In a recent article on the Global Research website, Jack Smith observes that the two-fold purpose of this commemorative event is firstly to "legitimize and intensify" a renewed militaristic spirit within America, and secondly to "dilute the memory" of historic public opposition to the Vietnam war. In this updated 2012 piece Smith, like Cohn, attempts a reality check for those in Washington and the military establishment who like to pick and choose elements of the 'Nam narrative that best fit their own retrospective views.
One of Smith's most remarkable and poignant observations -- one that, quantitatively at least, says as much about the Vietnamese as it does about the Americans who invaded their country and turned it into a living, breathing, revolving-door nightmare -- is the following:
"What strikes visitors to Vietnam in recent years is that the country appears to have come to terms with what it calls the American War far better than America has come to terms with [it]. Despite the hardships inflicted upon Vietnam, the government and people appear to hold no grudges against the United States."
As for highlighting the qualitative difference in the respective attitudes of selected people on both sides of the conflict, Smith notes that many, in Congress, the White House, and the Pentagon in particular, are looking to prosecute the war all over again by "organizing a massive propaganda effort to distort the history of Washington's aggression and unspeakable brutality in Vietnam".
With the Pentagon's Vietnam celebratory plans in mind, and taking a lead from Cohn and Smith, it seems timely to consider some alternative context and perspective, even if for some folks such an exercise may cause a measure of cognitive dissonance of the patriotic kind.
Hey, hey LBJ, How many boys did you kill today?
As it turns out 2015 marks two 'Nam related anniversaries, indeed Cold War signposts. These are the 50th anniversary of America's official 1965 'boots on the ground' entry into the country, along with the 40th anniversary of its ignominious withdrawal a decade later. At this point a stroll down memory lane is appropriate.
It was in August 1964 [then] US president Lyndon Baines Johnson (LBJ) signed off on the Gulf of Tonkin (GoT) Resolution signalling America's official escalation of its previously below the radar military involvement there. Thus was handed LBJ carte blanche approval for aggressive intervention in 'Nam, with the Gulf of Tonkin incident -- much like Iraq's WMDs served to do almost four decades later -- providing the president the pretext for deploying combat troops in large numbers, all purportedly to 'stop the dominoes falling' to communism in South-east Asia and beyond.
In response to the 'provocations' by the North Vietnamese of the GoT incident -- now all but officially recognised as akin to a false-flag ploy for upping the Vietnam ante -- Johnson instantly ordered 'retaliatory' air strikes against North Vietnam, which depending on which piece of ideological real estate you occupied (then or now), was either nationalist or communist.
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