GENERAL COMMENTS
And They Call Us Revisionists
by Stephen Sherman

On the weekend of March 10-11, the Kennedy School hosted a conference on Vietnam and the Presidency. The luminaries that participated were more than the usual suspects, such as veterans, academics and historians manqué. Instead, they were decision-makers and other major players: the people who influenced significant turning points in the twenty year American involvement in the Second Indochina War.

But they flew in and delivered self justifications of themselves and their patrons, and we learned little new about our nation’s most traumatic experience. We have already addressed some of the myths embedded in the celebrity and popular imaginations about Vietnam at www.Viet-Myths.net . We wish to take the opportunity here, to address the statements offered at this conference and to extend the discussion to others, both those who were able to attend as well as those that were not able to do so.

The Director of the Kennedy Library and Museum opened the conference by stating “. . . while war is always wrenching, the Vietnam War tore apart this country in ways from which we have never recovered. To many, it was a loss of innocence, the event that led to what has been called a permanent, adversarial culture in the United States.” Accepting that the bifurcation of our culture began or became evident with the Vietnam War, why were there no voices presented for the “other side”?

Despite the rare recognition of alternate points of view (Dan Rather “there are some people who say. . .”) and token "war-mongers" (Henry Kissinger and Alexander Haig), this conference was one homogenized paean to the liberal establishment’s view of the war, to wit: the war was a mistake, the “oppressed” Vietnamese defeated the imperialist American war machine, the anti-war movement were the only heroic figures, the government ran a “lying machine”, the lessons of Vietnam are whatever the liberal establishment defines them to be at a given moment.

Let’s examine the “axioms” of the “BlueState[1]” point of view.

(1) The war was a mistake. (Substantiated by a CBS News/New York Times poll from the year 2000) “Looking back on the war in Vietnam, do you think we did the right thing in getting into the fighting in Vietnam? Or should we have stayed out?” The right thing, 24%; stayed out, 60%.

Begrudgingly, credit was given, “when Presidents of the United States sank America deeper and deeper into the war in Vietnam, they believed they were doing the right thing. Why were they willing to risk so much? Should they have done it, and why did it fail to meet their goals? When did they begin to see the unanticipated consequences of their decisions and to reassess the next steps?”

There is an unwillingness to credit the elected Presidents of the United States and the members of the Executive Branch who spend full time considering what is important for our national security, as provided for in the Constitution. That collective experience and wisdom is always trumped by 29 year old reporters, dissident legislators and disaffected ex-military personnel.

As an instrument of foreign policy, we can agree that war is an option of last resort. We can agree as to its horrific effects on the participants, both civilian and military, and the agony of a public which sees the casualties mount. At this conference however, we are told that the role of the media[2] is to present the human costs of war in such a way as to deter the public from permitting this instrument to be used. Somehow this does not apply to wars other than those for the purposes of national defense. Darfur, for example, is proposed as a place where we could fruitfully apply our military forces. Like Somalia in concept, Darfur is where we can “make a difference” without expending American lives, at least until an opponent realizes it can change U.S. public opinion by making sure we get back some of our own back in body bags.

2) The good guys won. There were a number of speakers romanticizing communism. Communism in Vietnam and China, and in Russia for that matter didn’t prevail because it was a kinder, gentler form of government. It only lasted as long as it did in the Soviet Union and continues today in Vietnam, China, Cuba, and North Korea, because it ruthlessly suppresses the natural yearning of its population. Communism is not responsible for the economic boom in China; State control and state owned industries only serve to counter balance the gains made through freeing the engines of commerce. The liberals here imagining that their rights are being violated by the Patriot Act or Foreign Intelligence surveillance are very accepting of real human rights violations in the pseudo-Communist countries today where ideology is only a façade for continued one party control.

3) Celebrating the anti-warrior. A big thing was made of Carter’s pardon of draft dodgers in order to heal the wounds of war. If they felt strongly enough to go to Canada, what was the necessity to bring them home? Judging from the way that the end of the draft impacted on the anti-war movement, we suspect that much of the anti-war fervor was primarily a matter of self-interest and preservation of self. How about tending to the self-esteem of the men who went to do what their nation asked of them. These people are still regarded as baby killers. Treatment and compensation await them if they admit they were tainted by the Vietnam War, but simple recognition for their service is beyond the capacity of the liberal mindset. Pindar wrote, “Unsung the heroes’ deed will die.” The media and the entertainment and the educational industries have teamed up to make sure these songs remain unsung. Instead of looking at the anti-war movement as patriotism, perhaps failure to serve should diminish their civic rights. It seems to me that too many anti-war people went into soft studies like teaching, law, publishing, journalism, entertainment industry, perhaps to stay in school for the draft deferment, (they weren’t smart enough for engineering and the hard sciences) and they permeate and distort those fields today.

4) The Lying Machine: It is up to the President to convince the public to support his chosen course of action and to do this he uses the Lying Machine. Tim Naftali said "it is very, very important to keep in mind that all of President Kennedy’s generation was convinced that the Soviets had an advantage in competing for the hearts and minds of the people of the third world." The Blue State answer is that capitalism was an evil system. The real reason is evident from today is the recent coverage of the Chinese President’s State visit to the U.S. China just cut off CNN and BBC reportage of the Hu trip in order to present its own controlled version. Despite our President’s bully pulpit, he is followed by an equal time opposing view and a rash of critical editorials every time he speaks to the American people. We would suggest that the real lying machine is the one that mis-reports, mis-portrays and mis-teaches every aspect of a policy that is not to its liking.

5) What are the lessons of the Vietnam War? If you are going to elect politicians who decide it is in the national interest to send the sons and daughters of your fellow citizens off to war, be aware that the only acceptable outcome is “victory.” Winning a war means crushing an enemy sufficiently that he accepts the terms and conditions that satisfy the reason you went to war in the first place. War requires a high degree of ruthlessness. If your enemy is ruthless, you may not wish to match him step by step, but if you feel you must “know your enemy”, that is the first characteristic you must realistically keep in mind. If you insist on Rule of Engagements that lengthen the war and increase friendly casualties, be aware that you are as much to blame for the result as the enemy. Despite any proclamation that a particular war is “not in your name”, it is, and you should be held accountable. If your media wants to depict the “atrocities” of our side, ignoring the atrocities that began the conflict, they should also be held accountable. If you can show, week after week, pictures of prisoners with panties over their heads, why can’t you show fellow citizens jumping off burning towers or exhumations of mass killings by Saddam Hussein? I’m not prepared to suggest specifics of what this accountability entails, other than the judgment of history, at least for the time being.

A funny thing happened to the Vietnam War on its way to the history books. Even people who knew better have succumbed in part to the incessant pounding of the Left. That is the only excuse for the low number of people who believe we are doing the right thing, in the poll cited above. I am reminded of a story which appeared in the New York Times about a former soldier who returned to college after his tour of duty. He got into a fight with some protesters blocking Marine recruiters from campus, got arrested, was offered a choice of jail time or psychiatric treatment, took his Thorazine, went back to campus and made friends with the protesters. He now is acceptable to the Old Grey Lady as being part of the news that is fit to print. The Old Soviet Union or George Orwell’s Big Brother couldn’t have done it any better. Between political correctness and repetition of the Big Lie, the Silent Majority has been silenced into oblivion.

Back to this conference, it was a reunion of the old moderate liberal Establishment -- the professional advisors, the policy wonks, the largely East Coast, heavily old money families, the New York Times reporters – and it was talking to itself.

The “Vietnam Veterans” discussing Lessons Learned, and the other speakers who wore a uniform (including Dan Rather whose experience was limited to uncompleted boot camp) did not truly represent the majority of us “Revisionist” Vietnam Veterans who are proud of our service and know that we were winning when we left.

We should not have been surprised that there were no Vietnamese represented here: nobody involved in this powerful group ever thought about asking them anything during the War, nor did they now, despite the availability of such important figures as former South Vietnamese Ambassador Bui Diem (accredited to Johnson, Nixon and Ford) or Nguyen Xuan Phong (who represented his country at the Paris Peace Talks, and received five years of Communist-style “reeducation” for it, while Kissinger and Le Duc Tho modestly accepted their Nobels).

We learned little about either the Presidency or the Vietnam War from this conference, but we will, on this website, examine the statements made in detail, to make it a useful experience.

If the Kennedy School and others intend to teach the leaders of the future they must offer a history that is not based on unexamined myths? It was said, recently and repetitively, in regard to Vietnam, “It’s time to set the record straight.” The conference itself failed to do so. We will, on this website, attempt to make clear those failures.

[1]     See Essay on Blue States versus True Blue States elsewhere on this website.

[2]     Bob Herbert: "So I wish we would stop censoring the images and the stories from the war. I don’t think it is so much that you have to see the flag-draped coffins, although I don’t think those pictures should be censored. What I’d like to see is right in front of the public, the people who are wounded, who are dying, who are being maimed, the attacking and the effect of killing people. Put that front and center out there because that is what war is. And then you would have a better shot at stopping it."