{"id":18007,"date":"2023-02-16T07:51:02","date_gmt":"2023-02-16T12:51:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/?p=18007"},"modified":"2024-12-03T21:57:40","modified_gmt":"2024-12-04T02:57:40","slug":"the-forgotten-terrorist-pretext-of-the-vietnam-war","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/2023\/02\/16\/the-forgotten-terrorist-pretext-of-the-vietnam-war\/","title":{"rendered":"The Forgotten Terrorist Pretext of the Vietnam War"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Libertarian Institute, February 16, 2023\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The Forgotten Terrorist Pretext of the Vietnam War\u00a0<\/a><\/h1>\n

by James Bovard<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

\n

Since 9\/11, terrorism has become the ultimate entitlement program for America\u2019s political elite. Whether it is illegally spying on Americans or blowing Somali dissidents to pieces, invoking terrorism provides all the cover needed for Washington policymakers. But the disastrous results of granting politicians a blank check to fight terrorism should have been undeniable almost 60 years ago.<\/p>\n

Back in the 1960s, terrorism was what the communists did. Anti-terrorist moral fervor and ideological blinders propelled the U.S. into its biggest foreign policy blunder since World War II.<\/p>\n

As the French Foreign Legion struggled to reconquer Vietnam in the wake of World War II, the U.S. government constantly embellished the storyline to demonize the communist opposition. A CIA operative provided materials for a massive bomb that ripped through a main square in Saigon in 1952. A Life<\/i> magazine photographer was waiting on the scene, and his resulting snap appeared with a caption blaming the carnage on Viet Minh Communists.\u00a0The<\/em> New York Times<\/i> headlined its report: \u201cReds\u2019 Time Bombs Rip Saigon Center.\u201d The bombing was touted as \u201cone of the most spectacular and destructive single incidents in the long history of revolutionary terrorism\u201d committed by \u201cagents here of the Vietminh.\u201d The press coverage boosted public support for U.S. government aid to the French army fighting the Communists. A Vietnamese warlord named General Trinh Minh Th\u00e9, a CIA collaborator, claimed credit for the bomb but the U.S. media ignored his statement.<\/p>\n

In the wake of the French defeat in 1954, U.S. military advisors poured into Vietnam. In 1961, President John F. Kennedy declared: \u201cNow we have a problem in making our power credible, and Vietnam is the place.\u201d The Kennedy administration sought credibility by profoundly deceiving the American people and Congress regarding its Vietnam policy. JFK violated the limits on the number of American military advisors established in the 1954 Geneva peace treaty between the French and the Vietnamese communists. He also deceived the American public by mislabeling the growing U.S. contingent in South Vietnam as advisors at a time when they were becoming actively engaged in fighting.<\/p>\n

The US government regarded the South Vietnamese government headed by Ngo Dinh Diem as corrupt, oppressive, and inept. The Pentagon Papers <\/i>described a May 8, 1963 debacle in the city of Hue, South Vietnam: \u201cGovernment troops fire on a Buddhist protest demonstration, killing nine and wounding fourteen. The incident triggers a nationwide Buddhist protest and a crisis of popular confidence for the Diem regime. [The Government of South Vietnam] maintains the incident was an act of [Viet Cong] terrorism.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Diem government was outraged that the Buddhists demanded legal equality with Catholics and the right to fly the Buddhist flag. In August 1963, South Vietnamese Special Forces \u201ccarried out midnight raids against Buddhist pagodas throughout the country. More than 1,400 people, mostly monks were arrested and many of them were beaten,\u201d according to the Pentagon Papers<\/em>. The CIA was bankrolling these Special Forces, which were supposed to be used for covert operations against the Viet Cong or North Vietnam, not for religious repression. Diem\u2019s terrorizing of the Buddhists swayed the U.S. to back a coup that led to his assassination a few months later.<\/p>\n

The Lyndon Johnson administration exploited the terrorist label to sway Americans to support greater U.S. involvement in Vietnam. In a special message to Congress on May 18, 1964 seeking additional fund for Vietnam, LBJ declared, \u201cthe Viet Cong guerrillas, under orders from their Communist masters in the North, have intensified terrorist actions against the peaceful people of South Vietnam. This increased terrorism requires increased response.\u201d Johnson scorned a proposal by French president Charles de Gaulle for a Geneva conference on the growing Vietnam conflict because LBJ declared the conference would \u201cratify terror.\u201d In a June 23, 1964 press conference, LBJ declared that \u201cour purpose is peace. Our people in South Viet-Nam are helping to protect people against terror.\u201d<\/p>\n

U.S. policymakers were hungry for a pretext to unleash bombing. On May 15, 1964, U.S. Ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge recommended planning for the South Vietnamese air force to hit \u201ca specific target in North Vietnam,\u201d carefully timed after a \u201cterrorist act of proper magnitude beforehand by the North Vietnamese,\u201d the Pentagon Papers<\/em> revealed.<\/p>\n

At that time, the U.S. was already carrying out an array of \u201cnon-attributable hit-and run\u201d raids against North Vietnam, including \u201ckidnappings of North Vietnamese citizens for intelligence information, parachuting sabotage and psychological warfare teams into the north, commando raids from the sea to blow up rail and highway bridges, and the bombardment of North Vietnamese coastal installations by PT boats,\u201d according to the Pentagon Papers<\/em>. Thai pilots flying American planes bombed and strafed North Vietnamese villages. But the Johnson administration denied that the U.S. was committing any provocations.<\/p>\n

Johnson had already decided to attack North Vietnam to boost his election campaign. On August 2, 1964, the destroyer U.S.S. Maddox<\/i> fired on North Vietnamese ships near the North Vietnamese coast. Two days later, the Maddox<\/i> reported that it was under attack from North Vietnamese PT boats. Within hours, the ship\u2019s commander wired Washington that the reports of an attack on his ship may have been wildly exaggerated: \u201cEntire action leaves many doubts.\u201d But the Maddox<\/em>\u2019s initial report was all LBJ needed to go on national television and announce that he had ordered immediate \u201cretaliatory\u201d airstrikes against North Vietnam. Johnson railroaded a resolution through Congress granting him unlimited authority to attack North Vietnam. The resolution was written months earlier and the administration was waiting for the right moment to unveil it.<\/p>\n

Both the Viet Cong and the South Vietnamese government were terrorizing people at the time the U.S. involvement rapidly expanded in 1965. But the U.S. government looked only at the Viet Cong\u2019s terrorism to justify launching its own bombing campaign that killed far more civilians than did the Viet Cong or the North Vietnamese army prior to the end of the war.<\/p>\n

The American media endlessly recited the terrorist storyline that the U.S. government created to justify ramping up the Vietnam War. University of California Professor Daniel Hallin observed, \u201cThe theme of terrorism directed against civilians was central to television\u2019s image of the enemy\u2026Television coverage of the North Vietnamese\u2026focused on terror to the almost total exclusion of politics. The American media also almost completely ignored attacks on Vietnamese civilians by the U.S. military.\u201d<\/p>\n

The political racketeering that spawned the Vietnam War should remind Americans to be wary of any salvation mission championed by their rulers. The U.S. government perennially claims to be an innocent bystander after its covert interventions unleash havoc abroad. There is no shortage of evil governments and evil factions that butcher innocent people. But foreign atrocities, real or imagined, don\u2019t make Washington trustworthy.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Libertarian Institute, February 16, 2023 The Forgotten Terrorist Pretext of the Vietnam War\u00a0 by James Bovard Since 9\/11, terrorism has become the ultimate entitlement program for America\u2019s political elite. Whether it is illegally spying on Americans or blowing Somali dissidents to pieces, invoking terrorism provides all the cover needed for Washington policymakers. But the disastrous […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":16076,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[3560,3559,1980,2782,3558,26,288],"class_list":["post-18007","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-buddhists","tag-daniel-hallin","tag-gulf-of-tonkin","tag-johnson","tag-kennedy","tag-terrorism","tag-vietnam-war"],"yoast_head":"\nThe Forgotten Terrorist Pretext of the Vietnam War - James Bovard<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Since 9\/11, terrorism has become the ultimate entitlement program for America\u2019s political elite. 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The Wall Street Journal called Bovard \"the roving inspector general of the modern state\" and Washington Post columnist George Will called him a \"one-man truth squad.\" His 1994 book, Lost Rights: The Destruction of American Liberty, received the Free Press Association\u2019s Mencken Award as Book of the Year. His Terrorism & Tyranny won the Lysander Spooner \"Best Book on Liberty in 2003\" award. He received the Thomas Szasz Award for Civil Liberties work, awarded by the Center for Independent Thought and the Freedom Fund Award from the Firearms Civil Rights Defense Fund of the National Rifle Association. Bovard\u2019s writings have been publicly denounced by FBI director Louis Freeh, the Secretary of Agriculture, the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, the Postmaster General, and the chiefs of the U.S. International Trade Commission, the Drug Enforcement Administration, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, and the Federal Emergency Management Agency, as well as by many congressmen and other malcontents.","sameAs":["http:\/\/www.jimbovard.com","https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/jim.bovard","https:\/\/x.com\/jimbovard"],"url":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/author\/admin\/"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18007","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18007"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18007\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21162,"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18007\/revisions\/21162"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16076"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18007"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18007"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18007"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}