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Propaganda 101 – How The Pentagon Is Trying To Rewrite Vietnam War History
Submitted by Mike Krieger via Liberty Blitzkrieg blog,
In case you weren’t aware, the Pentagon is set to roll out a 50th anniversary commemoration of the Vietnam War. Personally, it’s hard to get excited about commemorating an event that led to the death of over 58,000 American soldiers and more than a million Vietnamese, particularly since much of it was the direct result of well documented lies and deception, such as the Gulf of Tonkin incident.
What’s worse, the Pentagon intends to rewrite history by whitewashing this period of civil unrest and government shame from American history. The propaganda is so blatant that it has resulted in many of the era’s most well known protestors and activists to come together in order to stop it.
The New York Times reports that:
WASHINGTON — It has been nearly half a century since a young antiwar protester named Tom Hayden traveled to Hanoi to investigate President Lyndon B. Johnson’s claims that the United States was not bombing civilians in Vietnam. Mr. Hayden saw destroyed villages and came away, he says, “pretty wounded by the pattern of deception.”
Now the Pentagon — run by a Vietnam veteran, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel — is planning a 50th anniversary commemoration of the Vietnam War. The effort, which is expected to cost taxpayers nearly $15 million by the end of this fiscal year, is intended to honor veterans and, its website says, “provide the American public with historically accurate materials” suitable for use in schools.
But the extensive website, which has been up for months, largely describes a war of valor and honor that would be unrecognizable to many of the Americans who fought in and against it.
Leading Vietnam historians complain that it focuses on dozens of medal-winning soldiers while giving scant mention to mistakes by generals and the years of violent protests and anguished debate at home.
In one early iteration, the website referred to the 1968 My Lai massacre, in which American troops killed hundreds of Vietnamese civilians, as the My Lai Incident.
The glossy view of history has now prompted more than 500 scholars, veterans and activists — including the civil rights leader Julian Bond; Daniel Ellsberg, who leaked the top-secret Pentagon Papers; Lawrence J. Korb, a former assistant secretary of defense under President Ronald Reagan; and Peter Yarrow of the folk trio Peter, Paul and Mary — to join Mr. Hayden in demanding the ability to correct the Pentagon’s version of history and a place for the old antiwar activists in the anniversary events.
Mr. Hayden, 74, and other 1960s-era activists who helped him gather signatures, say they do not quarrel with honoring the sacrifice of soldiers. But they object to having the military write the story.
“All of us remember that the Pentagon got us into this war in Vietnam with its version of the truth,” Mr. Hayden said in a recent telephone interview from Berkeley, Calif., where he attended a rally to mark another 50th anniversary, that of the free-speech movement. “If you conduct a war, you shouldn’t be in charge of narrating it.”
He promised “educational materials, a Pentagon exhibit, traveling exhibits, symposiums, oral history projects and much more.” The mission, he said, is to “help the nation take advantage of a rare opportunity to turn back to a page in history and to right a wrong, by expressing its honor and respect to Vietnam veterans and their families.”
Many of the longtime activists also see the petition as deeply relevant today.
“You can’t separate this effort to justify the terrible wars of 50 years ago from the terrible wars of today,” said Phyllis Bennis, a Middle East expert who has known Mr. Hayden since the early 1970s. “When I saw this, I thought immediately, ‘We’ve got to stop this.’ ”
This problem of people in power rewriting history to serve their own ends has been an issue throughout human history, something Julian Assange recently discussed and outlined here: Video of the Day – Hologram Julian Assange Talks George Orwell, Bitcoin and Preserving Human History.
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Commies are in charge now, and going after Snowden and Assange, and have been re-writing history for a long time so why do these people quibble over a Pentagon website? Big deal over nothing.
Daniel Ellsberg is a liberal democrat who could have leaked the Pentagon Papers to the NYTs when Johnson was president but waited until Nixon was inagurated. Thomas Hayden (aka Mr. Jane Fonda) is an old bitter socialist crank too.
So there you have it: the New York Times is able to report a story that casts the US government in a distinctly negative light.
But where are the negative stories about the Soviet government as reported by Russia Today and the rest of the Russian state-controlled media?
They don't exist, which makes Russia Today pure, unadulterated propaganda.
Eat up, Zero Hedgers!
Eat up, Zero Hedgers!
Well, if you'd get your fat face out of the trough for 5 minutes, maybe we would.
Eat up my methane gas blowing up your nose. Our crew member's have very high IQ's. Suck up the anal penetrator.
okay, you win
Don't worry about the intellectual paddling you've just received.
Eat! :-)
war racket #2014 and change
Thank You Super Ray,
from an old retired, mental case veteran. Me.
"When a soldier sees too much with his own eyes--too many fallen comrades and too many dead civilians--he's no good for war any more; he finally begins to question the false rationale. He begins to question the media slogans and military propaganda. He begins to believe his own eyes instead, his own conscience, his own heart."
Brothers in Arms | Strike-The-Root:Yes, this quote can be refer to Putin oligarch regime as to US oligarch regime.
I think Putin regime is more dull than US oligarch regime - because Putin is like czar with his oligarchs that makes regime more vulnerable. Where as US oligarch regime is using puppets like obama to be in power.
Vietnam veteran, Tim O'Brien, wrote: "For the common soldier, at least, war has the feel--the spiritual texture--of a great ghostly fog, thick and permanent. There is no clarity. Everything swirls. The old rules are no longer binding, the old truths no longer true. Right spills over into wrong. Order blends into chaos, love into hate, ugliness into beauty, law into anarchy, civility into savagery."
"There should be a law," O'Brien added, "If you support a war, if you think it's worth the price, that's fine, but you have to put your own precious fluids on the line. You have to head for the front and hook up with an infantry unit and help spill the blood."
The Things They Carried: Tim O'BrienWar is the childish tantrum of failed economics. A smash-and-grab of ephemeral advantages that drain like water from the opened fist.
"The wealthy and well-educated have been able to escape the burden of defending the nation," concluded Major Gabriel, formerly assigned to the Pentagon. "And the responsibility has fallen disproportionately upon the poor, the uneducated, and the nation's minorities. Such a condition constitutes a stain on one of the world's great democracies. It also disproportionately distributes the burden of death when it is time to do battle."
If you look closely at the infantrymen in the movie Platoon, you may notice graffiti on the helmets of Oliver Stone's soldiers.
One such slogan was FTA, which stood for "Fuck The Army." During the Sixties, the media rarely permitted any allusions to poor troop morale in the Vietnam War. That antiwar expression--FTA--was a symptom of a painful weight being pressed upon our Achilles heel, the Regular Army (RA) footsoldier, but it was only really understood when soldiers returned home to swell the ranks of protests against the war. Even then their voices were ignored or dismissed for years.
Propaganda by the Pentagram? Good luck with that fuckers.
"Now, when Indians don't trust Chiefs, battles are lost. This was clearly the case in Vietnam, where the term 'fragging' was coined by the troops to rid themselves of CO's they didn't trust because of incompetence or Custer glory complexes. But obviously, the brass didn't get the message there, and not only did they lose most of the battles, they lost the war."
Colonel David Hackworth, most decorated soldier of the Vietnam War,
About Face: The Odyssey of an American Warrior, Colonel David Hackworth:Things will get so bad that sooner or later they will have to re-write the propaganda as well.
Where are the Vietnam protesters now? How come Hanoi Jane doesn't speak up? Because they're now in power, have been bought and paid for, and are more concerned with their control than truth. Scum-bags.
Haydn ran for office. the real players in all this were from the Black Panther movement. Eldridge Cleaver wrote Soul on Ice, he later started a line of Men's clothing. after 1970 the antiwar movement radicalized, the Weathermen, and PLA?, the group that captured Patty Hearst. Jane Fonda just made the same transition as most Americans were making, toward jobs, families, and security. the boomers are fundamentally different than their parents after retirement, the W2 generation was the motor home, the boomers like their Harleys, but its materialism either way.
Nineteen: http://youtu.be/lJN850qHklw
the real narrative, the most interesting theme in the Vietnam war is the transition in the American publics perception of the war from local insurgency, a revolt of peasants against landowners, and unfair and oppressive taxation into the epic battle of good and evil, international communism versus American democracy. the peace talks were provided to transition the steps, by consolidating power between the rebels and the North, and the US at least covertly wanted the North to join the war to provide the narrative with substance. then probably with CIA help the Tet offensive was proposed by the north, that attack destroyed the local insurgencies, the Viet Cong, completely. at the same time Soviet freighters were allowed to ship Sam missiles directly to Hanoi, under the nose of the American navy. it all helped the drama play out in terms that gullible US media consumers would accept. at the same time the US propaganda experts were promoting cold war ideas, Nixon was forming the initiatives with China which would eventually set up WTO for the communist country, the leaders never believed that China was part of the communist conspiracy, and later it was a republican standard bearer, (usually staunch enemies of communism) GW Bush signed WTO,a nd repeated the Nixon globalist agenda, and NWO. the benefits for the american consumer were difficult to underestimate, bit of irony most of the anti war protestors, as well as entire generation of americans raised in that era became rabid materialists, acquiring goods and services at a pace their parents could never imagine.
after Vietnam the Chinese fought a war with Vietnam to disprove any notion that China might again intervene as they had in Korea. in fact the war may have been more about helping China consolidate power on the Asian continent. certainly if the US had defeated Hanoi that would have played into Chinas expansionist ambitions. GW Bush later made speeches in Taiwan calling for reunification with the mainland , and the western powers gave away Hong Kong as well. it was all the grand surrender to a communist economy and politburo they would eventually emulate, sending their newly created wall street tech giants to aid the Chinese in tracking dissent. Nixon promised to end the war in 68 and the war outlasted his Presidency.
we learned nothing from viet nam. the politicians created the war. the military did it's job and won.... the politicians didn't have the guts to turn the military loose in the north and turned their backs on millions who supported the usa, leaving them to die. hayden and fonda and kerry are left wing cocksucking pieces of shit... traitors.
the south vietnamese chose not to defend thier territory and gave up.. just like the iraqis are giving up to isis.. as i said we didn't learn. besides in iraq and soon afghanistan, brennan and obama gave it all away ans should pay the price... both cowards and traitors... aiding and abetting the enemy during wartime... supporting and aiding isis.. caving to the taliban... overthrowing our allies and supporters and aiding al queda and the muslim brotherhood in libya and egypt...
just like today the "generals" let the politicians manage the war. obama today is calling the shots on when and where amd how the military can act, without congressional approval.. his staff and white house has muzzie brohood rght there during the decision making giving advice... terriffic.
unfortunately for the pinkville residents they let the vc use their villages as a vc ambush points and calley got tired of his men getting killed by ambushes and attacks from the "innocent" villages. after the incident his men didn't take any more hits. when people dont stand up for what is right and remain silent... they ultimately pay the price... soldiers reach a breaking point and shit happens... politicians responsible walk away.... the wimpy rank seeking "generals" eat shit for a promotion.. and sacrifice the troops..
Congress has to exercise its Constitutional power or we will continue to repeat the mistakes...
I had a chance to listen to a couple of people from the SU who were on the northern side of the border during the war - a Soviet diplomat and a Soviet "journalist".
The diplomat was highly impressed with the US Air force - "whatever they wanrted to bomb they bombed."
The journalist was impressed with how primitive North Vietnam was.
Another Soviet journalist, who may or may not have been there, told me that: We gave the Vietnamese everything they asked for, but when we asked them for things we wanted they told us to get lost.
My own impression is that except for the US Marines the US military never did learn to fight decisively in Vietnam, so that the number of troops they killed was never equal to the number who replaced them.
US politicians never rallied the US populace sufficiently to maintain political support. I also have the impression that Nixion and Kissinger threw the S. Vietnmese to the sharks in favor of a detente with China.
Perhaps the war was, in any case, built on false premises. And could N. Vietnam have been co-opted? Decades later we have the spectacle of a US President in Hanoi signing a trade treaty there. You can buy Vietnamese products in US supermarkets now. Why did all those people have to die?
FWIW.
The US war in Vietnam is a complicated topic, and you really need to start with WWII or even WWI, and the entire Cold War and related hot wars, including Korea, in order to understand it. And even then it doesn't come out pretty, but at least it begins to make sense.
Victor Charlie still kicked their ass, and you cant rewrite that away. The worse war in US history in that it marked the apex of american culture and power...US is a pale shadow of what it was today
Victor Charlie still kicked their ass, and you cant rewrite that away. The worse war in US history in that it marked the apex of american culture and power...US is a pale shadow of what it was today
Nobody dumped 17 million gallons of *dioxin* on anybody.
It never happened.
/sarc
Well, somebody detonated 900 nuclear bombs in the United States and discharged radioactive waste everywhere.
That reminds me -
Most recent update - http://nuclear-news.net/2014/10/19/919-120-2-2-fukushima-radiation-neari...
"MY LAI INCIDENT"......I was in the Marines in the late 60s. Please google the photos of My Lai and remember most importantly.....EVERYBODY WALKED, including Calley. He did maybe 6 months before Nixon cut him loose. Everybody above him WALKED CLEAN AWAY without so much as a "fuck me naked". PLEASE! Google the photos. The truth shall set you free..................
Corporatists, war mongers, and revisionists, don't want the American people to know that the Vietnam War was all about the inception of 'the war on drugs' and the CIA trafficing in heroin via body bags of dead American soldiers. The CIA became the global cartel for underworld trafficing and money laundering that is still operating today. See TBTF and drug money laundering. If the MIC writes the historiography there is no possible way that the 'official version' of events will include the drug running or money laundering IMHO. All revisionist historians have opposition in the form of contemporary accounting by non-revisionist
historians and historiographers that cannot afford to wear rose coloured glasses.
Vietnam: You had to be in it to lose it. The dodgers didn't eat the bloody pennant, yanks yourself.
I imagine some enterprising technocrat would be tempted to hack that Vietnam War propaganda website and show blood streaming down the front page.
Foreign war is evil and must not be revered but instead condemned as government's failure at statesmanship and intelligent discourse with the leadership of other nations.
Vietnam war was an SDS victory
Students for Democrat Society were the leaders in starting the protests against the Viet Nam war
They were heavily influenced by the US communist party
kind of like some of ZH and RT cozyness here
http://www.conservapedia.com/Students_for_a_Democratic_Society
Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) was founded by Aryeh Neier (Director of the socialist League for Industrial Democracy) in 1960. Its principles were elaborated by Tom Hayden in the Port Huron Statement of 1962, which adopted the position of "anti-anti-Communism," refusing to support the West in the Cold War. What began as a movement to involve the largest possible number of American students in the democratic processes had become by 1969, as a contemporaneous FBI memo summarizes, "an organization totally dedicated to the destruction of American society...In the span of seven years, the SDS had evolved into a hard line Marxist-Leninist-Maoist organization dedicated to the destruction of Western democratic traditions and ideals."Several prominent SDS members organized Progressives for Obama in March of 2008. Among the organizers are Carl Davidson, Mark Rudd, and Todd Gitlin; while several Klonsky family members are represented, Mike Klonsky is conspicuously absent from the signers.
Again have a look at Cambodia where we settled for trading it is worth the visit to watch the result after so many years of war and destruction...
The Baby Boomers ( I am 66) proclaimed to be anti-war. Now we see their true colors. They support Obama, who bombed 6 countried in 7 years,
The Boomers are not anti-war. They are all for war if they or their kids don't have to fight in it.
Hey big five sided blight on humanity; don't forget the Phoenix Program. Oh, you got Langley contributing that chapter. OK good.
http://www.amazon.com/The-Phoenix-Program-Forbidden-Bookshelf-ebook/dp/B...
Obamma is the new Hitler, god of lies
Just read A Bright and Shining Lie, the story of LTC John Paul Vann. If you want to see the misery of that war, that one book is pretty much all you need.