The Vietnam War polarized American politics for many reasons, some warranted, others not. The rancor has persisted for three generations among the diehards, revisionist historians, and the actual veteran survivors. The conflict was poorly understood and reported back then and now. There was plenty of blame to go around including the lack of accurate accounts by the media. Sound familiar?
Media bias, fake news, and repression of the news stories that did not fit the anti-war narrative were not uncommon in the 1960’s. I posted a blog in November 2018 that illustrates this case in point. The blog was entitled The Ten Thousand Day War.
That blog is reproduced here for enlightenment of those not alive then, or those uninformed because the media largely buried the story because of the political ramifications. Even many Vietnam Vets who I know never knew these facts.
Only a third of those who served “in country” Vietnam are still alive. This story needs to be told before we pass on.
The story is well documented and should disturb those with an ounce of patriotism. Rereading the blog, I still get angry at the perfidy of the government administration calling the shots in the war. Perhaps I should refer to Vietnam as a “conflict” since Congress never officially declared it a “war.”
Vietnam was conducted by fiat through three administrations, two Democrat, one Republican, under Presidents Kennedy, Johnson and Nixon.
Here is the post I wrote in 2018.
Vietnam: The Ten Thousand Day War – 1945 -1975
That is the title of Michael Maclear’s documentary published in 1981.The book is an excellent, comprehensive historical review of the war. It is one that I used along with over thirty other references as background for my historical narrative RECALL published late last year.
I highly recommend Maclear’s book for history buffs. The in-depth documentary is objective and does not apportion blame or praise. It is full of facts and interviews with all the major players.
His interviews with the New Zealand AP reporter, Peter Arnett, who was present in Vietnam from 1962 to 1975, left a lasting impression with me, especially Arnett’s account of North Vietnam’s troop arrival in Saigon after the South’s surrender. Also, I learned things I didn’t know from reading other documentaries. Most importantly, I learned about some troubling, possibly treasonous activity by LBJ’s administration concerning telegraphing the next day’s bombing run targets in North Vietnam before LBJ called a halt to the bombing in 1968.
In fact, after attending two Vietnam vet functions over the recent Veteran Day events, I discovered many other vets are still unaware of some despicable political foul play that occurred during LBJ’s administration. The Pulitzer prize reporter, Arnett, exposed this perfidy in his CBS Canadian documentary 1980 TV series by the same name, THE TEN THOUSAND DAY WAR-VIETNAM.
I called attention to this deplorable disclosure in the epilogue of my historical narrative, RECALL. I have included this passage below for you to assess whether this action aided and abetted the enemy. I would be interested in your comments, if civil and objective.
The most egregious example of LBJ’s ignominious behavior and duplicity came to light in 1980 almost twenty years after the bombing of North Vietnam commenced. War correspondent, Peter Arnett of CBS interviewed LBJ’s former Secretary of State Dean Rusk in a Canadian documentary, The Ten Thousand Day War.
Rusk confessed that he and Defense Secretary Robert McNamara provided the North Vietnam government the list of targets the U.S. planned to bomb the next day. Our detailed aerial attack plans were relayed through the Swiss Embassy in DC to their Swiss Embassy in Hanoi. Rusk attempted to justify this policy by saying the National Security Council wanted to demonstrate to North Vietnam that America could strike at will, but wanted to avoid killing innocent people causing collateral damage. A utopian goal on paper, but untenable, impractical, and not well thought- through for real life solutions. Typical of DC’s naïve and fuzzy thinking.
There are no noble wars, just noble warriors. LBJ’s administration’s flawed policy vainly attempted to conduct a “noble” war, one at great risk of putting our pilots in harm’s way. The reckless nature of telegraphing of our bombing raids ignored the peril to our flyers, the “noble warriors.” LBJ once bragged our air force could not bomb an outhouse without his approval. On another occasion, he stated wars were too important to leave decisions with generals. That is the essence of astounding conceit and arrogance.
Those pompous statements should leave no doubt LBJ was onboard with this contemptible “tip off” policy instituted by Rusk and McNamara. Many principled critics would consider it an act of treason. If not, they should. Where was the outrage? MIA? Like the fate many pilots suffered as a consequence of this deceitful policy?
Our pilots soon suspected the enemy had foreknowledge of their objectives, facing heavily fortified ground fire upon arrival at their classified missions’ targets in North Vietnam. Not without reason, the enemy possessed inside information. It was not an uncanny coincidence. North Vietnamese intelligence was not that good.
The telegraphing of proposed classified bombing missions represented a reprehensible betrayal of our military by LBJ’s administration, an irresponsible, despicable perfidy, if not treason.
There is no final reckoning of how much this outrageous folly contributed to our loss of aircraft and crews. Or, how many POWs or MIAs resulted from the cause/effect of the betrayal of classified information. Or, how much the LBJ administration’s deceit contributed to the following statistics. Documents verify that ten percent of Vietnam War mortalities were associated with aircraft fatalities.
This information for some reason has remained buried. Where is the outrage?
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