What Did We Do in Indochina?
An interview with Robert Buzzanco.
The Vietnam War is right now—the Vietnam War isn’t “in the past”. There are people dying right now due to the Vietnam War—we should always keep that in mind, since there’s a tendency to fail to understand that people are dying right now due to the Vietnam War.
So remember that the Vietnam War is right now and not something “in the past”—people are still dying in 2022.
And it’s important not to become desensitized to the things that the US did in Indochina—look at this photograph that Philip Jones Griffiths took in 1967:
The photograph’s description says:
VIETNAM. This woman was tagged, probably by a sympathetic corpsman, with the designation VNC (Vietnamese civilian). This was unusual. Wounded civilians were normally tagged VCS (Vietcong suspect) and all dead peasants were posthumously elevated to the rank of VCC (Vietcong confirmed). 1967
Some points about the photograph:
(1) it’s disgusting what was done to this woman physically and mentally
(2) it’s also disgusting that the photograph’s description says “sympathetic”—there’s a horrifying assumption there that it’s somehow OK to brand people like cows
(3) the corpsman had a limited set of choices and isn’t to blame—the ones to blame are the war criminals who established those choices
Philip Jones Griffiths’s 1967 photograph serves to remind me that the statistics about the crimes that Washington committed in Indochina should always be humanized and should always be tied to real human suffering.
Robert Buzzanco is a US historian. I was honored and thrilled to interview Buzzanco—see below my interview with him that I edited for flow and added hyperlinks to.
“The horrors continue today—children are born with birth defects due to the carcinogens used in the war, and many millions of unexploded bombs still kill and maim people.”
1) What are the most exciting projects that you’re currently working on, and what are the most exciting projects that you know of that others are working on?
I just completed a couple podcasts.
In one of them, Noam Chomsky debunked Oliver Stone’s recently rekindled conspiracy theories about the John F. Kennedy (JFK) assassination:
These conspiracy theories hinge on the idea that JFK was ready to withdraw from Vietnam without victory and so the military-industrial complex and intelligence communities had him assassinated.
But Chomsky debunked the idea that JFK was somehow a dove—see Chomsky’s 1993 book Rethinking Camelot. And I just published “John F. Kennedy Goes Hollywood”, which is a three-part rebuttal to Oliver Stone’s conspiracy theories regarding JFK and Vietnam:
My three-part rebuttal shows in detail that JFK’s plans for Vietnam didn’t involve leaving without victory and that JFK’s general military policies and general defense policies fit firmly into a Cold War framework based on US strength and imperium.
The response to my Chomsky podcast was quite positive, so I might continue further with that topic.
And I’m also working on a book about the Vietnam War’s impact on the US economy. The book particularly emphasizes two economic crises that happened around the same time as the Tet Offensive—these two economic crises aren’t discussed much in the literature on the Vietnam War and yet they had a huge impact in forcing the US to begin to de-escalate the war.
2) What are the most important articles and books that you’ve written that people can read to get up to speed on all of your work, and what are the best books for the public to read about what we did in Indochina?
See my following three books, the third of which I co-edited with Marilyn Young:
Masters of War (1996)
I write “Afflict The Comfortable”—it’s a blog about history and politics.
And I also co-host “Green & Red”—it’s a podcast about radical politics.
As for the best books about Vietnam, there’s a significant literature and a large number of great works, but I always recommend these to start:
Gabriel Kolko’s The Politics of War—I think it’s still the best book about the war
Marilyn Young’s The Vietnam Wars
any of Noam Chomsky’s books on the topic
3) What did we do in Indochina, and what are the most important things to know about what we did in Indochina? By “we” I mean the US and its allies.
That’s a huge question.
The US was involved in various ways in Vietnam for about a quarter-century and unleashed immense destruction over that period.
The war was reported quite well while it was being fought. I agree with Kolko’s comment that—with respect to overall strategy and overall decision-making—one could write a very good book on Vietnam using only the New York Times.
But there’s widespread politically useful misinformation about the war. And there’s also widespread liberal apologetics for the war.
The below—relatively brief—description of the war includes what I believe is the most important information.
1. The US had no great interest in Vietnam after World War II—the US acquiesced to the French return there in order to placate Paris and keep the French fully on board with the US’s overwhelmingly dominant priority of fighting the Cold War in Europe.
2. The Japanese occupying forces left Vietnam in 1945. Then Ho Chi Minh—the leader of the nationalist and Communist Viet Minh—declared independence, citing the US Declaration of Independence. But the Vietnamese didn’t get to be sovereign—the French return led to the First Indochina War.
The French position started to deteriorate after they reimposed control in 1946, so the US started to send significant aid to the French Union forces in Indochina in order to prevent a Viet Minh victory.
The first reason for the US opposition to the Viet Minh was that the US—in accordance with the “containment” doctrine—opposed any and all “left-wing” forces.
And the second reason for the opposition to the Viet Minh was that the US’s long-term goal was to establish US-centric capitalism in Asia—the literature usually ignores this critical motive, but material like Andrew Rotter’s The Path to Vietnam examines this motive. The idea was to rebuild Japan along “free market” lines—which the US did, as you can read about in material like John Dower’s Embracing Defeat. And the idea was also to rely on China to be a US ally—the Chinese Communist Party’s 1949 victory killed that dream and meant that it was crucial to keep Asian countries like Vietnam and Malaysia as Western allies so that these countries could be economic partners for Japan.
3. The Viet Minh defeated the French in 1954 at the decisive Battle of Dien Bien Phu despite the massive amounts of money and equipment that the US had poured into Indochina. The US considered intervention in response to that defeat, but forces inside the US government—especially military leaders like General Matthew Ridgway—played what I argue was a decisive role in preventing US military involvement.
4. Despite the French defeat, the US wouldn’t leave Vietnam and instead essentially replaced the French as the colonial power there. The US didn’t accept Viet Minh victory and didn’t accept Ho Chi Minh’s leadership of a unified Vietnam—at the 1954 Geneva Conference, the US engineered a division of Vietnam along the 17th parallel with provisions to hold elections in 1956 to select a unified government, which everyone in the US government understood would result in a victory for Ho Chi Minh and the Communists.
5. The Geneva Conference agreement said that there would be elections in 1956 that would unify the two administrative units into one country, but the US knew that Ho Chi Minh and the Viet Minh would win those elections, so the US invented a country—the Republic of Vietnam (RVN)—below the 17th parallel.
Ho Chi Minh was North Vietnam’s president from the start.
The US put Ngo Dinh Diem in charge of the RVN—the US supported Diem because Diem was the only figure with national credibility who wasn’t associated with the Viet Minh or with Communist-associated organizations.
Diem had little popular backing—everyone from President Eisenhower to the CIA to military intelligence recognized that Ho Chi Minh would overwhelmingly win a free election, and Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson (LBJ) actually explained in 1961 that Diem was “the only boy we got out there”.
6. Diem—and his brother and top aide Ngo Dinh Nhu—ran a despotic state. Political opponents were imprisoned. And large numbers of “subversives” were tortured and killed—“subversives” was a broad term that described Viet Minh, people on the left, intellectuals, Buddhists, and others who were considered the regime’s enemies.
7. Basic histories of the Vietnam War usually omit the critical point that there were in the RVN significant numbers of Viet Minh who opposed Diem and who sought support and aid from North Vietnam’s Politburo.
But Ho Chi Minh was reluctant to give too much military help to the South because he was prioritizing socialist development in the North. And also because he didn’t want to provoke the US into expanding the US role in the RVN—the US was already sending to Diem:
huge amounts of money for expanding both the army and the internal security forces
“trainers” for the military
other military personnel to provide technical assistance for the army and for the internal security forces
8. Le Duan’s northern Communists finally in 1960 agreed to support the insurgency in the south. And the northern Communists helped to create:
the National Liberation Front (NLF), which was the resistance’s political wing
the Viet Cong (VC), which was the guerilla military group
From the start and going forward, the VC and associated forces were highly successful from a military perspective and from a propaganda perspective—conditions deteriorated for the Diem regime as the revolutionary forces succeeded and as popular opposition to the Ngo brothers mounted.
9. John F. Kennedy (JFK) had just been elected president, and he significantly escalated the US role in Vietnam in response to the grave situation in the south—contrary to inaccurate theories, JFK was never a dove on Vietnam and he wasn’t planning to withdraw from there.
Take a look at these points:
as soon as he took office, JFK authorized the Counter-Insurgency Plan, which called for training the Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN) in anti-guerilla tactics and not just conventional warfare
JFK then expanded the ARVN by 20,000 troops—to 170,000—and then by another 30,000 troops
JFK also enlarged the Civil Guard from 32,000 to 68,000 troops
the White House sent Diem an extra $42 million in 1961 in order to pay for these reinforcements—these funds were in addition to the $225 million per year that Diem was already getting
in January 1961 the US had 800 “advisors” in the RVN, but JFK increased that number so that it was 3400 in early 1962; and then 11,000 in late 1962; and then 16,700 in November 1963 when Kenny was assassinated
starting in 1962, JFK went big and deployed helicopter companies; fixed-wing aircraft; a troop carrier squadron; reconnaissance planes; air traffic controllers; crop defoliants to destroy the VC’s jungle cover; Navy minesweepers; CS gas; and napalm, which was a gasoline gel that seared human flesh
JFK also authorized the development of strategic hamlets in the RVN—the program removed Vietnamese peasants from their homes and possessions and relocated these peasants to hamlets where the peasants were supposed to be safe from NLF and VC recruitment and indoctrination, but the disastrous program alienated even more villagers from the government and helped NLF and VC recruitment efforts
10. The situation in the RVN got worse and worse during the JFK years. And the situation continued to worsen into 1964–1965 as Lyndon B. Johnson took over—there was a major deterioration during the period from the start of 1964 to the end of 1965.
US military officials had always known about the bleak situation in Vietnam and had never been enthusiastic about fighting there—these officials opposed sending ground troops to fight in the RVN.
But the US committed Marine combat forces to Da Nang in March 1965, since conditions were so bad and defeat was inevitable. And by July 1965 LBJ had made a much bigger commitment to Vietnam—he’d expanded the US force to over 200,000 troops with more troops to be deployed “as needed”.
So the US had “Americanized” the war—the US had taken over responsibility for fighting instead of leaving that to the AVRN. And the US military had been strongly warning against “Americanization” for a decade.
11. The US started to progressively expand its role in Vietnam in 1965. And the US role expanded to include:
ground operations that were often termed “Search and Destroy”
unleashing immense firepower and even B-52s—this firepower was primarily directed against the RVN, even though the RVN was the US’s ally
sending more US soldiers to the RVN—by early 1968 there were over 500,000
12. In 1967, US Commander William Westmoreland was optimistic and said that he saw “light at the end of the tunnel”.
But the enemy’s Tet Offensive in early 1968 exposed the failures of US planning—and the failures of US policy—regarding Vietnam. There are claims that Tet was a “military victory but political defeat” for the US and that the media and the antiwar movement were to blame—the reality is that Tet was a military disaster that led to a global economic crisis:
“The Reality of the Tet Offensive: Military Failure and Economic Crisis” (28 January 2021)
13. As the dust settled on Tet, the US shifted gears to a policy of “Vietnamization”, which was the ironic idea that the Vietnamese should bear principal responsibility for the war.
After Tet, the military requested more troops and requested that reservists be activated, but LBJ turned down that request because the prospects in Vietnam were bleak and the costs were too high—I argue in Masters of War that the military made this request as a political tactic so that the military could say: “Our hands were tied behind our back.”
14. Richard Nixon won the 1968 presidential election—Nixon was seen as the peace candidate, and he implied that he had a secret plan to end the war. Nixon defeated Hubert Humphrey, who was LBJ’s vice president and who was closely associated with LBJ’s escalation of the war.
15. Nixon took office on 20 January 1969 and started to withdraw US troops in June 1969—within 18 months the US had fewer than 200,000 soldiers in Vietnam.
But Nixon contradictorily expanded the war—principally by air—against North Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia. The US wars in Laos and Cambodia were “secret” wars in that the US public didn’t know about them, but the wars weren’t at all secret to the people in Indochina who were being bombed and killed.
16. Nixon’s massive bombing campaigns violated international law—these bombing campaigns hit civilian targets and killed noncombatants.
Operation Linebacker started during the enemy’s Easter Offensive and lasted from April 1972 to October 1972.
Operation Linebacker II—better known as the “Christmas Bombings”—ran for about 12 days in December 1972 and saw US planes drop over 40,000 tons of bombs in a campaign that one Nixon aide called “calculated barbarism”. The bombs hit military facilities and communication facilities, but the bombs also hit shipyards, docks, workplaces, civilian residential areas, and North Vietnam’s biggest hospital—there were craters as large as 50 feet in diameter.
Operation Linebacker II caused serious destruction in North Vietnam, but the enemy shot down 15 incredibly expensive B-52s—34 of them according to Hanoi—and over 20 US tactical aircraft.
Nixon’s air attacks were condemned across the globe:
the Vatican spoke out against the bombings
European leaders spoke out against the bombings
Swedish Prime Minister Olaf Palme compared the bombings to Nazi atrocities
both the USSR and China threatened to reconsider détente
Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev publicly blasted the “longest and dirtiest” war in US history
Zhou Enlai and Jiang Qing attended a mass rally in Beijing that was in support of the Provisional Revolutionary Government of the Republic of South Vietnam (PRG)
See my piece on Operation Linebacker II:
“A Christmas Tale, by Richard Nixon” (25 December 2016)
17. The Christmas Bombings brought the war to a conclusion—the reason wasn’t the damage to North Vietnam, though many scholars have suggested that, but instead the reasons were the US military’s losses during the Christmas Bombings and the global anti-US outcry in response to the Christmas Bombings.
Nixon agreed—in January 1973—to terms similar to the ones that he could’ve agreed to before his bombings. The US war ended, but the US continued to support the fictive state that it had invented—the RVN—until the RVN fell to Communist forces in April 1975.
4) How much death and destruction did we inflict in Indochina, and what dangers still exist today in Indochina due to chemical warfare and unexploded bombs and so on?
Regarding deaths and casualties, the numbers are estimates—the US and Vietnam have offered varying accounts.
We know with accuracy that over 58,000 Americans died in the war.
The numbers aren’t so clear when it comes to the Vietnamese—it’s probably safe to say that about 3 million Vietnamese died in the war in total, but some estimates are closer to 4 million.
About 2 million Vietnamese civilians died according to studies that Vietnam did—2 million is an oft-used figure regarding Vietnamese civilians.
These civilians were victims of the US air war. And they were also victims of “Search and Destroy” operations and other ground combat engagements.
Vietnam claims that the use of herbicides like Agent Orange led to about 500,000 Vietnamese killed or maimed and maybe 500,000 children born with birth defects—the US used 18 million gallons of Agent Orange.
And the tragedy regarding the birth defects is still occurring right now.
See this conversion with Sera Koulabdara:
There was an enormous use of firepower—the US dropped 4.6 million tons of bombs on Vietnam in the decade before the war’s end. And the US also dropped another 2 million tons of bombs on Cambodia and Laos.
In addition to the 18 million gallons of Agent Orange that I mentioned, the US also dropped over 400,000 tons of napalm.
Over 9000—or about 60%—of southern hamlets were destroyed. And 25 million acres of farmland were destroyed as well as 12 million acres of forest.
US bombs created about 25 million craters—many of these craters still contain active ordnance right now.
There were 15 million refugees from Indochina—and nearby countries—by 1975.
In total, the Cambodians and Laotians reported about 300,000 civilians killed and a much greater number of civilians wounded—that’s in addition to the 2 million civilian deaths in Vietnam.
And we should also remember that what the US did in Cambodia gave credibility and power to the Khmer Rouge, who committed horrific and infamous atrocities.
5) What do you think about the below presentation that allows you to scroll down and see the Vietnam War’s various bombing missions?
This is a wonderful and incredibly useful site—I’ve used this source several times and I’ll continue to use it in the future.
The site gives you details about the types of planes flown on sorties, about the various operations, about the areas hit, and about other things—these details are useful for scholars or for anyone who’s interested in the war.
And those maps clearly show that most of the area struck from the air was in South Vietnam, so the US dropped the significant majority of its bombs on its own ally—that’s a point that stands out to me when I look at those maps, so I always emphasize that point.
6) To what extent do scholars agree about the level of horror and damage and destruction that we inflicted on Indochina?
For the most part, the histories are pretty consistent in detailing how US power was used in Vietnam and in pointing out the massive level of US firepower that was used during the war—see Nick Turse’s important book on what the US did to Vietnamese civilians:
Kill Anything That Moves (2013)
The military and various government agencies have put out data regarding US troop deployments; sorties; Vietnamese killed; hamlets bombed; refugees; and other categories.
But there’s disagreement on the morality—and the utility—of that power.
7) To put a human face on things, what are the most striking and harrowing stories that you know of regarding what we did in Indochina?
To me the most striking and harrowing stories involve encounters between the US soldiers and the Vietnamese who the US soldiers were there to “save”.
We’re obviously aware of horrific events like the My Lai massacre or the Tiger Force’s behavior—these direct violent attacks on villagers were heinous, but these shocking attacks were actually a small piece of the terror that the US inflicted on Vietnam.
In the same time period when the My Lai massacre occurred, US planes killed exponentially more people at a distance.
And at the same time as the My Lai massacre, US troops were using defoliants and napalm, both of which caused huge numbers of people to die and both of which caused horrible health problems that continued long after the war and even continue to this day.
Completely separate from the well-known massacres, the following things happened:
children were orphaned
the elderly were killed
women were raped
women were humiliated
I’ve heard from virtually every single soldier I’ve talked to—who served in Vietnam—some type of terrible story about some interaction with the Vietnamese people that turned deadly.
The Vietnam Veterans Against the War conducted the Winter Soldier Investigation in 1971—that investigation provided a striking and harrowing catalog of human rights violations.
The horrors continue today—children are born with birth defects due to the carcinogens used in the war, and many millions of unexploded bombs still kill and maim people.
Throughout the US aggression, so many Vietnamese people had their basic humanity denied—and destroyed—on a daily basis, even though strangely enough a majority of these Vietnamese people were South Vietnamese and were supposed to be our allies.
8) How do most scholars explain why we did what we did in Indochina, and what’s wrong with that explanation?
Regarding Indochina, there’s no real consensus explanation on “why” the US got involved and waged such a huge and destructive war—most scholars are critical of the US involvement in Vietnam, but that criticism varies ideologically and politically.
Many on the left—like Kolko and Young and Chomsky—are very critical of the decision and tend to put the decision in the context of (1) US assertion of power in the Cold War and (2) US conflation of nationalist movements with Communist “threats”. And like Andrew Rotter and Lloyd Gardner, Kolko discusses economic motives like creating in Asia a capitalist economy that would benefit US investors and US companies.
But a greater number of people are on what I call the “soft left”. They’d say that the US intervened to stop communism, but they’d criticize US decisions on the grounds that the Viet Minh wasn’t a threat and on the grounds that the Viet Minh was also a nationalist movement—you can see this view in George Herring’s America’s Longest War, which was the first popular history of the war and which might be the best-selling history of the war out there.
And then there are many I’d consider more “liberal” who believe that the US had good intentions going into Vietnam, that the US was right to intervene anywhere in the world against any group deemed Communist, and that US leaders consistently made poor judgments regarding Vietnam like deciding to support the democratic regime in the RVN and like deciding to send more and more troops into a “civil war”. And this interpretation accords with the Truman Doctrine and NSC 68, which were critical Cold War policies that justified US involvement and US subversion against nationalist or revolutionary or socialist movements all over the globe. A great example of this view would be Ken Burns’s 2017 documentary series The Vietnam War in which Burns says that the war was “begun in good faith, by decent people, out of fateful misunderstandings, American overconfidence, and Cold War miscalculations”—see my critique of Burns’s documentary series here:
“Ken Burns’s War Stories” (2017)
And there are some conservatives—like Gunter Lewy and Harry Summers and Mark Moyar—who still defend the US war against Vietnam as a defense of freedom against Communist aggression. And this minority view isn’t as far removed from the liberal view as one might believe.
There’s an idea that the US wanted to do good in Vietnam and that the US made bad mistakes—this notion is soothing for liberals and a popular alibi for conservatives.
9) What’s your own explanation, and what evidence and logic supports your own explanation?
In brief, I believe that the US got involved in Southeast Asia in order to stop nationalist or Communist movements that might (1) threaten the creation of a capitalist Asia in which Japan would be a bulwark and (2) prevent areas like Vietnam and Malaysia from becoming areas where the Japanese could invest and could get cheap labor and could trade.
But Vietnam wasn’t a big priority—US policymakers went along with the French return to the area due to the need for Paris to be an ally against the USSR and against Eastern European Communists.
The US role grew rapidly and consistently once the US began to defend French interests in Indochina. And this growth was often due to the continued belief in “containment”. But this growth was also due to the idea that national “credibility” was on the line—it was important that everyone know that the US would always harm its enemies and always support its allies.
As I argue in Masters of War, the US military was always clear that Indochina wasn’t a vital interest and was always clear that it wouldn’t be a good idea to fight a guerilla war against a popular movement that was fighting for national liberation. And yet JFK and LBJ continued to send more troops and resources.
By 1964–65, the US faced a humiliating defeat in Vietnam unless a significant escalation took place—the need to prevent a humiliating defeat led to the Americanization of the war, Operation Rolling Thunder, and massive troop deployments.
Like most scholars, I think the US experience in Vietnam fits within a Cold War framework.
But I have a more critical analysis in which Vietnam was a larger and more violent version of US involvement in Iran, Guatemala, Venezuela, Iraq, Cuba, and many other places in the early Cold War—the US was constantly and violently attacking national liberation movements that (A) threatened US investors’ and US corporations’ ability to find places to pursue their interests and (B) might impede the US quest to have a global network of military alliances and military bases.
So Vietnam was unique in that it became a big war, but otherwise it was just another aggression in a long line of US imperial aggressions.
10) What do you think about Noam Chomsky’s explanation below? And do you agree with it? And how many scholars would agree with it?
in the post-WW2 era Washington sought to control the “Western Hemisphere, the Far East, the former British empire (including the incomparable energy resources of the Middle East), and as much of Eurasia as possible, crucially its commercial and industrial centers”—these were “not unrealistic objectives, given the distribution of power”
in 1949 China became independent, which was a major blow to US domination—China’s independence had “major policy consequences” that included the “immediate decision to support France’s effort to reconquer its former colony of Indochina” to prevent any further blows to US domination
Indochina “itself was not a major concern, despite claims about its rich resources by President Eisenhower and others”—the actual concern was the idea that if Indochina got out of control then the “virus of independent development might infect Indonesia, which really does have rich resources”
if Indonesia got out of control then Japan might also do so, and if Japan got out of control then the result would be an “independent Asia” with Japan as its “technological and industrial center” in a “system that would escape the reach of U.S. power”
this would mean that the US had “lost the Pacific phase of World War II, fought to prevent Japan’s attempt to establish such a New Order in Asia”—the geopolitical stakes were absolutely huge
the solution in such scenarios is to “destroy the virus and ‘inoculate’ those who might be infected”—here the solution was to “destroy any hope of successful independent development” in Vietnam and “impose brutal dictatorships in the surrounding regions”
these tasks were “successfully carried out”
McGeorge Bundy looked back on what happened and reflected that it “would have been wise” to end the assault on Indochina after the 1965 US-backed military coup in Indonesia—at that point the virus had been “virtually destroyed” and the “primary domino” of Indonesia was “solidly in place, buttressed by other U.S.-backed dictatorships throughout the region”
I definitely agree with this—this is the basis of much of what I’ve said in my previous responses.
The war has to be seen in the larger contexts of:
the Cold War in Europe
the misconceived belief that all Communist countries were the same and that they all took their orders from the Kremlin
the imperative to create a capitalist Asia with Japan as the linchpin and with states like Vietnam as commercial allies—China’s independence in 1949 made this an urgent priority
11) Let me tell you about my vision—for each country X that was involved in what we did in Indochina, I’d like to see X do the following:
(A) conduct an investigation that shines the spotlight on what actually happened—and on the present-day consequences of what actually happened—and then release a detailed report based on that investigation
(B) pay reparations to the victims
(C) make a detailed and sincere and self-reflective apology so that the victims can hear those apologies; and so that X’s citizens can think about those apologies; and so that moral consciousness can increase worldwide as the whole world thinks about those apologies
What will it take to bring about my vision, and what activist organizations can people join in order to bring about my vision?
For the US—and for any other country that was involved—it would be profoundly useful and educational to pursue (A) and (B) and (C).
But I’d have to say that it doesn’t take great effort to get an accurate account of the horrors that the US inflicted on Vietnam—we have a good idea of what actually happened in Vietnam thanks to scholarship; various official investigations like the Pentagon Papers; groups of US military veterans that traveled to Vietnam; medical personnel who’ve conducted research on Agent Orange and on other forms of ecocide; and the Vietnamese government itself.
So the issue is making that account the standard story. And that’s of course very difficult—you’ve got all sorts of political elites and media people and academics who promote the government propaganda on this. Herman and Chomsky have repeatedly shown—in the scholarship that they’ve done together—that it’s really hard to break through the government propaganda and the media propaganda, and other scholars have repeatedly demonstrated the same thing.
So we know the truth about Vietnam—we just don’t have the means to make the truth become the standard story of Vietnam.
12) For the US, how expensive would (A) be?
I don’t know what a precise accounting would involve, but like I said we already know a tremendous amount about what happened in Vietnam.
13) As a reference point, how much will the US’s ongoing January 6th investigation cost?
The January 6th committee has spent over $2 million so far—over $1.6 million of that was spent in the last quarter of 2021, which indicates a ramped-up investigation.
So for the January 6th committee, one should assume that the costs will either continue at that level or increase.
14) Isn’t (A) a great thing because the media will cover the investigation in the same way that the US media covers the ongoing January 6th investigation?
We can hope.
But it’s easier for the media to get into the guts of January 6th because it was a domestic incident and because Trump is easy to hate and expose—foreign wars are different because the media doesn’t want to shine the spotlight on crimes against humanity and on a failed foreign intervention.
15) Regarding (B), what should reparations be?
The economics of the war is an area where it’s difficult to get good data—the numbers are all over the place.
You have to think about what a genuine rebuilding would’ve cost. And remember that 3 million Vietnamese were killed and that 15 million people had to flee—I have no idea how one would estimate those costs.
No matter the precise numbers, it would take an absolutely immense amount to compensate Vietnam for what the US did—think of all of the attacks, all of the damage to infrastructure, all of the ecological warfare, all of the deaths, all of the refugees, all of the cancer, and all of the abnormal births.
An absolutely immense amount.
16) Did the US commit criminal aggression in Indochina? If so, how many countries did the US commit criminal aggression against in Indochina?
The US committed criminal aggression against all of these countries: North Vietnam, South Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos.
17) Suppose that the US did (A)—what would the investigation say about the quotes below?
The telephone transcripts show how frustrated Nixon was becoming with the Vietnam War and his failing effort to withdraw American troops from Vietnam by expanding the war into Cambodia.
He became especially angry on Dec. 9, 1970, with what he considered the lackluster bombing campaign by the United States Air Force against targets in Cambodia.
“They’re not only not imaginative but they are just running these things—bombing jungles,” Nixon said. “They have got to go in there and I mean really go in.”
Mr. Kissinger then cautioned: “The Air Force is designed to fight an air battle against the Soviet Union. They are not designed for this war.”
But the president persisted, suggesting that the bombing campaign could be disguised as an airlift of supplies.
“I want them to hit everything,” he said. “I want them to use the big planes, the small planes, everything they can that will help out there, and let’s start giving them a little shock.”
He ended by saying, “Right now there is a chance to win this goddamn war, and that’s probably what we are going to have to do because we are not going to do anything at the conference table.”
Mr. Kissinger immediately relayed the order: “A massive bombing campaign in Cambodia. Anything that flies on anything that moves.”
And see this striking comment from Chomsky:
I suspect that any credible investigators would understand that Nixon was ordering military action—attacks from “anything that flies” against “anything that moves”—that was illegal under international law.
Nixon committed war crimes—Nixon should’ve been put in front of an international tribunal like German war criminals were.
18) What are the new trends in Vietnam War scholarship?
There’s actually a dangerous new trend in the scholarship—I’ve written about this trend in an unpublished paper.
In the past decade or so, some scholars who work with Vietnamese archives have claimed to have created an entirely new story of the war. This supposedly new story of the war almost entirely absolves the US and almost entirely blames North Vietnam—and especially Le Duan—for the devastation and bloodshed in Vietnam.
And in fact, this story sounds very much like the justifications for the war that US officials in Washington gave in the early 1960s—LBJ and Dean Rusk and Walt Rostow would jump for joy if they read Lien-Hang Nguyen’s 2012 book Hanoi’s War.
But this story is neither new nor accurate, as my upcoming paper goes into.