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The Vietnam History You Haven't Heard
Christian Science Monitor ^ | January 22, 2007 edition | Mark Moyar

Posted on 01/22/2007 6:51:58 AM PST by kellynla

With ever-increasing frequency, Americans are told that Iraq is another Vietnam, usually by those accusing the Bush administration of miring the United States in a hopeless war. For most who make this comparison, the Vietnam War was an act of hubris, fought for no good reason and in alliance with cowards. But new historical research shows this conventional interpretation of Vietnam to be deeply flawed. The analogy, therefore, must be rethought.

Three journalists handed down the standard version of the Vietnam War in three bestselling tomes. The first two, David Halberstam's "The Best and the Brightest" (1972) and Stanley Karnow's "Vietnam: A History," (1983) each sold more than 1 million copies, while the third, Neil Sheehan's "A Bright Shining Lie" (1988), received the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award.

These books have profoundly influenced almost everything else that has been written about the Vietnam War. Because of the iconic status of these journalists and the political inclinations of the intelligentsia, the three books received few serious challenges – prior to the publication last summer of my "Triumph Forsaken: The Vietnam War, 1954-1965."

Historians such as Guenter Lewy, Lewis Sorley, and Michael Lind have also effectively contested some of the journalists' basic interpretations, and antiwar historians have produced more modest modifications, but the Halberstam-Sheehan-Karnow rendition of the war has remained dominant.

One reason for the durability of their version is that the endless repetition by other commentators produced the impression that it had to be right. Earlier, when writing a book on counterinsurgency in the latter years of the war entitled "Phoenix and the Birds of Prey," I, too, presumed that the first half of the war had been covered exhaustively.

(Excerpt) Read more at csmonitor.com ...


TOPICS: Culture/Society; Editorial; Foreign Affairs; Government
KEYWORDS: iraq; vietnam; war
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To: metesky; GoldCountryRedneck; kellynla

Ping


41 posted on 01/22/2007 11:28:07 AM PST by Kenny Bunk (¿Cómo te gustan esas manzanas, Gringo?)
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To: Kenny Bunk
I dare say there isn't any real history of the SOB [JFK] out yet...

Nailed it. I was aware of the 60's election theft, but, you're right.

Maybe, like, FDR, the "rest of the story" will someday surface.

42 posted on 01/22/2007 11:36:56 AM PST by GoldCountryRedneck ("Idiocy - Never under estimate the power of stupid people in large numbers" - despair.com)
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To: kellynla

history repeating itself bookmark


43 posted on 01/22/2007 11:39:17 AM PST by IrishCatholic (No local communist or socialist party chapter? Join the Democrats, it's the same thing.)
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To: kellynla; Brucifer

*ping*


44 posted on 01/22/2007 11:55:45 AM PST by Liberty Valance (Keep a simple manner for a happy life ;o)
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To: GoldCountryRedneck

We don't know how JFK lived, and it still is not certain how he died.

No conspiracy there.


45 posted on 01/22/2007 12:02:19 PM PST by alloysteel (Just going to church doesn't make you a Christian,like standing in a garage doesn't make you a car.)
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To: Kenny Bunk

The Cuban missile crisis was a direct result of Kennedy's massive failure at the Bay of Pigs.
Had he supported the invasion there would never have been a communist government to accept any armament of any type that would threaten us.
Kennedy was no hero in October.
He caused it.


46 posted on 01/22/2007 12:24:12 PM PST by smoketree (the insanity, the lunacy these days)
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To: kellynla

BFLR = Bump for later reading


47 posted on 01/22/2007 12:39:21 PM PST by Kevmo (Darn, if only I had signed up 4 days earlier, I'd have a 3-digit Freeper #)
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To: GoldCountryRedneck
JFK made a secret deal with the Russkies to remove missles from Turkey six months after the Russians got the missles out of Cuba.

Quid Pro Quo.

48 posted on 01/22/2007 1:22:30 PM PST by metesky ("Brethren, leave us go amongst them." Rev. Capt. Samuel Johnston Clayton - Ward Bond- The Searchers)
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To: Kenny Bunk
And to this day, the Kennedy Museum in Boston manages the release of JFK' "inner sanctum" tapes, usually heavily edited. The courts called the tapes private property, but Nixon's recordings using IIRC, pretty much JFK's equipment, were deemed government property.

Ain't life grand?

49 posted on 01/22/2007 1:28:56 PM PST by metesky ("Brethren, leave us go amongst them." Rev. Capt. Samuel Johnston Clayton - Ward Bond- The Searchers)
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To: smoketree

bttt


50 posted on 01/22/2007 1:30:29 PM PST by metesky ("Brethren, leave us go amongst them." Rev. Capt. Samuel Johnston Clayton - Ward Bond- The Searchers)
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To: ASOC
Folks ask why no big anti-war movement today?

There is no big antiwar movement because there is no draft. When Nixon ended the draft, the antiwar movement went away. Charlie Rangel knows this and this is why he keeps agitating to re-institute the draft. He wants to gallop backward to the old chaos of the "New Left."

51 posted on 01/22/2007 3:42:11 PM PST by hinckley buzzard
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To: smoketree
beginning with the losses of Laos, Cambodia, and VietNam, and the election of Jimmuh Carter, a nation fell to the communist orbit every four months for the next four years. The domino theory was not marginal. It came true.

In 1984, when Reagan was running for re-election, he could and did boast that "not one inch of territory" had been lost to the Communists on his watch. It was not just a straw man. It was a real turnaround from the prevailing trend.

52 posted on 01/22/2007 3:46:38 PM PST by hinckley buzzard
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To: Kenny Bunk
He started of our real involvement militarily in ViietNam with a big bang

Really? I recall that up to his death he was sending over more and more groups of "advisors", about 40,000 by 11/63, without ever rallying the nation to send troops in the open. Eg, his first SOTU speech only mentioned VN in passing, as one of several places freedom was at risk. I agree though that Kennedy had little commitment to VN despite his brave inaugural proclamations.

53 posted on 01/22/2007 3:56:28 PM PST by hinckley buzzard
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To: kellynla

here's a nice part of the works exposing the MSM warping of the Vietnam era...

Three Big Lies About the Vietnam War
by Michael Medved

https://www.treefarmtapes.com/catalog/product.asp?productid=14142


54 posted on 01/22/2007 3:58:21 PM PST by VOA
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To: jjm2111
No, the Vietnam war was lost in the way we tried to fight it. We tried to pretend it was like WWII..

Hardly. If we had fought VietNam like we fought WW II we would have nuked Hanoi, or at least carpet bombed it for the duration and sent the Navy and Marines in to occupy the port of Haiphong. We fought VN like the anti-WWII.

55 posted on 01/22/2007 4:14:40 PM PST by hinckley buzzard
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To: kellynla; 2111USMC; 2nd Bn, 11th Mar; 68 grunt; A.A. Cunningham; ASOC; AirForceBrat23; Ajnin; ...

Ping


56 posted on 01/22/2007 4:16:25 PM PST by freema (Marine FRiend, 1stCuz2xRemoved, Mom, Aunt, Sister, Friend, Wife, Daughter, Niece)
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To: ASOC

Good point.


57 posted on 01/22/2007 4:19:30 PM PST by Jet Jaguar
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To: RedRover; Just A Nobody; jazusamo; smoothsailing; euphoriadev

Hellacious ping. There's even a bonus Sheehan in here for you.

-excerpt-
Undermining South Vietnam's leader

During 1963, in contrast to later years, the American press corps largely favored American involvement in Vietnam. Many also believed, however, that the South Vietnamese president had to be replaced before the war could be won. Perhaps not fully aware of cultural differences, they faulted Mr. Diem for refusing to afford dissidents – and US reporters – the same freedoms they enjoyed in peacetime America.

Diem mishandled the Buddhist protests of mid-1963, they contended, by using a heavy hand instead of offering concessions. In truth, Diem did make concessions initially, but the Buddhists responded by accelerating their protests, enumerating more fictitious grievances, and demanding Diem's removal. Halberstam, Sheehan, and Karnow largely dismissed Diem's contention that the Buddhists were infiltrated with Communist agents, yet newly available Communist sources reveal that Diem was correct.

The Buddhists' unopposed insolence in the summer of 1963 undermined the Diem government's prestige, something no Vietnamese government could afford for long. Eventually, Diem's generals recommended that the government arrest the Buddhist movement's leaders and disperse the other protesters in order to restore its prestige. Diem consented and worked together with generals in executing the mission.

But then Halberstam and Sheehan published tendentious stories accusing Diem of acting without the knowledge of the military, citing "highly reliable" – but anonymous – sources. They also published stories stating that the officer corps was upset with Diem for his treatment of the Buddhists, based heavily on information from a Reuters stringer named Pham Xuan An who, unbeknownst to them, was actually a Communist agent. The stories were not true.

Halberstam, Sheehan, and Karnow would play crucial roles in events that fomented the coup that removed Diem on Nov. 1, 1963. Their anti-Diem information, much of it from ill-informed or agenda-driven sources, gave Diem's opponents in the US government the reasons they needed to remove what they considered to be an ineffective allied government. Ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge accepted their reports, spurring him to incite the coup.

Because the war went very poorly for the South Vietnamese after Diem's overthrow and assassination, the three journalists soon faced accusations that they had helped wreck the South Vietnamese government. Halberstam, Sheehan, and Karnow skillfully produced a defense, one they have maintained to this day.

By taking a few pieces of evidence out of context, they asserted that the South Vietnamese war effort had been wrecked before Diem's death rather than after it, something that they had not claimed at the time. They were thus able to convince the American people that Diem had ruined the country and that the press had been right in denouncing him.

A multitude of previously untapped American and Vietnamese Communist sources show that the South Vietnamese war effort actually was thriving until the very end of Diem's life.

Diem's armed forces hurt the Communists far more seriously than Americans have been led to believe. So, too, did his poorly understood "strategic hamlets," fortified South Vietnamese communities stocked with government cadres and militiamen.

When the war became unpopular in America during the late 1960s, Halberstam, Sheehan, and Karnow stopped expressing support for the US defense of South Vietnam. They ridiculed the principal American rationale for war – the so-called domino theory, which predicted that the fall of South Vietnam would lead to the fall of the other countries in the region. When many of the dominoes did not fall after South Vietnam fell in 1975, they held it up as proof that they were right.


58 posted on 01/22/2007 4:22:33 PM PST by freema (Marine FRiend, 1stCuz2xRemoved, Mom, Aunt, Sister, Friend, Wife, Daughter, Niece)
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To: kellynla; Millee; Allegra; Jersey Republican Biker Chick; carlr; PaulaB; Maximus of Texas; EX52D
My late Father, a WW2 Vet, said in 1971 just before his death, "We need to go through the news departments of CBS, NBC and ABC and bayonet every one of them traitor sumbitches."

Pappy was a man ahead of his time. I second his sentiments towards today MSM...

However, I would widen the field to include the NYT, WP, the Democratic Party and Congress...
59 posted on 01/22/2007 4:45:36 PM PST by Bender2 (Nancy P needs to spend a few weeks with her supporters in Tehran...)
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To: kellynla

bttt


60 posted on 01/22/2007 4:53:49 PM PST by shield (A wise man's heart is at his RIGHT hand; but a fool's heart at his LEFT. Ecc 10:2)
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