View the Entire Series
I. Closing on Truth
II. Hiding Truth of Islam
III. Post 9/11 Stupidity
IV. Lies about Vietnam
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Since the day it began, the war in Iraq has been compared to Vietnam by the left. The constant
cries of "Quagmire" have been an attempt not only to portray the Iraq war as a failure,
but to reinforce the myth of failure in Vietnam.
Leonard Magruder, a friend and patriot, offers the following article to illuminate the
left's efforts to ensure defeat in the Middle East by drawing contrasts with the Vietnam war.
But for that ruse to be successfull they first have to hide the fact that the war in Vietnam
was a victory for America, until our own politicians (pushed by the very same anti-war zealots
of today) surrendered and proclaimed defeat. The war was lost at home.
The parallels between the wars in Vietnam and Iraq are shockingly obvious - but not for the
reasons offered by today's opponents of American victory.
Printable PDF Format Available
CLOSING IN ON TRUTH
December 20, 2006
by Leonard Magruder
Fred Barnes, Editor of The Weekly Standard,
in a press release
buried by the media, claims that:
“Last Monday Bush was briefed on an actual plan for victory in Iraq, one that is likely
to be implemented. Retired General Jack Keane, former vice chief of staff of the Army, sketched
it for him during a meeting of five outside experts at the White House. The president’s reaction,
according to a senior advisor, was ‘very positive.’ Authored by Keane and military expert
Frederick W. Kagan of the American Enterprise Institute the plan...envisions a temporary
addition of 50,000 troops on the ground in Iraq. The initial mission would be to secure and
hold the mixed neighborhoods of Shia and Sunni residents where most of the violence occurs.
Once cleared, American and Iraqi troops would remain behind, living side-by-side among the population.
“The plan is an application of a counterinsurgency approach that proved effective in
Vietnam. Using this plan, of secure and hold, General Creighton Abrams cleared out the enemy
so successfully that the South Vietnamese government took control of the country. Only when
Congress cut off funds to South Vietnam in 1974 were the North Vietnamese able to win.”
CNN did briefly acknowledge this meeting in their Monday night news, but could not
describe the plan or its origin because the public would have asked, “What success?” The media
never told America about the success of the plan in Vietnam.
Peter Spiegel of The Los Angeles Times in an article
on Saturday, November 25, 2006,
coincidentally, brought out facts about the Vietnam War, which turn out to be related to this
plan, that have been suppressed for decades.
“In historical assessments and the American recollection, Vietnam was the unwinnable war.
But to many in the armed forces, Vietnam, as a war, actually was on its way to succeeding when
the Nixon administration and Congress, bowing to public impatience, pulled the plug: first
withdrawing U.S. combat forces and then blocking money and supplies to the South Vietnamese army.
If they hadn't, the South Vietnamese army, which had been bolstered by U.S. advisers and a more
focused "hearts-and-minds" campaign in the later stages of the war, could have fended off the
communist North, military thinkers have argued.”
This is the one truth, above all other truths, that the university hoped would never
see the light of day. We expand on this in this article.
Actually, the retreat began under President Johnson who wrote to General Westmoreland
shortly after the Tet Offensive that to “pursue the war more aggressively was politically
unfeasible” because he had “no choice but to calm the protestors lest they precipitate an
abject American pull-out.” (America in Vietnam, Lewy, 1978)
The protestors were protesting the significant American victory at Tet. (For details on this phenomenon see “Tet“ at v-v-a-r.org.)
Also, it was not public opinion that led to blocking funding. Sometime in 1972, the
American soldier, having fought the war successfully to a peace treaty, left South Vietnam,
leaving the South Vietnamese army to fight the North alone, which they did successfully for two
years, including the massive Easter invasion from the North. Then a Democratic majority in Congress,
led by Senator Ted Kennedy of Chappaquiddick fame, in a totally gratuitous betrayal of
an ally, cut off all their ammunition and drowned them in the South China Sea.
Said Major General Ira Hunt, “For two years the Army of South Vietnam were cleaning their clocks,
they were giving more than they were getting, there is no question about it. But when we pulled
the plug logistically there was no way they could carry on. We simply abandoned an ally.”
The American soldier won the war, but it was thrown away by the Democrats. Is this
going to happen again? Apparently not, if Bush can help it.
To begin with, one thing university faculty always hide from students is any idea
of the overall overwhelming success of American forces and ARVN, or the Army of South Vietnam,
in the five major offensives of the Vietnam War.
Here are the statistics, from
Vietnam in Military Statistics: A History of the Indochina Wars, 1977 - 1991,
by Micheal Clodfelter, Vietnam War combat veteran and noted
war historian:
1968 - The Tet Offensive
U.S. - 1,829 KIA (Killed In Action)
South Vietnam - 2,788 KIA
Communist forces - 45,000 KIA
1969
U.S. - 9,414 KIA
South Vietnam - 21,833 KIA
Communist forces - 156,954 KIA
1970 (includes Cambodian Incursion)
U.S.- 4,221 KIA
South Vietnam - 23,346 KIA
Communist forces - 103,638 KIA
Laos Invasion (Lam Son 719 ) (with U.S. air support)
South Vietnam - 3,800 KIA
Communist forces -13,668 KIA
1972 -Easter Offensive (with U.S. air support)
South Vietnam - 15,000
Communist forces - 83,000
The actual number of Communist soldiers killed during the war: 1,100,000.
Compare this to approximately 58,000 American forces killed. That is a 19 to 1 ratio.
Made aware of these facts students would certainly wonder - why are they teaching
us the war was “lost”? Obviously not on the battlefield while America was engaged.
For the full scope of the true tragedy of Vietnam, that it was a war that had
been won and then thrown away to placate those at home who would not serve, we now have
new histories that fill in what happened after 1968. This is a period of the war in
which there was significant progress under General Abrams new “hold and secure” policy,
following General Westmoreland’s initial “search and destroy” policy, a period
widely neglected in discussions of the Vietnam War. Very little of this progress was
made known at the time to the American people by the media. Two of the most important
of these new histories are Unheralded Victory: The Defeat of the Viet Cong and the
North Vietnamese Army, by Mark Woodruff, and A Better War: The Unexamined Victories
and Final Tragedy of America’s Last Years in Vietnam, by Lewis Sorley.
Following are a few revealing excerpts from Unheralded Victory by Woodruff:
“The war appeared to settle into this routine with the North launching attacks
against the South from within safe sanctuaries in Laos and Cambodia, and even the
DMZ....Hanoi’s troops invariably suffered badly at the hands of the Americans.
In every single battle they were beaten, even by their own admission.”
“Said Sir Robert Thompson, ‘In my view, on December 30, 1972, after eleven
days of those B-52 attacks on the Hanoi area, you had won the war. It was over.
They had fired 1,242 SAMs, they had none left. They and their whole rear base were
at your mercy.’
Sir Robert Thompson is the world’s foremost authority on People’s Revolutionary
War, who, as Secretary of Defense of the Malaysian Federation, defeated the communist
insurgency there. Often critical of Nixon’s policies, nevertheless in a special report
to him on progress under Abrams in Vietnam, he wrote: “In 1969, I was very impressed
by the improvement in the military and political situation in Vietnam as compared to
all previous visits, and especially in the security situation, both in Saigon and
the rural areas. A winning position in the sense of obtaining a just peace, whether
negotiated or not, and of maintaining an independent non-communist South Vietnam has
been achieved. We were most impressed by the remarkable success of the pacification
program, we were able to visit areas and to walk through villages that had been under
Viet Cong control for years. With increased security and improved communications, the
economy is expanding rapidly, the seeds of democracy are also being planted at the
village level. At the higher or political level there is no question but what the
government of President Thieu is not only more stable than any other government of
the past few years, but that its performance is steadily improving. On the military
side, there has been a steady improvement in both performance and morale.”
Where had all this progress come from, if not from the efforts and sacrifices of the American soldier?
Excerpts from Unheralded Victory, continued:
“That spring, a secret delegation of Communist military experts from North Korea, China, and
Cuba visited the war theatre, reporting back that the North Vietnamese and the Viet Cong forces
could not hold out much longer against the United States and its allies.”
“What may have been missing for both the Americans and the Australians was not a ‘welcome
home parade,’ but some acknowledgement of the victory they had achieved over the Viet Cong and the
North Vietnamese Army.”
This is where the war protestors really betrayed the American soldier, who got back at them
good when they denied Kerry the presidency. According to a poll we took of some 6,000 Vietnam
vets from 32 groups during the 2004 election, 80% of them planned to vote against Kerry, viewing
him as an anti-war leader. This finding was reported in an article in United Press International,
but the national press elsewhere frantically suppressed the finding. The national press campaigned
for Kerry, just as it campaigned for Democrats in the recent elections, telling America the lie
that the Democrats “have the solution.” Which of course they don’t.
Below are some excerpts from A Better War: The Unexamined Victories and Final Tragedy of America’s Last Years in Vietnam, by Lewis Sorley.
(Sorley is also the narrator in a highly objective 4-part film series on the war, The Long Way Home Project,
which students need to see, particularly the two parts that document the thesis of this article:
Part 2 - How We Won the War;
Part 3 - How We Lost the War.
Two other important films are Silent Victory
and How the Campus Lied About Vietnam.)
From A Better War:
“There was never any popular uprising in support of the enemy in South Vietnam.
Not too surprising in view of the enemy’s record, year after year, of assassinations
kidnappings, terror bombings, impressments, and indiscriminate shellings of population
centers throughout South Vietnam. The enemy’s response to the success of pacification,
said General Harold K. Johnson, was ‘cut throats faster, cut throats faster.’
“Said General Michael Davidson, ‘It is fair to say that by the middle winter
of 1970-1971, the Viet Cong had been virtually eliminated and the North Vietnamese Army,
which had endeavored to go big time with divisional size units, had been driven across
the border into Cambodia.
“In the villages and hamlets, the People’s Self-Defense Force had mushroomed
during 1969. At year’s end, now organized into a combat arm and a support arm, this
PSDF had more than 1,300,000 men and women in the combat arm, backed up by about
1,750,000 women, children, and elderly men in the support arm. (In other words, just
about all of South Vietnam had mobilized in support of the American effort, but
students are never told this, they are taught the South didn’t want us there.)
“By late 1969 almost the entire population of South Vietnam was thought to be
living under substantially secure conditions. More persuasive than the statistics were
the obvious improvements in both security and prosperity reflected in daily village life.
In March 1970, President Thieu introduced his ‘Land to the Tiller’ program. All rents
were suspended and almost 400,000 farmers would received title to a million and a half
acres of land. Prior to that, in an even more dramatic move, he had provided arms to
most civilians. Had he been an unpopular president, as argued by the anti-war movement,
he would never have risked doing that.
“In these later years the press simply missed the war. Maybe it wasn’t
exciting enough. But it was what the American soldier had done for South Vietnam;
hamlets in which the population remained secure, refugees able to return to their
villages, distribution of land to the peasantry, miracle rice harvests, roads kept
open for farm-to-market traffic, the election and training of village governments.
Some of what the press did see in Vietnam never got to the public back home.”
They didn’t want the American people to know the war was being won. Nor did
the anti-war forces.
As David Horowitz, an editor of the radical anti-war movement’s journal, Ramparts,
during those years later acknowledged, “Let me make this perfectly clear. Those of us
who inspired, and then led, the antiwar movement did not want just to stop the killing
as so many veterans of those domestic battles now claim. We wanted the Communists to win.”
The truth is, the “peace” movement was never really concerned about peace.
Although it cloaked itself in an aura of great moral purpose, it in fact gave aid
and comfort to the enemy, marched under the flag of the Viet Cong, allowed Hanoi to
dictate its agenda, and turned its back on the American soldier. When the soldiers
returned, it tried to stereotype them, with the help of the media, as dupes, or
drug-crazed “baby killers.” That those who did all the suffering in Vietnam should
on their return be asked to bear additional suffering at the hands of the very ones
who had betrayed them was absolutely unconscionable. Not to mention they wanted the
soldiers to lose.
Students need to be told about these things, to help them realize that the
new anti-war elements on campus are engaged in the same type of betrayal, totally
oblivious, apparently, to the fact that this time it will include nuclear attacks on
American cities.
It is absolutely time to demand that the media and the university stop hiding
out on the subject of Vietnam and re-enter into dialogue with the rest of America,
especially its Vietnam veterans, as to what really happened. We cannot go into a
world-wide war on terrorism with these huge lies in our history. Holding on to,
and perpetuating myths, has too great a potential for creating another lethal,
paralyzing polarization. The media, and the campus, must find the courage to
consider “second thoughts,” as have David Horowitz and so many others of the anti-war
movement, Horowitz now describing what they did in the 60’s as “treason.”
The campus and the media fell for enemy propaganda and it is time they admitted it.
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 (media and academia) gave credence to the most incredible allegations.”
That this issue of lying about Vietnam has continued to be a problem up to
today is shown by the fact that even as Kerry was being nominated at the Democratic
Convention in Boston, right next door at Simmons College some of the nation’s top
historians and military experts on Vietnam were holding a symposium,
Examining the Myths of the Vietnam War.
Out of this came the Vietnam Veterans Legacy Foundation.
The President of the group, Col. George E. Day, said in a press release,
“A false history of Vietnam has been used to endanger and demoralize our
troops in combat, undermine the public confidence in U.S. foreign policy and
weaken our national security. Leftists lied about the war 35 years ago and
are lying about it today. Our goal is to counter more than three decades of
misinformation and propaganda and set the record straight.”
The media at the Convention next door, demonstrating once again its perpetual
cover-up of all issues having to do with the Vietnam War, knew all about this, but
did not report it to the American people. Not long after, the group published a booklet
to be used on college campuses, Whitewash/Blackwash - Myths of the Vietnam War,
by Bill Laurie, who is a member of our Board of Advisors, and R. J. Del Vecchio
(available at TechConsultServ@Juno.com or amazon.com).
As columnist Stephen Young wrote on the 30th anniversary of the Vietnam War,
“Our national recollection of the war still matches that of the New Left.” The time
has come to raise the questions anew, because the new films and the new histories are
devastating to the leftist version on campus and could end this debate forever.
This is the one great trauma in the tissue of American history that has never been
honestly dealt with.”
The psychology of the phenomenon is elementary. To admit to having been wrong
would be to face, not only guilt, but disproof of their ideological assumptions.
But it is these same assumptions that are causing the wave of anti-Semitism on campus,
the dangerous “Islam is peaceful” mythology, and the anti-Americanism being pressed on
students: “It is because of something we did to them.”
We cannot win the war against terror with the campus building towards a
polarization that could again paralyze a national effort.
We invite you to see our two articles that sum up the complete case against
the anti-war movement of the 60’s. In the first of these articles, “Kerry Too Naive”,
we show you straight from literature handed out in the 60’s at major protests, that
anti-war leaders told their followers that the war was a civil war within the South
between the government and Viet Cong “indigenous freedom fighters.” The actual enemy,
the Communist North Vietnam, of which the Viet Cong was always a combat arm, was
never mentioned. In the second article “We Don’t Want you Views on War- You Lied About Vietnam,”
we show how the entire anti-war movement rested on the lie that
North Vietnam was never involved in aggression. The main focus of lying by the
anti-war movement were two White Papers issued by the State Department in December
1961 and March 1965, which argued the North was involved. Admission of this involvement
by Hanoi is found in the report “Summary of Fact,” issued in 1987 by Hanoi’s Military
History Institute. Wrote analyst Stephen Young, “The Summary confirms the two American
White Papers and utterly refutes the position of the anti-war movement.” Those who
supported the war were never confused about this.
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 Young, “The basic question is whether the U.S. involvement resulted
from a tissue of lies from Washington, 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.
(For how the campus is still lying about Vietnam, see “Students Challenge K.U. Professor on Vietnam”.
A new additional place to see Magruder articles is in the WMD forum on WMDterror.com,
a web site operated by Major Frank C. Stolz, USMC (Ret.), author
of the important book, WMD Attacks on America.)
If President Bush does adopt the “secure and hold” plan, it was successful before,
and it could work in Iraq as well. But we must watch the media and the university like
a hawk.
This article may be reproduced in any form. Copy this article, distribute, add us as a link.
Leonard Magruder
Founder/President, V.V.A.R.
Phone: 785-312-9303
Magruder44@aol.com
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