Letters from Vienna #68
When Propaganda Bubbles Pop
Long standing friends are distressed at my “defence of Russian imperialism” and “support of Putin”, with disastrous consequences for my social life. On the one hand I really don’t know whether to laugh or cry at such ignorance, blindness or folly, on the other: it obviously represents a failure on my part, with annoying consequences.
This isn’t the first time that propaganda, stupidities and sheer lies have sullied our existence. Lies, nonsense and propaganda have been dominating our lives ever since 9/11 and indeed: long before (the western war against Yugoslavia is a case in point). Yet, there comes a time when, despite all the efforts of the heirs of Bernays, Lippmann and Goebbels: propaganda bubbles pop.
According to a number of commentators the official western Ukraine narrative is set to fail: the Ukrainian army is buckling[1] and more and more Ukrainians are, with considerable justification: refusing to fight.
A similar moment came in Vietnam in 1968 when all the lies about “seeing the light at the end of the tunnel” were put paid to by the VC (Viet Cong) and NVA (North Vietnamese Army) Tet Offensive. Nobody embodied the lies better than General William Westmoreland, commander of MACV (Military Assistance Command Vietnam), who boasted of the high “body counts” of the “enemy”. What he failed to mention or perhaps didn’t know or even care about, was that the vast majority of the dead were, in reality, civilians.
Officers and men were obsessed with body counts and were incentivized to kill as many as humanly (or inhumanly as the case may be) as possible.[2]
Dead children were recorded as being “dead VC” or “dead NVA”[3] Prisoners (if any happened to be taken) or detainees were simply murdered in order to increase the body count[4]. The philosophy of the US war machine was simple: “If it’s dead and Vietnamese, it’s VC.”[5] Occasionally, such as at My Lai (in 1968), there was even “body-count deflation”: “After the My Lai massacre, the Americal division claimed only 128 enemy dead, when in actuality more than 500 civilians had been slaughtered. At nearby My Khe, American troops massacred from 60 to 155 civilians, according to US sources, but a body count of only 38 was reported to headquarters.”[6]
Under these circumstances it’s hardly surprising that Vietnamese civilian casualties have been estimated to be 7.3m[7] and that the US military command was convinced, in a fit of delusional madness, that they were successfully “bleeding the enemy dry”.
Yet, even today I read on social media that the war in Vietnam was “necessary to stop Communism”. Undoubtedly the ignorance of the past informs that of the present; too many are simply unaware; again, with disastrous consequences. For example: the current NATO/EU move to block Kaliningrad might well lead to World War Three, much in the same way that Polish actions against Danzig in the same part of the globe led to WWII.
The “War against Communism”
One of the biggest lies was (and is) that the war in Vietnam was waged “against Communism”. If one is to believe Wilfred Burchett[8] then the war was essentially a popular uprising against a cruel, brutal and murderous regime. This would explain why much of the fighting was in the Mekong Delta and not in the north, close to the border with North Vietnam.
If, as this writer believes, the war was long planned in advance (see letter #65) then it would have made sense for the powers that be to provoke popular resistance against the puppet regime in Saigon. In the same vein: the powers that be had (and have) the means and the motive for covering up their crimes against humanity. The media always (with very few exceptions) went (and goes) along with their lies. Independent thought or council was (and is) rarely sought. Only when the truth of the situation was (or is) simply too overwhelming to ignore, such as during the Tet Offensive of 1968, was (or is) some reporting forthright.
The Rice Bowl of Asia
A second lie was that the war was being waged on behalf of the people. Rather than “help the Vietnamese out of their poverty”, the war devastated the entire economy of Indo China. It’s important to note that this destruction started long before direct American entry into the war: “At the time of French conquest, the huge majority of the population still lived as their ancient ancestors had done: by growing rice in the fields around scattered, virtually self-sufficient villages sited near a water source. Vegetable gardens, Indochina’s plentiful fish, and domestic pigs and poultry completed a healthy diet. Communications were primitive and travel rare, since trade was insignificant above an artisan level. In a tropical climate fields irrigated with river salt produce two rice crops annually, although these require intense labour in the planting and harvest seasons, the cycle allows a reasonably leisurely life for the rest of the year, and a water buffalo, a wooden plough and a rice flail were all the machinery a peasant needed.”[9]
“Cochin China, the land of the south, was an ancient, rural land. It was the rice bowl of Asia. Long before the war era, more than 13.5 million acres of land had been planted with rice. As far back as 1931, Cochin China had been producing more than two million tons of rice a year. By the 1950s, this figure had increased to six million tons. South Vietnam had been a major exporter of rice; under Diem, with the economy in chaos, it was forced to import rice to feed the people. This was one of the horrible legacies of the war years.”[10]
A third lie was to ignore the real cause of the war: the greed of the military industrial complex and other corporate interests. There is, for example one theory, based on a since deleted chapter of Anthony Sampson’s book about the “Seven Sisters”, which argues that the war was essentially fought for oil. One American academic indeed has asserted that all the major wars of the Twentieth Century were essentially wars over oil and there’s no reason to doubt her.
Brown & Root
When discussing the obvious corruption of the war years one has to bear in mind that the fates of Lyndon B. Johnson and Herman Brown (of Brown & Root) were intimately intertwined. Indeed: Roger Stone makes a persuasive argument that it was LBJ who murdered JFK[11] (at the behest of the Deep State).
Few benefited from the war more directly than Brown & Root: “In 1965, a year after Johnson stepped up America’s participation in Vietnam, Brown & Root joined three other construction and project management behemoths, Raymond International, Morris-Knudsen, and J.A. Jones to form one of the largest civilian-based military construction conglomerates in history. The group, which came to be known collectively as RMK-BRJ, went on to do more than $2billion worth of work in Vietnam, of which Brown & Root took a 20 percent cut…”
“RMJ-BRJ literally changed the face of Vietnam, clearing out wide swaths of jungle for airplane landing strips, dredging channels for ships, and building American bases from Da Nang to Saigon. As part of the single most lucrative contract the company had ever entered into, Brown & Root was in Vietnam from 1965 to 1972 pulling down $380 million in revenues in the process…”
“RMJ-BRJ built two 10,000-foot jet runways and two deep-water piers in Da Nang; a permanent jet runway in Chulai; two jet runways at Phanrang; ammunition and fuel storage facilities; barracks; helicopter landing pads; pipelines; hospitals; communication facilities; and warehouses. In short, the construction conglomerate built everything the American military needed in Vietnam. They did 97 percent of the construction work in the country during the seven years they operated there. The remaining 3 percent went to local Vietnamese contractors.”
“…One study by the New York Times found that nearly 40 percent of the billions being spent in Vietnam was being stolen, used in bribes, or outright wasted at the rate of half a million dollars a day…(while) its workers were manipulating currency and selling goods on the black market.”[12]
The “waste” fell largely into the grateful hands of the Viet Cong, who then used it with deadly effect against US soldiers. As one VC officer put it when talking to an American: “We couldn’t have won the war without you.”
Eventually all the lies concerning the war in the Ukraine will come to light (although, even to this day, enough lies about the Vietnam War remain buried) yet, by that time, I fear, I’ll be completely and utterly alone.
[2] pp.44-45 Kill Anything That Moves, Nick Turse
[3] pp.45-46 Ibid
[4] pp.46-47 Ibid
[5] p.47 Ibid
[6] p.48 Ibid
[7] p.13 Ibid
[8] Vietnam, Inside Story of the Guerilla War, Wilfred G. Burchett
[9] p.71 The Last Valley, Martin Windrow
[10] p.77 JFK, L Fletcher Prouty
[11] The Man Who Killed Kennedy, Roger Stone
[12] pp.164-165 the Halliburton Agenda, Dan Briody