"60's Lies About Vietnam War Must Be Exposed Now"

[thedrifter]

VIETNAM VET REFORM GROUP SAYS 60'S LIES ABOUT VIETNAM WAR MUST BE EXPOSED NOW
TO DISCREDIT ACADEMIC VIEWS ON FOREIGN POLICY AND THREAT OF POLARIZATION. -
a V.V.A.R. newsnote from Leonard Magruder- President (Part 2)

The main focus of lying by the anti-war movement was two White Papers
issued by the State Department in December l961 and March l965. The claims of
these two papers, based on a great deal of evidence, were that Hanoi was
directing a campaign of overt and covert subversion and aggression against
an independent South Vietnam. In a sustained attack over the years, the
anti-war movement claimed that the war was a civil war between "U.S. puppets"
and "indigenous resistance" in South Vietnam . This denial of a North
Vietnamese presence in the South was the major contention, and the biggest
lie, of opponents of the war. They portrayed the two White Papers as a
calculated campaign of disinformation by the U.S. Governement. Destroying the
credibility of these two White Papers was the chief objective of the anti-war
movment and the first step in its ultimate victory over U.S. policy. But it
was done by lying, and if they do it again with regards to current U.S.
policy on the war on terrorism, they will destroy the homeland.
The l961 White Paper said outright and, as it turns out, correctly,"The
Viet Cong are not indigenous freedom fighters; Hanoi is behind the guerrilla
war in South Vietnam. The Lao Don party, that is, the Communist Party, is
the vangard of the "liberation" movement." This first White Paper was the one
that presented John F. Kennedy's case for assistance to South Vietnam as
legal, moral, and proper.
The Second White Paper, released in Februrary of l965, after Lydon Johnson
took over, again made the point that the conflict was caused by Hanoi's
policy of conquest. It stated, "South Vietnam is fighting for its life
against a brutal campaign of terror and armed attacks inspired , directed ,
and controlled by the Communist regime in Hanoi. It is established beyond
question that North Vietnam is carrying out a carefully conceived plan of
aggression against the South... a violation of the United Nations Charter and
directly contrary to the Geneva Accords to which North Vietnam is a party."
The entire anti-war movement rested on the lie that North Vietnam was
never involved in aggression. This was done to take the issue out of the
arena of Cold War containment policy. This is what was taught to students in
the notorious teach-ins at major universities. as well as spread by leading
anti-war figures such as I.F.Stone, Stanton Lynd, Tom Hayden, David
Dellinger, Abbie Hoffman, Francis Fitzgerald, and Hans Morganthau. Later
George Kahin and John Lewis in a text that was widely used in the teach-ins
,"The United States in Vietnam", wrote, "There is no evidence to assert, as
does the U.S. White Paper of 1965, that the Liberation Front for South
Vietnam was formed at Hanoi's order." They completely ignored all of the
evidence that went into the two White Papers. Since then, of course, we have
had numerous testimonies from disenchanted leaders of the North confirming
the accuracy of the White Papers, men such as Van Toai Doan, author of "The
Vietnamese Gulag" and Truong Nhu Tang, author of "A Vietcong Memoir." As to
the lie by the anti-war movement that the Viet Cong was an independent South
Vietnamese political movement, Bui Ten, the North Vietnamese colonel who
accepted the surrender of South Vietnam said in "The Wall Street Journal "
recently, "It was set up by our Communist Party to implement a decision of
the Third Party Congress of September 1960."
But the most important confession of involvment by Hanoi is found in the
report "Summary of Fact", issued in l987 by Hanoi's Military History
Institute describing key decisions made by Hanoi regarding South Vietnam from
the Geneva Convention in l954 until the final conquest by the Communists in
l975. Stephen B. Young in an article to which I am indebted for some material
in this article, summarized the impact of this material when he wrote, "The
Summary confirms the two American White Papers and utterly refutes the
position of the anti-war movement. Hanoi's document reveals how, step by
step, the Vietnamese Communist leadership in Hanoi made the decisions to
forment a war in South Vietnam and then, again and again, to escalate that
conflict." From the start of South Vietnam's existence following the Geneva
Conference, Hanoi was resolved to crush its autonomy and bring its people
under Communist rule. Those who supported the war were never confused about
this, but the lies of the anti-war movment came to be embraced by so many
that the U.S. was threatened with serious internal conflict, and the flawed
solution of Vietnamization offered by Nixon was accepted.
The "Summary of Fact" contains this statement, "Following the road set out
by the Party Congress, on December 20, l960, the People's Front for the
Liberation of South Vietnam was established." That is, the NFL, or Viet Cong
is thus revealed by the Summary as having been the creation of Hanoi's
Communist Party. That one sentence destroys the arguments of the anti-war
movement.
The White Papers of 1961 and 1965 had assessed the intentions of Hanoi
with complete accuracy. The credibility gap, or cynicism, of the 60's was
not created by any fabrication on the part of the Kennedy or Johnson
Administrations. It was created by deliberate lying by the leaders of the
anti-war movement.
Said Stephen B. Young in his article commenting on celebrations of the
thirtieth anniversaries of the Vietnam War,"A generation congratulates itself
once again for doing what the North Vietnamese never could have done -defeat
the United States. History, as they say, is written by the victors, and the
victor in this conflict was the American anti -war movement. It is no wonder,
then , that our national recollection of the war matches that of the New
Left. It is no wonder too that certain questions are no longer asked, chief
among them the question, a central one thirty years ago, of whether the U.S.
involvement resulted from a tissue of lies Washington was spinning out even
before the Gulf of Tonkin incident, or whether its factual assessment of
conditions in South Vietnam , Laos, and Cambodia and its consequent policy
response to the plight of the South Vietnamese people was rational and
justifiable."
We now know, with much of the evidence coming from the enemy itself, that
the response was rational and justifiable. Therefore, what is taught on
campus about the Vietnam War can no longer be tolerated as it is largely
based on lies. By far the most widely used textbook on the Vietnam War in our
universities is Stanley Karnow's "Vietnam: A History." So biased is the book
that when translated into a PBS series it caused protests and riots by
Vietnamese refugees and Americans in New Orleans, Houston, Los Angeles,
Washington, Paris, and London. A documentary , narrated by Charlton Heston
was produced exposing the errors, and also a book, "Pirates are Losers."
The time has unquestionably come for Vietnam veterans, who were the
primary victims of this massive academic conspiracy against truth to speak
out strongly in demanding that this change, and that this matter of the two
White Papers and the evidence that the anti-war movement was a moral fraud,
be a central part of presenting to students a new and more honest view of the
Vietnam War.
The only way that the American campus is going to be able to present the
absolutely necessary unity with the rest of the nation that is required in
the face of the terrorist crisis is to admit that it was wrong on Vietnam,
admit they fell for and propagated enemy propaganda, as there are already
signs that this may be happening again.
As the Chief of Military History, U.S. Government wrote in his "Final
Report", "If there is to be an inquiry related to the Vietnam War, it should
be into the reasons why enemy propaganda was so widespread in this country,
and why the enemy was able to condition the public to such an extent that the
best educated segments of our population have given credence to the most
incredible allegations."

Sempers,

Roger