My first piggy bank was in the shape of a globe. After I’d found out what a globe was my first question was “Where is Britain?” and I got the rather disappointing reply familiar to all Britons. My second question – to which there was an similarly disappointing answer – was “Where is Vietnam?” I asked because I had heard the word over and over again on the radio.
In 1975, South Vietnam was defeated by the communist North. I remember the TV pictures. I was particularly saddened by the sight of a helicopter being thrown off the deck of an American aircraft carrier. I knew then that this was a catastrophe although it took me a lot longer to find out just how much of a catastrophe.
People often talk about how bloody the Vietnam War was. Perhaps 500,000 deaths. What they rarely talk about is how bloody the Vietnam Peace was. Two million dead by some estimates. Once the South Vietnamese Army had collapsed the South Vietnamese had nothing to protect them from communist tyranny, red in tooth and claw.
It didn’t have to be this way. The big secret about Vietnam – apart from the peace being bloodier than the war – was that South Vietnam would have been just fine had the US public not got bored of the thing and the US Congress not voted to end combat air patrols over the country.
I can’t imagine what brought that to mind.
My understanding (and please correct me if I’m wrong*) was that it was Walter Cronkite who lost the war. There had been a suicide bombing at the US Embassy in Saigon and Cronkite said it was like the end of days or something. He also said much the same about the Tet offensive which whilst it caught the US off guard, initially, ultimately got whupped because it was the NVA going from guerilla to conventional warfare and that was exactly what the USA wanted.
*I’m young and British enough that the main legacy of ‘nam for me is a load of (generally bad) movies. Especially ones made by Oliver Stone. How long did it take for Sgt Elias to croak? Well, about as long as Samuel Barber’s Adagio for Strings… I hate Oliver Stone. Forget the Spanish bootikins or the pear of anguish JFK is both more cruel and unusual.
The “Paris Peace Accords”, during which John Kerry gave aid-and-comfort to the Marxist side – just as he had given false testimony, on oath and in uniform, to the United States Congress earlier (also to give aid-and-comfort to the Marxist side), were broken almost as they were signed – with North Vietnam, and the Soviet Union and the People’s Republic of China Marxist regimes behind it, continuing to support Marxist forces in South Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos.
It is indeed true that the Congress refused to aid anti Communist forces – leaving the people of Vietnam, Laos and, worst of all, Cambodia – to be slaughtered.
If one traces back the disaster one finds President Kennedy – who approved the removal of the President of the Republic of Vietnam (South Vietnam) although President Kennedy denied that he knew this would mean the murder of the President of Vietnam, just as President Kennedy denied that he knew that the ruler of the Dominican Republic would be murdered when he, President Kennedy, approved the removal of the ruler of the Dominican Republic – although these leaders could possibly be removed without them, and other people, being murdered was not explained.
President Kennedy also ordered American agencies to interfere in the Canadian elections – leading,eventually, to the decline of Canada into the “Woke” country it is today (the Red Ensign flag was an early victim of that transition, it went in 1965 – these days Canada is openly ruled by the Central Banker Mark Carney whose loyalty is the accursed “international community”).
The Dominican Republic soon collapsed into Civil War – but President Johnson did intervene in 1965 to prevent the socialist side winning that Civil War.
In Vietnam the situation was much worse – the murder of President Diem (and others) led to a series of unstable military regimes and, eventually, to the Marxist victory, and to the Marxist victory in Laos and, worst of all, the Marxist victory in Cambodia.
As for the very wealthy (especially after his marriage to a rich widow) John Kerry, who gave aid-and-comfort to the Marxist enemy in the war, he later went on to hold various high offices (including being a United States Senator – unsurprisingly he had the most leftist voting record of all United States Senators – up till the time that Barack Obama became a United States Senator) and introduced Barack Obama to the world at the Democrat Convention of 2004 (the Convention that nominated the “Fellow Traveler” John Kerry to be President of the United States) – Barack Obama was a key speaker at the Convention in 2024, and this is where it became clear that the “hard left” (as opposed to the “soft left” around the Clintons) were backing Barack Obama to be President of the United States – and he was elected to be so in 2008.
In the 1970s and 1980s the young Barack Obama was not a “fellow traveler” – he was a Marxist, if Barack Obama ever stopped being a Marxist is unclear. But, it should be stressed, that he was very much a modern (Frankfurt School “Critical Theory”) Marxist – NOT someone who thought in terms of industrial workers taking power by fighting on the streets.
NickM
The Tet Offensive was partly about trying to influence public relations in the United States – but also about wiping out independent Marxists in South Vietnam, Hanoi (North Vietnam) wanted only Marxists that it 100% controlled – not southern Marxists who might (possibly) want some sort of independent regime – and not any “Fellow Travelers” who might prove disloyal at some future point either, so it sent the “National Liberation Front” (Vietcong) into mass attacks against the Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN) and the United States military – knowing that the Vietcong would be smashed, it is true that it also sent a lot of North Vietnamese Army forces into battle knowing they would be killed – but Marxists do not care about casualties.
It must also be stressed that the Vietnam was was NOT about “tin and tungsten”, as Jane Fonda falsely claimed, nor was it really about “one country invading another country on the other side of the world” – something that would be no concern of the United States of America.
Vietnam, like Korea and othe conflicts, was an effort to stop the spread of MARXISM – not a struggle for natural resources, or a response to “one country invading another country on the other side of the world” – something that wold be no concern of the United States of America.
Marxism is what Edmund Burke called an “Armed Doctrine” – he gave the examples of Islam and the ideology of the French Revolution, in that it seeks to spread its system, by force, to all other countries – that is why it is legitimate to intervene in distant wars in order to oppose Marxism – because Marxists seek to impose their system on all countries.
That last point is worth making again.
Marxism is what Edmund Burke called an “Armed Doctrine” – he himself gave the examples of Islam and the ideology of the French Revolution (which was drawn from the thinker Rousseau), in that it seeks to spread its system, by force, to all other countries. That is why it is legitimate to intervene in distant wars (that are no where near the United States) in order to oppose Marxism – because Marxists seek to impose their system on all countries, all over the world, including the United States.
Obviously if North Vietnam was not Marxist, its take over of the South would be none of the business of the United States – just as one dictator taking over from the another dictator in Cambodia would be none of the business of the United States – unless the new dictator was pro Marxist.
This is because Marxism (like the two examples that Edmund Burke gave – Islam and the ideology of the French Revolution) is an “armed doctrine” that seeks to spread its system, if need be by force, to all other countries – including the United States and the United Kingdom.
Such organisations as NATO (and other such organisations on other parts of the world) were created to resist the spread of Marxism – they were NOT created as threats to any particular nation-state.
The United States, as every President from George Washington to Woodrow Wilson (President Wilson had other ideas – indeed he HATED the philosophy of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States – especially the Bill of Rights) made clear – is NOT in the business of imposing its political system around the world, and is not interested in distant wars – unless those wars involve an Armed Doctrine (see Edmund Burke and others) that wishes to impose its system around the world, including on the United States.
NickM
My understanding (and please correct me if I’m wrong*) was that it was Walter Cronkite who lost the war.
That’s one of the American media’s favourite myths they love to tell about themselves. W. Joseph Campbell debunks it here.
What I learned in the last 50 years is that the war in Vietnam reached its final debacle in 1975 after the Democratic congress stopped all financial aid to SV. Which quickly collapsed its military. NV did not win. SV lost. Because the money to defend itself was cut off by Congress.
I learned that the strongest voice in Congress against the US taking in several hundred thousand South Vietnamese who were facing immediate execution / lingering deaths in concentration camps, men, women and children, was Joe Biden. His speech in the Senate in 1975 is chilling. And proved why he was morally unfit for any elected office. That man was pure political evil.
I learned that every last one of the drafted Vietnam vets I have met over the decades who served in combat or combat zones came from a blue collar / rural background. Not a single one came from an affluent middle class suburban / city background. Not one. Some (a very few) did get drafted but every one ended up getting sent to very REMF postings. Tet was the only time any of these people might have been ever put in harms way. The people doing all the demonstrating were the last people at risk of ever ended up in combat.
A few affluent middle class types did end up in combat zones. As junior officers via ROTC. For career reasons. The brighter ones learned from the get go to shut up and listen to the senior NCO. The less bright ones quickly got fragged. Before they got everyone killed / wounded. Once knew a guy who mentioned just how a hand-grenade and an army cot can be used get someone shipped back on the next plane to Oakland / Okinawa. Oakland if they really did not like the guy. They sent one guy to Oakland. One guy to Okinawa.
A very different story from the medias “Vietnam War” narrative.
OK, I’m seriously going out on one now… What was the tipping point in Vietnam? I tend towards thinking wars tend to have them. So, if not Walter Cronkite, basically saying the war was unwinnable then what? Whether Johnson heard that doesn’t matter as much as that millions of Americans heard it from the media’s “trusted guy”. Because when a country starts to believe it is losing it has lost – it is then only a matter of time. Believing you can win is not a sufficient cause of victory but it is a necessary one.
Difference was, we got pulled out of VN by the peaceniks who eventually made so much noise and violence that the public got tired of it all and didn’t fight the lefty congressional side, while there’s no real “peace now!!” sentiment behind leaving Ukraine.
Completely different motivations.
Nick:
Vietnam was essentially won. Then the USA gave up on its ally. Similar to Afghanistan. All South Vietnam needed was military aid. When that was cut off, defeat was inevitable. The NVA was lavishly supplied with military equipment from the USSR. That is why the 1975 offensive succeeded, when the 1968 and 1972 offensives failed. In 1972 the South Vietnamese army beat back the North’s offensive with almost no US ground troops, but with the help of US air power. In 1975 they did not get it.
Paul:
I don’t think so. The North Vietnamese communists did not have a sophisticated understanding of American public opinion. In 1968 they convinced themselves that they could take the south militarily. It was a massive defeat for them. The fact it broke American morale in the USA (if indeed it did) was a bonus they had not expected.
Paul:
In 1963 Diem was a big problem for President Kennedy. He was the Catholic president of a Buddhist country, and when Buddhist monks started immolating themselves it was clear he could not stay in office if South Vietnam was to survive.
Kennedy delegated American policy on the ground to the US ambassador, Henry Cabot Lodge, who was gung ho for the Coup. Kennedy was very much in two minds. In the end he let the coup take place. It would probably have happened anyway, as the army was sick and tired of Diem. Kennedy did not order that Diem be killed, but after Diem’s death he did feel he had dithered and not taken charge of the situation. A few weeks later he was dead too.
I believe Congressional Democrats cut promised support to the South because Nixon had won the war, and allowing him a ‘win’ was intolerable.