From: lavaughn.hayes@vertigo.com (Lavaughn Hayes) Newsgroups: alt.war.vietnam Subject: Re: Bitchin' pinkos Date: Tue, 5 Apr 1994 03:47:00 GMT MD> Could you provide some examples of what you mean from this newsgroup, MD> and how you came to judge those examples as being "leftist propaganda"? If you have to ask, Mark, then either you're incredibly naive or you're trying to bait me. We'll soon see which. To cite only two themes of left- ist propaganda espied recently in this newsgroup: 1) The VN Conflict was a VNese civil war; 2) US military forces in VN were an undisciplined horde of indiscriminate killers. Theme 1 can be called leftist propaganda because it reflects the systematically propagated doctrinal view of the leftist government of NVN; theme 2 can be called such because it reflects allega- tions systematically propagated by the so-called "peace movement" in this country which was organized and dominated by leftists who more or less clandestinely endorsed and supported NVN's policies. MD> Some people in this group seem to dismiss anything that disagrees with MD> their preconceptions as "leftist propaganda". I hope that you'll be MD> different from those people and actually provide some details of what MD> you mean. I'd like to know which information I should be dismissing as MD> mere propaganda, and why. When I was sent to VN in 1964, I had no preconceptions about the country in specific or politics in general because I knew virtually nothing about either one. From 1964 to 1972, I spent over six years in that country dur- ing which time I was exposed to an enormous quantity of documentation gene- rated by the military and political operations on both the allied and com- munist sides. Due to that exposure, I feel that I can say that I possess a certain amount of knowledge about who did what and why they did it. It is primarily on this knowledge, which came from the empirical evidence of the day, that I base my conclusions about these topics. Since the end of the French Indochina War had created two independent na- tions, NVN and SVN, the NVNese could not simply ignore this geopolitical reality and invade SVN to accomplish the enduring dream of VNese national- ists of all political stripes, unification of the historic country of VN, a cultural and linguistic unity for over 1,000 years, but often not a polit- ical one. Such a direct approach might invite intervention, either by the US or the UN. Instead, they had to invent a ruse to conceal their actions directed towards that goal, thereby permitting plausible denial of any acts of aggression by one independent nation against another. This ruse was the civil war theme, and in the early years, NVN went to great lengths to main- tain and propagate its plausibility, as much evidence can well show. Some of the commenters here expend much verbage on arguing whether or not the civil unrest under the SVN regime of Ngo Dinh Diem can be construed as the beginnings of that civil war. For the sake of brevity, this argument can be simply ignored; indeed, all events prior to 1975 can be dismissed. After they had neutralized the threat of international intervention through means of the phony Paris Peace Accords, thereby making the civil war theme irrelevant, NVN simply invaded and overthrew the SVN government in 1975. This blatant act of aggression by one independent nation against another cannot be denied, it cannot be explained away by any incipient rebellion in the south, and it confirms what the true intentions of NVN were all along. In light of this harsh reality, the leftist theme that the VN Conflict was a VNese civil war is exposed as nonsense and self-deception. Why do they continue to propagate such propaganda 19 years later? Two reasons, I think. First, if the proposition is true, then the US can be condemned for pursuing bad foreign policy by intervening in the internal affairs of an- other nation. Secondly, if this is true, then the horrendous behavior of the American left during the war is exculpated, and they can wash their hands of the guilt they bear for prolonguing the war, creating a political climate of capitulation in this country, forcing us to lose politically a war which we had won militarily, and ultimately the death, displacement and imprisoning of millions in SEA. This guilt, if actually felt, must be ex- cruciatingly painful for those leftists whose chief preoccupation seems to be demonstrating their moral superiority over their other countrymen. The same motives are behind the vicious slander directed against American servicemen of the VN era. The sheer lunacy of this slander is reflected in the fact that some of its proponents include among the "guilty" era ser- vicemen who did not even go to SEA. In VN, the percentage of military forces who had opportunity to kill anyone in the line of duty was small; indeed, many units kept all weapons locked up, as is the policy on state- side bases. Certainly, some criminal acts occurred, both against other Americans and VNese, as such acts occur in any society; this type of beha- vior is not the focus of the propaganda, of course. Its focus is on the incident at My Lai, from which the leftists extrapolate that such incidents were commonplace and reflective of a general attitude and style of behavior amongst in-country servicemen. Due to the access I had during my time there, I would have heard of any other incident of same or similar magni- tude, and since I did not, I do not believe that any others took place. There were many other incidents of much smaller scope; virtually all were investigated, and while some remain questionable, the majority of them were due to human error, including those cases where allied forces were fired upon or bombed, and not to the animalistic motives which the leftists would ascribe to GIs in VN. This demonization of the VN veteran at large is a monstrous miscarrage of justice, especially given the lack of specific evidence against more than a very few individuals; any objective thinker should be appalled that anyone would propagate it, much less believe in it. Its propagandistic nature is underscored by the fact that anyone espousing the slander theme will almost invariably ignore the NVNese policy of syste- matic butchery, torture and kidnapping as an instrument of political coer- sion and intimidation. LV sends...From: mday@note.lcs.mit.edu (Mark Day) Newsgroups: alt.war.vietnam Subject: Re: Bitchin' pinkos Date: 20 Apr 94 10:46:02 Organization: MIT Laboratory for Computer Science In-reply-to: lavaughn.hayes@vertigo.com's message of Tue, 19 Apr 1994 14:59:00 GMT lavaughn.hayes@vertigo.com (Lavaughn Hayes) writes: MD> That's why I'd like for you to provide some details. I'm wary of the MD> way your paragraph above seems to depend entirely on emotion for its MD> impact. Well, one of the few reliable truisms about the VN episode is that anyone should be wary of everything, so I can't fault you there. But it does seem to me that you overrate the role emotion plays in debunking any proposi- tion. If a thesis is true, then it should be obvious that the facts do not derive from emotion, but instead provoke it, given that the observer is capable of feeling anything at all. For example, the proposition that Sta- lin killed around 40,000,000 people during his reign of terror in the USSR undoubtedly provokes emotion in most people, but that result cannot be used to deny its truth or infer that its truth depends on the emotion aroused. I'm sorry, but I can't see the relevance of any of this. My point was that you provided little evidence, and that using strong language was no substitute for that evidence. I don't mean to imply that one cannot have an emotional reaction to the facts of a case, only that one cannot convince a skeptic simply by demonstrating the depth of emotion one feels. MD> For example: What point in time are you thinking of, where the U.S. had MD> won the war militarily but leftist influence caused the U.S. to give MD> up? I'm more familiar with the idea that the U.S. "never really MD> tried", and accordingly that the U.S. *could* have won. I didn't re- MD> alize that there was a point at which the U.S. *had* won but then gave MD> it up. Surely you don't mean the Paris peace agreement? Yes, you're right; we gave the war away in the Paris peace agreement. I didn't realize how badly until I read just recently a posting on the agree- ment in this newsgroup. The reason I say this is because during the time- frame '70-72 the NVA had ceased to be the great threat it once was in SVN, ARVN was showing significant improvement in its capabilities, these deve- lopments had allowed withdrawal of most US forces, and the B-52 strikes in NVN had had a significant impact on NVNese morale and capabilities. Taken together, these developments suggest that we had won the war militarily or at least exhausted NVN to the point that it could not continue its war ef- fort effectively without a lengthy period of recuperation. Under such circumstances, we should have been able to take a hard line at the peace talks and demand an agreement favorable to our side. The best result would probably have been similar to that reached at the end of the Korean war, with the political integrity of SVN maintained and perhaps a contingent of US forces remaining in the country in a watchdog role. This is not the sort of agreement we obtained by any means; thus, it appears that our negotiators threw away the position of strength we had gained af- ter 7 years of warfare and allowed NVN to gain the position it wanted more or less to be in. Note that it then took NVN two more years to recuperate before it was ready to launch its final invasion of SVN; this fact is an- other indication of how badly we had hurt them by the '70-72 timeframe. How did the American left influence this shoddy outcome? I think their ac- tivities had shaken up many politicians in this country so badly that they were ready to flush SVN and whatever position we had gained there down the tubes at the first chance they got, more for the sake of their own shabby little self-interests than for anything else. Whatta you think? Well, your analysis may well be right in that the American left did scare the politicians. But I think they scared the politicians because the electorate was genuinely tired of the costs for a war they had never really wanted. I think that if you look at how the U.S. came to be involved in Vietnam, it was largely driven by domestic political considerations, despite the noble rhetoric of protecting South Vietnam. There was never enough support for the war to have a real Congressional declaration, even in the early days. And I think that if there had really been a solid body of support for the war, leftist agitation would have been irrelevant. You can look at the Gulf war, for example, when the few opposing voices were terribly isolated and scorned because the vast majority supported that use of the military (although again there was no real declaration of war -- an interesting lapse). So it seems to me that by 1972 there was a situation in which the American electorate, having been led slowly into an increasingly costly commitment, eventually said "enough", and the politicians (good as they are at figuring out how to keep their jobs), called the thing off. You may well be right that the timing was foolish. But as a small-d democrat, I have trouble with the idea that there's something wrong when the politicians call off a war that the people don't want anymore. MD> No, of course it's not your "responsibility" to convince me of any- MD> thing. But having made a claim, and having had that claim questioned, MD> you have to face the reality that you can either support the claim or MD> not, and have the claim judged accordingly. If your version of the MD> truth only holds up in front of a sympathetic audience, it's not of MD> much use to me. I have to smile at that, Mark. Just what "sympathetic" audience are you planning on presenting my claims to? Not the boys on the left in this newsgroup or those on the left in academia, where such claims, supported, unsupported or otherwise, are politically incorrect and likely to get you in hot water if you should find them too believable <BG>. No, my point was that it isn't fair for you to demand that I demonstrate a lack of bias before you provide evidence to support your views. I don't believe that anyone is unbiased, I just try to figure out what their biases are and compensate accordingly. In my scholarly work, the sharpest and most useful criticisms often come from people who are predisposed to disagree with me; the people who tend to think I'm right often let me get away with sloppy reasoning or gaps in my data. I can't say to people, "I won't answer that question because I think you're biased". I either have the facts that show they're wrong, or I don't. You can either support your points, or leave me to assume that you have no such support; but you can't say "you're insufficiently sympathetic to my point of view, so I won't tell you what the evidence is." Your remarks about political incorrectness and leftists are, as usual, non sequiturs. Perhaps you should get used to the idea that not everyone who questions you is a "leftist". (And perhaps contemplate that there are more political possibilities than the simple left/right liberal/conservative Demopublican/Republicrat "spectrum" into which things are usually crammed). --Mark Day mday@lcs.mit.edu
From: lavaughn.hayes@vertigo.com (Lavaughn Hayes)
Newsgroups: alt.war.vietnam
Subject: Re: Bitchin' pinkos
Date: Mon, 11 Apr 1994 02:15:00 GMT
MD> If you have to ask, Mark, then either you're incredibly naive or you're
MD> trying to bait me. We'll soon see which.
MD>
MD> Well, I suppose it's useful to know that anyone who asks you a polite
MD> question is either stupid or attacking you. Interesting attitude, I'd
MD> say. :-)
"Stupid" is your word, Mark; I said "naive". Even very intelligent people
can be naive. Similarly, "trying to bait" someone is not "attacking" that
person, but rather an attempt to lure him or her into taking some kind of
action which makes that person vulnerable to attack. This interesting dem-
onstration of your cognitive skills in action suggests that you haven't
learned anything "useful" from my words or about my attitude because for
whatever reason you have simply misread or misinterpreted what I wrote.
MD>LH> ... 1) The VN Conflict was a VNese civil war; ... Theme 1 can be
MD>LH> called leftist propaganda because it reflects the systematically
MD>LH> propagated doctrinal view of the leftist government of NVN; ...
MD>
MD> ... since I am in fact under the illusion that #1 is correct (that
MD> the Vietnam conflict was a Vietnamese civil war), I'd like to pursue
MD> that a little further. Your explanation of why this is leftist pro-
MD> paganda seems unsatisfactory to me. I think you are saying, rough-
MD> ly, that the Vietnam conflict was NOT a civil war because the Hanoi
MD> communists said that it WAS a civil war. In this model, we simply
MD> negate anything the communists say in order to determine the truth.
MD> But surely that's not what you really meant.
Nice try, baitmaster. The ideological nature of the NVNese regime presup-
poses, of course, no absolute conclusions about veracity or lack thereof in
its communications and those of its agents and agencies. More simply put,
these folks tell the truth when it suits their purposes, they tell lies
when doing so suits their purposes. In that respect, they probably differ
little from other regimes, communist or otherwise. Hence, the proposition
that the VN war was a civil war is neither true nor false simply because
NVN said it and all the little leftist groupees in America echoed it.
MD> ... I assume that you have available to you the text of the 1954 Geneva
MD> accords. My copy of the text is quite explicit that the two entities
MD> are not distinct nations, and that the demarcation line is not a na-
MD> tional boundary. It also makes quite clear that there were to be in-
MD> ternationally-supervised elections for the purpose of peacefully
MD> uniting the two entities politically. I'm sure you also have (or had)
MD> access to U.S. assessments that Ho Chi Minh and the communists were
MD> likely to win such an election. Accordingly, I'm puzzled by your as-
MD> sertions about the independent existence of North and South Vietnam,
MD> and I'm puzzled by the claim that the communists had to invade the
MD> South.
Sure, I always keep a copy or two of the Geneva Accords in my rucksack
which must be around here some place. It comes in handy when I need a
sheet or two to wrap up left-over spam sandwiches or the Charmin runs out.
I suspect you're leaving out a key detail or two, but what the hell...that
seems to be de rigueur in this newsgroup. The more interesting thing is
that in 1964, the existence of NVN and SVN as independent nations seemed to
be a fait accompli recognized in practice, if not legality, by both sides.
At the same time, there was considerable evidence that a communist insur-
gency was being developed in SVN, but it was still difficult to determine
whether this was an independent development only assisted by NVN or a sat-
ellite development directed by NVN. We now know that the latter was true.
MD> There are certainly differences between North, Central, and South
MD> Vietnam, but one might equally well observe that Southerners and
MD> Yankees are very different, without thereby implying that there was
MD> some deep reason for partitioning the U.S. along the Mason-Dixon line.
The differences between NVN and the rest of the country are somewhat great-
er, especially the linguistic ones, than any ever existing between the
northern and southern regions of the US. Some did feel at one time that
there were deep enough reasons for a Mason-Dixon line partition; that's why
we had a civil war in 1861-5. But those reasons were more the result of
political differences than cultural or linguistic. The same is true of the
division of the historic VN into separate nations.
MD> Such a direct approach might invite intervention, either by the US or
MD> the UN. Instead, they had to invent a ruse to conceal their actions
MD> directed towards that goal, thereby permitting plausible denial of a
MD> war of aggression by one independent nation against another. This ruse
MD> was the civil war theme, and in the early years, NVN went to great
MD> lengths to maintain and propagate its plausibility, as much evidence
MD> can well show.
MD>
MD> Well, it's exactly that "evidence" that I'm asking for, so a little
MD> more detail would be helpful here.
See further below.
MD>LH> Some of the commenters here expend much verbage on arguing whether
MD>LH> or not the civil unrest under the SVN regime of Ngo Dinh Diem can be
MD>LH> construed as the beginnings of that civil war. For the sake of
MD>LH> brevity, this argument can be simply ignored; indeed, all events
MD>LH> prior to 1975 can be dismissed.
MD>
MD> This seems to be a little excessive. We ignore the entire history
MD> of U.S. involvement in Vietnam? Surely this was a typo.
Hardly. The purpose of US involvement was to keep NVN from overrunning
SVN. If we had not come to SVN's aid, that would have happened sometime in
the period 1965-67. Since NVN did overrun SVN in 1975, one can say that
our presence only delayed the inevitable and the ultimate outcome is really
as if we were never there. This is not a popular opinion, by any means,
but a lot of VN vets realize this, even if intuitively, and that's why many
of them have such a royal case of the ass at the politicians who threw
their efforts away and the leftists in this country who made it possible.
MD>LH> This blatant act of aggression by one independent nation against an-
MD>LH> other cannot be denied, it cannot be explained away by any incipient
MD>LH> rebellion in the south, and it confirms what the true intentions of
MD>LH> NVN were all along.
MD>
MD> I don't know why invading the other "country" contradicts the idea
MD> that it was a civil war. You seem a little confused here. I know
MD> that *you* don't believe it was a civil war, but if *they* believed
MD> it was a civil war, why wouldn't they invade? (related concept:
MD> Sherman in Atlanta, "Gone with the Wind", etc. :-))
It's a shame Ho and Giap didn't have you to advise them in 1961-65. If
they had only known that it was a "civil war" in the historic VN they were
engaging in, then they wouldn't have had to go through all the trouble of
developing a phony "civil war" (read communist insurgency) in SVN. They
could have just come charging across the DMZ a la Sherman in 1965 instead
of sneaking those NVA regiments down that long Ho Chi Minh trail. It might
also have saved them the dirty chore of "sacrificing" all those nice VC in
Tet '68, thereby ridding themselves of the separatist southerners who had
visions of their own independent socialist paradise in SVN. These were the
"real rebels" in the south, but the fact that they let themselves be led to
the slaughter like so many lambs is further confirmation that NVN, not the
NLF, was directing the whole show. But since Ho, Giap & Co. didn't have
you around to enlighten them, they had to deal with international opinion
and geopolitical reality and conceal their true aggressive intentions until
Nixon/Kissinger relieved them of such troublesome burdens at Paris. Only
thereafter did they feel free to do a Sherman routine across the DMZ (they
did a dress rehearsal as early as early '72 before US troops had completely
withdrawn from SVN), with not the slightest mention of a "civil war".
MD>LH> In light of this harsh reality, the leftist theme that the VN Con-
MD>LH> flict was a VNese civil war is exposed as nonsense and self-decep-
MD>LH> tion. Why do the leftists continue to propagate such propaganda 19
MD>LH> years later? Two reasons, I think. First, if the proposition is
MD>LH> true, then the US can be condemned for pursuing bad foreign policy
MD>LH> by intervening in the internal affairs of another nation. Secondly,
MD>LH> if this is true, then the horrendous behavior of the American left
MD>LH> during the war is exculpated, and they can wash their hands of the
MD>LH> guilt they bear for prolonguing the war, creating a political cli-
MD>LH> mate of capitulation in this country, forcing us to lose politically
MD>LH> a war which we had won militarily, and ultimately the death, dis-
MD>LH> placement and imprisoning of millions in SEA. This guilt, if actu-
MD>LH> ally felt, must be excruciatingly painful for those leftists whose
MD>LH> chief preoccupation seems to be demonstrating their moral superiori-
MD>LH> ty over their other countrymen.
From: lavaughn.hayes@vertigo.com (Lavaughn Hayes)
Newsgroups: alt.war.vietnam
Subject: Re: Bitchin' Pinkos
Date: Sat, 23 Apr 1994 18:41:00 GMT
Reposted:
DK> Before 1965 (when the U.S. invaded South Vietnam in force), there is no
DK> question but that it was a civil war in the South. Before 1968 (when
DK> the NVA became the dominant Communist force in the South), it was still
DK> primarily a civil war. To simply deny without qualification that it
DK> was "civil war" is pretty silly.
It's silly only to the twits of the American left who have visions of so-
cialist sugarplums dancing in their drug-muddled little minds. Until Tet
'68, there was a blossoming communist insurgency in SVN masquerading as a
"civil war". Some of these "rebels" even thought they were going to set
up a People's Republic of SVN. But Uncle Ho never was one to share the
power, so he and henchmen cooked up the idea of staging the "General Upris-
ing of the People" (the final step in a classic insurgency) a little before
the "people" were ready for it. We know that "Uprising" as Tet '68, and so
many of the VC (largely southerners until then) were killed in it that Ho
never had to worry about any separatist tendencies amongst the brethren
again. On the other hand, he did have to send NVNese down to staff even
the smallest "guerrilla" units which had a very big recruiting problem.
The remaining VC were so brainwashed they didn't even question infallible
Uncle Ho's motives; they blamed their failure and near extermination on the
SVNese people for refusing to rise up and join them in overthrowing the GVN
and took revenge on the defenseless civilians at every chance.
Until 1965, the armed forces sent south to enlarge the ranks of the VC army
were mostly SVNese who had been sent north for military/political training
(many of them kidnapped). They were not organized as regular units of the
NVA (NVNese Army). The usage of southerners and irregular units was de-
signed to bolster the myth of a "civil war" in SVN. It is interesting that
the first conventional combat units from NVN and the US made their entry
into SVN almost simultaneously, the NVNese units in secret, the US in
presence of the world. NVN had obviously made a significant change in its
policy of involvement in SVN, and evidently this was known at the highest
levels of the US government. Who made the first move I can't say. Never-
theless, NVN tried to maintain the "civil war-in-the-south" myth long
thereafter, in large measure to impress the dimwits of the American left,
even though the stream of NVNese sent south became a flood after 1968.
DK>LH> For the sake of brevity, this argument can be simply ignored; in-
DK>LH> deed, events prior to 1975 can be dismissed.
DK>
DK> OK, none of you Vet's who read this newsgroup was ever in Vietnam.
DK> How about that?
Were you ever in VN? Come on, you can 'fess up if you're the one who held
Jane's purse while she was playing "people's shoot-dem-GIs" machine gunner.
You obviously missed the point above, so I won't even bother.
DK> I think you're forgetting the part where the ARVN attacked Communist
DK> positions for the better part of a year right after the Accords had
DK> been signed, then almost a year after the Accords the Communists final-
DK> ly launched a counter-offensive, during which the ARVN melted away.
What were those communist positions doing in ARVN's AO? Weren't we both
supposed to withdraw? In early '72, even before US forces had completely
withdrawn, NVN had a dress rehearsal of things to come when they launched
an offensive directly across the DMZ and out of Laos against Dak To above
Kontum. Near Quang Tri city, ARVN kicked their butts so badly they had to
scurry back north of the DMZ (what was left of them, leaving their T55s and
APCs burning behind them). Much the same happened in the Dak To area.
Why was ARVN so effective in '72 and not in '75? Good question. Could
have something to do with a fellow's morale after his best buddy stabs him
in the back. You oughta look into that; after all, backstabbing is one of
the left's most popular passtimes <yuuuuk yuk yuk, yuk yuk yuk>.
DK> One need not extrapolate, there is evidence in abundance elsewhere.
DK> Joe Nunes has posted some of it recently.
Yeah, I've seen some Mr. Nunes "evidence". Pure disinformational trash.
DK> Actually, most incidents were smaller: 1, 10, maybe 20 killed at a
DK> time. But when it happens a hundred or a thousand times over, it adds
DK> up to enormous brutality.
So true. When the leftists in the media and elsewhere repeat the false al-
legations against VVets, not those responsible for anything, but all VVets,
even those of the era who didn't go to VN, some folks start to believe the
lies. Care to tell me why I should believe your statistics? I'm the guy
who read six years worth of operation reports, and I didn't see any such.
DK>LH> This demonization of the VN veteran at large is a monstrous miscar-
DK>LH> rage of justice.
DK>
DK> Which "demonization" of veterans?
The one you and your other "morally superior" group-thinkers indulge your-
selves in, in the message to which this is a reply and constantly. Before
you accuse VN veterans of illegal killings, as you just did, show some evi-
dence which could stand up in a court of law; otherwise, shut up because
you ain't got the foggiest notion what you're talking about and you're only
engaging in idle speculation. Slander is not only illegal, it's immoral,
as if illegality and immorality make any difference to leftist ideologues.
DK>LH> Its propagandistic nature is underscored by the fact that anyone
DK>LH> espousing the slander theme will almost invariably ignore the NVNese
DK>LH> policy of systematic butchery, torture and kidnapping as an instru-
DK>LH> ment of political coercison and intimidation.
DK>
DK> [sounds like the Phoenix Program to me....]
If you don't approve of that program, then why do you approve of butchery,
torture and kidnapping by the VC and NVNese? Explain, please, why you are
convinced that the latter is correct and admirable and the other is not.