Fake History Episode 3/Part 2

Omission and spin.

We are presented with the long saga of Denton “Mogie" Crocker, a volunteer and Vietnam War casualty. Did anyone during the Vietnam War volunteer and not become a casualty? Well, 58,000 plus Americans died in Vietnam, including Denton Crocker. If somewhere around 2.5 million personnel served within the borders of South Vietnam, what then are their stories? No one would suggest that the producers tell either 58,000 or so stories or another 2 million stories, but they did spend 10 years on “research.” You might now feel the producers are omitting things, but the question is not one of omission, they have omitted a lot, but why omit, and for what purpose?

We do see reference to JFK's “Ask not what your country can do for you……” speech and Henry V’s band of brothers St. Crispin speech as reported by William Shakespeare but how do the producers wish us to interpret that? Check your confirmed biases and decide - a call to valor or to ignominious death caused by lying, incompetent politicians.

We hear the stories of Marine Lt. Brady and his counterpart Vietnamese Marine Lt. Toan. We learn about how these two interacted and felt about each other and we see our side picking up only their dead and not the Vietnamese dead. We are made to feel bad and to feel ashamed, but does one event or series of events really tell the tale of the whole war? Burns & Novick want you to see it that way because the bad colors our understanding, colors it the color they want us to see.

Vietnam is a large country. When something bad happens in one location does that mean the same bad things are happening in many locations, happening all over the country? Do old communist propaganda films show us the truth or the truth the communists wanted their own people to believe?

Burns & Novick paint the Battle of Binh Gia as a pivotal and important battle in the war fought in South Vietnam. The Viet Cong inflicted many casualties on the ARVN but then withdrew and permitted the ARVN to recapture Binh Gia. The Viet Cong claimed a victory and bestowed honors on the 271st VC Regiment that fought at Binh Gia. The ARVN considered the battle a victory and erected a monument to recognize the sacrifice of their soldiers who had fallen in retaking Binh Gia. There is Viet Cong spin here and there is ARVN spin. Which one represents historical fact? When the Viet Cong, backed by the NVA, attack all of South Vietnam at TET 1968, suffer terrible losses, lose many more than the US or ARVN, and fail to arouse a national uprising against the SVN government one spin is the communists were defeated, but the other spin is the war is a lost cause because the Viet Cong/NVA were able to attack the US and ARVN forces all across SVN despite their losses and the permanent destruction of Viet Cong military capabilities for the rest of the war. Binh Gia in reverse?

When the NVA conduct the Eastern Offensive of 1972, suffer terrible losses reducing them to ineffective for two years, fail to hold any of the cities they attacked, and the ARVN was the primary opponent, with very few US forces still in SVN, but with the advantage of US air support, the war is judged a lost cause even though the NVA failed in all they wanted to do. Reverse Binh Gia?

This episode underscores attacks on US bases, Special Forces camps, and hotels used by Americans, gives voice to anti-war and protest movements but never shows that anything else might have been going on in South Vietnam. We have no idea if this violent activity represents 5%, 50%, or 75% of what is going on throughout South Vietnam. If there is really not that much violent activity but the spin is to make it look like there is, and they don’t say anything about just what percent of everyday activity all this violent activity represents, then that leaves us to think it is bad all over the country.

Toward the end of the film, there is a description of the Battle of the Ia Drang Valley. The narrator mentions enemy combatants slipping south into Laos and into South Vietnam in preparation for the battle.

What a minute.

Slipping south through Laos? Did he say along the Ho Chi Minh Trail that ran from North Vietnam along the length of the Lao/Vietnam border and then into South Vietnam and farther south into Cambodia? Did he say Laos was an independent nation, the Kingdom of Laos, and the Ho Chi Minh Trail was an invasion of Laos, an independent nation? Did he say that when the troops of one nation penetrate the border of another nation, we call that an invasion? He might have mentioned that the North Vietnamese Army invaded Laos in order to move into South Vietnam to fight US armed forces in South Vietnam, who were there at the invitation of the SVN government, to help them resist the invasion of their country.

This is a significant omission if you are a true historian and not a propagandist selling a distorted story.

Richard Crossman, the British Deputy Director of Psychological Warfare Division (PWD) for the Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force (SHAEF) during the Second World War said "In propaganda truth pays... It is a complete delusion to think of the brilliant propagandist as being a professional liar. The brilliant propagandist is the man who tells the truth, or that selection of the truth which is requisite for his purpose, and tells it in such a way that the recipient does not think he is receiving any propaganda... [...] The art of propaganda is not telling lies, but rather selecting the truth you require and giving it mixed up with some truths the audience wants to hear."

Keep Crossman's statement in mind.

I noticed that all the witnesses that appear as talking heads have minimal identification, some are just North Vietnamese or North Vietnamese Army, and others have something minimal like Sam Wilson - Army. Isn't Sam Wilson a recently deceased, highly decorated, Lt. General with long experience in special operations and intelligence? Why not a further identification? Well, for whatever reason Burns & Novick wanted to present Sam Wilson, John Negroponte, Everett Alvarez, or James Willbanks, perhaps to be able to say they interviewed respected men. Did they not want to identify everyone they interviewed or presented as talking heads for fear of controversy over perhaps less respectable credentials? One might say minimal identification lets you slip some ringers into the mix. Or as Crossman might call it, the art of propaganda.

Omission and spin.