PREVIOUSLY ON THE SKC BLOG: We explained why the United States became involved in Vietnam. Why did the U.S. think that Vietnam was worth so much killing and dying for? The most frequently-offered explanation, among American historians - is that the United States was in Vietnam in an attempt to stop communist expansion into South East Asia.
... ... ... IMAGE CREDITs ABOVE: NASA FACT: How long were we in the Vietnam War? Long enough for conspiracy theorists to dream up the idea that the Moon Landing was a hoax — a diversion to take the minds of the American people off the war itself. ... ... ...
THE CLIFF NOTES, edited from transcripts. Presented here are the real reasons as well as the U.S. government presentation of facts to the American public.
CHAPTER IV: CONSEQUENCES The Vietnam War memorial is a very powerful place. It's wall has over 58,000 names inscribed on it - the names of all those U.S. personnel who died in Vietnam. When you're there in person it is overwhelming. The 58,000 names represent those who died. About 150,000 more people suffered serious physical injury during the war, and no one can ever know how many more suffered emotionally, psychologically.
• Do we know how many Vietnamese people died in the Vietnam War? The truth is that in Vietnam the devastation of the war ran so deep, and was so widespread, that no one really knows the exact number of people killed or seriously injured during the war years. Most estimates range between three to three and a half million Vietnamese people killed. No one also knows how many of those people were civilian - for political reasons the U.S. military would often add any dead body - man, woman, or child, civilian or not - as a dead Viet Cong or PAVN soldier for their body count. To this day, about 300,000 Vietnamese are still considered 'missing in action'. The numbers are hard to decipher, to say the least.
WALL IMAGE CREDITS, ALL OTHER IMAGE CREDITS
• The war destroyed Vietnam in other ways as well. First there were the bombs. Vietnam endured the most concentrated, intense bombing history has ever seen. The United States rained 8 million tons of bombs down on Vietnam - that's almost three times the total amount of all the bombs dropped worldwide during all of World War II, all on a country that's a bit smaller than the size of California. The U.S. flattened schools, hospitals, Buddhist temples, crops — everything.• The U.S. also used biological warfare in Vietnam. The purpose was to destroy the environment to make it hard for the Viet Cong to hide in the forests, or to destroy crops and livestock so that the Vietnamese people might surrender due to starvation and other forms of suffering. More than 6 million acres of South Vietnam were sprayed, including entire villages and farms. This killed thousands of civilians and contaminated land so severely that in some parts of Vietnam, trees have only recently started to grow again. A wide range of crippling and disfiguring birth defects, caused by the teratogens that were put in the chemicals, are another lasting legacy of this vicious warring tactic.
• Millions of Vietnamese became refugees. Nobody knows how many thousands of people perished during this time. An estimated six million unexploded mines and bombs remain in Vietnam and continue to kill farmers and children even today. The lingering effects of the war in Vietnam are too vast to list. How do we put this without sounding stupid or naive? It almost seems like the war was out of control.
• Any war, any conflict, causes tremendous suffering among those involved. It's also true that all wars are not the same; that each war is, in a sense, unique. Many military historians have pointed out that, even by war standards, the Vietnam War was a very cruel and brutal war. From a technological-military standpoint, you have the world's richest and most powerful military, fighting an all-out war against a relatively small, extremely poor, Third World country — you could almost say that the results were predictable. This in itself doesn't really explain why the United States chose to devastate Vietnam to such an extreme - policies that drove its people, its culture, its history, its environment, to the very brink of annihilation.
• Somebody had to decide that they were going to absolutely devastate the country. Do people really make these kinds of decisions? You could say that it was that way by design. Part of the reason why U.S. war planners consciously utilized only the most ultra-violent tactics was directly related to their flawed analyses. Because they mischaracterized the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese as essentially 'proxy armies', the U.S. plan for victory became relatively simple: kill as many people as possible, inflict so much unbearable suffering, that eventually their will would be broken and they would surrender. This is why only the most brutal tactics were chosen - to best exploit the inherent weakness of an enemy who was presumed to be fighting someone else's cause. Which of course also explains why the strategy failed. That this strategy also dovetailed neatly with America's own history of racism and class warfare goes without saying.
• If the leaders in the United States had been able to look at the Vietnamese as fully human, maybe this particular moment in history could have unfolded differently. After reading through all these books and documents, I've come to two main personal conclusions: the first is that in times of conflict or war, for various reasons, people tend to make a conscious effort to strip their enemy of their humanness. I'm convinced this only leads to more pain, and more death. The second is that this doesn't have to happen.
CHAPTER IV: CONSEQUENCES is the LAST POST IN THIS 4 PART SERIES Iif you just want to know everything right now go back to the first post in this series and watch the video. It requires a 40 min and 23 second commitment. (after the jump scroll down the page to reach the video)
Laotian Chronicles: A Life Story [ an excerpt from the novel I may never write ]
... ... ...
BIBLIOGRAPHY for the PINKYSHOW EPISODE 060809-1
Cultures in Conflict: The Viet Nam War. Robert E. Vadas. Greenwood Press, Westport, Connecticut/London, 2002.
The Eyewitness History of the Vietnam War, 1961-1975. George Esper and the Associated Press. Villard Books, New York, 1983.
Herbicidal Warfare: The Ranch Hand Project in Vietnam. Paul Frederick Cecil. Praeger Publishers, New York/Westport, Connecticut/London, 1986.
The Illustrated History of the Vietnam War. Brian Beckett. Multimedia Publications (UK), 1985.
The Pentagon Papers: as published by the New York times. Bantam Books, New York, 1971.
A People's History of the United States, 1492 - Present. Howard Zinn. HarperPerennial, New York, 1980, 1995.
A People's History of the Vietnam War. Jonathan Neale. The New Press, New York/London, 2001, 2003.
Secrets: A Memoir of Vietnam and the Pentagon Papers. Daniel Ellsberg. Penguin Putnam, 2002.
The Truth About the Most Dangerous and Destructive Nation. Raymond Hirashima. Vantage Press, 1978.
The Umbrella of U.S. Power: The Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the Contradictions of U.S. Policy. Noam Chomsky. Seven Stories Press, New York, 1999.
Vietnam. Larry Burrows. Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 2002.
Vietnam: A Long History. Nguyen Khac Vien. The Gioi Publishers, Hanoi, 1993.
Vietnam and Other American Fantasies. H. Bruce Franklin. University of Massachusetts Press, Amherst, MA, 2000.
Vietnam: A Visual Encyclopedia. Philip Gutzman. PRC Publishing Ltd., 2002.
The Vietnam Experience: The Aftermath, 1975-1985. Edward Doyle, Terrance Maitland, and the editors of the Boston Publishing Company. Boston Publishing Company, Boston, MA, 1982.
The Vietnam Experience: The Fall of the South. Clark Dougan, David Fulghum, and the editors of the Boston Publishing Company. Boston Publishing Company, Boston, MA, 1982.
The Vietnam Experience: Raising the Stakes. Terrance Maitland, Stephen Weiss, and the editors of the Boston Publishing Company. Boston Publishing Company, Boston, MA, 1982.
Vietnam Front Pages. Hal Drake (editor). Hugh Lauter Levin Associates, New York, 1986.
Vietnam: The Secret War. Kevin M. Generous. Bison Books, New York, 1985.
Vietnam: The War in the Air: A Pictorial History of the U.S. Air Forces in the Vietnam War: Air Force Army, Navy, and Marines. Col. Gene Gurney, USAF (ret.). Crown Publishers, New York, 1985.
The Vietnam War: An Almanac. John S. Bowman (general editor) & Fox Butterfield (introduction). Bison Books, New York, 1985.
PREVIOUSLY ON THE SKC BLOG: Vietnam existed for aeons before Americans suddenly started thinking about it in the 1960s as this far-away and nightmarish place. Jungles, rice paddies, war, etc. The Vietnamese are an ancient people, with their own culture and their own identity. Even in ancient times, they had to struggle against foreign domination. Within the context of the Vietnam War we now know of the timeline, the events and the players — but what of the motives?
... ... ... IMAGE CREDITs ABOVE: Mike Stimpson If you prefer not to wait for the balance of the posts to be rolled out over the next few days you can watch the entire 40-minute episode of the Pinky Show in Part One of this series of posts here ... ... ...
NOTE: This 'Fortunate Son' is not a cover of CCR's famous single but, an original work by Bruce Hornsby.
THE CLIFF NOTES, edited from transcripts. Presented here are the real reasons as well as the U.S. government presentation of facts to the American public.
CHAPTER III: SEARCHING FOR REASONS So far we've described how the United States became involved in Vietnam, but we still haven't explained why. Why did the U.S. think that Vietnam was worth so much killing and dying for? The most frequently-offered explanation, among American historians - is that the United States was in Vietnam in an attempt to stop communist expansion into South East Asia.
• Because Ho Chi Minh was a communist, the United States readily assumed that the Viet Minh were puppets of China, or maybe the Soviets, or maybe a little bit of both. The feeling at the time was that if the U.S. were to let the Viet Minh take control of Vietnam, then this would initiate a kind of chain reaction, in which nearby areas like Cambodia, Laos, Thailand, Indonesia, etc., they would all fall, like a row of dominos and succumb to communist influence. We called this the 'domino theory', and basically the U.S. government believed that the obvious solution to such a situation was to make sure that the first domino (Vietnam) didn't fall. This is the main reason why the Eisenhower administration was willing to commit so much money and resources to create a "South Vietnam".
• What was the perceived threat from communism? The U.S. saw communism as the enemy and other forms of socialism as well. Whenever people would talk about how bad communism is, often the reasons they'd give would be framed in terms of how communism is authoritarian and oppressive, while the U.S. is all about freedom and democracy. Which points to an obvious question: If U.S. foreign policy since World War II had been only about making moral choices between 'democracy' or 'authoritarianism', wouldn't the United States have a long history of supporting democratic movements on principle? The answer: It does not.
• A cursory review of the U.S.'s foreign policy decisions in the 20th century shows that the U.S. actually has a rather poor record when it comes to supporting democratic movements around the globe. The U.S. has been as willing to overthrow a democratically elected government or prop up a dictatorship - Indonesia, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Guatemala, Chile, Grenada, Congo, Philippines, Greece these are just a few examples.
The single most important measure of a country's receiving support from the United States has been whether or not that country's markets, labor, or resources could be made available to American business.
• Sometimes this has required supporting powerful landlords against peasants, in other cases installing a ruthless dictator produces the most desirable results. In the case of Vietnam, the situation required support of the business owners in the cities as well as the powerful landlords — waging a kind of class war against a landless peasantry. The important thing to remember is that the specifics have always been secondary to the primary objective of securing a stable environment in which American-style capitalism can thrive. This is the way in which U.S. foreign policy has actually been very consistent.
Historian Jonathan Neale puts it as follows, "These state capitalist countries were a threat not so much because they called themselves 'socialist', but because they were competing capitalist powers and their markets were largely closed to American business."
• Even to this day, most Americans tend to think of the Vietnam War as a kind of civil war. The fact remains, the Vietnam War was fundamentally between the people of Vietnam and the United States. That's why in Vietnam, the Vietnam War is not called the Civil War, it's called the American War. The Vietnamese saw the United States as a foreign occupier, and they were fighting in order to expel them from their country. In other words, from a Vietnamese perspective, it was a war for independence.
• Confused? If the Vietnam War wasn't a civil war, then how come there were Vietnamese in the South Vietnamese government, or Vietnamese serving in the South Vietnamese army - who were these people? Vietnam had been a French colony for a really long time. One of the ways a colonizer will often rule over a colony is to create a minority ruling class within the native population - give them privileges and power and have them do much of the dirty work. The French used these Vietnamese - the moneyed business class in the cities, land owners, Vietnamese Catholics, and so on, to rule over the rest of the population - mostly Buddhist, mostly rural, landless, and most of all, very poor. When the French were finally forced out of Vietnam, many of the Vietnamese who had benefitted from French rule turned their allegiance to the Americans. To the majority of the Vietnamese though, these people were supporting the subjugation of their own people - they were collaborators, traitors.
• We Americans exploited this complicated situation - basically a class war and a land war wrapped up in a larger struggle for independence - by spinning the situation as a Civil War to the American people back home. The government knew that it could never get public support for military intervention in Vietnam if it said the war was being fought in order to secure business opportunities for the American elite. Instead it talked about it as if it were a civil war between two sides - a good side and an evil side. Of course the United States was supporting the good guys. The American public, totally ignorant of Vietnamese history, or even the logic of imperialism, bought it - at least for a while.
• The Pentagon Papers, the U.S. State Department's own 'official history' of the Vietnam War, has approximately 4,000 pages of declassified information that any U.S. citizen can access. If you study the papers, it's quite clear that at the highest levels, American leaders had no illusions that they were fighting a war for the benefit of the Vietnamese people. To be blunt, most Americans couldn't have cared less about the Vietnamese peasants. It also seems very clear that of all the U.S. presidents, secretaries of state, generals - the U.S. leaders who were in control, none of them really took the Vietnamese perspective seriously. They were quite certain that their Cold War model, their domino theory explained everything quite nicely.
• They were locked into their own way of looking at the situation. They did not understand what motivated the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese Army. More than any other single thing, this made America's defeat inevitable. The Vietnamese who fought the United States absolutely did not see their struggle as a mere 'subset' of some greater communist cause. They were not puppets of the Soviets, Chinese, or anybody else. Many people who fought for the VC and NVA were not even communists. They were fighting for the idea of an independent Vietnam and they understood their struggle to expel the Americans as being directly connected to a 2,000 year history of resistance to foreign domination. This knowledge, this feeling, was a core element of Vietnamese identity. Had the American leadership been willing to empathize with their enemy, perhaps they would have known that the Vietnamese were ready to fight to the last man; they would have never surrendered.
• In hindsight, this American confusion between 'Cold War' versus 'War for Independence' seems obvious and embarrassing. Did the Americans not try to learn anything about Vietnamese history before taking on this war? Why did the American leadership disregard all reliable information on this matter, choosing instead to impose their own paradigm on the situation regardless of whether or not it fit? Was it just arrogance? Maybe it was all of the above. There exists the idea that maybe it had something to do with America's denial of its own colonial past. Maybe when a nation's own history of genocide or taking land by force is erased from memory, maybe that helped to render the Vietnamese people's struggle for land and sovereignty invisible. There is no other way to explain why they couldn't see what was happening right there in front of them.
... ... ... ... ... CHAPTER IV: CONSEQUENCES (posting in 2 days) • Reading all of the the text takes a wee bit of time, something many in our attention-span challenged culture have so little of — so Chapter IV of IV Chapters will be posted tomorrow. Or if you just want to know everything right now go back to the first post in this series and watch the video. It requires a 40 min and 23 second commitment. (after the jump scroll down the page to reach the video)
Laotian Chronicles: A Life Story [ an excerpt from the novel I may never write ]
... ... ...
BIBLIOGRAPHY for the PINKYSHOW EPISODE 060809-1
Cultures in Conflict: The Viet Nam War. Robert E. Vadas. Greenwood Press, Westport, Connecticut/London, 2002.
The Eyewitness History of the Vietnam War, 1961-1975. George Esper and the Associated Press. Villard Books, New York, 1983.
Herbicidal Warfare: The Ranch Hand Project in Vietnam. Paul Frederick Cecil. Praeger Publishers, New York/Westport, Connecticut/London, 1986.
The Illustrated History of the Vietnam War. Brian Beckett. Multimedia Publications (UK), 1985.
The Pentagon Papers: as published by the New York times. Bantam Books, New York, 1971.
A People's History of the United States, 1492 - Present. Howard Zinn. HarperPerennial, New York, 1980, 1995.
A People's History of the Vietnam War. Jonathan Neale. The New Press, New York/London, 2001, 2003.
Secrets: A Memoir of Vietnam and the Pentagon Papers. Daniel Ellsberg. Penguin Putnam, 2002.
The Truth About the Most Dangerous and Destructive Nation. Raymond Hirashima. Vantage Press, 1978.
The Umbrella of U.S. Power: The Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the Contradictions of U.S. Policy. Noam Chomsky. Seven Stories Press, New York, 1999.
Vietnam. Larry Burrows. Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 2002.
Vietnam: A Long History. Nguyen Khac Vien. The Gioi Publishers, Hanoi, 1993.
Vietnam and Other American Fantasies. H. Bruce Franklin. University of Massachusetts Press, Amherst, MA, 2000.
Vietnam: A Visual Encyclopedia. Philip Gutzman. PRC Publishing Ltd., 2002.
The Vietnam Experience: The Aftermath, 1975-1985. Edward Doyle, Terrance Maitland, and the editors of the Boston Publishing Company. Boston Publishing Company, Boston, MA, 1982.
The Vietnam Experience: The Fall of the South. Clark Dougan, David Fulghum, and the editors of the Boston Publishing Company. Boston Publishing Company, Boston, MA, 1982.
The Vietnam Experience: Raising the Stakes. Terrance Maitland, Stephen Weiss, and the editors of the Boston Publishing Company. Boston Publishing Company, Boston, MA, 1982.
Vietnam Front Pages. Hal Drake (editor). Hugh Lauter Levin Associates, New York, 1986.
Vietnam: The Secret War. Kevin M. Generous. Bison Books, New York, 1985.
Vietnam: The War in the Air: A Pictorial History of the U.S. Air Forces in the Vietnam War: Air Force Army, Navy, and Marines. Col. Gene Gurney, USAF (ret.). Crown Publishers, New York, 1985.
The Vietnam War: An Almanac. John S. Bowman (general editor) & Fox Butterfield (introduction). Bison Books, New York, 1985.
PREVIOUSLY ON THE SKC BLOG: A lot of the information that people think they know about the Vietnam is wrong. Factually incorrect. There's a lot of misinformation and false assumptions. In order to fully appreciate my upcoming posts about the fall of Laos from an insider's perspective (my fathers) and the day my father made that fateful call to my mother, it is important that you understand the reasons the U.S. fought the Vietnam War. You'll be surprised to find that the seeds of our involvement goes all the way back to WWII.
... ... ... IMAGE CREDITs ABOVE: Amnesty International's take on the Infamous Eddie Adams' Pulitzer Prize-winning photo. If you prefer not to wait for the balance of the posts to be rolled out over the next few days you can watch the entire 40-minute episode of the Pinky Show in Part One of this series of posts here ... ... ...
THE CLIFF NOTES, edited from transcripts. Presented here are the real reasons as well as the U.S. government presentation of facts to the American public.
CHAPTER II: DESIRE & STRUGGLE, A BASIC TIME LINE OF EVENTS Vietnam existed for aeons before Americans suddenly started thinking about it in the 1960s as this far-away and nightmarish place. Jungles, rice paddies, war, etc. The Vietnamese are an ancient people, with their own culture and their own identity. Even in ancient times, they had to struggle against foreign domination.
• China occupied Vietnam for approximately a thousand years. The Vietnamese finally expelled the Chinese in the 10th and 11th centuries, but then again in the mid-1800's, Vietnam again fell under foreign domination - this time colonized by France. The French ruled Vietnam through the use of Vietnamese puppet-governments, but the exploitation and oppression that the Vietnamese people suffered was no less severe because of it. French control of Vietnam would last almost a hundred years, until 1940, when Japan, following its own Imperialist dreams, began its own militarized occupation of Vietnam. The Japanese kept both the French and the figurehead Vietnamese emperor in place, while exercising control from behind the scenes - essentially a double-puppet government.
• In 1941 and continuing throughout the World War II years, the Viet Minh form. They are a group of Vietnamese nationalists, who dream of an independent Vietnam, free from foreign domination. Their first political and military objective is to oust the occupying Japanese and French from their homeland. Their leader, communist revolutionary Ho Chi Minh, is supported by the United States and China because he fights their mutual enemy, the Japanese, from within Vietnam.
• As WWII was winding down, it started to become clear to that Japan was going to lose the war, and many Vietnamese believed that maybe their independence would be close at hand. It didn't happen. In summit meetings held at Yalta and Potsdam, leaders from the United States, Russia, and Britain sat down to decide how they were going to divide up the world after World War II Needless to say, the Vietnamese, or anybody else who 'didn't matter', they weren't invited. The planet was to be divided into spheres of influence - for example, the U.S. and Britain would have influence over Western Europe and the Soviet Union would have Eastern Europe, the United States would get control over North, Central, and South America, the U.S. and Britain would share control the Middle East, and so on.
• Franklin D. Roosevelt wasn't a big fan of European Imperialism and he knew the people of Vietnam had suffered tremendously under French rule. But he was also very sensitive to his WWII allies - the English, the French - and English Prime Minister Winston Churchill, a close friend of Roosevelt, he felt that if Vietnam were to gain its independence, that would be bad example to their own colonies in the British Empire, especially India. In the end the three powers agreed to let France 'keep' Vietnam.
• Back in Vietnam, the Japanese surrender to the Viet Minh at the end of WWII. The Viet Minh declare Vietnam independent, and essentially there is a lot of partying in the streets. The good feelings don't last long. With Japanese Imperialism no longer a threat, the U.S. revokes its backing of the Viet Minh and Vietnamese independence, and instead transfers its support to the French, who immediately try to re-establish Vietnam as a colony.
• It's obvious to the Viet Minh that they've been betrayed and they resist - full-scale war breaks out between the Vietnamese and the French in 1946. Although the war is generally referred to as the French Indochina War, behind the scenes the United States is France's 'silent partner', financing up to 80% of France's war costs. Even with all the money and guns on their side, the French are decisively defeated by the Viet Minh in 1954 after nine years of very bloody fighting. For the second time in ten years, it looked like the Vietnamese were on the verge of total independence.
• Again this was not the case, no independence yet. You would think that getting trounced on the battlefield means that the loser just picks up and leaves immediately, but in real wars, the situation is never that simple. The French had been in Vietnam for almost one hundred years, and the war amd the effects of colonization itself, had left the country in a disorganized mess. Also the formal terms of France's surrender had to be discussed. The French and the Viet Minh - along with China, the United States, Britain, and the Soviet Union - they all meet in Geneva, Switzerland in 1954 to sort everything out.
This is where it gets really interesting, but also a little bit tricky.
• At the Geneva Accords, the first thing that needed to be decided was how to actually end the fighting and separate the combatants. It's decided that Vietnam would be temporarily divided in half into two "regroupment areas" - the Viet Minh forces would collect north of the 17th parallel, and the French forces south of the 17th. The French would then leave, and after a period of two years, a unified national election would be held in both the North and the South - at which time the Vietnamese people would be formally, and finally, independent and sovereign under a single government of their choice. This was the plan.
• The two sides agreed to these terms for different reasons. Ho Chi Minh felt that that even though Viet Minh could have eventually wiped out the remaining French forces, he also knew that many more people would have had to die unnecessarily. Besides, Viet Minh had strong support among the Vietnamese people - he was sure that they could easily win a national election.
• The French and Americans, also wanted an end to the fighting - the French were incapable of a military victory and continuing would have been senseless. A two-year window before a national election was attractive to the Americans because they also knew that if an election were to be held right away, that the Viet Minh would easily win. The U.S. didn't want a communist government in Vietnam, a government that would be more politically and economically aligned with China or the Soviet Union rather than the United States. The U.S. saw the two-years as a window of opportunity during which they'd have the chance to pour money and material goods into the southern half of Vietnam to create some semblance of a good economy. This would maybe win over enough of the Vietnamese peasants to elect a government that would be more open to U.S. influence.
• That's exactly what the U.S. did. As the French left Vietnam, the United States seized the moment and immediately embarked on an enormous project of 'nation building'. The result was a new nation - "South Vietnam". This in itself is one of the most commonly misunderstood aspects of the Vietnam War. One of the fundamental 'facts' that Americans 'know' about the Vietnam War era is that there was a North Vietnam (communist) and a South Vietnam (democratic), and that the United States was helping the South Vietnamese repel communist aggression. What most people don't realize is that South Vietnam was essentially invented by the United States as a base for building and maintaining its own interests in Asia. There was nothing in the Geneva Accords that explicitly stated that Vietnam was to become two separate countries.
• Most people just say 'South Vietnam', 'North Vietnam', like it was always this way. They don't realize that a particular situation was exploited by the United States and that the division was created in an attempt to create a foothold from which they could exert their interests in the region. The Vietnamese people by and large did not want their country split in half.
• Next, the United States installs a puppet government in the newly created South Vietnam. They choose a devout anti-communist Catholic named Diem - recently emerged from exile in New Jersey - to head their new government in Saigon. The two years go by quickly and as the agreed-upon national elections approach, it becomes clear that Diem and his American backers are still not popular enough to win an election against the more popular Ho Chi Minh. The U.S. encourages Diem to block the 1956 elections, which he does - the elections never take place.
• Diem's regime is characterized by corruption and oppression, and by around 1960, grassroots opposition - with support from the Viet Minh leadership in the north - begin to coalesce in the southern countryside. They are the National Liberation Front, or NLF - Diem and the Americans call them the Viet Cong. This is one of the more common misunderstandings about the Vietnam War. We know that we fought against an enemy called the Viet Cong and just assume that the Viet Cong were from North Vietnam. In actuallity, especially in the earlier phases of the war, most of the Viet Cong were from the South. They received guns and supplies and other kinds of support from the Viet Minh in the north, but the Viet Cong were actually rooted in the Vietnamese peasantry of South Vietnam. This pretty much contradicts what most people have in their imagination. Americans and South Vietnamese in the South, Viet Cong in the North [in North Vietnam], everybody fighting against each other somewhere in the middle in the 'battlefront' area. This is not accurate.
• The Viet Cong were essentially a social and political revolutionary movement dedicated to ousting the Americans and their puppet government by force. The United States considered them the enemy and that's why almost all of the fighting during the Vietnam war took place within the borders of 'South Vietnam'. Ironically, you had the President of the United States telling the American people that we're there to help the Vietnamese maintain their independence, and at the same time we're over there in their country fighting them as the enemy?
• It's important to point these kinds of things out, because understanding the geography of the war also reveals a certain reality that somehow still manages to escape American consciousness - that essentially, the U.S. military was trying to squash an armed uprising of Vietnamese, who were in turn just trying to get the American occupiers out of their country.
• By 1963, the Viet Cong had gained widespread popular support throughout South Vietnam. The United States was getting annoyed by Diem's inability to control the situation and orchestrates his assassination in November of that year. Immediately after that the U.S. starts exercising much more direct control over South Vietnam. Back in America, President John F. Kennedy is himself assassinated, and Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson assumes the presidency.
The following year, 1964, represents a crucial turning point. Privately, the Johnson Administration has decided that an all-out war is the only way to defeat the Vietnamese, but American public opinion remains sharply divided. The solution: the Administration orchestrates a 'wartime media-event' - the infamous "Gulf" of Tonkin Affair - in which the U.S. accuses North Vietnam of firing torpedos at an American destroyer with torpedo boats. This never actually happened, but the story is good enough to galvanize the American people and Congress. Infuriated by the (imaginary) act of aggression, Congress overwhelming approves The Gulf of Tonkin Resolution in August, 1964. The resolution gives President Johnson broad powers to use military force at his discretion. And this he does - U.S. warplanes begin bombing North Vietnam almost immediately - the first of several intense bombing campaigns that would continue for almost a decade. By 1969, there are more than half-a-million U.S. troops in Vietnam, all fighting in a country most Americans can barely find on a map, fighting an enemy that no one seems to understand.
John F. Kennedy motorcade, Dallas crop.png
John F. Kennedy motorcade, Dallas, Texas, Nov. 22, 1963 Photo by Victor Hugo King, cc, others CLICK for IMAGE CREDITS
This 'war-time" media-event reminds many current thought leaders of Iraq and the "Weapons of Mass Destruction" campaign. Or the U.S.S. Maine and the Spanish American War. "Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it."
... ... ... ... ... CHAPTER III: SEARCHING FOR REASONS (posting in 2 days) • Reading all of the the text takes a wee bit of time, something many in our attention-span challenged culture have so little of — so Chapter III of IV Chapters will be posted tomorrow. Or if you just want to know everything right now go back to the first post in this series and watch the video. It requires a 40 min and 23 second commitment. (after the jump scroll down the page to reach the video)
Laotian Chronicles: A Life Story [ an excerpt from the novel I may never write ]
... ... ...
BIBLIOGRAPHY for the PINKYSHOW EPISODE 060809-1
Cultures in Conflict: The Viet Nam War. Robert E. Vadas. Greenwood Press, Westport, Connecticut/London, 2002.
The Eyewitness History of the Vietnam War, 1961-1975. George Esper and the Associated Press. Villard Books, New York, 1983.
Herbicidal Warfare: The Ranch Hand Project in Vietnam. Paul Frederick Cecil. Praeger Publishers, New York/Westport, Connecticut/London, 1986.
The Illustrated History of the Vietnam War. Brian Beckett. Multimedia Publications (UK), 1985.
The Pentagon Papers: as published by the New York times. Bantam Books, New York, 1971.
A People's History of the United States, 1492 - Present. Howard Zinn. HarperPerennial, New York, 1980, 1995.
A People's History of the Vietnam War. Jonathan Neale. The New Press, New York/London, 2001, 2003.
Secrets: A Memoir of Vietnam and the Pentagon Papers. Daniel Ellsberg. Penguin Putnam, 2002.
The Truth About the Most Dangerous and Destructive Nation. Raymond Hirashima. Vantage Press, 1978.
The Umbrella of U.S. Power: The Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the Contradictions of U.S. Policy. Noam Chomsky. Seven Stories Press, New York, 1999.
Vietnam. Larry Burrows. Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 2002.
Vietnam: A Long History. Nguyen Khac Vien. The Gioi Publishers, Hanoi, 1993.
Vietnam and Other American Fantasies. H. Bruce Franklin. University of Massachusetts Press, Amherst, MA, 2000.
Vietnam: A Visual Encyclopedia. Philip Gutzman. PRC Publishing Ltd., 2002.
The Vietnam Experience: The Aftermath, 1975-1985. Edward Doyle, Terrance Maitland, and the editors of the Boston Publishing Company. Boston Publishing Company, Boston, MA, 1982.
The Vietnam Experience: The Fall of the South. Clark Dougan, David Fulghum, and the editors of the Boston Publishing Company. Boston Publishing Company, Boston, MA, 1982.
The Vietnam Experience: Raising the Stakes. Terrance Maitland, Stephen Weiss, and the editors of the Boston Publishing Company. Boston Publishing Company, Boston, MA, 1982.
Vietnam Front Pages. Hal Drake (editor). Hugh Lauter Levin Associates, New York, 1986.
Vietnam: The Secret War. Kevin M. Generous. Bison Books, New York, 1985.
Vietnam: The War in the Air: A Pictorial History of the U.S. Air Forces in the Vietnam War: Air Force Army, Navy, and Marines. Col. Gene Gurney, USAF (ret.). Crown Publishers, New York, 1985.
The Vietnam War: An Almanac. John S. Bowman (general editor) & Fox Butterfield (introduction). Bison Books, New York, 1985.
In the course of trying to understand my Dad's role with the CIA during the fall of Vietnam and subsequently the surrounding countries (including Laos) I talked to more than a few relatives who lived through it, read through stacks of my fathers notes and read more than a few books. These books included Robert McNamara's 'In Retrospect: The Tragedy and Lessons of Vietnam' In the preface is a telling quote, it reads:
"We of the Kennedy and Johnson administrations who participated in the decisions on Vietnam acted according to what we thought were the principles and tradition of this nation. We made our decisions in light of those values. Yet we were wrong. We owe it to future generations to explain why." Even with this knowledge I haven't always been able to reconcile all the differing points of view until I stumbled across this gem on the internet. 'The Pinky Show's response to a viewers request that they explain how and why the U.S. fought the Vietnam War.'In order to fully appreciate my next upcoming posts about the fall of Laos from an insider's perspective (my fathers) and the day my father made that fateful call to my mother, it is important that you understand the reasons the U.S. fought the Vietnam War. You'll be surprised to find that the seeds of our involvement goes all the way back to WWII.
... ... ... You can watch the 40-minute episode of the Pinky Show below, see it full screen on YouTube or if your internet connection is unreliable, read my cliff notes of the episode. Regardless, buckle yourself in, it's either a 40min video or a bajillion word summary — chopped into four parts released over four days. Perfect for Sunday, Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday afternoon reading!
ABOUT THE PINKY SHOW: "The Pinky Show is the original super lo-tech hand-drawn educational TV show. We focus on information & ideas that have been misrepresented, suppressed, ignored, or otherwise excluded from mainstream discussion. Pinky presents and analyzes the material in an informal, easy-to-understand way, with helpful illustrations that she draws herself. Episodes are available on the internet for free at www.PinkyShow.org." ... ... ... ... ...
THE CLIFF NOTES, edited from transcripts. Presented are the real reasons as well as the U.S. government presentation of facts to the American public.
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CHAPTER I: MISINFORMATION
A lot of the information that people think they know about the Vietnam is wrong. Factually incorrect. There's a lot of misinformation and false assumptions.
"As you know, the U.S. for more than a decade has been assisting the government, the people of Vietnam, to maintain their independence."
~ John F. Kennedy
• There is a problem with this statement. It's problematic because the first half of the sentence is misleading, and the second half is simply untrue.
• When President Kennedy refers to, "the government, the people of Vietnam", he fails to mention which government, which obviously is very important. Because during the Vietnam War era, there was more than one government struggling for control - and the one that had the strongest support among the Vietnamese people wasn't the one the United States was supporting.• When Kennedy said "assisting... the people of Vietnam, to maintain their independence", it sounds like the Vietnamese people were helpless in the face of some foreign aggressor, which the United States was helping them to repel. In actuality, the foreign aggressor was the United States. The word "independence" is problematic. By definition, 'independence' implies 'self-determination, sovereignty'. But the United States had only recently stopped bankrolling the French war against the Vietnamese people, in their attempt to try to keep Vietnam under French colonial rule. So a statement like this only makes sense if you accept the rather ridiculous idea that the Vietnamese needed our help in order to maintain their independence from... themselves.• This is a simple illustration of why the Vietnam War is so hard to get a grip on. Most Americans think we know at least a little bit about the Vietnam War. Things we've seen in movies and TV, information received from the government, from newspapers, from high school textbooks — the problem is that so much of that stuff is factually incorrect or misleading. Interpretation of facts is one thing, but you can't have understanding built on outright misinformation.
... ... ... ... ... CHAPTER II: DESIRE & STRUGGLE, A BASIC TIME LINE OF EVENTS (posting in 2 days) • Reading all of the the text takes a wee bit of time, something many in our attention-span challenged culture have so little of — so Chapter II of IV Chapters will be posted tomorrow. Or if you just want to know everything right now go back and watch the video above. It requires a 40 min and 23 second commitment.
Laotian Chronicles: A Life Story
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BIBLIOGRAPHY for the PINKYSHOW EPISODE 060809-1
Cultures in Conflict: The Viet Nam War. Robert E. Vadas. Greenwood Press, Westport, Connecticut/London, 2002.
The Eyewitness History of the Vietnam War, 1961-1975. George Esper and the Associated Press. Villard Books, New York, 1983.
Herbicidal Warfare: The Ranch Hand Project in Vietnam. Paul Frederick Cecil. Praeger Publishers, New York/Westport, Connecticut/London, 1986.
The Illustrated History of the Vietnam War. Brian Beckett. Multimedia Publications (UK), 1985.
The Pentagon Papers: as published by the New York times. Bantam Books, New York, 1971.
A People's History of the United States, 1492 - Present. Howard Zinn. HarperPerennial, New York, 1980, 1995.
A People's History of the Vietnam War. Jonathan Neale. The New Press, New York/London, 2001, 2003.
Secrets: A Memoir of Vietnam and the Pentagon Papers. Daniel Ellsberg. Penguin Putnam, 2002.
The Truth About the Most Dangerous and Destructive Nation. Raymond Hirashima. Vantage Press, 1978.
The Umbrella of U.S. Power: The Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the Contradictions of U.S. Policy. Noam Chomsky. Seven Stories Press, New York, 1999.
Vietnam. Larry Burrows. Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 2002.
Vietnam: A Long History. Nguyen Khac Vien. The Gioi Publishers, Hanoi, 1993.
Vietnam and Other American Fantasies. H. Bruce Franklin. University of Massachusetts Press, Amherst, MA, 2000.
Vietnam: A Visual Encyclopedia. Philip Gutzman. PRC Publishing Ltd., 2002.
The Vietnam Experience: The Aftermath, 1975-1985. Edward Doyle, Terrance Maitland, and the editors of the Boston Publishing Company. Boston Publishing Company, Boston, MA, 1982.
The Vietnam Experience: The Fall of the South. Clark Dougan, David Fulghum, and the editors of the Boston Publishing Company. Boston Publishing Company, Boston, MA, 1982.
The Vietnam Experience: Raising the Stakes. Terrance Maitland, Stephen Weiss, and the editors of the Boston Publishing Company. Boston Publishing Company, Boston, MA, 1982.
Vietnam Front Pages. Hal Drake (editor). Hugh Lauter Levin Associates, New York, 1986.
Vietnam: The Secret War. Kevin M. Generous. Bison Books, New York, 1985.
Vietnam: The War in the Air: A Pictorial History of the U.S. Air Forces in the Vietnam War: Air Force Army, Navy, and Marines. Col. Gene Gurney, USAF (ret.). Crown Publishers, New York, 1985.
The Vietnam War: An Almanac. John S. Bowman (general editor) & Fox Butterfield (introduction). Bison Books, New York, 1985.
"You speak english very well for an illegal alien." That is not exactly what people said when I first emigrated to the United States but, thats what I heard. First of all I wasn't an illegal alien. I had emigrated to the US through the generosity of catholic priests who knew my father and offered to sponsor me. That's how I ended up with an open ended visa, a green card and eventually US citizenship.
It was surprising to me that in an internationally sensitive city like Washington, D.C. circa 1975-76 people were still amazed that a young laotian boy could speak english without an accent. Then again, they didn't know my assimilation to the American way of life and my ability to speak english started at the American School of Vientiane, Laos. ... ... ... IMAGE CREDITS: The image treatment is based on a photo illustration from blink.net.
"I used you kill fuckers like you in Vietnam,"muttered my neighbor at the urinal. I'm not sure the affect he expected his words to have on me — since it was not possible for me to stop mid-stream and engage in fisticuffs. I had already started to tune out his diatribe. I don't think he realized that during the Vietnam War I was in elementary school. I don't think he knew that my father was a hardline anti-communist and essentially military commander of the CIA controlled Laotian Hmong army. This part is debatable since many thought General Vang Pao was the defacto leader. Our family had supported American forces, not opposed them. While washing my hands in the sink, I looked over at him and said, "I'm sorry you still bear scars from the conflict." I have no idea if what I said was true. I'm not even sure why I said it. I don't know if it was my perfect english or what I said but he shut up — never breaking eye contact with me all the while. I exited the restroom and joined my fraternity brothers who were already digging into their dinner. (during my college years, 1985, Regency Mall, Richmond, VA)
The American School in Vientiane (ASV), Laos was an oasis of calm far away from the Vietnam war. The school had a eclectic mix of military brats, expats and the children of distinguished locals. Except for the fact that ASV encompassed kindergarten and grades one through twelve, it could have been mistaken for any typical American school.
We had athletic fields and corresponding athletic teams (except for football), cheerleaders, swimming pools, extra-curricular activities, the requisite clubs, dances and senior trips. In other words, your typical American school. If you took a page out of the Cobra's Tale yearbook (our mascot was a cobra) and compared it to any Southern California high school yearbook from the 1970s you'd be hard pressed to tell the difference between the two. I experienced none of the aforementioned because during this time I was in grade school. Though all the grades existed on a single campus, it was rare that the kids in high school ever set foot into the elementary courtyards and vice-versa.
I ended up at ASV because my Dad had tricked me into doing so. As my Dad tells the story, he had gotten a very tersely worded warning from the French Academy I was attending. The gist of the note said if I could not stay awake in class during the afternoons I would flunk out and readmission would be out of the question. It didn't help that they considered me a blithering idiot because I could never pay attention.
My Dad, concerned that his son would end up banned from formal education, asked me what the problem was. Specifically he said, "What's your problem?" I replied, "Dad its too hot." if you've ever lived or visited Laos you know it get to upwards of 35 degrees celsius (95 Fahrenheit) with 75% humidity during the school year. Its a tropical heat so you're always sweating. The French schools were unbearable and they had no air-conditioning. I was used to putting my head down on my desk and passing out. Thats how the teachers described it. I called it taking a nap.
Truth be told, when I was young, I hated school. Years later when I was tested in the US they surmised it was because I was bored — due to the fact that I was a hyperactive child who read three grade levels higher than his peers. I was considered hyperactive because the term Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD) had yet to be coined or recognized as a condition. It didn't help that I was first introduced to processed sugar and foods at ASV. But, I digress.
My father gathered his wits and smiled broadly, "Are you telling me that if I put you in a school that has air-conditioning you'll not only stay awake but, you'll also succeed and excel in your studies?" I looked him straight in the eyes and said, "Yes." My father had called my bluff, just one week later I was waiting on the front curb in front of our house waiting to be picked up for my first day at the American School in Vientiane.
Once at ASV I absorbed the language easily. I already spoke english but, it was formal and stilted. I didn't have the right cadence, emphasized the wrong syllables and often used the wrong words or the right words in the wrong context. English sentence structure is different from french and especially Lao. I also had no grasp of idioms, slang or American pop-culture. All that was about to change.
Laotian Chronicles: A Life Story [ an excerpt from the novel I may never write ]
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My intro to processed foods, experiences at ASV and negotiating the school bus system: fodder for future posts!
Ethically, people are not born fully formed. They cannot be defined at the beginning of their lives the same way they can be at the end. Sometimes a moment can change things. Sometimes in an instant our choices are made for us. The betrayal of a trust. The revelation that our truths are ours alone. In the context of this truth my father cannot be judged or summed up by a single act. Yet in lives public and private, we see time and time again that a single moment can define what others think of us. Was my father rebuked at the end of the Vietnam War because he was not as accommodating to the CIA as General Vang Pao? General Vang Pao is considered a hero among the Hmong people. He was also identified as the mastermind behind the 2008 plot/coup to overthrow the current Laotian government. I tell you this because headlines like "Crown Prince Sopsaisana's Opium Bust" are not very flattering.
IMAGE CREDITS: The collage is made up of the head of Simon Pegg (Hot Fuzz), the poppies from a photo by Pierre Arnaud Chouvy.
ethics |ˈeθiks| |ˈɛθɪks| |ˈɛθɪks| plural noun 1 [usu. treated as pl. ] moral principles that govern a person's or group's behavior : Judeo-Christian ethics. The moral correctness of specified conduct : the ethics of euthanasia. 2 [usu. treated as sing. ] the branch of knowledge that deals with moral principles.
When I was younger, and we lived in Laos, our house was gated. I always assumed it was for privacy, in retrospect I imagine it was also for our safety. The exterior walls were concrete, three feet thick and the circular driveway ended in steel gates 10 feet tall. Maybe not 10 feet tall, they could have been shorter, but when you're nine years old everything is very imposing.
Back then I always noticed that people either loved my father or hated him vehemently. Maybe hated is too strong a word. I should say despised — in the way all politicians are despised. I could never understand why. He tried to explain it to me once. He explained how he had contracted with an organization much like Doctors Without Borders to provide additional support and healthcare for the Laotian people. Some of these doctors were Filipino. If you know how xenophobic most Asian cultures are, you know what is coming. The native Laotian doctors saw this as an afront, a commentary about how well they were caring for their own people. They became very offended. I'm making a generalization here, I'm sure many native Laotian doctors welcomed the help. Regardless, my father was used as a scapegoat, a whipping boy if you will. He was damned if he didn't get the needed help and he was damned if he did. Sometimes you have to make the shitty call.
... ... ... How long do you have to read this post? Seriously, I'm trying to save you some time. If you're not a reader and you just want something to scan while you drink your coffee skip this post. Or wait until lunch. This is what I meant when I wrote "long-form narrative" in the ABOUT page of this blog. Buckle-up because this one requires commitment. ... ... ...
It is very hard to judge this situation once you realize that my father was not doing this for personal gain but on behalf of the CIA. Does the end justify the means? Also, just because you may not believe this blog entry doesn't mean it didn't happen. In retrospect, I'm pretty sure my Dad's history was one of the possible reasons I didn't get that design job in '09 at Langley.
SOURCE I: Political Friendster provides this context: The Laotian prince, Sopsaisana, was the head of the Asian Peoples Anti-Communist League, the chief political advisor of Vang Pao, military commander of the CIA's Laotian Hmong army. The heroin itself was refined from Hmong opium at Long Tieng, the CIA's headquarters in northern Laos, and given to Sopsaisana on consignment by Vang Pao. The consignment made its way from Vang Pao in Long Tieng to Sopsaisana in Vientiane via General Secord's Air America. That, apparently, was an alternative Richard Nixon was willing to accept.
SOURCE II: Wikipedia has this short five sentence missive: The Laotian prince Sopsaisana was the head of the Asian Peoples Anti-Communist League, the chief political advisor of Vang Pao, Vice President of the Laotian National Assembly and military commander of the CIA controlled Laotian Hmong army. In April 1971 Prince Sopsaisana, then Laos's new Ambassador to France, arrived in Paris. After a tip-off, customs at Orly airport intercepted a valise containing 123 pounds of pure heroin, then the largest drug seizure in French history with an estimated value of $13.5 million. The Prince had planned to ship the drugs to New York. CIA stationed in Paris convinced the French to cover up the affair; Prince Sopaisana returned to Vientiane two weeks later.
SOURCE III: A more colorful retelling of the incident from the book, The Politics of Heroin in Southeast Asia by Alfred W. McCoy Published August 1st 1972 by Harper & Row. (isbn: 0060129018) The excerpt:
The Golden Triangle: Heroin Is Our Most Important Product "LADIES AND GENTLEMEN," announced the genteel British diplomat, raising his glass to offer a toast, "I give you Prince Sopsaisana, the uplifter of Laotian youth." The toast brought an appreciative smile from the lips of the guest of honor, cheers and applause from the luminaries of Vientiane's diplomatic corps gathered at the send-off banquet for the Laotian ambassador-designate to France, Prince Sopsaisana. His appointment was the crowning achievement in a brilliant career. A member of the royal house of Meng Khouang, the Plain of Jars region, Prince Sopsaisana was vice-president of the National Assembly, chairman of the Lao Bar Association, president of the Lao Press Association, president of the Alliance Francaise, and a member in good standing of the Asian People's Anti-Communist League. After receiving his credentials from the king in a private audience at the Luang Prabang Royal Palace on April 8, 1971, the prince was treated to an unprecedented round of cocktail parties, dinners, and banquets. (1) For Prince Sopsaisana, or Sopsai as his friends call him, was not just any ambassador; the Americans considered him an outstanding example of a new generation of honest, dynamic national leaders, and it was widely rumored in Vientiane that Sopsai was destined for high office some day.
My Dad in dress whites.
The send-off party at Vientiane's Wattay Airport on April 23 was one of the gayest affairs of the season. Everybody was there: the cream of the diplomatic corps, a bevy of Lao luminaries, and, of course, you-know who from the American Embassy. The champagne bubbled, the canapes were flawlessly French, and Mr. Ivan Bastouil, charge d'affaires at the French Embassy, Lao Presse reported, gave the nicest speech. (2) Only after the plane had soared off into the clouds did anybody notice that Sopsai had forgotten to pay for his share of the reception. When the prince's flight arrived at Paris's Orly Airport on the morning of April 25, there was another reception in the exclusive VIP lounge. The French ambassador to Laos, home for a brief visit, and the entire staff of the Laotian Embassy had turned out. (3) There were warm embraces, kissing on both cheeks, and more effusive speeches. Curiously, Prince Sopsaisana insisted on waiting for his luggage like any ordinary tourist, and when the mountain of suitcases finally appeared after an unexplained delay, he immediately noticed that one was missing. Angrily Sopsai insisted his suitcase be delivered at once, and the French authorities promised, most apologetically, that it would be sent round to the Embassy just as soon as it was found. But the Mercedes was waiting, and with flags fluttering, Sopsai was whisked off to the Embassy for a formal reception.
1971 Mercedes 280 4-Door Embassy Issue
While the champagne bubbled at the Laotian Embassy, French customs officials were examining one of the biggest heroin seizures in French history: the ambassador's "missing" suitcase contained sixty kilos of high-grade Laotian heroin worth $13.5 million on the streets of New York,(4) its probable destination. Tipped by an unidentified source in Vientiane, French officials had been waiting at the airport. Rather than create a major diplomatic scandal by confronting Sopsai with the heroin in the VIP lounge, French officials quietly impounded the suitcase until the government could decide how to deal with the matter.
Although it was finally decided to hush up the affair, the authorities were determined that Sopsaisana should not go entirely unpunished. A week after the ambassador's arrival, a smiling French official presented himself at the Embassy with the guilty suitcase in hand. Although Sopsaisana had been bombarding the airport with outraged telephone calls for several days, he must have realized that accepting the suitcase was tantamount to an admission of guilt and flatly denied that it was his. Despite his protestations of innocence, the French government refused to accept his diplomatic credentials and Sopsai festered in Paris for almost two months until he was finally recalled to Vientiane late in June.
Back in Vientiane the impact of this affair was considerably less than earthshaking. The all-powerful American Embassy chose not to pursue the matter, and within a few weeks everything was conveniently forgotten (5) According to reports later received by the U.S. Bureau of Narcotics, Sopsai's venture had been financed by Meo Gen. Vang Pao, commander of the CIA's Secret Army, and the heroin itself had been refined in a laboratory at Long Tieng, which happens to be the CIA's headquarters for clandestine operations in northern Laos.(6) Perhaps these embarrassing facts may explain the U.S. Embassy's lack of action. In spite of its amusing aspects, the Sopsaisana affair provides sobering evidence of Southeast Asia's growing importance in the international heroin trade. In addition to growing over a thousand tons of raw opium annually (about 70 percent of the world's total illicit opium. (7) Southeast Asia's Golden Triangle region has become a mass producer of high-grade no. 4 heroin for the American market. Its mushrooming heroin laboratories now rival Marseille and Hong Kong in the quantity and quality of their heroin production.
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L-R: Samples of Heroin, A. W. McCoys two books, map of lab locations, Wattay Airport in the 70s (Wayne Knight), miscellaneous Air America artifacts.
EPILOGUE: (condensed)
In Laos, CIA clandestine intervention produced changes and upheavals in the narcotics traffic. When political infighting among the Lao elite and the escalating war forced the small Corsican charter airlines out of the opium business in 1965, the CIA's airline, Air America, began flying Meo opium out of the hills to Long Tieng and Vientiane. CIA cross-border intelligence missions into China from Laos reaped an unexpected dividend in 1962 when the Shan rebel leader who organized the forays for the agency began financing the Shan nationalist cause by selling Burmese opium to another CIA protege, Laotian Gen. Phoumi Nosavan. The economic alliance between General Phoumi and the Shans opened up a new trading pattern that diverted increasingly significant quantities of Burmese opium from their normal marketplace in Bangkok. In the late 1960s U.S. air force bombing disrupted Laotian opium production by forcing the majority of the Meo opium farmers to become refugees. However, flourishing Laotian heroin laboratories, which are the major suppliers for the GI market in Vietnam, simply increased their imports of Burmese opium through already established trading relationships.
The importance of these CIA clients in the subsequent growth of the Golden Triangle's heroin trade was revealed, inadvertently, by the agency itself when it leaked a classified report on the Southeast Asian opium traffic to The New York Times. The CIA analysis identified twenty-one opium refineries in the tri-border area where Burma, Thailand, and Laos converge, and reported that seven were capable of producing 90 to 99 percent pure no. 4 heroin. Of these seven heroin refineries, "the most important are located in the areas around Tachilek, Burma; Ban Houei Sai and Nam Keung in Laos; and Mae Salong in Thailand." (21)
Although the CIA did not bother to mention it, many of these refineries are located in areas totally controlled by paramilitary groups closely identified with American military operations in the Golden Triangle area. Mae Salong is headquarters for the Nationalist Chinese Fifth Army, which has been continuously involved in CIA counterinsurgency and intelligence operations since 1950. According to a former CIA operative who worked in the area for a number of years, the heroin laboratory at Nam Keung is protected by Maj. Chao La, commander of Yao mercenary troops for the CIA in northwestern Laos. One of the heroin laboratories near Ban Houei Sai reportedly belongs to Gen. Ouane Rattikone, former commander in chief of the Royal Laotian Army-the only army in the world, except for the U S. army, entirely financed by the U.S. government.(22) The heroin factories near Tachilek are operated by Burmese paramilitary units and Shan rebel armies who control a relatively small percentage of Burma's narcotics traffic. Although few of these Shan groups have any relation to the CIA today, one of the most important chapters in the history of the Shan States' opium trade involves a Shan rebel army closely allied with the CIA. (For location of these laboratories, see Map )
Other sources have revealed the existence of an important heroin laboratory operating in the Vientiane region under the protection of Gen. Ouane Rattikone. Finally, the U.S. Bureau of Narcotics has reports that Gen. Vang Pao, commander of the CIA's Secret Army, has been operating a heroin factory at Long Tieng, headquarters for CIA operations in northern Laos. (23) Thus, it is with something more than idle curiosity that we turn to an examination of CIA clandestine operations and the concurrent growth of the narcotics traffic in the Golden Triangle.
While watching 'The Betrayal', the award winning documentary film by Ellen Kuras and Thavisouk Phrasavath, I stumbled on the most concise explanation for the Vietnam War I had ever seen or read. It also showed me ghost-like images of my father I never knew existed. Ghost-like because he had passed just days prior on the other side of the Atlantic. I never made it to his funeral.* ... ... ...
Gary Jules' rendition of 'Mad World', the single by 'Tears for Fears' has been used in an audio swap of the original soundtrack by Howard Shore. My apologies to the filmmakers and Mr. shore for bastardizing their work of art. The clip in its original form can be seen here.
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In the process of piecing together my father's past, I realized how little I knew about the Vietnam War. Why it was fought. Why the United States was involved and just exactly how was my father caught up in all this?** Over the years, there were many stories told to me by family members both immediate and distant. Much of it was spoken to me in hushed tones. Was it a secret? There were rumors of his participation in aiding the CIA. Specifically aiding the CIA in the illegal, secret U.S. air-war in Southeast Asia during the Vietnam conflict. I kept thinking, how could this be true? My dad was a diplomat, a politician, what good was he as an asset?
My research into answering all these questions for myself includes reading Robert McNamara's 'InRetrospect: the Tragedy and Lessons of Vietnam', researching Air America***, watching countless documentaries, talking (or hoping to talk) to their author/directors and trying to make sense of it all. During the screening of The Betrayal, the 2008 award winning documentary, I was struck by how similar the real life protagonist's story mirrored my own — at least the part where he talks about his father during the first 10 minutes of the film. Imagine my surprise when the "b-roll" archival footage of the royal procession and Savang Vatthana, the last king of Laos, showed the familiar face of my father in the background. He can be seen at the 00:58 to 01:10 section of the footage. Imagine that someone you loved dearly passed and later that week you found that person present in the photographs of a stranger. Imagine that and you'll know how I felt at that moment. I had never seen this footage before and the fact that he had just passed from pancreatic cancer the week prior made it eerie.
I rabidly did a screen grab of the images in question and e-mailed them to my siblings living in France. I even posted the two minute clip on YouTube. I asked my sisters, my brothers and my half brothers,**** "Did you know this footage existed? Where did it come from? How come none of us knew it ever existed?" No one had any answers. We marveled at how young and driven he looked. He was so healthy and virile in the flickering images.
Unbeknownst to me, none of my siblings ever showed the footage to my mother. I believed they assumed that one of the other sisters or brothers would have shown my mother the footage, but no one confirmed this. She was here in the U.S. these past few weeks to attend to her brothers funeral.***** It was at this time that I showed her the clip for the first time.
When she watched the clip for the first time she was speechless. If you know my mother such a reaction is a near impossibility. She asked me rewind and play back the footage in slow motion, the fifth time she spoke. She was almost indignant, "This is not funny. Where did you get this footage!" she demanded. My mother believed I had compiled the footage and used my CGI contacts to pull a prank on her. I had to reassure her the footage was genuine, after which her tone became softer. Eventually, she asked me to purchase her a copy of the documentary DVD.
Laotian Chronicles: A Life Story [ an excerpt from the novel I may never write ]
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*
More on why I never made it to my fathers funeral in future posts.
Part of my fathers involvement is chronicled in The Politics of Heroin in Southeast Asia a major, nonfiction book on heroin trafficking published in 1972, by Alfred W. McCoy. Although well researched, the portion of the book that deals with my father's troubles only scratch the surface of the situation in Laos at that time. It would be unfair to judge my father on just this one account.
Whenever I bring up this subject outside of my family, especially with people I have dated, I am often greeted with smiles as the person listening to my story always assumes I'm telling a big fat lie.
My father was equal parts sinner and saint and in our family there are nine children, that I know of. Of the four girls and five boys, two are half brothers and one is a half sister. More on our motley crew in future posts.
The Laotian people do not, in fact, try and die in clusters to make it easier on travelling relatives. 2009-2010 has just been a bad year in our family.
My father often indulged me, to the chagrin of my mother. This included seeing movies years before I was able to appreciate the story or the subtext. Thunderbolt and Lightfoot, along with Cool Hand Luke, are the movies that stick with me to this day. If you've seen either of those films you already know why they would resonate with a boy who misses his father.
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After we escaped from Laos* the days blended together like summer vacation when, as kids, you were allowed to roam the neighborhood on your bike — as long as you were in earshot of the call for lunch/dinner. This was not my existence. Mine was spent on a balcony of a Bangkok apartment calling out to people as they walked by. My only distractions were my younger brother Guillaume,** poorly crafted LEGO™ knockoffs and a Spiderman™ action-figure. It was on one of these sweltering summer*** days that my dad indulged me, in more ways than I knew at the time, in an escape from the heat and our current state of mind.
[ See links at the end of this post for a tribute video]
It was after the fall of Saigon and the Vietnam War was coming to an abrupt close. We were in limbo. A family without a country and no immediate plans for immigration. Even at nine years old I could tell from the hushed conversations between my parents that all was not right with the world. We had traded a life of privilege for one of survival. We essentially depended on the kindness of strangers. My father would work the streets of Bangkok looking up contacts and calling in favors, in an effort to acquire the paperwork and sponsorship required to relocate us to France. Towards the end of this process, there was a day when he came home in great spirits. He told me during dinner that he had a great surprise for me. My father was so excited he couldn't contain himself. It had been months since I'd seen him this happy. During his street travels he had come across a theater showing an animated feature of my favorite super-hero: Spiderman. This was a treat just for the two of us. My mother was staying behind to care for my brother who was too young to tag along.
The next day we walked the city of Bangkok as my father tended to his affairs. I can only imagine the difficulty of accomplishing this task with a nine year old, ADD-afflicted boy in tow. As the day drew to a close, we were hot, sweaty, and covered with the dust of the streets. It was then that my father unveiled his surprise. Imagine his disappointment when I bluntly informed him that the movie he thought showcased my favorite superhero instead starred the Thai equivalent of Mighty-Mouse. When my dad asked if I was still interested in seeing the movie, the ungrateful imp in me yelled, "No!" I'm sure that was followed with the characteristic whining of a tired, hungry child.
My father made an immediate executive decision and that is how we ended up in the only other movie showing at the theater. The movie 'Thunderbolt & Lightfoot' starring Clint Eastwood and Jeff Bridges was not exactly children's fare. Regardless, it got us off the street, into the air-conditioned darkness of the movies and filled my wailing mouth with a cold Coca-Cola. If you've never seen the movie the plot goes as follows:
"Seven years after a daring bank robbery involving an anti-tank gun used to blow open a vault, the robbery team temporarily puts aside their mutual suspicions to repeat the crime (after they are unable to find the loot from the original heist). The hardened artilleryman (Eastwood) and his flippant, irresponsible young sidekick (Bridges) are the two wild cards in a deck of jokers." ~ imdb.com • It is also a movie about, "The nature of freedom and loneliness. Youth vs age. The American dream - inverted (criminal as hero). It's the kind of movie that sticks with you. It is an unappreciated masterpiece." ~ orpheus44
This oscar-nominated movie subconsciously affected me in ways not obvious to me until I watched the film again years later. There is a running theme of honor (among thieves), genuine friendship and the support of family — no matter how unorthodox the family. I now realize that these are the same principles I applied to my current life-long friends and family members. These are people who will bail you out of jail, drive cross-country to come to your aid and loan you money without the expectation of being paid back. They are few and far in between. I am blessed to have more than my fair share.
To this day, though I own the movie on DVD, if 'Thunderbolt & Lightfoot' is playing on television I must stop to watch — even if only for a few minutes. That is all it takes to transport me back to that hot, sweaty, afternoon with my first friend and father.
Laotian Chronicles: A Life Story [ an excerpt from the novel I may never write ]
* I'll go into more detail on the 'Escape from Laos' in future posts. ** Not his real Laotian, given name. ***Actually it was late spring, since summer in Thailand & Laos is monsoon season.
Originally written on the day after Father's Day 2009 — Republished 2010. I hope this missive is the prodding others need to realize that it's not too late to make amends. You can't choose your family but, you can choose to make the most of the time you have with them
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Forgiveness. Yesterday was the first time I didn’t feel guilty about forgetting to put a Father’s day card into the mail. For the first time in my life I didn’t need to make that call, to hear your voice, talk to you ever so briefly, before you would hand the phone to Mom — but, I wanted to. Thats why I'm compelled to write you this letter. I don't know how the universe works but, I have faith that you'll see it.
I had breakfast with friends in Ashburn yesterday, Dad. Then I drove over to Jack's and spent the afternoon playing with my niece and catching up with Diane and her family. We had a perfect summer meal of Maryland blue crabs, steamed corn, fritters, potato salad and hard cider. Later we gathered around the fire-pit and relaxed over glasses of Prosecco. Everything was great until Jack pointed out the big dipper in the clear Bethesda sky and I began to wonder. I wondered where are you now, what were you doing and if the after-life made up for all the regrets you endured while you were here on earth. Are you with my brother and your son, Monirak? I hope so. I hope you're in a place where people are honest and true to their word. I hope you're in a place where everyone is decent and looks out for their fellow man. A place without politics, religion, pride or prejudice. Maybe in the after-life we'll pass through a cosmic customs station, turn in our religious denomination passports and on the other side realize we've all arrived in the same place — regardless of faith.
Until I see you next, I'm grateful that we got to spend time together, to talk and reminisce. Though you were deaf in one ear, I'm sure you heard everything I had to say. But, just in case you didn't Dad, I'll say the most important parts one more time: Contrary to your own beliefs, you never disappointed me. You always thought you let me down and always wanted to find a way to make ammends. The forgiveness you sought was never given because there was never anything to forgive.
I loved that you disciplined and taught me by example, even if it took me longer than most to learn certain lessons.
I was never angry and I never had any regrets that you had sent me overseas to study at such a young age. The experience has informed me and made me everything I am today; independent, resourceful, tolerant and outspoken.
One of my happiest memories of you was when I lost your grandfather's Omega Constellation wristwatch. The watch you gave me after I graduated from VCU — the one in my possession for less than an hour. It had such sentimental value and meant so much to you. When I eventually told you, I remember you said, "Don't worry. It's just a watch."
It never bothered me that people either loved you with a passion or hated you vehemently. I know now thats how things are in politics. I know you can't please all the people all the time and you did what you thought best for your people. You never brought any of those problems home, to me you were just my Dad.
It moved me to tears that, even in your fragile state, you thought more about me than you did yourself. I still have the bracelet you gave me and I wear it often, my own buddhist talisman of happiness, health and prosperity.
I know you're gone but, here in my heart nothing has changed. I'm still holding on to you. I love you and I miss you.
~monirom
Laotian Chronicles: A Life Story [ an excerpt from the novel I may never write ]
