by Oui
Fri Apr 25th, 2025 at 08:44:21 AM EST
The best minds of America set foreign policy in SE Asia, persuaded by the "domino" theory and war time think tanks like the RAND Corporation.
The French colonial occupation forces were defeated by Dien Bien Phu ...
Dien Bien Phu & the Fall of French Indochina, 1954
The Vietnam War Ended 50 Years Ago: People Still Get it Wrong | Juan Cole |
April 30th marks the 50th anniversary of the Vietnam War's end when Vietnamese tanks rolled into Saigon, soon to be renamed Ho Chi Minh City. The war was a terrible experience for the United States, but even more so for the people of Vietnam and much of the rest of Southeast Asia. Estimates are that up to 3 million Vietnamese perished, as well as many, many thousands of Cambodians and Laotians. 58,000 American died, and a trillion American tax dollars were wasted.
Many of us who were there are still trying to understand and come to grips with it. Based on years of study, here is what I think people still get wrong about the war. What I write will be controversial, but it is based on what I saw and learned. If I seem angry, it is because I still am.
In nearly all wars, the other side is demonized and made into evil caricatures of human beings; doing so makes it easier to kill them. From the US perspective, the Vietnam War was no exception. Even the Vietnamese who were supposedly on our side were commonly referred to as Gooks, zips (Zero Intelligence Personnel), Slants, Slopes and more, often to their faces.
In my experience, the US military chain of command made no effort to correct this. Given the pervasive racism among American troops, it should come as no surprise that violence against Vietnamese civilians was common. It is hard to understand how anyone thought the Vietnamese people would rally to the US side while being badly treated.
In Vietnam many of us learned to be quite skeptical of the media and the US government. To cite just one example out of hundreds, as the advancing NVA/VC forces began to over-run the South (mid-1970's), US officials and media warned of a blood-bath to come. Secretary of Defense [James] Schlesinger warned that 200,000 would be killed if the communists won. The American armed forces newspaper Stars and Stripes, in one of the last issues to arrive in Saigon, carried a headline: `At Least a Million Vietnamese Will Be Slaughtered.'" But that never happened.
When it came to allegations of massacres, whether by the enemy in Hue during Tet [offensive by Viet Cong early February 1968], or the Americans at My Lai, the truth was regularly mangled by the US government and media.
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Vietnam: 50 Years of Forgetting | Featured Documentary - Al Jazeera |
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Vietnam's War Sites Become Tourist Magnets 50 Years After Fall of Saigon
Fifty years after the Vietnam War ended, which are the best war sites to visit? | NZ Herald |
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Nixon-Kissinger-Schlesinger-Colby - Inside workings Nixon White House
Saudi Arabia Oil Embargo - 29 Nov. 1973
Kissinger: I have been telling the President that we should say to the Arabs that we will make progress when you lift the embargo--not that the embargo will be lifted as we make progress.
Schlesinger: We have been talking about using the Marines.
Kissinger: We should have a plan before we move troops. It is ridiculous that the civilized world is held up by 8 million savages. I spent three hours with Faisal. His problem is he is a friend of the United States, but he is pressured by radicals. So he is leapfrogging the radicals so he isn't embarrassed by his U.S. relationship.
We have had two letters from Yamani. I told them that we couldn't operate under pressure.
I get the impression they are blinking.
Colby: Yes, they are looking for ways to get us oil.
Schlesinger: They are turning up the screws on Aramco.
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