Susan L.M. Huck: Vietnam Falls: it is time to establish responsibility

BTTT

Kerry at the Massachusetts Vietnam Veterans Memorial Dedication, June 9, 2002

Senator Kerry, are you proud of our Vietnam veterans? Are you proud of helping to bring them home -- without letting them finish the war that took so many of their comrades?

Some biting criticism of CFR is on this thread...

"It was not the work of some nameless "they," but of individuals we have been told all along were great Americans—yet they intended from the beginning that Vietnam would be an American defeat. There is no other outcome for a no-win war."

The John Birch Society was born out of another pre-planned "no win" war in Korea. Strang, Evans, Welch, and Allen started to sound the alarm against CFR not only on Vietnam, but also their infiltrations all across American culture: Tentacles into Congress, Hollywood, media, education, and more. Still they have been ignored. Even when proven correct (as in the case of KGB files on Hollywood) they have been ignored.

Thanks for the ping.

Reposted at jbs.org here.

I was actually in mail contact with Huck back in 1975 as a college student. I sent her a letter telling her that there were numerous errors in “Vietnam Falls.” She answered me but was not very convincing. I later greatly expanded my review, turned it in as a term paper in a sociology class and got an A!

If anyone wants more info, please email me at jwagner4@integrity.com.

Response to “Vietnam Falls” by Susan Huck:

Huck resorts to lies, inaccuracies, exaggerations. and omission of important information.

She claims this was “a no-win war. Planned that way.” Of course this is absurd. Presidents are always obsessed with their historical legacies. Can you really imagine Kennedy, Johnson and Nixon planning to lose a war, which would ruin their historical reputations? Common sense dictates against this.

She claims that Ho Chi Minh was sprung free from a Chinese prison by Americans in about 1944. There is no evidence whatsoever to support that. According to biographical sources, Ho made a deal with his warlord captors. Americans had nothing to do with it.

Huck then claims “In March 1946 a Leftist French Government was ready to let HO have the North, but he wanted everything and made his bid with a surprise attack on Hanoi on the night of December 19, 1946.” In fact, it was the French who struck first the previous month with a naval bombardment of Haiphong that killed 6,000 people. Funny that Huck didn’t mention that.

She later writes that after the French lost the first Indochina War in 1954, that they “were at least able to over the southern flight (from north to south) of some three million refugees from ‘liberation.’” This is a huge exaggeration. The initial 250,000 refugees (typically collaborators with the French) made an unprompted decision to leave, but the number then increased to 850-900, 000 due to CIA black propaganda psy war strikes to the Catholics (according to the Pentagon Papers and other sources) that influenced vastly more to leave.

Huck also didn’t mention that there was the Geneva Agreement created in 1954 that temporarily split Vietnam in two, to be later reunited after national elections. The United States put Ngo Dinh Diem in power who refused the elections. The reason is that Ho as a national hero would have won. Diem then started a violent campaign in 1955 against all opposition including the communists. Ho’s Viet Minh in the South did not start fighting back until two years later and the North began sending Southerners home (to help out) in 1959.
‘
Once the war started under Johnson, Huck said that Haiphong was never hit during the early years. That is not true. In June 1966, 80 % of Haiphong’s doc facilities were destroyed, but the North Vietnamese got the supplies in anyway. And plenty of other targets were hit, but government officials who studied the potential for bombing Vietnam concluded “The idea that destroying or threatening to destroy N. Vietnam’s industry would pressure Hanoi into calling it quits, seems in retrospect, a colossal misjudgment... NVN…was an agricultural country with a rudimentary transportation system and little industry of any kind.” (Source: Pentagon Papers)

Meanwhile, Washington dumped more than 7 million tons of bombs mostly on South Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos and some on North Vietnam as well—though there were restrictions there, due to fear of a Soviet or Chinese reaction.

(To Be Continued)

Please provide a correct link to this article.

(Part 2)

Huck notes that under Nixon, the bombing of North Vietnam was conducted and Haiphong was mined, and there was no intervention by Russia or China, “So the ‘restraints’ had been lies.” Another blatantly inaccurate claim. First, let me note an amazing irony. It was John Birchers like Huck who were always sounding off how “aggressive” the communists were. Yet during the Vietnam War’s early years, when the Johnson administration expressed fear of Soviet or Chinese reprisals if we pulverized North Vietnam, the Birchers dismiss that as nonsense! Amazing.

But with Nixon, 1972 was a very different era than 1965-66. Détente was in effect, Washington was talking to both Russia and China, offering them incentives and playing them off against each other. In fact, China even pressured Hanoi toward an agreement, according to Seymour Hersh (see source below)..

Concerning the 1973 to 1975 period, Huck wrote : “There is no question that Henry Kissinger arm-twisted President Thieu into signing his phony ‘peace with honor’ paper…There is no question that Kissinger, Nixon –and even President Ford –promised both economic and military help to South Vietnam should the communists crank up another offensive. That was all eyewash.”

First, the treaty itself was not “phony.” What was it to a large extent? It was largely a return to the old Geneva Agreement that Washington had scuttled almost 20 years before!
It recognized that Vietnam was one country, temporarily divided, and it mandated national elections and ultimate reunification of the nation.

It is well known by now that Nixon wanted very much to bomb North Vietnamese troops in 1973, but he was completely restrained by the Watergate scandal. Beyond that, I would argue that the Saigon regime (shock to some here!) was primarily responsible for the treaty failing.

During the weeks after the treaty signing, reporters on the scene (such as Daniel Southerland of the Christian Science Monitor) noted that the Saigon regime was guilty of by far the greatest number of ceasefire violations. By the end of 1973, Saigon had increased the amount of territory under its control by 15 percent. And CIA analyst Frank Snepp, author of the prominent book “Decent Interval,” wrote, “Despite American claims to the contrary, the North Vietnamese did not engage in much offense military activity during the first year of ‘peace.”

Furthermore, Thieu refused any participation in meetings to form the National Council on Reconciliation and Concord, the electoral commission to develop national elections.

By mid-1974, the ceasefire was completely over with and the war was fully back on. In April 1975, Thieu ordered a huge tactical withdrawal of his troops, which turned into a snowballing panic. Is it any wonder Congress would not give them anymore funding? The North Vietnamese soon after won the war.

Huck then cites some of her right wing friends from throughout the years and says, “That we have been proved right (about waging the war differently) is bitter solace.” I don’t think most Americans see it that way! Most see getting involved at a all, as a huge mistake.

Four books I highly recommend are A Peace Denied, by Gareth Porter, Fire in the Lake by Francis Fitzgerald, The Price of Power: Kissinger in the Nixon White House by Seymour Hersh, and The Pentagon Papers (New York Times edition)