Turning Point: The Vietnam War, Part 2
All you need to know about the quality of this series is that director Brian Knappenberger gives the last word on Kennedy’s Vietnam policy to Dan Rather. This is the man who perhaps has done more to obfuscate how Kennedy was killed than any living person. (Click for one aspect https://consortiumnews.com/2016/04/22/how-cbs-news-aided-the-jfk-cover-up/) And since the program does not reveal any of Kennedy’s early talks in 1951 with people like Seymour Topping, let alone his withdrawal program, Rather can give that notion the back of his hand. (Seymour Topping, On the Front Lines of the Cold War, pp. 152-56)
I
In Part 2, the series finally gets to the origins of the war. We get a brief biography of Ho Chi Minh and his letters to President Truman for support in his attempt not to be recolonized by France after World War II. I could detect nothing about how Secretary of State Dean Acheson advised Truman to begin supporting the French effort to take back Indochina. Or the unwillingness of Paris to grant any true independence through their stand in Bao Dai. Even at this early date, there were analysts in the State Department who felt that Ho’s resistance would eventually lead to a war between his followers, the Viet Minh, and France. (Pentagon Papers, Volume I, p. A-5) These same analysts found there was no proof that the Soviets had a strong influence on Ho Chi Minh as late as 1948, when the imperial war had begun in 1946. (ibid, p. A-6)
By 1950, Dean Acheson had altered the American policy of chilly neutralism. This was due to the recognition of Hanoi as a state by Moscow. That was enough for Acheson to declare Ho Chi Minh a communist, not a nationalist. (ibid, p. A-7) By the summer of 1950, Acheson and Truman were extending aid to the French puppet Bao Dai. From here on in, the USA became more and more involved in the war. Later in 1950, they initiated a Military Assistance Advisory Group in Saigon to aid Paris.
Truman and Acheson had reversed Franklin Roosevelt’s aims in Indochina. FDR was clear on this to Secretary of State Cordell Hull:
Indochina should not go back to France. France has had the country…for nearly one hundred years, and the people are worse off than they were at the beginning….The people of Indochina are entitled to something better than that. (Oliver Stone and Peter Kuznick, The Untold History of the United States, p. 112)
In other words, Kennedy was aligned with Roosevelt in that he valued nationalism in the European colonial empires over the American alliance with France. Acheson valued his alliance with France more than he did the decolonization dictates of Roosevelt. All of this crucial history is just about absent in Turning Point, even though this in itself is a clear turning point in the conflict. But then comes something even worse, as the film literally leaps to the siege of Dien Bien Phu.
How is it possible to jump to that fateful siege without mentioning that Secretary of State John Foster Dulles and President Eisenhower had ratcheted up the aid to France exponentially when the general took office? By 1954, America was supplying almost 80% of the funding for the war. This was because Foster Dulles was even more of a dyed-in-the-wool Cold Warrior than Acheson. In 1953, twelve shiploads of arms were coming in per month, and by 1954, it totaled about a billion dollars per year. (Operation Vulture by John Prados, see Chapter One of the e-book version.)
II
But despite all this, the French strategy to lure Hanoi’s commander, General Vo Nguyen Giap, into a trap in the northwest area of the country did not work. In fact, Dien Bien Phu, which cost the Americans 300 million dollars, backfired. (Seth Jacobs, Cold War Mandarin, p. 33) About a month into the 55-day siege, it became apparent that Giap had outsmarted French General Henri Navarre. Foster Dulles and Vice President Richard Nixon could not accept this impending loss. So Nixon developed an alternative scheme: sending American ground troops. (Prados, Chapter 9)
Then came something even wilder: the use of atomic weapons, code-named Operation Vulture. (Stone and Kuznick, p. 267) Incredibly, Dulles thought the use of these bombs would be simply an extension of conventional warfare. Recall, this is just nine years after Hiroshima. Nixon became the floor manager in Congress for Vulture. In keeping with his anti-colonial views, the chief outspoken opponent of this fruity scheme was Senator John Kennedy. (Stone and Kuznick, p. 268) One reason I think the film leaves out Vulture is because this Kennedy opposition would have undermined the false portrait of Part One.
Eisenhower would not approve of Vulture without British backing. But England would not go along with the project. British clearance was refused even when Foster Dulles himself went to London to lobby for it. (Prados, Chapters 6 and 8) When Eisenhower would not let it proceed unilaterally, Foster Dulles used his last card. He offered the bombs to the French foreign minister. Georges Bidault pointed out something that, in his messianic zeal, Dulles had overlooked: “If those bombs are dropped near Dien Bien Phu, our side will suffer as much as the enemy.” (David Talbot, The Devil’s Chessboard, p. 245)
Dien Bien Phu fell in early May of 1954. In a stunning lacunae, almost all of the above concerning the attempts by Nixon and Foster Dulles, and their schemes about ground troops and Vulture is absent. Yet it is essential. Once one realizes the lengths that Foster Dulles and Nixon were willing to go to in order to save France’s Indochina empire, then, and only then, can one understand what they did next. After the defeat at Dien Bien Phu, the Eisenhower administration never intended to abide by the strictures of the peace conference, labeled the Geneva Accords.
Those Accords allowed for a division of the country between the north and south, in preparation for elections to provide for one leader under unification in 1956. The problem for Foster Dulles was that both he, Eisenhower and Nixon knew that Ho Chi Minh would win any popular election in a landslide. (William Blum, The CIA: A Forgotten History, p. 139) So Dulles had his representative make an oral pledge to abide by the accords, but instructed him not to sign them. (Stone and Kuznick, p. 268)
Now, one of the Geneva guidelines was that “the military demarcation line is provisional and should not in any way be interpreted as constituting a political or territorial boundary.” (Trapped by Success, David L. Anderson, p. 62). The area in the south was under the temporary supervision of France, which pledged not to interfere, to the point of keeping Bao Dai’s team out of the final negotiations. (ibid, p. 63) Since Foster Dulles controlled the allied side, one can conclude this is what he wanted. Dulles violated this territorial stricture fairly early.
III
As Seth Jacobs outlines in his biography of Ngo Dinh Diem, the CIA had been alerted to Diem’s anti-communist and anti-French qualities in the early fifties. Diem understood that the USA played the major role in the French imperial war by that time, and would likely take over if Paris lost. So he spent years in the USA after leaving Vietnam in order to publicize himself as being able to take over for the puppet Bao Dai if France left. He managed to attract the attention of powerful people, like Congressman John McCormack, Secretary of State Dean Acheson and Supreme Court Justice William Douglas. (Seth Jacobs, Cold War Mandarin, pp. 29-32) Diem ended up meeting with Robert Amory of the CIA in the spring of 1953 and shortly after with Senator Mike Mansfield. Mansfield sponsored a luncheon for him, which included Senator Kennedy, Cardinal Spellman and Congressman Clement Zablocki. (Jacobs, p. 31) At this luncheon, Diem criticized both the French and Ho Chi Minh, and he said he could fill the area between them and rally the population to fight for him. (ibid, p. 32) This was a sales pitch, of course. As we shall see, Diem could never balance Ho’s popularity or rally a force to defeat the Viet Cong, let alone the army of North Vietnam.
Diem then went to France, where he did not do well at all. (Jacobs, p. 32). But this did not really matter since France would be out of the equation soon. Bao Dai knew that Diem had the backing of powerful people, like Acheson, whom he had met in 1951. Bao Dai, therefore, did what Foster Dulles wanted and appointed Diem as the new leader in the south. Diem requested full powers over the state, and he got them. (Jacobs, p. 139). But when he arrived in Saigon, Colonel Edward Lansdale noticed a problem. His enclosed limousine sped by, and he did not mingle with the crowd Bao Dai had paid to greet him. Diem was never, and would never become, a man of the people. He wore Brooks Brothers suits, spoke good English, was a Catholic in a Buddhist nation, and had his hair styled like an American. In that regard, he was no match for Ho Chi Minh. The CIA and Lansdale had made a big mistake.
On top of this, Diem never planned on being a democratic leader in the south. He did not believe in civil liberties: freedom of speech, freedom of the press, or assembly. He certainly never bought into free and fair elections, which Lansdale rigged for him. (Jacobs, p. 95) Viet Minh suspects at times were beaten, had their bones broken and some females were raped. Diem even authorized the use of the guillotine by mobile courts in the countryside. (Gordon Goldstein, Lessons in Disaster, p. 51) If Lansdale ever firmly protested to Washington about these abuses, they are hard to locate. But inevitably, this helped the Viet Minh.
America had broken the Geneva Accords by installing military help for what was now a new country, not just a provisional one. (William Blum, The CIA: A Forgotten History, p. 139) They had constructed a new dictatorial government led by a man who was, in reality, a fascist. Therefore, Diem now broke the Accords again by announcing he would cancel the 1956 elections. (Blum, p. 139)
To say Turning Point skimps over this crucial history gives it too much credit. For example, it says words to the effect that two states emerged out of Geneva. South Vietnam did not emerge. It was created by the USA in order to avoid the unification of the country under Ho. North Vietnam arose as a reaction to this violation of Geneva. When the film talks about the migration of the Catholics south from the north, I could not find any reference to Lansdale. But this was largely his propaganda operation to bolster Diem. (Jacobs, pp. 52-54). So the following civil war was not really such. It was an imperial war caused by the interference of the USA--through the Dulles brothers, Nixon and Eisenhower. And they had placed a man in charge of their fabricated country who was perhaps one of the worst choices they could have made. (Jacobs, pp. 38-39)
IV
From here, the film jumps to 1965. I didn’t understand why at first. But by doing that, it first leaves out a large segment of the Eisenhower administration and its propping up of Diem. For instance, Michigan State University faculty acted as consultants in police and public administration. (Anderson, p. 76) There were five CIA agents infiltrated into the program, but carried on the university payroll. They devised a policy for Diem to have anyone over the age of 15 carry an ID in South Vietnam. If you did not have such, you were considered a Viet Cong suspect and could be thrown into the infamous tiger cages. (Blum, p. 140) At the time of registration, fingerprints were recorded and information about political beliefs was taken.
Lansdale was virtually Allen Dulles’ representative in Saigon, working out of something called the Saigon Military Mission, which operated independently from the regular CIA station. It was from there that he ran “Passage to Freedom,” his great propaganda triumph of scaring the Catholics of the north into fleeing south during the two-year transfer window. (Anderson, p. 77) Lansdale also headed off an early coup attempt by sending the plotters on an all-expenses-paid vacation to Manila. (ibid, p. 62)
John Foster Dulles created the SEATO group in 1954. This was his way of establishing what he called a “no trespassing sign” against the Soviets and Chinese in Southeast Asia. Although the alliance did not include South Vietnam directly, Dulles formed an extended protocol, which Diem accepted. This was used by President Johnson when he passed the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, which was basically a declaration of war against Hanoi. (Jacobs, p. 63) Again, I detected no mention of this crucial linkage in the over six-hour series.
When I could not find this link, I began to pore over my notes. I then began to uncover something that I did not want to believe. But it explained the chopped-up chronology of the series. By skipping from 1956 to 1965, you don’t just minimize what Foster Dulles and Nixon did. You also eliminate Johnson’s actions in 1964, i.e., the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution: the declaration of war against Hanoi, partly based on SEATO. This is how agenda-driven the film is against JFK. They dropped the real declaration of war by Johnson in August of 1964--and everything leading up to it and following from it. Which is a huge part of the story.
At the beginning of Part 2, the program has a Viet Cong member say that many more Americans were in Vietnam in 1965. If you skip what LBJ did both after Kennedy’s death and then during 1964, you can characterize that as some kind of mystery, or even a continuation of Kennedy’s policy. It was neither. It was not a mystery because Johnson had been planning on it for months on end. And one of the film’s talking heads, Frederick Logevall, wrote a book about that very subject, called Choosing War. Before him, Joseph Goulden wrote a similar book, called Truth is the First Casualty. Both authors prove, without any doubt, that as Johnson was saying one thing—that he was not going to send American boys to do a job Asian boys should do—he was planning to do just that. The key point was to keep that goal hidden until he got elected in 1964.
This is critical information. It is startling for the series to dismiss it. It is perhaps the most crucial part of the story since the creation of South Vietnam itself. It was under Johnson that the war reached a scope and intensity not seen before, e.g., the air war Rolling Thunder, and 540,000 combat troops in the theater. Under Kennedy, there had been no combat troops. And he was getting out.
Johnson first thwarted the intent of Kennedy’s NSAM 263, JFK’s order to begin the withdrawal at the end of 1963. It did not happen. Johnson then altered certain parts of NSAM 273, an order Kennedy had not seen but National Security Advisor McGeorge Bundy had prepared for him. This alteration allowed for direct involvement by US forces in the war in naval operations. Again, this was not allowed under Kennedy. (John Newman, JFK and Vietnam, pp. 447-58)
But beyond that, in December of 1963, Johnson had appointed William Sullivan--a foreign service officer who had opposed Kennedy’s withdrawal plan--to head a multi-agency task force. It was called the Vietnam Working Group. (Joseph Goulden, Truth is the First Casualty, p. 88) Sullivan understood that his job was to plan for an all-out war against Hanoi. He came back with a paper that might as well have been written by Walt Rostow, who Kennedy had kicked out of the White House because he was too hawkish.
Sullivan concluded that if the war was to be won, it needed direct American intervention. The Viet Cong were a formidable force, and it was necessary to bring the war to Hanoi in order to put pressure on them to lessen their support. That pressure would include American naval ships off the coast of North Vietnam to blockade Haiphong and use force if necessary to block shipping. Sullivan recommended 100,000 American troops in the first call-up. (Goulden, p. 90)
Remember, this is December of 1963 - February of 1964. By January 22nd, Johnson had already let the Joint Chiefs in on advice and planning, and they recommended aerial war against critical targets in North Vietnam and the use of American ground troops. (Gordon Goldstein, Lessons in Disaster, p. 108) By March, the Pentagon was advising air and naval bombardment of targets in the north, mining of harbors, a naval blockade, and, in case of Chinese intervention, the use of atomic weapons. (Ibid) This planning continued under various personalities, including William Bundy. And it was decided that they would go to Congress for a resolution upon the occurrence of a casus belli. Any trace of any reference to withdrawal or neutralization had been buried with John Kennedy. In fact, the Chiefs had now recommended a list of 94 air targets in the north. (Goldstein, p. 108)
The casus belli, of course, was the--at least partly ersatz--Gulf of Tonkin incident in August 1964. Johnson had the war resolution already composed and in his suit jacket. (Eugene Windchy, Tonkin Gulf, p. 319) Once it happened, the administration went to the senate and got their resolution through by what many later termed—including Senator William Fulbright — a false presentation. On August 4th, Johnson ordered air raids in retaliation against Hanoi, and he immediately decided to go to the Senate for his declaration. (Goldstein, p. 126). It passed overwhelmingly, and it even included allowances for American troops to enter Laos and Cambodia. (Goulden, p. 13)
These events, the exaggerated Tonkin incident, the misrepresentation of it—for example, the speedboat raids by the Vietnamese were connected to the destroyers off the coast, the passage of the war resolution—these all allowed Johnson to do what Kennedy would not do. That was to Americanize and militarize the war.
To not deal with any of this, and to not detail the rupture of policy that led to the landing of combat troops at Da Nang in March of 1965--this is both inexplicable and inexcusable. Unlike what the film tries to imply, Johnson knew what he was doing from the beginning.
From here, the film deals with the failure of the Strategic Hamlet program and General William Westmoreland’s unsuccessful attempt at what he called ‘counterinsurgency’. It also details the failed concepts of Westmoreland’s “search and destroy” missions and free fire zones. These were all parts of his attempt to win a war of attrition. It therefore became a war by body count. Except, as the film shows, the body counts were fudged, and therefore, Westmoreland was not getting or giving out the correct numbers. Meanwhile, Westmoreland asked for more and more troops, which Johnson gave him. All the way until a total of over half a million were in theater by 1968.
This troop build-up was coupled with Rolling Thunder, the largest bombing campaign since World War II. Except, in Germany and Japan, one had a surfeit of industrial and arms-building targets. You did not have anywhere near that many in Vietnam. When it was all over, as the film demonstrates, 5 million tons of bombs had been dropped over all of Vietnam. Nixon and Kissinger then dropped about 2 million more over Laos and Cambodia.
Johnson was perturbed by the war coverage, especially by CBS reporter Morley Safer showing a village being burned live on camera, then asking: How will this win the hearts and minds of the Vietnamese? Johnson was also much disturbed by Martin Luther King coming out against Vietnam in April of 1967, with his famous speech in New York.
By 1967, the CIA had issued a study questioning the body count thesis and whether it was valid. McNamara had shown signs of his disaffection for the war and his disagreement with Rolling Thunder. He ordered the monumental Pentagon Papers study without telling Johnson—this was a devastating secret history of the war made up from classified documents. While it was being written, he decided it was time to get out of Vietnam. Johnson disagreed. He more or less retired McNamara. Johnson then made a speech about how the enemy had never defeated our forces in battle. This was after bringing back Westmoreland, who said there was light at the end of the tunnel.
The Tet Offensive was right around the corner. Johnson was about to pay a huge price for his break from Kennedy.
