm
“One more time. Millions of people died while we were there. A fair proportion of them were people we ourselves killed. In any reckoning of the costs of intervening and withdrawing from Indochina, those people count too. It’s a bizarre, narcissistic blind spot to imagine otherwise.” J. Henley
Narcissistic blind spots. Indeed. No one is forwarding serious arguments in support of the above excerpt, instead the standard lines and assumptions and self-assurances, and sniffs and sneers, are merely being repeated, ad nauseam, like some type of ritualized benediction or sacred text that is not to be questioned. Iow, the boundary lines protecting the sacred and the holy have been defined, and damn those who dare cross those lines.
The simple fact is, it’s not that South Vietnam and North Vietnam cannot still be debated, in terms of what was won and what was lost and how and in terms of what otherwise might have happened, post-April, 1975. Rather it’s the fact that debate is shutdown with such ad nauseam repetitions and now ritualized self-assurances. Even entire theses that are well researched and well documented are readily sniffed at and summarily dismissed, shutout of the discussion tout court and preemptively. A dozen or more examples could be listed but following are four particularly well argued and detailed theses, all soundly documented as well.
Moyar’s “Triumph Forsaken”
Michael Lind’s “Vietnam, the Necessary War”
Andrew Krepinevich’s “The Army and Vietnam”
Lewis Sorley’s “A Better War”
But never mind. Ritualized, tout court dismissiveness and oft-repeated lies and self-assurances, in forms ranging from knee-jerk sneers to far more sophistical rhetoric and rituals, form the defenses of those tasked with protecting the sacred and holy, the never-to-be-questioned “truth” – a truth so feeble it dare not allow even well documented scholarship and theses to question its sacred dicta and dogmas – and fragile egos.
When J. Henley opened his comment with “one more time” he unwittingly reflected, precisely, the tactic that is so readily and so often deployed: repetition in lieu of transparency and sound argument and explication.
Comment by buermann —
August 23, 2007 @ 12:24 pm
“the relatively low number of nonviolent excess deaths in the Lancet2 report was a bit of a surprise, given the state of Iraq’s infrastructure and its medical system.”
Iraq’s infrastructure and medical system were already so undermined by sanctions that this would have been reflected in the baseline for the Roberts et. al..
Comment by Jim Henley —
August 23, 2007 @ 12:51 pm
So Michael B, what’s your casualty count for the period in which US military advisors and combat troops served in Vietnam, say 1956-1973? If you prefer to break it down to pre- and post-Diem, go ahead: 1956-1963; 1964-1973. Probably ought to throw 1974-5 in there too, since the aid cutoff wasn’t until 1975, so we were still involved.
You are claiming that my statement that millions of southeast Asians died during the years we were involved in the wars there is incorrect, right? So what are your numbers, and what is their provenance?
Comment by Michael B —
August 23, 2007 @ 1:28 pm
J. Henley,
I didn’t say, or so much as suggest, that there were not casualties, to suggest as much is a red herring. What I questioned was your incredibly facile attribution, by inference, of all the casualties to U.S. involvement. It’s a stupendously superfical and ahistorical inference.
Begin, for example, with Ho Chi Minh and Co.’s “land reforms,” c. 1954, where appx. 50,000 to 100,000 peasants were murdered by Uncle Ho because they failed to submit and failed to meet the standards of the proletariat as defined by Ho’s regime (in large part that meant they owned a small parcel of land or some similar “crime”). Then move on to the many thousands killed because they represented competition for Uncle Ho, in terms of leadership for North or were followers of that competing leadership. From there we can move on – still prior to U.S. involvement, to the 50’s – to the thousands killed via infiltrations into the South, using the Ho Chi Minh trail, via terror and related tactics, in order to ensure the locals were duly submissive to the Stalinist styled regime of Uncle Ho.
That’s a beginning, a beginning which also reflects why the U.S. got involved in the first place.
Comment by Jim Henley —
August 23, 2007 @ 1:39 pm
Michael, obviously people also died because the North Vietnamese government killed them. My point is that, notwithstanding our involvement and partially because of it, millions of people died in Southeast Asia during the period of our involvement. At the very least we didn’t save those people. That’s leaving aside the fact that you haven’t bothered to demonstrate that continued US involvement in Southeast Asia after the early 1970s wouldn’t have meant – millions more deaths anyway.
So, tell me that a much smaller number of Southeast Asians died during the American part of the war than the standard literature indicates, and tell me why I should believe you or not it. Because otherwise you’ve got no point.
Comment by Michael B —
August 23, 2007 @ 2:46 pm
J. Henley,
Where to begin? You seem to be unaware of this, but when you say “obviously people … died because [Ho Chi Minh's regime] killed them” you are admitting something which was very much dismissed, marginalized and even denied for a protracted period of time. For example, as is reflected in Western Leftist propaganda campaigns depicting Ho Chi Minh as a simple nationalist rather than a committed Stalinist who was long tutored under the Soviet system during the 30’s and 40’s and evidenced in Vietnam, in the 50’s and later, via Uncle Ho’s personality cult, Stalinist styled gulags, assassination campaigns, terror campaigns, etc., all comprising a murderous and repressive totalitarian rule. At least that is now more openly being admitted, even if it is after the fact. Good to see people finally coming to terms with at least that much historical evidence and truth.
Too, you are falling back upon some very vague associations and assumptions, not the least of which is assuming what would have happened had we not become involved. You are forwarding assumptions and dismissiveness and vague references and false choices, not critical thought; likewise you have failed to demonstrate anything yourself (e.g., again, had we not become involved). In that vein and to paraphrase your own demand: “Tell me that a much smaller number of South Vietnamese – and North Vietnamese who so desired – would have died and would have been allowed to live in relative freedom without American participation than the history and evidence indicates, and tell me why I should believe you or not. Because otherwise you’ve got no point.”
Further, one could also say, perhaps in relation to the U.S. Revolutionary War or, differently, the French Revolution, both in the late 18th century, that “notwithstanding” the effort involved, many people died and if people would not have rebelled and stood up for their most basic human rights, then far fewer people would have died. It doesn’t simply come down to numbers killed, if comes down to the most basic, the most elemental of human rights. I’m not in the least dismissing the tragic aspects, but you are in fact eliding enormities in addition to forwarding some momentous assumptions.
In sum, your “obviously” in fact does elide enormities, enormities which you are free to dismiss if you like, but others choose not to. The most basic choice wasn’t between people being killed in war vs. not being killed in war, the choice was between people being able to choose whether to live under a murderous and brutally repressive totalitarian regime, modeled along Stalinist lines, or otherwise. That choice formed the genesis of the U.S.’s initial involvement during the Kennedy admin., then moreso later.
Comment by Jim Henley —
August 23, 2007 @ 2:59 pm
Michael, you realise nobody writes this poorly who is not bullshitting, right?
Comment by Michael B —
August 23, 2007 @ 3:43 pm
Oh dear, another brave on-line insult cum rank dismissiveness. Formidable stuff, self-satisfaction.
Comment by Donald Johnson —
August 23, 2007 @ 5:14 pm
Is it true that Moyar thinks well of Suharto’s coup in Indonesia? I haven’t read the book, but one of the reviews online said this.
And does he say much about Diem’s torture and murder of political opponents?
The reviews I’ve seen say that Moyar should be taken seriously because of the research he’s done, but that he’s also prone to make assertions on weak evidence. And on the ethical level he sounds like another Guenter Lewy (whose book I have)–outraged by communist atrocities, not so much by those committed by our side. Again, though, I haven’t read the book. Perhaps he’s horrified by Diem’s massive human rights violations. And maybe he’s utterly appalled by the slaughter of many hundreds of thousands of people by Suharto in Indonesia. You never know when you read a review if it is accurately conveying the author’s viewpoint.
Comment by Donald Johnson —
August 23, 2007 @ 5:21 pm
Partly answering my own question, the reviewer linked below says Moyar does acknowledge Diem’s ruthlessness, but both defends it and understates its scope. I’d forgotten that it says he acknowledges it.
http://hnn.us/roundup/entries/36138.html
Again though, this is just a review.
Comment by Glaivester —
August 23, 2007 @ 6:54 pm
Michael B-
Jim Henley is not arguing that “people died while we were there” should end the argument. He is pointing out that in order to blame America’s leaving Vietnam for the atrocities that took place afterwards, you have to present a realistic scenario of how, being there, we could have caused a better outcome.
Comment by Michael B —
August 24, 2007 @ 1:10 pm
Glaivester, we disagree concerning whether or not any genuine interest exists on the part of Mr. Henley.
Donald Johnson, the author of your review is asst. prof. Jeremy Kuzmarov. Can you point me to a single review or article of Kuzmarov’s that is favorable to someone other than a Chomsky or Chomsky-styled author. Or can you point me to a single country, other than the U.S., that Kuzmarov reviews unfavorably? Or, concerning North Vietnam, can you point me to a single review by Kuzmarov that views Ho Chi Minh’s reign critically, for example a critical review of the massacre at Hue, the “land reforms” of the early 50’s, the assassinations and terror campaigns of that same period?
As to the review itself, Kuzmarov little more than dismisses Uncle Ho’s Leninist/Stalinist origins and lengthy history in Stalin’s Soviet and Mao’s China, including Ho’s siding with the Soviet Union and against the more nationalistic Tito or with the Soviet Union and against the Hungarian nationalist Imre Nagy. But those are merely two of the more salient reminders of Ho’s allegiance with Stalin’s and communism’s international focus and Uncle Ho’s allegiance to that focus, which Kuzmarov seeks to denigrate. A similar tone and method pervades Kuzmarov’s review.
Comment by Jim Henley —
August 24, 2007 @ 1:21 pm
Michael: In summary, are you saying, “America’s intentions were noble, so you can’t judge the results of America’s actions as harshly as we judge the results of the actions of North Vietnam?”
Comment by Michael B —
August 24, 2007 @ 1:59 pm
Is this now an example of your sincerity, of your desire for give-and-take on more reasonable/rational and cogent grounds?
But no, that is not an accurate summary. To the contrary, what I am saying is that harsh realities existed and that all sides of the conflict need to be judged on the basis of common principles. (And to be clear, I wasn’t dismissing everything Kuzmarov said, was rather calling attention to his pervasive imbalance and history reflecting that imbalance and left-leaning prejudice.) Likewise, I notice you didn’t answer any of my questions.
Too, you owe me an apology for the “b.s.” remark. But I’m not holding my breath and, too, you have yet to come to terms with anything I previously forwarded. Or, in summary, are you suggesting you should be allowed to ask questions, but never be questioned?
Comment by Michael B —
August 24, 2007 @ 2:40 pm
Glaivester,
Below is a list of what occurred, post-April 1975, to South Vietnam’s population, though first and for emphasis, recall that all U.S. ground forces had left Vietnam by 1973 and that we had largely promised only military supplies and financial support after that point, not U.S. forces as such. By 1973 South Vietnam ARVN and other forces had taken over the war and were fighting it successfully, without our ground forces. But again, following is a brief list of what occured, post-April, 1975, to South Vietnam’s population:
+ 65,000 South Vietnamese were executed by the North Vietnamese in the immediate wake of April, 1975; a number in line with other such findings such as Turner who estimates 50,000 to 100,000 in that period immediately following April, 1975. Doan Van Toai and Nguyen Tuong Lai in Santoli’s volume suggest the total massacred in the immediate wake of was as many as 200,000.
+ 250,000 South Vietnamese died in Soviet styled gulags and Maoist styled “reeducation” camps. (For a contrasting number, James Taranto recently took note of a 2001 investigation by the Orange County Register (OCR) which came up with a number of 165,000 killed as a result of 1,000,000 being placed in those gulags/reeducation camps.)
+ 300,000 to 500,000 starved to death in the wake of 1975. (Turner)
+ A million South Vietnamese boat people, tens of thousands of which (estimates seem to range from 125,000 to 250,000) died at sea, these included mass forced expulsions plus those who simply wanted to escape; the San Diego Union, July 20, 1986, estimated as many as 250,000 drowned at sea.
+ Many hundreds to many thousands of suicides among the South Vietnamese leadership in the wake of April 1975.
+ It’s estimated there were 400,000 to 500,000 South Vietnamese civilians killed by the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese regulars during the period c. 1954 – 1975. (E.g., the Ho Chi Minh Trail was originally created as a supply line and in order that propagandists, assassins and terrorists could infiltrate from the North into the South, coercing local, indigenous South Vietnamese populations into ideological compliance.)
In sum, post-April 1975, roughly 800,000 to a million, due to the North’s Stalinist styled regime’s retaliations, repressions, etc. against the former South’s population. Those are merely the deaths, ranging from summary executions to starvations to drowning at sea, etc. – disregarding lives oppressed and destroyed but short of being killed.
Now, to be clear, you and Mr. Henley are suggesting that those numbers would have been roughly as bad or even worse if America had kept it’s promise to furnish military hardward and finances??? (And again, by 1973 U.S. ground forces had already been redeployed out of Vietnam, so it was no longer a matter of keeping U.S. ground forces in Vietnam, as your question seems to suggest.)
As such, please present a realistic scenario of your own as to how you imagine a comparable or even worse outcome would have occurred had America, despite U.S. ground forces having left, kept its promises in terms of financial and military supplies.
References used, in addition to the one of two newspaper studies referenced, include the following:
Robert F Turner’s “Vietnamese Communism: Origins/Development”
Al Santoli’s “To Bear any Burdan”
Moyar’s “Triumph Forsakenâ€
Michael Lind’s “Vietnam, the Necessary Warâ€
Andrew Krepinevich’s “The Army and Vietnamâ€
Lewis Sorley’s “A Better Warâ€
Again, you need to be willing to hold yourselves accountable, to the same standards you’d apply to the Great Satan, the U.S. You also need to acknowledge we’re discussing the harsh realities in the real world, not some imaginatively conceived utopia or ideality, then comparing those imaginings to what South Vietnam and the U.S. were facing, against the Soviets, against Stalin’s and Mao’s and Uncle Ho’s strategems and ruthlessness.
Comment by Glaivester —
August 24, 2007 @ 5:11 pm
Again, you need to be willing to hold yourselves accountable, to the same standards you’d apply to the Great Satan, the U.S.
Knock off the theatrics, bub. If you hadn’t entered into this debate with the attitude “you’re all so hypocritical evil and stupid, and anti-American ifyou disagree with me,” people would be more likely to pay attention to what you say.
Now, if we assume that providing the South Vietnamese with finances would have in itself been enough to have prevented the North Vietnamese takeover, then yes, I agree with you that we should have kept the funding up. I don’t know if continued funding would have saved South Vietnam or not, but it strikes me as likely.
In short, in post 37 you make a good argument. This is what you should have done at the start, and with a much different tone. Arguing that on the margin, the costs of staying are less than the costs of leaving is reasonable. Arguing, as many others have, to look at the costs of leaving without considering the costs of staying, on the other hand, is unwise.
On the other hand, to the extent that this rings true, it becomes less relevant to Iraq, because in Iraq we are not in a situation where we are reducing our troop presence to zero and increasingly reducing our role to financing and supplying the Iraqi side we want to win. (Indeed, there are indications that Iraq may be a jumping-off point to an expanded war involving Iran and/or Syria if we stay in).
You also need to acknowledge we’re discussing the harsh realities in the real world, not some imaginatively conceived utopia or ideality,
True, but it seems that many (although perhaps not you) deny the harsh realities on the other side, and assume that if we stay and are determined to win, we can shape everything the way we want it. Beleiving that we can whip Iraq into a unified democratic country or even a stable U.S. ally is, in my opinion, rather unrealistic.
Comment by Michael B —
August 24, 2007 @ 5:49 pm
Ok, ok, I used some “theatrics” to provoke, but they were not intended more personally in the manner you’ve suggested (e.g., implying anti-American or stupid outlooks), rather I use them when it comes to Vietnam and a few other critical topics due to the tendency of so many to reflect an echo chamber effect and rely upon received opinion when it comes to such subjects, rather than a willingness to be open to a more honest give-and-take. No personal slight was intended in the least and I apologize if it appeared that way, which confusion would perhaps be understandable.
Too, I acknowledge and applaud your honest approach. To be clear, I don’t pretend to have absolute or definitive answers so much as I’m aware of meaningful and at least some more pivotal questions which warrant being asked.
Iraq, reflecting the President’s recent speech which related Vietnam/Iraq, is of course a larger and perhaps even more contentious subject. I won’t comment here on that “pandora’s box” subject.
Comment by Joe —
August 24, 2007 @ 10:00 pm
Donald Johnson, old shoe:
I’m not sure if you were alive at the time, but peasant liberation (in the form of the VC who were mostly North regulars) of South Vietnam was the only thing I heard at the time.
Also, your “Apparently he thinks we could have “won†in Vietnam. Yeah, whatever.” – Good Lord, a real tour de force of an argument!
Actually, I have been convinced that the Diem overthrow (and subsequent destablization of Vietnam) was a Republican’s fault. That Repbulican was Henry Cabot Lodge who was the Amb. to Vietnam at the time of the coup. I suppose President Kennedy shares a bit of the blame, but for the most part Lodge either lied to or intentionally misled his superiors in DC.
Please, open your mind to alternatives to what you’ve been spoon-fed over the years. I have, it is a wonderful experience.
Read Trimph Foresaken, it is well worth your time.
Comment by Donald Johnson —
August 25, 2007 @ 12:56 am
Michael, in your eagerness to link the reviewer with Chomsky, you forgot to tell me if Moyar approved of the murder of massive numbers of Indonesians by Suharto.
On Diem, oddly enough I’ve read lefties who say he was more competent than what came after and most people say that Diem’s overthrow was something the US should not have been involved in, so it’s a little odd to see this brought up as a stunning new suggestion. As for victory, I don’t doubt that in principle Vietnam could have been won using the methods Suharto used in Indonesia and those seem to be the methods Diem favored–lots of torture and killing. Perhaps he was very good at it. This was the point of my “whatever” comment.
BTW I’ve seen many of Michael’s casualty numbers before, and a wide range of death estimates for the number killed by the US. I’ve gotten fairly cautious about death toll estimates unless I know what they’re based on–preferably either actual counts or else a careful statistical analysis of whatever data is available. (The key word there is “careful”. )
As an example of what I’m talking about, one that won’t ruffle too many ideological feathers here (though the US did support the murderers), I’ve seen estimates of the number killed by Pakistan in what became Bangladesh in 1971 that range from “tens of thousands” up to 3 million. That’s an extreme case, but when you notice things like this you start to become cynical and suspect that people are making up plausible-sounding numbers based either on what evidence they have or on nothing at all.
Joe, what ho, old boy, where do you get this notion that “most” of the VC were Northern troops? What I’ve read is that the VC were Southern peasants, the NVA were Northern troops, and after the Tet offensive most of the fighting on the communist side was done by the Northerners. As for what you heard, I rather doubt that in 1975 people said that Southern peasants were overrunning South Vietnam with Russian-supplied tanks, but perhaps you hung out with a singularly ill-informed crowd.
Comment by Donald Johnson —
August 25, 2007 @ 1:17 am
As an example of a dubious study, there may have been a bloodbath in postwar Vietnam (there were certainly executions and re-education camps), but the 65,000 figure was produced in a study that was statistically worthless. I remember reading the Porter paper refuting it a long time ago, but was only able to find this thread on usenet which contained a portion of it–
http://www.usenet.com/newsgroups/soc.rights.human/msg02361.html
My guess is that tens or hundreds of thousands of boat people did die and some unknown number of executions occurred. If the US had continued to support South Vietnam then many hundreds of thousands more would have died from wartime violence. If they’d lost anyway, then we’d be back to re-education camps and boat people.
If our side had won, there’s no reason to think there wouldn’t have been a large scale “White Terror”. Suharto’s behavior seems to be the model the revisionists wish we had followed. And Suharto was about to kill a huge number of people in East Timor, with US blessings, not to mention military equipment.
Comment by Joe —
August 25, 2007 @ 4:33 am
Donald, did you just prove my point when you admitted you thought the VC were Southern peasants……
“Nobody claims that a peasant uprising ended South Vietnam in 1975. Another strawman goes up in flames.”
Or perhaps were just talking about different dates. During the Vietnam war, I was always told, and believed it to be true, that the whole war was a peasant uprising (your point about the VC being peasants). We all agree that the fall of Saigon & the rest of the South in 1975 was a result of Russian-supplied equipment and a proper invasion by the NVA (and a simultaneous VC attack), but that’s the point, it was always the North attacking the South from about 1956 onward, with help from their patrons in Moscow & Beijing, never a peasant uprising like we were told in the NYT and the like. Remember, Ho Chi Minh was just a misunderstood naitonalist (who happened to be in Russia for most of the 1930’s) not a communist, we forced him into be so.
You really should read Moyar’s book, it has a great deal of research from Northern documents that is fascinating. Don’t get me wrong, I’m pretty much against getting involved in other countries problems, but to just swallow David Halberstam’s NYT dispatches hook, line and sinker, is a dangerous thing to do when judging history.
You seem like a pleasant enough fellow, I swear I’m not trying to mislead you on the book (I also swear I’m not really Mark Moyar trying sell books or an undercover Amazon.com representative).
As far as a singularly ill-informed crowd, you may be right, I watched NBC nightly news (with Untley and Brinkley) every night and read the New York Times during most of the war period!
Comment by Donald Johnson —
August 25, 2007 @ 9:52 am
I read leftwing commie-symp Gabriel Kolko’s book on the Vietnam War back in the 80’s and he’s quite clear that the VC were part of North Vietnam’s forces, while they themselves were South Vietnamese peasants. I know there was a belief on the part of antiwar types in the 60’s that the VC were a politically independent outfit, but the fact that this is wrong is very old news.
BTW, since you’ve read Moyar, does he think Suharto’s mass slaughter in 1965 was an appropriate model to be followed?
Comment by Donald Johnson —
August 25, 2007 @ 10:02 am
One other point (wish I could think of them all at once). You guys seem to be arguing with the romanticized views of the Vietnamese communists held by the far left during the 60’s. At least some of us on the far left today are deeply suspicious about romanticizing anyone with a gun. Personally, I’m also not a big fan of “nationalism” as such–if I was going to identify several “isms” which had inspired numerous bloody atrocities and other horrific human rights violations, I’d say that “nationalism” should be on anyone’s short list, alongside of communism, fascism, imperialism, and for that matter (though it overlaps with the previous two) anti-communism. Fanatical religionism isn’t a word, but it belongs there too.
I once heard two old lefties now on opposite sides–Christopher Hitchens and Tariq Ali–arguing about the Iraqi insurgents. The question was whether the Iraqi insurgents belonged in the venerable category of nationalist rebels, like the VC or the Algerian FlNM (I may have the initials wrong.) Ali said yes and Hitchens said no. From my Amnesty International standpoint, the answer is “yes”–all three groups committed horrific atrocities against civilians.
Comment by Donald Johnson —
August 25, 2007 @ 10:15 am
Sigh–one more post. I should add that I don’t actually know if all the Iraqi insurgent groups commit atrocities against civilians. Some of them (specifically meaning Sunni groups now) denounce Al Qaeda for committing them. Whether this is sincere I have no way of knowing. Maybe they only condemn Al Qaeda killing of Sunni civilians. Maybe not. Most Americans seem only interested in divisions amongst Iraqi insurgents to the extent they can be talked into allying themselves with us and shooting at each other. Understandable, but I’d like to know more.
Comment by SS-Dallas —
August 25, 2007 @ 1:44 pm
The Moyar book is so much crap. Trust me, I was there, pretty much alongside Halberstam, Sheehan, Arnett, Browne… from 1962 thru 1967. I saw things with my own eyes. You’re right about invasion from the North… since Ho Chi Minh declared a 30-year to unite the whole of Vietnam in 1956. Peasants were used mostly in the early days, managed by “cadre” from the North… very poorly armed, raiding GVN police stations and small Army posts to get weapons. (That’s why the U.S. refused to arm the ARVN with anything better than M-1s and Carbines until much later into the war.) But it was the NVA/PAVN, etc., that came in force in 1965 when the U.S. landed in division-sized units. The rest is history.
Moyar is almost totally “all wet.”
ss
Comment by Michael B —
August 25, 2007 @ 1:52 pm
“Michael, in your eagerness to link the reviewer with Chomsky, you forgot to tell me if Moyar approved of the murder of massive numbers of Indonesians by Suharto. Donald Johnson
One final response herein perhaps, and will try to be conscientious, though I was not being evasive and cannot address each and every issue to the satisfaction of everyone. First, there was no such “eagerness.” Rather, I had not heard of Kuzmarov, googled him, read reviews and articles of his that are posted on-line (there are a few, but not that many), and very briefly summarized those reviews, or rather summarized a basic weakness and strong ideological bias reflected in those reviews.
As to Moyar’s view of Gen. Suharto, who took over from Sukarno via a military coup, it’s difficult to summarize very briefly, but the following points:
+ Kuzmarov’s summary of Moyar’s view of Suharto is superficial and in fact is disingenuous. Kuzmarov states “[Moyar] goes so far as to support the American backing of General Suharto in Indonesia in a 1965 coup and the bloodletting that followed, which the CIA described as ‘one of the worst mass murders’ of the 20th century.” In fact Moyar thoughtfully describes the pre-existent anti-Communist military in Indonesia under Gen. Marjadi and Gen. Suharto; he describes Sukarno’s increasing embrace of the PKI, the sizeable communist movement in Indonesia; and he does so within a realist framework – e.g., noting the tinderbox quality that had been reached by 1965 between those competing forces – not with any type of ideological or politically based enthusiasm for the brutality as such.
+ Moyar straight-forwardly acknowledges the character of the coup, for example stating “[w]ith a brutality that claimed hundreds of thousands of lives, the anti-Communists wiped out the huge Indonesian Communist Party.”
+ What Moyar then says, and likely this is what Kuzmarov is referencing, is that “[t]his vital domino [Indonesia], tipping precariously, was [thus] transformed into a huge boulder standing squarely in the path of Chinese and North Vietnamese expansionism.” And that is a true statement, both despite the brutality and because of the takeover. But it’s only within those broader, realist, geo-political and regional dynamics that the coup, with America’s support in terms of military materiel, is in turn “supported.” By contrast, does Kuzmarov support the Maoist regime in China at the time, together with its expansionist interests in Laos, Vietnam, Cambodia, Indonesia and elsewhere? Does he support Uncle Ho’s “land reforms” cum murderous purges? Such questions are the type of thing, as a counterpoise, Kuzmarov never poses to himself, much less answer. In other words Kuzmarov writes in a manner that effectively sharply critiques the U.S.’s actions (Vietnam, support of the coup in Indonesia) while he sanitizes the actions and the very real existential threats, reflected in Uncle Ho’s Soviet and Maoist sponsors, entirely out of the picture: he deftly presents a set of false historical choices.
+ Finally and only in summary, I find Kuzmarov to be more than a little disingenuous throughout and more than a little broadly dismissive. Whether he is conscious or less conscious of his political/ideological bias I cannot say, but it appears to be both pronounced and decisive.
More generally and in concluding, I do regard Moyar’s “Triumph Forsaken” very highly, but that is not to say I regard it as the final word on the subject or upon any particular, as if to say it is the “bible” on the subject. Still, Moyar possesses some notable bona fides (Harvard, summa cum laude and PhD at Cambridge), he seems to write thoughtfully and conscientiously (400 pgs., with an additional 100 pgs. of detailed footnotes, cross reference material). Likewise, I’m well aware that any historical work covering a contentious subject needs to be approached circumspectly, with a conscious awareness of the tugs and pulls that a variety of interests, predispositions, political and ideological influences, etc. can have on a person, even one who has poured over large quantities of original documentary evidence across a wide range of sources, such as is reflected in Moyar’s work. Too, I’ve read scores of books and papers on the subject, so I’m not looking at Moyar’s work through a single lens. Finally, Moyar’s is merely one work I’d highly recommend, I’ve listed half-a-dozen herein and could list another dozen still.
(For an on-line paper covering a different aspect of the subject, but one that is highly indicative of some basic themes and explores those themes in some detail, Peter Rollins on Sheehan’s “Bright Shining Lie” is a formidably incisive exploration on several levels.)
Comment by Donald Johnson —
August 25, 2007 @ 2:21 pm
Thanks, Michael B. I don’t know if Kuzmarov (who I’d never heard of until the other day) supports communist atrocities. I’ve noticed a couple of people on the right citing Indonesia and Suharto’s actions there in 1965 as a model to be followed, and I’ve read things which suggest this was how it was viewed at the time.
Here’s another reviewer who thinks Moyar deserves to be taken seriously for his scholarship, but evidently disagrees with him on various issues, though only talking about one. (I think–I read this a day or two ago.) He thinks Moyar goes too far based on thin evidence, or that’s the impression I had, though he also wishes historians would read him.
Um, darn it, I accidentally deleted the weblink. I’ll supply it in the post below this.
Thanks, ss. I’m not really sure (without reading Moyar) what is supposed to be so revolutionary about his achievement. Are we supposed to think there weren’t South Vietnamese peasants fighting the South Vietnamese government or supporting the guerillas? That antiwar activists on the far left romanticized the VC in a ridiculous way–this just isn’t news. (It’s also comparable to the way the Afghan resistance was romanticized in the 80’s, btw. People in the West love their noble heroic guerilla fighter myths.)
Comment by Donald Johnson —
August 25, 2007 @ 2:22 pm
Here’s the weblink to another review of Moyar–the one I meant to supply above.
http://www.h-net.org/~diplo/roundtables/PDF/TriumphForsaken-McAllister.pdf
Comment by Michael B —
August 26, 2007 @ 7:38 am
Well, certainly Kuzmarov is not going to openly state he supports communist atrocities – a la the massacre at Hue, the “land reforms” of the early to mid-50’s, etc. The point made there was Kuzmarov’s literary style, wherein he places U.S. actions (support of the Indonesian coup in terms of military materiel) under a microscope while eliding Uncle Ho and his sponsors as represented in Mao’s China and the Soviet Union, which literary style has the effect of presenting a false, non-realistic set of choices. In effect it gives renewed witness to the cynical efficiency and historical efficacy of “Stalin’s statistics.”
“Are we supposed to think there weren’t South Vietnamese peasants fighting the South Vietnamese government or supporting the guerillas?”
The V.C. existed, certainly and obviously, though many of those peasants infiltrated from the North rather than being indigenous to provinces in South Vietnam. Indeed, the origins of the V.C. resulted from a strategic initiative by the North, not as a result of a popular revolt in the South. Too, many who were indigenous to the South had aligned themselves with the North due to terror and highly coercive propaganda campaigns conducted by the North’s cadres, via infiltrations using the Ho Chi Minh trail. That terror and those campaigns of coercion in the early to late 50’s were themselves the reason for the commencement of the war, at least so in terms of open and increasing guerilla hostilities; the North invaded the South, not the other way around, following the armistice of 1954/55.
Otoh, in 1969 alone and as reported in Lewis Sorley’s “A Better War,” just short of 50,000 Viet Cong realigned themselves with the regime in South Vietnam. That during a single year, following Tet.
Comment by Donald Johnson —
August 26, 2007 @ 12:00 pm
“he point made there was Kuzmarov’s literary style, wherein he places U.S. actions (support of the Indonesian coup in terms of military materiel) under a microscope while eliding Uncle Ho and his sponsors as represented in Mao’s China and the Soviet Union, which literary style has the effect of presenting a false, non-realistic set of choices”
Not a safe way to argue. I don’t know Kuzmarov’s opinions, but a great many lefties know about communist atrocities, but focus on those committed by the US and its allies because we think that’s our duty as citizens of the US. We’d prefer much less violent intervention (direct or via proxies) by the US, along the lines George Washington outlined. In most cases there’d be no siding with murderous rightwingers against murderous leftwingers (or vice versa, for that matter).
You could be right about K, but silence can be interpreted in several different directions.
As for violence in the South, from what I’ve read Diem was engaged in violent repression from the mid 50’s on. It’s probably meaningless to talk about who started the violence–when two ruthless opponents both want power, it’s just a matter of circumstance or tactics who ends up striking first.
Comment by Donald Johnson —
August 26, 2007 @ 2:17 pm
That wasn’t terribly clear. I should do better self-editing. Basically, I think we should avoid getting involved in other people’s wars except in extreme circumstances. WWII was an extreme circumstance–in that case, of course, we lined up with an extremely violent leftwing thug against an extremely violent rightwing thug.
Comment by Michael B —
August 27, 2007 @ 7:01 am
A common sentiment, but one too infrequently expressed with an equally forceful insistance that the Soviet Union and Mao’s China should not have “gotten involved” with North Vietnam. It’s in Michael Lind’s “Vietnam, the Necessary War” that Lind notes: in the Kremlin on the evening of Feb. 14, 1950, three men toasted one another in a banquet hall: Joseph Stalin, Mao Zedong and Ho Chi Minh.
But I’ll close with another on-line recommendation: Rereading Vietnam. The checks and balances inherent in the civilian/military divide, in sum, is a decidedly healthy product, serving to ensure against potential excesses that otherwise might be committed by one side of that divide or the other. Still, when it comes to more coarsely grained aspects of that divide, both minor inefficiencies and larger tragedies are capable of occurring when one side fails to more fully appreciate the role of the other. “Rereading Vietnam” has the potential to serve as a corrective to the civilian side of that ignorance as applied to Vietnam specifically and more generally, via analogy.
Comment by buermann —
August 27, 2007 @ 1:03 pm
Mike: “with Ho Chi Minh and Co.s land reforms, c. 1954, where appx. 50,000 to 100,000 peasants were murdered by Uncle Ho”
This complaint lost a lot of its alacrity as Nixon insisted on repeatedly and dishonestly upping the estimate until it reached 550,000 (news conference, 7/27/72).
Jim: “the aid cutoff”
There was no aid cutoff in FY 1975.
Mike: “not the least of which is assuming what would have happened had we not become involved”.
Let’s assume the worst of Ho, and take the Great Richard Satan Nixon at his exaggeration, and assume that had we not become involved double his estimate would have died to at the hands of President Mihn of the United People’s Democratic Republic of Vietnam, elected July 1956, per the Geneva Accords.
That leaves us with 1.1 million, add to that your 800,000 without question and that leaves us with 1.9 million deaths to use as further PR for our Black Book of Communism. Against the standard estimate for the period of the American war (which, us not having involved ourselves, wouldn’t have happened) of 3.5 million we’ve now saved 1.6 million lives, a trillion or so in butter, and scored a great propaganda victory against the communist hordes.
If you’ve followed along on the back of your envelope you’ll see that the Vietnam war, in hindsight, was a very dumb idea.
Comment by Michael B —
August 27, 2007 @ 3:13 pm
buermann,
Given the several comments above, you are not reading or are not arguing very closely, beyond, seemingly, what you want to hear and read. (E.g., the 50,000 to 100,000 that you refer to, in terms of Ho Chi Minh’s “land reforms,” were Uncle Ho’s regime’s cullings merely in the 53/54 period as pertains to those land reforms, a single program, not reflective of their entire regime, though it did reflect a certain ideological and totalitarian outlook. You are playing loosely with numbers more generally as well.)
As to the option of “not having involved outselves,” again, note the earlier comment that it would be nice to see similarly forceful statements vis-a-vis Stalin’s Soviet and Mao’s China not allowing themselves to get involved on the side of North Vietnam as well. Your statements here, and elsewhere, are more than a little one-sided.
As to the aid cutoff, essentially from ‘73 to ‘75, it was quite real and in fact critical and your own account is highly truncated, is a tendentious account. Too, Lewis Sorley’s “A Better War,” referenced above, serves to mount an extensive and well documented argument contrary to your assertions (with support from Richard Nixon, no less, who now becomes authoritative by your standards?).
Finally, you are forwarding standard Leftist tropes, arrogations, reductions. You seem to forget that it was the North that invaded the South, not vice versa. Also that after the Geneva armistice, in 1954, it was large populations that migrated from the North to the South during the allowed period of appx. one year following that armistice, and not the other way around, thus voting with their feet in the direction of the South and away from Uncle Ho’s Stalinist styled regime. (Migration was allowed in both directions, from the North to the South and vice versa; ten times as many voted with their feet from North to South as compared to the South to North migration, during a one year period from 1954 to 1955.)
The Vietnam war was a great tragedy, as were various other theaters during the Cold War, from the Truman Doctrine and Greece, to Korea, to Hungary and Czechoslovakia and the Iron Curtain in general and elsewhere as well. No one is arguing it wasn’t a tragedy. But given the totalitarian, highly repressive and in fact murderous regimes that in fact were genocidal at times, such as is reflected in your references to “The Black Book of Communism,” it doesn’t all reduce to facile arrogations of numbers and similarly tendentious arguments.
Comment by buermann —
August 27, 2007 @ 3:56 pm
Of course I’m playing fast and lose with the numbers, I expressed stated that I was doing so, and all entirely to your advantage.
There was no aid “cutoff”. That’s not an assertion, that’s just an apparently utterly forgotten fact.
If there had been a cutoff in FY 1975 Gerald Ford would have been complaining to congress about it in his speech on 1/27/1975, during which he requested supplemental aid:
If there had been an aid cutoff the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations’s March report advising passage of the supplemental wouldn’t have discussed in detail the amount of aid provided thus far in the FY and it’s utilization.
If there was a cutoff, S.663, as recommended by said Committee on Foreign Relations to supplement aid to Indochina, wouldn’t have died as a subject on the table of Congress. The only other bill on aid to Indochina that got any further before the regimes fell was Bella Abzug’s earlier supplemental humanitarian aid bill, which was passed in the Senate, and remained hung in committee in the House by the time the regimes fell a month later, at which point Ford’s January request was rendered quite irrelevant.
You can look at all the congressional activity during FY 1975 for yourself on thomas.loc.gov, it’s not rocket science.
The cutoff never happened, it’s a fabrication amidst all this other nonsense.
Comment by Michael B —
August 27, 2007 @ 4:28 pm
If by “cutoff” you intend from some figure down to zero, then I agree. Though if that’s what you’re forwarding, I’ve never seen anyone make the argument that such a cutoff, to zero funds, occurred.
They were sharp and absolutely critical reductions or cutbacks, including reductions even of medical supplies, as reflected in the overall monetary reductions. Too, as indicated, they occurred roughly from ‘73 to ‘75, perhaps a good deal prior to that point as well. As South Vietnamese Brigadier General Tran Dinh Tho indicated during this period, “This drastic cutback gravely affected not only the RVNAF [Republic of Vietnam Armed Forces] combat capabilities, but also the morale of their cadres and troops.”
So if your point is there were drastic and critical cutbacks, but no “cutoff,” that’s true, but in terms of practical impact it simply meant a slower rather than a quick death to the Republic of Vietnam (South Vietnam).
Comment by buermann —
August 27, 2007 @ 5:02 pm
“aid was cut off”, what else would it mean? If people remembered clearly what happened they’d call it a reduction, and not a very meaningful one at that. If Nixon could request a reduction, as he in fact did, why couldn’t Congress reduce it some more?
And of course a South Vietnamese general would look for somebody else to blame. That doesn’t demonstrate anything other than that he lost.
Comment by Michael B —
August 27, 2007 @ 5:49 pm
Such facile, contemptuously born dismissiveness. Stalin’s statistics. And of course the quote from Republic of Vietnam Brig. General Tran Dinh Tho was simply one reflection of the broader scale of events, the cutbacks as a whole, it wasn’t intended to describe the those cutbacks in their entirety or the murderous reprisals, to the people of South Vietnam, those cutbacks resulted in.
Pathetic. You can’t even argue along reasonable/rational and historical/empirical lines, much less morally proportioned lines. The Left has long been a citadel and redoubt of mendacities and malevolence when it comes to the Republic of Vietnam (South Vietnam), you’re merely bearing renewed witness to those oft-repeated, historical corruptions.
Again, Peter Rollins on Sheehan’s “Bright Shining Lie” is highly instructive in exposing and detailing some of the progenitors, the lineage, of some of those basic deceits.
Comment by buermann —
August 27, 2007 @ 6:52 pm
I’d be less dismissive if you could demonstrate better reading comprehension.
E.g. “Stalin’s statistcs”, I quoted you and Nixon, Stalin of course was quite dead.
Or: “the quote…was simply one reflection”
Not even a reasonable argument along historical lines, you might say, but an anecdote.
“The Left” bla bla bla.
And many happy returns.
Comment by Michael B —
August 28, 2007 @ 12:45 pm
You were contemptuous and dismissive from the very beginning. You latched onto the fact that Jim H. (who sides with you) used the term “cutoff” instead of “cutback” as if a semantic error was the sine qua non of those pivotal cutbacks. You are contemptuously dismissive of those cutbacks in terms of the absolutely pivotal role they played, and the totalitarian regime that followed (see comment #37 above). You elide other critical factors, such as the historical fact that it was Ho Chi Minh and Co. that invaded the South, not vice versa. Or overlooking the Soviet Union’s and Mao’s expansionist policies in Vietnam and elsewhere while acting as if the U.S.’s involvement on the side of the Republic of Vietnam was the critical factor – in other words, by default, you’re suggesting we should have stood idly by while Ho Chi Minh, supplied by his Sino-Soviet sponsors, overwhelmed the Republic of Vietnam in the South.
Also, “Stalin’s statistics” is a reference to a quote of Stalin’s that reflects a general attitude toward mass killings, not to Stalin’s reign specifically. Otoh, I did previously note a meeting that took place in the Kremlin between Stalin, Mao and Ho Chi Minh on Feb. 14, 1950. Likewise, Ho Chi Minh spent a protracted period of time in Stalin’s Soviet, matriculating into a Leninist/Stalinist ideologue, not a simple nationalist. In that same vein I previously noted that when Ho Chi Minh had the option of standing up for nationalists in opposition to the Soviet Union, as was the case with Tito in Yugoslavia or Nagy in Hungary, he chose the side not of the nationalists but of the Soviet Union, therein revealing the long, storied mendacities/propaganda reflected in the myth of “Uncle Ho” as a simple nationalist and not a Marxist/Leninist ideologue and practitioneer and proxy of Sino-Soviet Marxist expansionism.
You dismiss as mere anecdote that which was representative of the South’s fall, which resulted in the mass murders and cleansings reflected in my August 24, 2:40 pm comment above (presently comment #37).
Hence, from beginning to end, contemptuous dismissiveness and a studied avoidance of any more thoughtful and cogently based engagement.
Comment by buermann —
August 28, 2007 @ 2:07 pm
‘You latched onto the fact that Jim H. (who sides with you) used the term “cutoff‒
Yeah, I disagreed, so I posted a link as to why I disagreed, in detail.
“you’re suggesting we should have stood idly by while Ho Chi Minh … overwhelmed the Republic of Vietnam in the South.”
Why, the topic of the thread! How’d that get in there? I observed that by your own argument, and granting it further generous appendages from Mr. Nixon, this would have been a far superior outcome.
Taking your argument as given without exception, of course, is the opposite of “dismissive” and “contemptuous”.
Comment by Michael B —
September 1, 2007 @ 7:38 am
The “detail” you’re trumpeting is risible, the more basic point is that there never was an argument about whether it was a cutoff vs. a cutback in the first place. And no, no one was suggesting any argument simply be “taken as given,” which is not at all the opposite of being dismissive. The opposite of merely being dismissive would be to advance an argument that appeals to the mind, one that is cogent, coherent, that corresponds to the latest historical evidence.
In that vein I’ll close with this American Spectator article which gets to the heart of it. Excerpt, a couple of key graphs:
The statements of Kerry and Kennedy lure the public’s gaze away from the speech’s main point — that antiwar Americans believed that the Vietnamese and Cambodian people would stop suffering if America stopped supporting the anti-Communist forces. It is very much in the Senators’ interests, for both espoused this view during the war. In his famous Dick Cavett Show appearance, Kerry said, “There is no interest on the part of the North Vietnamese to try to massacre the people once people have agreed to withdraw.” In early 1975, Kennedy objected to President Ford’s request of $300 million in military aid for South Vietnam and $220 million for Cambodia by arguing that this aid would “fuel the war.”
Another scathing critic of the VFW speech who held such views in 1975 is Stanley Karnow, author of an outdated but still widely read history of the Vietnam War. “The ‘loss’ of Cambodia,” Karnow said, would be “the salvation of the Cambodians.” Senator Christopher Dodd, then a member of the House, claimed in 1975, “The greatest gift our country can give to the Cambodian people is peace, not guns. And the best way to accomplish that goal is by ending military aid now.”
(And no, you didn’t observe my own argument with “generous appendages” from Nixon. You distorted and confused my argument.)