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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsWhy Don’t Americans Know What Really Happened in Vietnam?
Why Dont Americans Know What Really Happened in Vietnam?
Instead of confronting the truth, we scrubbed the record cleanand were still paying for it in Afghanistan and Iraq today.
The 1960sthat extraordinary decadeis celebrating its 50th birthday one year at a time. Happy birthday, 1965! How, though, do you commemorate the Vietnam War, the eras signature catastrophe? After all, our government prosecuted its brutal and indiscriminate war under false pretexts, long after most citizens objected, and failed to achieve any of its stated objectives. More than 58,000 Americans were killed along with more than 4 million Vietnamese, Laotians, and Cambodians.
. . . . . .
How quickly times change. Jump ahead a decade and Americans had already found an appealing formula for commemorating the war. It turned out to be surprisingly simple: focus on us, not them, and agree that the war was primarily an American tragedy. Stop worrying about the damage Americans had inflicted on Vietnam and focus on what we had done to ourselves. Soon enough, President Ronald Reagan and his followers were claiming that the war had been disastrous mainly because it had weakened an American sense of pride and patriotism, while inhibiting the nations desire to project power globally. Under Reagan, Vietnam became a rallying cry for both a revived nationalism and militarism.
. . .
The Antiwar Movement Dispatched to the Trash Bin of History
In the 1980s, however, the Americans most saddled with blame for abusing Vietnam veterans were the antiwar activists of the previous era. Forget that, in its later years, the antiwar movement was often led by and filled with antiwar vets. According to a pervasive postwar myth, veterans returning home from Vietnam were commonly accused of being baby killers and spat upon by protesters. The spat-upon storywildly exaggerated, if not entirely inventedhelped reinforce the rightward turn in American politics in the post-Vietnam era. It was a way of teaching Americans to honor victimized veterans, while dishonoring the millions of Americans who had fervently worked to bring them safely home from war. In this way, the most extraordinary antiwar movement in memory was discredited and dispatched to the trash bin of history.
. . . .
t should not go unnoticed that the same government that is spending $65 million commemorating the veterans of a once-reviled war has failed to provide sufficient medical care for them. In 2014, news surfaced that the Veterans Administration had left some 100,000 veterans waiting for medical attention and that some VA hospitals sought to cover up their egregious delays. Every day an estimated 22 veterans commit suicide, and among vets of Iraq and Afghanistan the suicide rate, according to one study, is 50% higher than that of their civilian peers. The Pentagons anniversary commemoration has triggered some heated push-back from groups like Veterans for Peace and the Vietnam Peace Commemoration Committee (co-founded by Tom Hayden). Both are planning alternative commemorations designed to include antiwar perspectives once so common but now glaringly absent from popular memory. From such efforts might come the first full public critical reappraisal of the war to challenge four decades of cosmetic makeover.
. . . .
http://www.thenation.com/article/197425/why-dont-americans-know-what-really-happened-vietnam
G_j
(40,367 posts)the way history is rewritten.
niyad
(113,490 posts)deutsey
(20,166 posts)Hearts and Minds (1974)
The Oriental doesn't put the same high price on life as does the Westerner. Life is cheap in the Orient. Hearts and Minds is an Academy Award winning documentary about the Vietnam War directed by Peter Davis. The film's title is based on a quote from President Lyndon B. Johnson: "the ultimate victory will depend on the hearts and minds of the people who actually live out there". The movie was chosen as Best Feature Documentary at the 47th Academy Awards presented in 1975.
The film premiered at the 1974 Cannes Film Festival. Commercial distribution was delayed in the United States due to legal issues, including a temporary restraining order obtained by one of the interviewees, former National Security Advisor Walt Rostow who had claimed through his attorney that the film was "somewhat misleading" and "not representative" and that he had not been given the opportunity to approve the results of his interview.
After Columbia Pictures refused to distribute the picture, Bert Schneider and Henry Jaglom purchased back the rights and released the film in March 1975 through Warner Bros.
niyad
(113,490 posts)grasswire
(50,130 posts)....mentioned as the person who hid the evidence of Nixon's treason in his safe.
niyad
(113,490 posts)LongTomH
(8,636 posts)Octafish
(55,745 posts)Kennedy wanted to keep USA out of Vietnam.
JFK ordered withdrawal from Vietnam. LBJ reversed it four days after Dallas.
In National Security Action Memorandum (NSAM) 263 JFK orders everybody out...
Then in NSAM 273...
Vietnam Withdrawal Plans
The 1990s saw the gaps in the declassified record on Vietnam filled inwith spring 1963 plans for the complete withdrawal of U.S. forces. An initial 1000 man pullout (of the approximately 17,000 stationed in Vietnam at that time) was initiated in October 1963, though it was diluted and rendered meaningless in the aftermath of Kennedy's death. The longer-range plans called for complete withdrawal of U. S. forces and a "Vietnamization" of the war, scheduled to happen largely after the 1964 elections.
The debate over whether withdrawal plans were underway in 1963 is now settled. What remains contentious is the "what if" scenario. What would Kennedy have done if he lived, given the worsening situation in Vietnam after the coup which resulted in the assassination of Vietnamese President Diem?
At the core of the debate is this question: Did President Kennedy really believe the rosy picture of the war effort being conveyed by his military advisors. Or was he onto the game, and instead couching his withdrawal plans in the language of optimism being fed to the White House?
The landmark book JFK and Vietnam asserted the latter, that Kennedy knew he was being deceived and played a deception game of his own, using the military's own rosy analysis as a justification for withdrawal. Newman's analysis, with its dark implications regarding JFK's murder, has been attacked from both mainstream sources and even those on the left. No less than Noam Chomsky devoted an entire book to disputing the thesis.
But declassifications since Newman's 1992 book have only served to buttress the thesis that the Vietnam withdrawal, kept under wraps to avoid a pre-election attack from the right, was Kennedy's plan regardless of the war's success. New releases have also brought into focus the chilling visions of the militarists of that erafour Presidents were advised to use nuclear weapons in Indochina. A recent book by David Kaiser, American Tragedy, shows a military hell bent on war in Asia.
CONTINUED with very important IMFO links:
http://www.history-matters.com/vietnam1963.htm
That doesn't get repeated anywhere near enough, even on DU. Thank you, niyad!
niyad
(113,490 posts)we can rec it.
Octafish
(55,745 posts)I'd be happy to as a little Valentine for our friends.
On this subject:
Papers reveal JFK efforts on Vietnam
By Bryan Bender, Globe Staff
Boston Globe June 6, 2005
EXCERPT...
Records show that McNamara and the military brass quickly criticized the proposal. An April 14 Pentagon memo to Kennedy said that ''a reversal of US policy could have disastrous effects, not only upon our relationship with South Vietnam, but with the rest of our Asian and other allies as well."
Nevertheless, Kennedy later told Harriman to instruct Galbraith to pursue the channel through M. J. Desai, then India's foreign secretary. At the time, the United States had only 1,500 military advisers in South Vietnam.
''The president wants to have instructions sent to Ambassador Galbraith to talk to Desai telling him that if Hanoi takes steps to reduce guerrilla activity , we would correspond accordingly," Harriman states in an April 17, 1962, memo to his staff. ''If they stop the guerrilla activity entirely, we would withdraw to a normal basis."
A draft cable dated the same day instructed Galbraith to use Desai as a ''channel discreetly communicating to responsible leaders North Vietnamese regime . . . the president's position as he indicated it."
But a week later, Harriman met with Kennedy and apparently persuaded him to delay, according to other documents, and the overture was never revived.
CONTINUED...
http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2005/06/06/papers_reveal_jfk_efforts_on_vietnam/
Thank you, niyad!