Forty Years Later: Kim Phuc and Her North Vietnamese Enemies
If you are of a certain age, you almost certainly remember Kim Phuc vividly, even though you may not know her name. She was the nine-year-old South Vietnamese girl who was burned by napalm on June 8, 1972, and whose image in a prize-winning photo taken by South Vietnamese AP photographer Nick Ut became an iconic and influential force that helped end the war.
The picture of Kim running down a road near the village of Trang Bang screaming in agony and terror, her clothes torn off and her body badly burned, shocked and outraged an America that had become profoundly weary of the war and its horrors. The photo was Picasso’s Guernica come to life, even more horrific because it was not just an artist’s imaginative and stylized rendition of the bombing’s effects, but the real thing.
As familiar as the photo has become, the story behind it is less so. For example, if the introductory paragraph of this essay had read: “She was the nine-year-old girl who was burned by napalm dropped by American forces in South Vietnam,” how many readers would have caught the error?
In fact, it was the South Vietnamese who were doing the bombing, but the idea that Kim was burned at the hands of Americans persists. That is only one of several common misconceptions about the attack, because the incident has been widely misrepresented and misunderstood through errors of omission and commission.
In many accounts — up to and including this recent AP story in honor of the photo’s 40th anniversary — the crucial role of the North Vietnamese is downplayed. The AP article’s only mention of their role in the battle is in a sentence that states Kim and her family had taken shelter in a temple for three days “as north and south Vietnamese forces fought for control of their village.”
The phrase almost makes it sound as though the claims of the two sides were about equal. But in reality those North Vietnamese forces were invading the South Vietnamese village of Trang Bang that Kim and her family called home, and the South Vietnamese forces were defending it from them (by 1972, the vast majority of Communist forces fighting in the South were Northerners).
What happened that June day 40 years ago was depicted in this original report on the incident. It was filed by Christopher Wain, a British journalist on the scene who witnessed the battle, the airstrike, the napalming of Kim and the others, and who also assisted her in getting help afterward.
Wain described a firefight between South Vietnamese forces and the North Vietnamese infantry who were dug into bunkers on the outskirts of the village. Because the white markers that the South Vietnamese had dropped to indicate the Northern positions had been dissipated in the rain, the South Vietnamese airplanes made the error of dropping bombs near their own forces instead. Some South Vietnamese infantry (ARVN) ran from the temple to escape the sudden danger, along with a group of civilians (including Kim) caught in the crossfire whom the ARVN forces were waving to safety. Another South Vietnamese plane came by, and according to Wain:
I suppose all the pilot could see was figures running, which is what he would expect the North Vietnamese to be doing. You cannot identify people when you are 100 feet up and flying at 300 miles per hour, so he flew in and dropped four canisters of napalm on top of them …
As this report points out, the fleeing ARVN members were armed and running with the civilians toward the regular ARVN units, a situation that contributed to the pilot’s perception that they were the Northern enemy determined to attack the Southern positions. The ARVN soldiers carrying their weapons can clearly be seen in Ut’s photo, behind the burned children.
Once the setting and protagonists are understood, the situation becomes apparent: a tragic case of friendly fire and civilian casualties in a war in which the Northern enemy counted on the fact that civilians and children would be hurt and killed, Pulitzer Prize-winning photographs would be taken, and the American public would shrink even further from a conflict in which the lines between combatants and civilians could rarely be cleanly drawn and these horrific errors were inevitable.
Just what is it about the Pulitzer and misleading photographs? Do they do that intentionally?
The Pulitzer is about as politically corrupt as the Nobel Peace Prize is. So if they can embarrass the US, they probably will, particularly is Republicans are the target. If they can support Socialists and globalists, they absolutely will. Journalistic integrity takes a back seat to their agenda.
Journalistic integrity is a foreign concept to those people.
The photograph is what it is. There is nothing misleading about it. What is misleading is the propaganda the photograph was used to push.
}}}} The photograph is what it is. There is nothing misleading about it. What is misleading is the propaganda the photograph was used to push.
The photograph is what it is, but there are plenty of variables which are open to interpretation:
}}} “her clothes torn off and her body badly burned”
OK, perhaps this is true but there’s nothing whatsoever to suggest that in the picture. She’s terrified, no question, but there are no tatters of clothing on her, as there should be. Lacking any evidence to the contrary, my presumption would be that she was probably bathing when the attack started, and ran, unable to procure (or retain in possession of) any kind of clothing.
Moreover, as to burns… WHERE? It may be that she was burned but you can’t see any sign of it in this photo to my non-medical eye. Being in black and white doesn’t help, but certainly there are no flames on her body, no discolored areas suggesting burns and certainly no sign of charred flesh of any kind.
This is a horrific event but being caught in war almost always is. It doesn’t justify giving up like sheep to the wolves of the world. That just makes the carnage piecemeal. Instead of a fight to a solution which provides peace and prosperity for many, if not all, you wind up with Saddam’s Rape Rooms and the gassing of the Kurds.
Just google “Kim Phuc today” and you will see the burns that she has today in pictures of her holding her child.
Hats off to Kim Phuc for her bravery in telling the Commies “Go Phuc yourselves!”
PS: I suppose this wasn’t my classiest posting but hey, somebody had to volunteer to state the obvious
Although I agree with your sentiment that we need to fight wars to their conclusion once committed, you are really missing the mark on this photo.
If you do a little research, you will find photos of her as an adult displaying her terrible scars. There is also color film taken on the day that show her skin hanging in tattered strips from her back.
Sources are so easy available these days. Seek and ye shall find.
What does that have to do with his comments about the actual picture? Is that the standard then? See a picture, then google for the story? How was that done in the early 70′s?
I read in another blog that her clothes literally dissolved from her body. She is a devout Christian woman today, and I am sure that whatever her account is, is the accurate one. She has freely forgiven those who caused her so much pain.
She is a happy, joyful woman of God.
I assume they know they are lying. Communists work to take over education and newspapers. In the modern world they’ve taken over the tv and movie industry. They take any sign of human suffering and use it to their advantage, because liberals really have no ability for empathy for othe people.
This women was accidently hurt by South Vietnamese troops while trying to defend the area from North Vietnamese communists. At best the liberals will make the two sides seem even, usually they make it see that the communists weren’t invaders and that if the US stayed away noone would have died.
What does a liberal care for the truth, the suffering of others, the dead? A liberal is to busy trying to convince others he or she is morally superior.
Thank you for clearing that up after all these years. And God may bless Kim Phuc.
Vietnam (or JFK’s war, as my father called it) is still an open wound for many people.
“They traveled to Moscow for their honeymoon, and when their flight stopped in Canada on the way back to Cuba they seized the opportunity to defect.”
Interesting that even though she was treated like a celebrity by the Communists, she took her first opportunity to defect. Just shows that even when given preferential treatment in a Communist society, life in the West is still much more desireable. So much for wanting to stay in a “workers paradise.”
Similar in thought to the Belenko defection in the 1970′s when he flew a soviet MiG-25 to Japan and defected to the West. He was a well-respected soviet fighter pilot who had to be considered absolutely party faithful to fly the super-secret interceptor that the soviets had cobbled together to intercept the SR-71 spyplane of US forces.
Belenko recounts in his story “MiG Pilot” how it all happened and his amazement at being allowed to travel freely in the US when he thought his escorts were putting on a show and taking him to places staged to look as they did. He had been so conditioned to the apparatchik way of thinking that he was still suspicious of the West, but quickly coming to embrace it once he figured it out.
You can still get his book on Amazon.
He left a society that is the dream of every socialist in this country; The utopia that is unattainable and is merely a fantasy. He lived that life over there and came to find it a lie.
Belenko recounts in his story “MiG Pilot” how it all happened and his amazement at being allowed to travel freely in the US when he thought his escorts were putting on a show and taking him to places staged to look as they did. He had been so conditioned to the apparatchik way of thinking that he was still suspicious of the West, but quickly coming to embrace it once he figured it out.
It’s not remotely surprising that Belenko thought the places he was seeing in the West were staged. It was a long-time Soviet practice to have false showplaces that were used to dupe foreigners into believing things were Utopian. Such showplaces were used to fool the likes of George Bernard Shaw into thinking the Soviet Union was the “worker’s paradise” claimed by the Communists and their supporters.
These places were called “Potemkin Villages” (although they were often “model factories”, “model prisons”, “model daycare centers”, etc.) All of them were set up for the single purpose of showing foreign visitors some kind of idyllic example of something to make them buy the idea that life was wonderful in the USSR. Countless Westerners fell for it.
The notion of the Potemkin Village is interesting in itself but I’ll leave those interested to read about it on their own. Here’s the Wikipedia article on the subject: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potemkin_village
One concluding thought. Having read many accounts by Soviet emigres – and spoken to a few in person – do you know what the single most mind-boggling thing was for many of them when they arrived in the West, particularly America or Canada? Supermarkets. They were astonished to find stores that were immense by Soviet standards chock full of every imaginable item, especially when they discovered that ANYONE could shop in them. Initially, many thought that they were in special stores reserved only for the members of the Communist Party since that was how things worked at home.
You’re spot on about the supermarkets. In 1991 I became friends with a Soviet emigre as a senior in high school. I remember the first time she went with us to a supermarket. She became very emotional and started crying when we hit the dairy section. She’d never seen that much milk.
Of course, all this is why it is no coincidence that hard-core Leftists hate supermarkets. And shopping malls. And suburbs. And cars.
Basically anything that can be taken to be a result of Western affluence.
Conservatives and Liberals both attribute far too much power to the press. This tragic picture played, I suspect, no role whatsoever in the turning of American opinion against fighting the war.
Make no mistake, no American became opposed the War. We became opposed to fighting it because it was no longer possible to deny it was futile. We were not going to win this war, even with our acceptance of what we normally abhor – a war of attrition.
The details of what actually happened are of course fascinating and the relationship between the two – what happened and what was reported, or implied – is not doubt the relationship between the real world and any and all news stories – probably without exception.
We lost that war before we decided to end it. Make no mistake, the anti war movement was powerless. It was clearly nothing but treason – don;t get me wrong – but it was treason to no real end. The America people told their political representatives to end this God Damn war when what was left of it was only political games.
Everything you just said IS the propaganda the media spewed at that time. The Tet offensive absolutely CRUSHED the north into fine powder. It was only the democrats pulling forces and then defunding it that snatched defeat out of the jaws of victory (something they are real good at) that the South finally fell.
Soon afterwards came the reports of the slaughter of the innocents. The American public looked straight at the democrats who cried, “NO RECRIMINATIONS!” and flatly refused to discuss the matter.
Democrats disgust me.
I as well. Anyone voting dem is being ignorant, evil, or stupid. Maybe all three.
You’re right about that. Tet annihilated the Viet Cong, completely broke them as an effective force. That may have been one of the goals of the Tet Offensive, a move by the Northern Communists to wipe out domestic competition after their eventual victory in much the same way as Stalin encourage the Poles to rise in Warsaw then halted his armies to let the Germans wipe out the core of Polish Communists.
NVA forces also took a serious beating. That would have been the time to point out that under international and UN law, the NVA was illegally in Laos and Cambodia, then moved into Laos in a big way, cutting across to Thailand and thus severing the supply routes to the South. Then the US could have focused on the border and let the RVN deal with the remaining NVA and Viet Cong in the South. That would have gone a long way toward making the war a victory.
My Uncle was there in country during TET, his second tour of three. He said the same, we crushed the Viet Cong, utterly destroyed them.. they were never an effective fighting force in units above platoon size again. The NVA stepped in and took over their place, making it clear it was never a civil war, but a communist war of aggression against their southern neighbors.
Remember the other Tet picture?
TThe one where a south Vietnamese police chief shot a “suspected Viet Cong in the head point blank execution style?..PROOF of the US backing a fascist regime or such…
the real story?.. untold by a left wing press eager to smear the US and our Vietnamese allies..
That “suspect” had been taken, caught red handed when he and his fellow assassination squad members were inside the home of one of the police chiefs officers, having killed him and his wife and all their children execution style for being “enemies of the communist peoples”.. That police chief lost a good friend, and he knew that man’s family.. knew his children.
in his place.. what would you have done?
I wouldn’t have been so merciful as to do it in the head.. not after what that sniveling coward had done.
But the media especially the left wing eurpoean press took that picture and went nuts with it.. never telling what that VC had done.. and was caught in the act doing.. there was no doubt as to his crimes.. none at all.
The worlds left wing media wanted the US to loose, we know that, they had always favored the Soviet advancement of communist regimes..
The American media?.. mixed.. some were simply tired of the war.. some were useful simpletons.. and some willing accomplices.. actively aiding the communist side. Cronkite was the worst, a willing stooge, believing the communist lies entirely, and repeating them with no skepticism at all.
I had family fight in Tet, and went to high school with a family of Viet Minh who had escaped from the fall in 75. They took the name Washington when they were given refugee status,.. giving up their family name was not a trivial act for an Asian family… and they loved this country enough to take the name of our first great war leader, then president. They were wood carvers by trade.. and they were making truly beautiful pieces,.. even the boys at high school age were highly skilled carvers..
They assimilated, became us, proud to become Americans.. but not as proud as I was to have them among us.
There was one other picture of note… during an NVA mortar attack on one of the larger SVN cities (Hue, Saigon, I don’t remember for sure) a mortar landed near a small school girl. Blew her liver onto the windshield of a parked car. A photographer rushed over and started snapping picture as the girl’s liver slid down the windshield.
That picture never made it to the papers.
It would have been bad press for the commies, I guess.
I have a major objection to your remark about Stalin stopping his forces east of Warsaw rather than helping with the Polish uprising to ensure the defeat of the Polish Communists who were seen as possible rivals to the Soviets after the war.
It is my understanding that Polish Communists played only a rather small role in the Warsaw Uprising in August 1944. It’s far more likely that Stalin wanted the NON-Communist Poles to be weakened so they would have a harder time resisting the Polish and Soviet Communists after the war. Stalin supported the Polish Communists, particularly the Lublin faction of Communists who had already formed an alleged “Polish government” under Stalin’s auspices. They were opposed to the far more popular Polish government-in-exile that was democratic in nature.
I think both of you are close. My personal read is that Stalin wanted anyone who had the INITIATIVE to rise up against the Nazis killed – that way it would make it easier for the Soviets to rule Poland if all the “troublemakers” were out of the way. Doesn’t matter if they were commies or royalists or others – but if everyone with a backbone was dead…
-John
Exactly. Including, or perhaps especially, this claptrap:
That’s exactly what they want people to believe, so that they can continue to exercise their power without being restricted by an enraged public.
But I suppose all those tens of billions spent in advertising each year in the U.S. is just wasted? Has no effect? Doesn’t change how people think and act?
Yeah, right.
Militarily, the USA won. Politically, we lost. (By the way, I served with the Marines and was in Nam from July 67 – July 68.)
The NVA failed in sustaining any regional takeovers, and that was the simple empirical fact for all of the biggest battles of the war. However, to win the war we had to bomb Haiphong harbor and Hanoi and we lacked the political will to do so. The enemy now knows how to defeat America ( Iraq, Afghanistan): Stick around for 5 or 10 years and the U.S. will get tired and go away.
charles says:
“However, to win the war we had to bomb Haiphong harbor and Hanoi”
I don’t agree. You shouldn’t kill 100.000 or 200.000 more Viet to win the war.
To in the War you should just have to hang one or two american liberal (like jane fonda) for treason
Pictures like this serve two purposes: One is to tell people that it’s OK to stop thinking about a complex matter (the Trayvon Martin propaganda picture is the same type of thing). Another is to reinforce the idea that America (or a white Hispanic) is always the bad guy.
Lawrence,
“This tragic picture played, I suspect, no role whatsoever in the turning of American opinion against fighting the war”
Maybe you’re right. Maybe by ’72, the cumulitive effect of so much inaccurate, biased, intentionally misleading and downright ADVOCACY reporting for the enemy, had taken its toll and this was just the icing on the cake. After the “Siagon Police Chief murders a civilian” lie, Hanoi Jane ratting out American Prisoners, John Kerrys unquestioned (but unsubstantiated) lies about “atrocities” he witnessed, and Mr. Cronkites “the war is lost” sermon, what else would (ignorant) people (be manipulated to) think in by’72, when seeing a naked child, burned, running down the street screaming?
I saw the same attempt to use a single photo to “influence” people one day in the Iraq war…around the time of the “TV beheadings” (that they never showed us, have to work hard to minimize the outrage!)
A single photo. A US soldier, with a flaming vehicle in the background…an angushied “WTF” throw of his arms in the air as he turns to look at the camera…pure futility written on his face…his mouth frozen in mid “aw, what NOW”.
It just happened to be the front page Photo of our local paper in Bucks County PA that day. Ditto for my moms paper in Jersey. Ditto the NY Times. I logged on my computer, and it was also the Leading News Photo online at AOL that day.
And CBS, and MSNBC, AP and Reuters. You couldnt NOT see it, everywhere you looked that day Time, Newsweek, even People Magazine had it later that week. Out of the THOSANDS of images to choose from, newspeople in every venue, everywhere, saw THAT one and squealed “thats it!”
And they made a concious effort to promoted IT, rather than anything heroic about our VOLUNTEER armed forces, because it reflected what THEY felt, and what THEY wanted to push to the American people, and the world.
Disaster. Futility. Anguish. Defeat.
It was erie to see that photo magically spring up everywhere at once, at the same time Kennedy and Reed pronounced the war lost.
I was a small child when I saw the Saigon Police Chief shoot the VC on television. As I grew up, I learned of the coverup and the lies about what really happened.
And I lived long enough to see them try to do it again…
I mentioned the Saigon incident in a later comment before I read yours. At the time, nobody asked (nor were they able to ask, having no Internet) what Loan’s poor, helpless little victim had been up to before Loan’s troops caught up with him. All they had was the bare, horrifying image, published so as to bypass the critical faculties and go straight to the gut, rousing anger and revulsion and associating those feelings with America’s involvement in Vietnam. Propaganda doesn’t have to be fancy. Sometimes what you DON’T say is just as important as what you DO say.
Bugs,
Youre right, thats the way they roll…The New Deal photographer Dorothea Lang was no different…have an advocacy opinion, then create an image that paints a visual/emotional story to back it up…make one up from whole cloth if need be…Its not a “lie” of it reveals a “Greater Truth”, right?
And they all know, despite the New Media proving them wrong every day in real time, that THEY WILL control the historical narrative in the end…ask any college kid today what happened in the 60′s.
For 99% of them, “Vietnam” (the entire era) is neatly summed up in three photos:
Siagon Police Chief
Kent State girl
Burned child.
“We” were the Bad Guys, randomly hurting innocent unarmed folks, because we’re sick bloodthirsty racists.
“They” (the group they see themselves being) were Peace Loving partying college students,
forced to stand up against evil.
End of Story.
Its The Subtle Truth, perpetually re-enforced everywhere outside places like PJM, and they will know no other.
Interesting that the news has been called “the first draft of history” while those images tend to BE history.
That’s certainly not the way I remember things.
I once worked with a fellow from Vietnam, and who said that, the USA had basically won the war, but didn’t know it, . . . and beyond this, I was always under the impression that, the Democrats had some idea that, the USA had won that war, and they were set on defunding because, they wished to injure Republican election chances, . . . I mean, our dear “Lawrence Kaplan” makes some bald assertions, and rather urgently, adding a common, low-class epithet in place of reason, still and all, they’re mere bald assertions; so, . . .
When our cowardly Congress decided to end the funding for our South Vietnamese allies to continue their fight to save their country from Communist aggression it pretty much sounded the death knell for what was then known as South Vietnam. I didn’t know the “rest of the story” of Kim Phuc but it comes as absolutely no surprise to me that she defected as soon as she possibly could. I hope that she is able to finally find some peace in her tragic life.
It was also the death knell for hundreds of thousands Vietenmese and millons of Cambodians. What is worse, none of thsoe who purposefully misrepresented the war in order to undermine America’s will not onlt to fight but merley to fund South Vietnam, none of those, tis is for you Jane Fond, who comforted the North-Vienamese into their belief they could outlast the Americans had had to answer for it.
Guys, give credit where is due. We had no strategy for victory in Viet-Nam during the Johnson administration. Neither Jane Fonda or pro-communist journalists won the war for the Reds, although they did their best to help. I recommend On Strategy: A Critical Analysis of the Vietnam War by Colonel Harry G. Summers (http://www.amazon.com/On-Strategy-Critical-Analysis-Vietnam/dp/0891415637/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1339175714&sr=1-1). IMHO it is the best book written about the whole mess.
Another BTW, although I was 15 when we intervened in earnest I realized that the key to winning the war was invading Laos, blocking the the Ho Chi Minh trail and turning south Viet-Nam into a logistical island. After that the ARVN could have handled the situation with American forces providing a back up. Winning was not rocket science; as Herman Kahn wrote there were five or six ways of winning the war and one way of losing it. The US choose the one way of losing it. Another note; polls in 1972 showed 1/3 the public wanted out, 1/3 wanted to stay and win, 1/3 wanted to win or get out. Translated 2/3s were willing to stay and fight if a winning strategy were instituted.
Good points all. Some others to add.
We should have blockaded Haifong harbor and bombed the reilways in N Vietnam that connected them to China. That would have cut off N Vietnam from most of their outside weapons supply. In addition to cutting off the trail in Laos, there was also no reason we could not have launched hot pursuit raids into the north a few miles into the dmz and the north, to keep them off balance and destroy their resuply sanctuaries. These types of things would have played to our conventional strengths, instead of letting the communists play to their insurgent strengths. And the constant restrictions on what could be bombed, and the constant on/off bombing stoppages were foolish. We also should have started really training S Vietnamese troops much sooner than we did. I blame McNamara and LBJ mostly, especially McNamera. He was the one that pushed to get us in, then pushed the losing half measures strategy, and then turned on the war when his own flawed strategy lost.
Nixon was on the right track for awhile, with Vietnamization, invading the trail, and unrestrained bombing. But by that point LBJ/McNamara and the media had mostly lost US support for the war, and Nixon had to send Kissinger to negociate an “honerable peace” which after the cutoff of funds to the south was realy a US sellout, in exchange for return of our prisoners.
This is not quite the story we hear today from leftist university professors, but far closer to the truth. By the way, the S Vietnamese gov was not great, but as bad as they were they were better than the gov of the north. Fortunately, after many years of bloodshed and poverty, the communist vietnamese gov is finally starting to reform, and allow some free market reforms into their economy, and trying to repair relations with us. And even more ironically, the south, with their US inspired legacy of the free market, are now the most prosperous part of the country.
It all could have been avoided had the ballot-box stuffers and vote buyers not cheated Nixon out of his victory in 1960.
ID voters now!
I agree only to a point. The immediate cause of th defeat, defeat not so much for America but for the Vietnamese and Cambodian people, was that America lost its will to fight. For this there were two cases: First one was that the war was getting too long, lossese were piling too high for an American public opinion who felt, or was rold to feel, it had no dog in this fight. In this, military and ciilian leadership is a fault. e can argeue about if a better strategy would have ben able to knock out Noth Vietnam and the VC before the American public tired of the war. We have to remind however that right or wrong America feared that pushing its operations too hard and too far (like blocking Haiphong) would lead, like in Korea to a direct confrontation with Red China. However while we can think of Johnson, McNamara and Westmoreland were grossly incompetent none of them was working for the enemy.
And then we have the second cause: I have told that the war was lost because America lost its will to fight or even to fund the South Vietnamese. So we have to look for those who did their utmost to make it lose its will to fight. It wasn’t Johnson who during Tet told the Americans the war was lost but Cronkite and similar news anchors, it wasn’t Westmoreland who told the war was not worth figting and the South Vietnamese governement worse than the Communists, who pushed the news about the Hue massacres and of Communist atrocities under the rug, who made people believe that girl had been bombed by the Americans and as hostile instead of friendly fire, (ie an accident), or carefully avoided to tell that the North-Vietnamese shot by the South-Vietnamese colonel was part of a unit who had massacred the families (that is women and children) of South-Vietnamese officers. it was not McNamara who told Blacks they were pulling more than ther share of fighting and dying (actually they were pulling below their sahre), who encouraged draft dodging or organized massive demostrations against the war. It was neither Johsnon, Westmoreland or McNamrara who, after Tet, when the North-Vietnamese were pn the verge of throwing the towel persuaded them that America was morally imploding and that if only they held just a little more they would win: it was the massive demonstrations, the race riots and it was Jane Fonda and her clique. Millions of Vietnamese and Cambodians would die as a result. Jane Fonda and the people who undermined America’s will to fight didn’t do it out of incompetency but of malignity. There are people who telle Jane fonda is a traitor. She is worse than that: she aided on the perpetration of a genocide and is unrepentant about it, she is a criminal against humanity and should have been treated like the Nazis were at Nuremberg.
The press figured strongly into North Vietnamese strategy. They knew that is the US got serious about fighting, they wouldn’t stand a chance. However, because the war was never declared and because of things like student deferments, poorly defined objectives and the steady ratcheting up of the war, there were divisions and resentment over the war at home.
So, the North exploited this by bringing in fellow traveling journalists and taking them to show piece locations, staged events, and the like that the journalists swallowed hook, line and sinker. In the South, many were fed fake stories by ringers because most journalists never went outside of the “green zone” in Saigon. They swallowed whatever stories they were given and rarely checked up on them, in no small part because of their and their editors’ back home, personal biases. Ditto the left-leaning media at home. Had the truth of Tet been told, war could have been officially declared at that point and the war finished fairly soon thereafter.
Anyway, our current enemies are equally media savvy. They know that most of the media are anti-war, and for 8 years rabidly anti-Bush, so they played the fellow travelers in the media. Under Bush, the media took any story they were given, so long as it was bloody and/or embarrassing to Bush. The enemy staged events, whether faked or actually putting civilians in harm’s way (which, BTW, international law says those who put the civilians in harm’s way are at fault not the attacking force)to get video and stories. Most journalists hung out in the bars in the Green Zone and don’t go out with the troops but take their stories from local ringers, many of which give them propaganda from the enemy. Naturally they don’t verify these stories. So its Vietnam all over again, a media savvy enemy is playing the anti-war media like a fiddle.
Re: the North Vietmanese exploiting the gullibility of the western press: there is quite a parallel with the propaganda war in the Middle East, with the islamist terrorists in Hezbollah (Gaza and Lebanon) and AlQaida (Syria) winning hands down with their carefully staged theatre-pieces for gullible western journalists.
Gulliblility? Do you really think it is gullibility?
Perhaps a better way to describe it is WILLFUL gullibility. They want to believe it’s true and refuse to see the lie.
One good thing about the New Media world: thousands of people can now question the images they’re shown by the Old Media. We no longer have to take what we see at face value nor are we limited to the media’s interpretations, explanation, and narratives.
Remember the famous picture of Nguyen Ngoc Loan executing a Vietcong prisoner? In those days, the image said “Poor, helpless youth mercilessly gunned down by brutal U.S.-sponsored war criminal.” The context told a different story. Maybe not one that exonerates Loan, but one that makes the “youth” seem a bit less innocent and helpless and Loan’s action a bit more understandable. If the Internet had been around back then, media consumers would have been able to ask questions about the incident, put it in context, and yes, even question the motives of the wire services and newspapers that plastered the image all over the world.
You assummed every one was familiar with the history and didn’t provide the context: First: Because fighting out of uniform endangers civilians and in order the Geneva Convention allow for the suppary execution of combattants not wearing it. Seciond and more important: the North Vietnamese was part of a unit who had murdered the families of South-Vietnamese officers.
Since you mentioned the photograph of Gen. Loan, here’s what the photographer, Eddie Adams had to say about it.
Adams wrote in Time magazine, “The general killed the Viet Cong; I killed the general with my camera. Still photographs are the most powerful weapon in the world. People believe them, but photographs do lie, even without manipulation. They are only half-truths. What the photograph didn’t say was, ‘What would you do if you were the general at that time and place on that hot day, and you caught the so-called bad guy after he blew away one, two or three American soldiers?’”
Except the photograph lied again. The right question should have been: éWhat would you do if you caught the guy who had killed the children of some of your friends? Children you had played with.
Maybe it’s just me, but I never thought that the Americans had done the bombing.
But it’s probably not just me. I pretty much avoid the news, but even when the picture was first available, I knew that it was the South Vietnamese who had done this.
It is painfully clear that the Muslim extremists have studied the commie tactic of dragging innocent civilians into their conflicts. I recently saw a photo with the caption, “You can tell the good guys from the bad by who uses innocents as human shields and who uses themselves to shield others”.(paraphrased). The picture showed two U.S. Troops protecting Afghan children, rifles at the ready. Of course, liberals will always blame America for every ill in the world instead of seeing that it is Americans who stop many more from occurring.
Great essay. One correction — initially Phuc was not being treated by the local South Vietnamese hospital, until the photographer followed up and insisted. The staff thought she was too far gone, but once the photographer asserted, Phuc got treated and recovered.
Returning from ‘Nam (USMC 1967-67), I came to despise the vast majority of the U.S. media and initiated the custom of enjoying a celebratory drink whenever a “progressive” leftist member of the “4th estate” is killed or suffers any other serious mishap. This article provides an excellent example for my answer to the question when others (including some of our local “progressive” reporters) ask me “Why” I feel this way.
Thank you RivahMitch, I know your feeling exactly. (USMC, Nam 1969-1970). The photo of Ko Phuc brought tears to my eyes but that is the nature of war. People, often the innocent, get injured or die. As to the execution, I didn’t blame him at all. I had seen what the Viet Cong were capable of. I’m sure you are aware of the “rules” of war we were forced to endure. Forced on us by the politicians that had never been there and blamed when ever we had to break those rules just to survive ourselves. Then to be spat on and cursed when we came home. We were sent with a job to do and then not allowed to do it.
PS: I have still not seen any movie or TV show that Hanoi Jane has been in since then and still speak up when anyone mentions her.
& perry1949
Thank you both for your service.
I once asked my father (25th ID, 68-69′) if he had any regrets about his time in Vietnam. He was silent for a minute, I never forgot his answer, and he said, “Yeah, just one. They didn’t let us win.”
G-d bless.
I briefly met Kim, she is now a Canadian. She spoke of her life with the Viet Cong. They initially left her in the room where the dead would soon be dead but she didn’t die. She eventually was transferred, when the Viet Cong understood her propaganda value,they tormented her continually. On one of many flights out of Viet Nam to Cuba for skin graphs, the refueling was done in Gander Newfoundland, Canada, her and her husband walked to the other side of the immigration line, in fear of being turned back. She was not turned back and today lives in Ontario. The best part of her story is her ability to forgive. She is the biggest person I know.
This photograph, the war, the anti-war, and the war-as-a-career crowds sickened me then, and now. Consider napalm burning on your naked body; consider it burning for eternity. That would be a good working definition of hell. Those US and Asian big shots who rose to fame and fortune by torturing ‘Nam are, for the most part, now dead. By my beliefs, they, and we, face the just consequences of all behavior on this side of the grave. A rough view might be the top strata of Washington, Manhattan, and Hollywood, currently roasting.
I will never convince those who hold opposite judgments about ‘Nam, but it is obvious to me that no US President should wage war unless he has the US people behind his policies. That particularly means Congress, who has a Constitutional duty to declare war, but has ducked their duty since WWII. If, and only if, we go to war as one nation, then Congress and high Federal officials must be exposed to death by combat. It is evil to claim you can lead from the rear.
We must reestablish legal means to try and execute traitors, particularly in this electronic age, where leaks can annihilate entire populations.
And there may be merit in hanging that picture in the halls of Congress, the oval office, the Sec Def office, CEO offices, bars, and motels. As Ms. Kim knows, life is real, and war is hell.
“but it is obvious to me that no US President should wage war unless he has the US people behind his policies.”
If you look at surveys of the American people during the time prior to 1972-3, they were solidly behind the war. TGhe mmedia wasn’t.
As a Vietnam Veteran the comments have been very interesting and a re-learning experience of sorts. Some of the material I like some are hogwash. The Battle Still Rages! However, it still does not keep me from wanting to Smash Jane Fonda in the Face!
I still remember Hanoi Jane’s “apology” in an interview with one of the MSM stalwarts, Barbara Walters if memory serves. She said, as nearly as I can remember, “I”m sorry if my actions offended anyone”. The tone though, clearly said “I stand by everything I did and if it upset anyone, well too bad for them.” I didn’t get any sense at all that she had the slightest bit of remorse or regret.
I just found the interview – I _think_ this was the interview I mean – on YouTube (search on “Jane Fonda Barbara Walters”) but can’t bring myself to spend 40 minutes listening to that traitor (Fonda, of course) just to find the exact quote.
You are far too kind. I would have Jane Fonda hanged instead. As a traitor and as a criminal against humanity for the Vietanmese and Cambodian genocide.
USA Roman Catholic ruling class sent the US military to other side of the world to support the distinctly Roman Catholic ruling class of S.Vietnam.
Yeah that Johnson was big on kissing the papal ring…
:rolleyes:
Several years back, my son had the privilege of being a roommate to some Vietnamese young men whose families had been forced to leave Vietnam when we bailed out on them. One of the first questions they asked of him during his stay with them was why did the USA leave when they basically had the war won? For my son, it was the beginning of his reeducation from liberal to right of center and edging more right all the time. It’s a real shame our socialist propaganda machine (MSM) holds such sway in our land.
In what universe was South Vietnam a protagonist? That regime was more brutal than Assad is today. Yes, Ho’s regime was also brutal. No, that does not excuse the atrocities of Diem and Thieu.
Stop looking at North Vietnam for two seconds and take a good look at what South Vietnam really was. It wasn’t worth American lives. I don’t blame the soldiers who went there at all; they did their jobs as best they could and they fought admirably.
But those in charge didn’t know shit from Shinola. “Yes, we’ll divide this ancient culture in two and tell the southern half their northern counterparts are evil now because of communism (a phrase, incidentally, most in South Vietnam didn’t comprehend). And oh, we’ll place a repressive Catholic in charge of this largely Buddhist country who will use his best troops against the South rather than the Viet Cong. We’ll completely ignore the role of nationalism in a nation that literally just finished a successful colonial uprising against the French.”
If you question Karzai today, you would have been questioning the value of Saigon.
Actually South Vietnam was originally inhabited by a people called the Champa, who were first independent. then a vassal state of the Vietnamese Northern kingdom centered around Hanoi, then conquered by the Vietnamese in about 1832. When you talk about North versus South Vietnam, you are talking about two distinct ethnic groups. The group that had the most to do with creating a single “Vietnam” were the French colonial authorities.
But those in charge didn’t know shit from Shinola.-Aaron
Don’t flatter yourself. You weren’t in charge, bigot.
@Aaron: “Stop looking at North Vietnam for two seconds and take a good look at what South Vietnam really was. It wasn’t worth American lives.”
Only Americans can decide what is worth American lives. But if you want to know the difference between North Vietnam and South Vietnam, ask Vietnamese. Some of the comments above give you their side of the story.
Viet Nam is a fascinating place. I have been there a few times in the last fifteen years.
The language; “Tieng Viet” is NOT homogenous from north to south: in the north, there are six distinct “tones” in vowel sounds, in the South, there seems to be only five. A lot of terminology for common items like bottle and bowl is utterly different.
Then there is the region around Hue, which has its own dialect and very different cuisine.
And let’s not forget the more than forty other ethnic groups like the Ade, Rhade, Hmong etc.
The “Vietnamese” as most folk know them are the “Khing” people. There is significant Chinese influence in both North and South, but the Viets have had an uneasy relationship with their northern neighbours. Ho Chi Minh City, previously Saigon, used to be a Khmer fishing village called Preah Nkor, and so on and on. The Cham people who lived in the central region were pushed out by the Khing and ended up in North East Cambodia, around a town called Kompong Cham. Hun Sen, the Khner Prime Minister is from Kompong Cham.
It is not all black and white comic-book stuff
Comrades, if the North Vietnamese had a greater claim to the South then, well the Southerners, Then that child’s injuries are not shameful – they are glorious scars for the people. [which of course is unadulterated Bullsh*t][cannot wait for my children's political science profs in college to try and pull this one - american's naplamed them.....indeed.
I have had the pleasure of meeting several Vietnamese who have been born and raised in Vietnam since the end of the war. They have all been pleased to meet
and American who was in said war. It is pretty obvious that we did not leave a bad taste in Vietnamese mouths.
In Texas, I also knew a Viet Cong “chu luc” (their term for full-time regulars.) He decided he did not like the way he had been “liberated” so he joined the tail end of the first crowd of refugees. Talked his way into an early permanent residency and then into an accelerated naturalized citizenship. Why was he so anxious? He wanted to be sure that in 1984 he got to vote for Ronald Reagan.
Any questions as to who really won?
Great story, and all credit to Mr. Rubin for reminding us that the war could have been won. I’ve used it (with link) in our expat conservative blog!
http://rossrightangle.wordpress.com/2012/06/12/always-learning-something-new-that-little-vietnam-girl-chose-freedom/
Is this article a neat piece of trivia or an apology for the failed Vietnam War?
The photograph worked because it told a narrative, it didn’t matter that this day the children burned were hit by accidental friendly fire, the much larger point was that America went into a war of choice, we brought tons of napalm, lots of people got killed and later generations were forced to pay for it.
Today we have the benefit of knowing the war was started by a false flag incident, expanded because defense profiteers wanted to swindle a lot of taxpayer money, and extended by LBJ solely to win re-election. 50,000 troops died and those that survived were not cared for adequately.
So the photograph was a godsend, a way of slapping apathetic Americans into reality, using a visual that translated into a visceral reaction. Ronald Reagan got elected by painting visual images of lazy, shiftless welfare queens when his bloated defense proposals was driving the deficit – in reality, welfare fraud was a tiny fraction of the overall deficit, and all the money spent went right back into the economy anyway, even if it was for liquor and cigarettes.
So the narrative is never meant to be fact-checked, only to get an emotional response. Reagan’s campaign advisor Lee Atwater even admitted in an interview they wanted to gin up racist sentiment without saying it overtly, so this is par for the course. But when do-gooders use Reagan’s propaganda tactics, it’s suddenly a problem? Neocons, please, be consistent…