The Washington Times
published my piece on the Vietnam War.
South Vietnam fell to the
Communist North in 1975, but the war is in the news again due to Mark Bowden’s
book “Hue 1968” and the Ken Burns PBS TV series “The Vietnam War.”
Mr. Bowden’s book is an
outstanding work of reportage and storytelling, untainted by his personal
anti-war views, which he only discloses in the book’s epilogue.
Alas, not so the TV series.
We see John Kerry beginning his political career by telling Congress Vietnam
atrocity stories. Mr. Kerry’s tales were later discredited by others who were
present, but this was not covered in the series. Also absent from the series
were gung-ho Vietnam veterans like Oliver North and James Webb, a Marine
Vietnam veteran and author of perhaps the best novel on the war, “Fields of
Fire.”
The series offered the views
of former North Vietnamese and Viet Cong soldiers and both American anti-war
protesters and Vietnam veterans. But one later discovers in the series that the
Vietnam veterans most prominently featured all went on to became members of the
Vietnam Veterans Against the War and anti-war protesters. As only a very small
percentage of Vietnam veterans joined the Vietnam Veterans Against the War,
this selected roster of talking heads appears to have been calculated to stack
the deck in favor of the anti-war narrative.
If one is looking for another
view of the Vietnam War, one should read Philip Jennings’ “The Politically
Incorrect Guide to the Vietnam War.”
I spoke to Mr. Jennings, a
Marine who flew helicopters in Vietnam, a while back.
Mr. Jennings explained that a
number of American presidents saw the Communist world conducting an openly
aggressive movement in Eastern Europe, China, Korea, Malaya and the
Philippines. And we chose to take a stand in South Vietnam.
“However misguided America’s
leaders might have been in some of their political, strategic and tactical
decisions, we still won the war,” Mr. Jennings writes. “We forced North Vietnam
to submit to the Paris Peace Accords of 1973. Those accords ended the war and
pledged the North Vietnamese to peaceful coexistence with the South.”
Mr. Jennings noted that
America never lost a battle during the entire war.
You can read the rest of the
piece via the below link:
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