PBS Vietnam War Documentary – Response to Episode Two

Following in France’s Footsteps - Episode Two reveals that while France was motivated by colonialism and the U.S. by anti-Communism, the patterns of the two countries involvement in Vietnam, including an abysmal lack of understanding of Vietnamese history and culture, whom we allied with, and the focus on military action rather than politics were the same. 

In his review of the PBS Documentary, Thomas Bass quotes David Halberstam of the New York Times as having said, “The problem was trying to cover something every day as news when in fact the real key was that it was all derivative of the French Indo-China war, which is history. . .So you really should have a third paragraph in each story which should have said. . . ‘None of this means anything because we are in the same footsteps as the French and we are prisoners of their experience.” It became clear early on to Halberstam, but to all too few political leaders that the eventual outcome of our involvement would also be the same.  

Dominoes and a Chess Piece - On April 7, 1954 President Eisenhower gave his famous “falling dominoes” speech, comparing  the prospect of France’s defeat in Vietnam by the Communist-led nationalist forces to a falling domino, first in a line of dominoes, including Burma, Thailand, Indonesia and even Japan that might also fall to Communism.  That fearful, if absurdly mechanistic and misguided image and theory was a prime motivation for Kennedy and Johnson in their thinking about increasing military involvement in Vietnam.    

Cold War ideology and the politics of fear provided a framework in which images and theory about Communism became more important than reality.  As Leslie Gelb, who directed the Pentagon Papers project, tells Burns and Novick in Episode Two, “Vietnam was a piece on a chessboard, not a country.” And as Gelb wrote in his summary of the Pentagon Papers, “We must note that South Vietnam (unlike any of the other countries in Southeast Asia) was essentially the creation of the United States.” This “creation of the United States” is the “country” Burns bemoans disappearing at the end of the war.

A contrast of two Parades - In 1957, three years after the United States installed him in power and two years after he refused country-wide elections mandated by the 1954 Geneva Accords which almost everyone believed Ho Chi Min would win, President Ngo Dinh Diem came from Saigon on a state visit to the United States. Diem was greeted at the airport by President Eisenhower who hailed him as great patriot and defender of freedom; he addressed an enthusiastic joint session of Congress, was wined and dined by Cardinal Spellman, and treated to a huge Ticker-Tape parade in New York City with 250,000 people lining the streets.

In contrast, Diem sponsored a parade in Saigon to celebrate an anniversary of his rule which was so autocratic, corrupt, nepotistic and unpopular that, out of fear of protests or violence, the Diem regime and police allowed no one on the streets to observe the parade.

   

Fabricated News and Good Journalists – The Cold War profoundly affected news coverage from 1947 to 1990 and was a major reason why there wasn’t more opposition earlier to U.S. involvement in Vietnam.  Media coverage of Diem’s 1957 visit to the United States was carefully and effectively managed by American Friends of Vietnam, an anti-Communist elite lobbying organization created by Joseph Buttinger. (Buttinger later became disillusioned with Diem and denounced him.)

As Episode Two reveals, in Vietnam, the Saigon government, U.S. Embassy and the U.S military all worked very hard to present news about the war in the most positive light, often including what later were proven to be outright lies. Most American journalists, and as a consequence most Americans, got their news about the war from these sources. 

There were a handful of journalists, including Neil Sheehan, Malcolm Browne and David Halberstam, who dug deeper, sometimes at risk to themselves, for the truths about the war. Sheehan received the Pentagon Papers from Daniel Ellsberg and wrote what they revealed in The New York Times. He also wrote the book, A Bright and Shining Lie, later made into a film. Malcolm Browne, raised a Quaker, famously photographed Thich Quang Duc’s self-immolation in June 1963, which contributed to the downfall of the Diem regime. David Halberstam wrote, Vietnam: the Making of a Quagmire in 1964, which prophetically predicted why the U.S. war was unwinnable months ahead of the arrogant and tragic massive increases in the numbers of young Americans being sent to fight the war.

Whatever one’s take away from the Burns/Novick PBS Documentary, the works of these three journalists are resources we should make sure to study and urge that young people study in schools. The following words from the end of David Halberstam’s book seem a good way to end this commentary on Episode Two:

“In the early fifties the people of America were subjected to constant statements. . .  .about the West’s battle to save Southeast Asia from the Communists. But the war was taking  place in Vietnam, what was at stake were the lives of Vietnamese people, and to them the names seemed wrong; it was not a matter to them of the West against the Communists, but of themselves against the colonialists.  It was a classic example of seeing the world the way we wanted to, instead of the way it was.”