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Added: (Mon Oct 12 2009)
David Shribman, syndicated columnist and editor of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette touched on this in today's column:, "Morphing Metaphor of Vietnam."
"Two volumes are being devoured (in Washington) as the Obama administration conducts a prolonged and agonizingly public debate over which way America should go. One book is Lewis Sorley's, "A Better War: The Unexamined Victories and Final Tragedy of America's Last Years in Vietnam.." It concludes that the Americans, contrary to accepted wisdom, "came very close to achieving the elusive goal of a viable nation and a lasting peace."
It was more than close. We documented the tragedy of media and anti-war lies in the 60's in our article "Closing in on Truth", posted on wmdterror.com Dec. 31, 2006, at the time Bush was similarly agonizing about a "surge' for Iraq.
Hoping to help insure that those old lies of the "media/academia" complex are not allowed to influence the current debate, we repeat a few sections from that article::
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December 31, 2006
BUSH DECISION LIKELY TO BE GENERAL CREIGHTON ABRAMS "CLEAR AND HOLD" WINNING STRATEGY IN VIETNAM -RAISES ISSUES AGAIN ABOUT MEDIA LIES
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. 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 that same week brought out facts about the Vietnam War, related to the new plan, that have been suppressed for decades.
"In historical assessments and the American recollection," said Spiegel, "Vietnam was the unwinnable war. But to many in the armed forces, Vietnam as a war was actually on its way to succeeding when Congress, bowing to public impatience, pulled the plug, first withdrawing U.S. combat forces and then blocking funding and supplies to the South Vietnamese Army. If they hadn't the South Vietnamese Army, which had been bolstered by U.S. advisors 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. "
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.
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.
Another thing that the "media./academia" complex hid from everybody, especially students, was 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," 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.
Wrote Sorley:
"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 antiwar 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."
That this issue of lying about Vietnam has continued to be a problem up to our times 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 new 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 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.
No argument from these people must be allowed into the current debate about Afghanistan. Their view of the Vietnam War was one big lie to the core.
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(For how the campus is still lying about Vietnam see "Students Challenge K.U. Professor on Vietnam" at v-v-a-r.org. A new additional place to see Magruder articles is WMDterror.com, largely military strategists on the current crisis, by Major Frank C. Stolz, USMC (Ret.) author of the important book, "Stage One-WMD Attacks on America." We also invite you to see two articles at v-v-a-r.org that summarize the case against the anti-war movement of the 60's, "Kerry Too Naive", and "We Don't Want Your Views on War- You Lied About Vietnam." Write us for a complimentary copy of our documentary,"How the Campus Lied About Vietnam.")
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