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<h1 itemprop="name headline">No Apologies: U.S. Aggression
Against Vietnam</h1>
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<h2>Nearly 60,000 US soldiers died in the Vietnam
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<div class="capdate" itemprop="datePublished"><big><big>Published
10 November 2014</big></big></div>
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<div class="subtitle" itemprop="description alternativeHeadline"><big><big>In
the post-WWII era, the conventional narrative in the U.S. on
the Vietnam war has emerged as arguably the most disturbing
case of the perpetrator’s nationalistic indifference towards,
and often approval of, an apocalyptic destruction of the
target of its attack.</big></big></div>
<big><big> </big></big>
<p><big><big>Out of all the peculiarities of the political milieu in
the U.S., what probably stands out the most is the discourse
on the U.S. obliteration policies against Vietnam. If in any
other country there exists a wider gap between the
conventional portrayals and narrative on a war of aggression
carried out by that country, on one hand, and the documentary
record, on the other, then I have yet to come across it.</big></big></p>
<big><big> </big></big>
<p><big><big>What does the general picture on U.S. aggression look
like? The U.S. air force dropped <a
href="http://books.google.fi/books?id=18aEuSp9fj0C&pg=PA92&lpg=PA92&dq=%23v=onepage&q=">more
bombing tonnage</a> solely in South Vietnam than the total
bombing tonnage of every single aerial bombing campaign by all
sides in WWII put together. The total amount of U.S. bombings
during the Vietnam War was <a
href="http://books.google.fi/books?id=18aEuSp9fj0C&pg=PA92&lpg=PA92&dq=%23v=onepage&q=">more
than twice</a> the size of all the bombings in WWII.</big></big></p>
<big><big> </big></big>
<p><big><big>12 million acres of forest and <a
href="http://books.google.fi/books?id=VrqK5VdO2i0C&pg=PA84&lpg=PA84&dq=vietnam+%23v=onepage&q=">25
million acres</a> of farmland, at the bare minimum, were
destroyed by U.S. saturation bombing. The U.S. sprayed over <a
href="http://www.reuters.com/article/2007/06/17/us-vietnam-dioxin-idUSHAN11143520070617">70
million liters</a> of herbicidal agents to Vietnam.</big></big></p>
<big><big> </big></big>
<p><big><big>Reflecting the fundamental defects of the conventional
narrative on the matter, the death toll of the Vietnamese
caused by the U.S. military onslaught is routinely debated in
hundreds of thousands, sometimes in millions. <a
href="http://partners.nytimes.com/library/world/asia/081097vietnam-mcnamara.html">According
to</a> Robert McNamara, for example, 3,6 million Vietnamese
were killed in the war.</big></big></p>
<big><big> </big></big>
<p><big><big>Among the <a
href="http://www.bmj.com/content/336/7659/1482">most
comprehensive studies</a> on the matter was published in
2008 by Harvard Medical School and the Institute for Health
Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington. They
put the Vietnamese death toll at 3.8 million. <a
href="http://books.google.fi/books/about/Kill_Anything_That_Moves.html?id=q3LWGAAACAAJ&redir_esc=y">According</a> to
Dr. Nick Turse, an American historian and investigative
journalist who has conducted pioneering research on the
Vietnam War, even the “staggering figure” of 3.8 million “may
be an underestimate”. Furthermore, the U.S. attack wounded <a
href="http://us.macmillan.com/killanythingthatmoves/NickTurse">5,3
million</a> Vietnamese <em>civilians</em> and up to <a
href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/11/12/AR2006111201065.html">4
million</a> Vietnamese fell victim to toxic defoliants used
by the U.S. against large parts of the country. The U.S.
assault created <a
href="http://books.google.fi/books?id=VrqK5VdO2i0C&pg=PA84&lpg=PA84&dq=vietnam+%23v=onepage&q=">200,000
prostitutes</a>, 879,000 orphans, 1 million widows and <a
href="http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-23427726">11
million refugees</a>.</big></big></p>
<big><big> </big></big>
<p><big><big>To enter from the realm of international law, facts and
figures to what at times goes by the name of ‘internal U.S.
debate’ on the matter of U.S. attack on Vietnam is tantamount
to an abrupt teleportation into an unsavory twilight zone.
Consider the following results of a <a
href="http://www.gallup.com/poll/2299/americans-look-back-vietnam-war.aspx">Gallup
poll</a> conducted in November, 2000. Of respondents aged
between 18 and 29, 27% said that the U.S. was backing North
Vietnam, 45% said South Vietnam and 28% expressed no opinion
at all.</big></big></p>
<big><big> </big></big>
<p><big><big>What about support for the war among the U.S. public,
say, at the end of the 1960’s? According to a <a
href="http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/MRC/pacificaviet.html">Gallup
poll</a> conducted in July, 1969, more than a year after the
My Lai massacre, 53% of the respondents approved of Nixon’s
handling of the war.</big></big></p>
<big><big> </big></big>
<p><big><big>Arguably the main trend after the termination of U.S.
aggression against Indochina has been a systematic
glorification of U.S. actions. During a conference in 2006
titled <em>Vietnam and the Presidency</em>, former U.S. head
of state Jimmy Carter gave his well-known <a
href="http://www.lbjlib.utexas.edu/johnson/press.hom/Vietnam_Presidency/Transcripts/IntroductionbyCarolineKennedyandVietnamInterviewwi.pdf">account</a> on
the war and its effects to his presidency. Carter, not
regarded as an ardent advocate of aggressive U.S. foreign
policy among post-WWII U.S. presidents, perhaps quite the
contrary, stressed the importance of moving “beyond the
Vietnam War to better things”.</big></big></p>
<big><big> </big></big>
<p><big><big>Carter gave special emphasis on what he called a
“healing process” - a healing process for American society,
needless to say - and proclaimed that, under his
administration, “that healing process made major strides
forward”. Not only that, the “healing process” was no less
than “complete” when “the Vietnam heroic monument, one of the
most popular places in Washington” was set up, soon after the
Carter presidency.</big></big></p>
<big><big> </big></big>
<p><big><big>The inscription on the world-renowned Vietnam Veterans
Memorial states that “[o]ur nation honors the courage,
sacrifice, and devotion to duty and country of its Vietnam
veterans.” Instead of having prosecuted war criminals and paid
enormous compensation to Vietnam, for starters, the U.S. gave
Vietnam the above sentence.</big></big></p>
<big><big> </big></big>
<p><big><big>Carter’s commentary serves as an odious, yet
illustrative, reminder of the standard line of thinking in the
U.S. political culture. In short, when the U.S. attack on
Vietnam had finally come to its end, what was of uttermost
importance was a “healing process” for the United States, and
reflecting the progress, if not completion, of that healing
process was the erection of a monument singing the praises of
the “courage” and “sacrifice” of the U.S. veterans. Now, let
us move “beyond the Vietnam War to better things”.</big></big></p>
<big><big> </big></big>
<p><big><big>Perhaps even more revealingly, Carter has asserted on
the Vietnam War that “I don't feel that we ought to apologize
or to castigate ourselves or to assume the status of
culpability”, stressing that “the destruction was mutual”.</big></big></p>
<big><big> </big></big>
<p><big><big>In 2000, the then Secretary of Defence William Cohen
expressed similar approach towards the U.S. actions in the
Vietnam war. “I don't intend to go into any apologies,
certainly, for the war itself” Cohen declared upon his visit
to Vietnam. “Both nations were scarred by this. They have
their own scars from the war. We certainly have ours.”</big></big></p>
<big><big> </big></big>
<p><big><big>The tenets of the official U.S. position towards the
unparalleled crimes the U.S. military committed in Vietnam
remain as disturbing as ever: no apologies for U.S. conduct
during the war, certainly no reparations; no intentions to
prosecute U.S. government officials and military personnel for
any of the countless war crimes the U.S. committed in Vietnam;
romanticizing and glorifying the overall performance of the
U.S. military in the war.</big></big></p>
<big><big> Indeed, in the post-WWII era, the conventional narrative
in the U.S. on the Vietnam war has emerged as arguably the most
disturbing case of the perpetrator’s nationalistic indifference
towards, and often approval of, an apocalyptic destruction of
the target of its attack.</big></big>
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