Fake History - Episode 7

It is interesting that there are notable men that step up and tell us about how in combat men can act inhumanely, commit atrocities, and thus strip off the thin veneer of civilization, not anything new in the annals of the history of war.

Tim O’Brien was a Private First Class and then an acclaimed author, "Going After Cacciato,” a book that I’ve read.

Max Cleland, disabled Army Vietnam veteran, recipient of the Silver Star and Bronze Star with “V”, former U.S. Senator, Administrator of Veterans Affairs, and Secretary of the American Battle Monuments Commission.

LTC James Willbanks, US Army (Ret), twenty years in the Army, advisor to ARVN in Vietnam, well-known military historian.

Vincent Okamoto, Army Ranger infantry officer, Vietnam veteran, the most highly decorated Japanese-American to survive the war, Distinguished Service Cross, Silver Star, Bronze Star, Purple Heart (3 Oak leaf clusters).

Karl Marlantes, U.S. Marine, was awarded the Navy Cross (second only to the Medal of Honor) for actions in Vietnam, Bronze Star, two Navy Commendation Medals for valor, two Purple Hearts, and ten Air Medals. He suffered a severe case of PTSD.

Robert G. Gard Jr., Army Lt. General (Ret), West Point graduate, served in Korean War, assistant to two secretaries of defense, commanding general of Fort Ord in California (1973-75), and commanding general of the U.S. Army Military Personnel Center (1975-77). Gard's final military post was as president of the National Defense University in Washington, D.C. (1977-81). In 1981, Gard retired as a lieutenant general after 31 years of service.

Merrill A. McPeak, retired 4-star USAF general, 14th Chief of Staff of the Air Force, jet fighter pilot, and member of the Thunderbirds, Project Commando Sabre Misty FAC, was awarded the Silver Star.

There are even declassified Army files, assembled by a Pentagon task force in the 1970s, that detail 320 alleged incidents that were substantiated by Army investigators — not including the most notorious U.S. atrocity, the 1968 My Lai massacre.

Those are some heavy-duty witnesses spread out over 90 minutes or so to establish an ugly history of atrocities. One suspects that there are those who are happy to color this history in black hues for those who were not there and who are still to be taught the history of this war.

What are the themes of this episode, for surely there are definite themes? This is not valid history. It is history by selective anecdote. The extensive panel of witnesses to how our young men and their leaders shatter the thin veneer of civilization frame the other themes.

Burns & Novick show us riots in Berlin, Paris, The Hague, Prague, and Washington, DC. Except for Washington DC, what do the Germans, French, Dutch, and Czechs have to riot about? Is the implication that they are against our war or war in general? Mostly our young people protest the war, why would their young people protest it? Are their young men going to be sent to Vietnam? Do they care whether Vietnamese die or not? The Iron Curtain came down and the Soviet Bloc fell apart after 9 November 1989. By 2 August 1990, the beginning of the Gulf War were they rioting in the streets of Europe? Did they riot in the streets when we invaded Afghanistan (7 October 2001)? Did they riot in the streets during the Iraq War (20 March 2003)? No anti-war protests? Some might consider the war fought in Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam as a surrogate USSR/PRC vs. the US war, and might that mean agents of communism, at the urging of the USSR, may have had something to do with causing anti-war riots in Europe? Do Burns & Novick pose any serious questions about why there was rioting? They leave it unsaid but implied it must have been pure anti-Vietnam war protests. It brings to mind “polemics.”

Burns & Novick mention 1968 as a year of the spirit of revolution, the fight for human rights, and racial unrest. The events of 1968 show us there was unrest and the willingness to protest and riot. What were the reasons for the unrest? We know some of them but do we know all the reasons? Were there hidden actors stirring unrest in the U.S. and the world for their own benefit? Who benefits from stirring up anti-American protests? These questions arise from reviewing the events shown in this documentary but are they answered?

If fostering different perspectives and civil discourse around important issues furthers progress, equality, and a more connected society why don't they confront the issue of possible communist subversion of our society?

Burns & Novick mention Gen. Creighton Abrams replacing Westmoreland as Commander, United States Military Assistance Command Vietnam (COMUSMACV) and they show Lewis B. Sorley (LTC US Army (Ret) describing Abrams as drinking a lot and grumpy. That is all Burns & Novick show Sorley saying about Abrams. The same Lewis B. Sorley who graduated from West Point, served for 20 years, part of which was serving with Abrams in Saigon. The Sorley who wrote “A Better War: The Unexamined Victories and Final Tragedy of America's Last Years in Vietnam,” a book that describes Abrams as the best general we had in Vietnam. A book that states that scholars and journalists have ignored the years from 1968-1975 when the war was being won on the ground even as it was being lost at the peace table and in the U.S. Congress. The omission of more about Gen. Abrams from Sorley can only lend credence to the suspicion that Burns & Novick have an agenda and are presenting only half-truths and only the truths they need to push their agenda.

Now why would Burns & Novick diminish Sorley and what Sorley might say about Abrams? Was Sorley not marching to the tune they want to play? This is one omission that I can highlight, among others already previously noted, but how many other omissions have there been, and to what end?

On the small plus side, that permits Burns & Novick to claim they are being fair and balanced, they do present some information about the common North Vietnamese attitudes toward the war. Vietnamese interviewees say the Vietnamese people really don’t know how many died but only that the media in North Vietnam consistently portray events in the South as great victories. We are told that as some listen to the radio reports it is obvious to them they are not being told the truth. Vietnamese mothers want to know, where is my son, where did he die? Burns & Novick tell us very few families received death notices from the government. While thousands of fresh recruits are ordered South the sons and friends of Party officials are sent overseas, university students are exempted from the army, and people with money pay bribes to keep their sons out, pay doctors to say their sons are unfit to serve. Those who do get sent South report meeting wounded going back North and wonder if they are seeing their future selves.

Sounds like communist corruption and sounds like only the poor communists go to war. Didn't Burns & Novick say the same thing about Americans? If the same thing happened in both countries wouldn't that suggest making that comparison? The American examples are made loud and often, but the Vietnamese examples are slipped in quietly. Perhaps, in addition to the omission of inconvenient truths altogether there is also the admission of truths buried in the ambient sounds of other events. If not, then why isn't this presented in juxtaposition to the same thing said about Americans?

Burns & Novick present the Phoenix Program in the words of Lt. Vincent Okamoto who, according to his Wikipedia entry, was assigned as the intelligence-liaison officer for 2 months to the Phoenix Program while attached to Company B of the 2nd Battalion, 27th Infantry, 25th Infantry Division. The viewer has to come away from Okamoto's interview with a negative impression of Phoenix. However, after Burns & Novick's 10 years of research, there is no mention of "Phoenix and the Birds of Prey: The CIAs Secret Campaign to Destroy the Viet Cong”, December 1997, by Mark Moyar. The publisher's notes about Moyar's book are: "This study explodes many of the prevailing myths and perceptions of the program and the myriad efforts that until now have been mistakenly lumped together under the term Phoenix. Drawing on recently declassified documents and interviews with more than one hundred U.S., South Vietnamese, and North Vietnamese sources, Mark Moyar dissects the various attempts to eradicate the Viet Cong infrastructure and analyzes the effectiveness of each. With balance and full documentation, he addresses serious misconceptions about these efforts and provides the most accurate and complete picture available of the allies' decapitation of the Viet Cong shadow government.”

Stuart Herrington also appears in the film to denigrate the Phoenix Program and may have had more experience with it than Okamoto did. Herrington said he thought Phoenix succeeded in degrading the Viet Cong Infrastructure (VCI) but that the Saigon government remained as unpopular as ever. Yet we are told that a poll taken in South Vietnam revealed 35% of South Vietnamese favored Pres. Thieu, 20% favored the communists, and 45% favored anyone else but either of those two. That shows that the Thieu government was not popular, but neither were the communists, witness the South's failure to rise up against the government during the TET offensive.

But, back to Phoenix, Mark Moyar interviewed more than one hundred people just for this one topic. Burns & Novick showed the interviews of about 80 people for the entire film, but they omitted any mention of Mark Moyar and did not interview him. Why was his point of view less important than Herrington's or Okamoto's? Did Herrington and Okamoto say what Burns & Novick wanted to hear? Would Moyar contradict what they already believed? The viewer will never know.