Since the sixties, Noam Chomsky has been calling the United States an imperialist nation and continues to do so, now saying U.S. actions in Iraq and Afghanistan are imperialist. The purpose of Mr. Chomsky’s’ philosophy is to destroy the legitimacy of any and all acts of force by an ethical, lawful state. In essence, Mr. Chomsky asserts that such a state is identical to barbarians who use force for self-interest, i.e. dictators and fascists. By doing this, Mr. Chomsky is willing to put heroes such as policemen and soldiers on the same level as villains such as murderers and terrorists.

According to Mr. Chomsky’s twisted reasoning, “…torture has been routine practice from the early days of the conquest of the national territory, and then beyond, as the imperial ventures of the “infant empire” — as George Washington called the new Republic” (The Torture Memos, Chomsky, May 24, 2009). He believes that George Bush was simply following some “secret” mandate from Washington to expand the empire through the use of torture. To buttress his case, he cites the Yale historian John Lewis Gaddis, “Adams as the grand strategist who laid the foundations for the Bush Doctrine: the doctrine that ‘expansion is the path to security’” (The Unipolar Moment and the Culture of Imperialism, Chomsky, December 3, 2009). Yes, John Adams (1735 – 1826) is responsible for the War on Terror, not the 19 terrorists who orchestrated the takeover of four commercial planes on September 11, 2001, killing thousands of innocent people. You can learn a lot at college.

Mr. Chomsky slanders Washington as a vile Machiavellian: “A prince that acquires new territories and removes the natives to give his people room will be remembered as the father of the nation (Machiavelli).’ And George Washington agreed. He wanted to be the father of the nation. His view was that ‘the gradual extension of our settlement will as certainly cause the savage as the wolf to retire, both being beasts of prey, though they differ in shape.” (Modern-Day American Imperialism: Middle East and Beyond, Chomsky, Boston University, April 24, 2008)

Mr. Chomsky bases this statement from Letter to James Duane dated September 7, 1783.  In his letter, Washington was appealing for a non-violent resolution with the Indians and to find peaceful means of living with them on a common land, not advocating war. “As the Country, is large enough to contain us all; and as we are disposed to be kind to them and to partake of their Trade…draw a veil over what is past and establish a boundary line between them and us beyond which we will endeavor to restrain our People from Hunting or Settling.” Washington’s intent to Duane was clear: peaceful means of coexistence.

His thought that directly precedes Mr. Chomsky lifted quote is this, “I am clear in my opinion, … of being upon good terms with the Indians, and the propriety of purchasing their Lands in preference to attempting to drive them by force of arms out of their Country; which as we have already experienced is like driving the Wild Beasts of the Forest…”  In other words, if you make war with the Indians, they will scatter in the country side and return to hunt you down, as they are to be respected as is the wolf.

Mr. Chomsky lacks credibility because he has to rely on fabrication of events in order to support his opinions. Fabrication is part of the leftist anti-War movement which is really the leftist/socialist “Make America Surrender” movement.

The second part is asserting that equal actions (war and terrorism) are equal in ethics.  Everyone agrees that murder is evil, and murder is caused by killing. However, not all killing is evil—certainly, accidents and self-defense stand out as two exceptions.  Chomsky must assert, for his reasoning to be sound, all value judgments can be based on actions alone and not on intentions; he confuses actions and intentions. In contrast, Western ethics are quite clear in saying that a person can commit the very same action with more than one intent. Every child knows that you can step on someone’s toes with or without harmful intent, yet the action is the same.

Here is perfect example of his inability to separate actions and ethics: “…the most elementary principle of just war theory, universality. Those who cannot accept this principle should have the decency to keep silent about matters of right and wrong, or just war”(Noam Chomsky, Hegemony or Survival, 2003, pg 202). He follows this assertion with the question, “Have Cuba and Nicaragua been entitled to set off bombs in Washington, New York, and Miami in self-defense against ongoing terrorist attack?”  His point is that any and all states have equal right to the use of force or no one has it, “universality.” This is a complete failure on his part to differentiate between fascist dictators and communist death-squads from those who have no other self-interested motive other than justice.

The greatest danger of Mr. Chomsky’s anti-war ethics and lies is that it fuels the anti-war movement. Moreover, it paves the way for the college student to believe that power exists without justice as a limiting factor. Thus, making it moral to quest for power for power’s own sake, which is foundational to Marxist thought. But all power must be subservient to justice and the law, especially when American national security is at stake.

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The US/CIA experience in Vietnam should give us plenty of evidence that there are more advantages to running COIN operations in today’s global war on terror than in conducting conventional warfare option. It is even more evident that if we were to plan and execute a sound ‘pacification’ plan in Iraq or Afghanistan, then there must be some elements of COIN at play to help balance out how we mitigate growing insurgent operations. They are smarter and faster at learning U.S. order of battle so how we fight is not a big secret.

In Vietnam the same problem was encountered by the CIA as the North Vietnamese already had extensive documentation of CIA doctrine in conducting air drops, employing stay-behind units, etc. without the benefit of helping that country make changes from within. Obviously, the CIA was fairly confident it could continue to make drops and lose team after team yet they did not factor in the possibility their teams had been compromised time after time. Maybe sheer dumb luck made some missions successful and still, they were failures for a long-term solution.

First, the CIA did not know the North Vietnamese had been consistently studying its methodology and quickly executing countermeasures and mostly obtained this information from the Chinese. Second, incursions carried out into a closed society must accompany a much more comprehensive plan. Once on the ground, units would have to depend on their limited training and then if they landed close enough to populated areas they were instructed to stay low for short periods of time gathering information. But then there was no plan in how to approach locals other than maybe clerics or family members and that alone always posed a great risk to the team members, thus really not accomplishing much but to get them killed or captured and tried.

There was little consideration for exploiting political and ideological angles within the population; at least just not right away. Eventually this reality would manifest itself fully. The suggestion by the CIA to President Kennedy was to engage the population with these psychological techniques, to create the illusion that there was a nascent revolutionary movement at play within North Vietnam and create the threat from within. This approach would have been a proper complement to paramilitary operations, since that could have been the second stage; to actually carry out clandestine operations, sabotage, and a direct attack on the government machine.

There was some of this work involved in the post-invasion stability operations in Japan and Germany, and these are two success stories that need to be studied more. When the allies moved in looked around and started to guide these countries into a post-war, they already had a plan, the intelligence base to tell them where to begin securing the population (borders) supervising local police and basically keeping track of everything the locals did before a turn-over could take place.

So how do we carry out these incursions and do we conduct part sabotage/assassination (just as the Israelis did) while we conduct aggressive PSYOPS campaigns? Even disinformation and propaganda efforts must carry a purpose and that is to engender in the local population the need to fight for their future. Initially the CIA’s intention was to help the Vietnamese become independent from any foreign intervention in the end and this is the basis for stability operations.

The employment of irregular forces (indigenous) is of great importance because they have a vested interest in not only fighting an insurgency such as Iraq, but also to gradually wean themselves from foreign intervention, which is the main purpose of introducing stability operations (nation-building). This has not always been a well carried out concept, as we seem to engage countries with cultures totally different from ours and often we fail to recognize that those differences will affect the outcome of any conflict and how that culture will survive post-conflict/invasion.

The absence of the rule of law is the first factor that must be either established or maintained if already present in the targeted environment. Efforts of pacification were disrupted constantly by the VCI by threatening those people and agencies working on re-building the country with military attacks. Though the allies were able to fight the VCI successfully and provide protection for these activities imagine any NGO working in the field or that matter civil affairs unit while under fire. The first thing that should be provided to the non-combatant population is security. They either get it from their government with foreign assistance or they fall under the rule of insurgent groups and historically the populations do not well at all. That was a critical development in Algeria where the French government allowed more than one political fringe group to develop and begin conducting counterintelligence operations separate from government support then had to try and control more than one group with civilians at greatest risk who were ultimately main victims of hostilities. The French allowed Algerian populations to be stripped of their identities in order to make counterintelligence efforts more difficult and people were chased away from their homes by all factions so there was no security for them.

The Iraq parallel

We’ve tried this endeavor before and had been successful which I wonder if much thought was given to the application of the principles involved in stability operations in addition to the rule of law is the continuity of governance, this includes social and government services, local services, trash pickup, electrical power, potable water, police, border/population control, etc. The greatest examples are post-invasion Germany and Japan. In both cases military police were deployed to conduct law enforcement operations while there was a controlled environment of the population and local government that enabled social growth and the beginning of rebuilding their infrastructure. This could not be done if hostilities were still a consideration, from either conventional or insurgent forces. In the case of Iraq those elements of security and of continuity of governance were absent, combat forces thrust into the realm of law enforcement duties were lacking in training and experience; the difference between fighting a shooting war and maintaining law and order have had a long-term impact on life here. Reconstruction efforts can easily slow down or stop in the presence of violence, whether from insurgent activity or rampant criminality or a combination of both. This has been the case in Iraq.

The VCI also operated openly in populated areas unlike insurgents in Iraq, who opt for a more covert approach but then in some areas they do make themselves known throughout neighborhoods. Iraq insurgents don’t show the highly organized military organization as did the VCI in that the Iraqis did not form a shadow government to run counter to the local government but then there was none to speak of for a while so I guess the CPA (Coalition Provisional Authority) at first tried to establish a fresh government once Saddam’s regime elements were removed causing a chaotic situation which grew out of control.

I wonder, and would like to get some feedback on this, if some of you who have worked in this field directly could clarify how coalition forces could have gained more ground here by utilizing a COIN approach after the invasion and early enough in the game. Before the mass exodus of government personnel, the sacking of businesses and attacks on police stations and police elements – and I do consider the fact that the potential for those attacks was unfortunately ignored as a possibility – would have been more advantageous because the people of Iraq, though living in authoritarian but controlled environment, would have been more keen on participating in their own liberation afterwards. COIN can easily influence positive or negative political and social change in a country and an effective tool to aid in establishing the stability process.
A combined approach

I don’t want to complain without offering some sort of theoretical plan just as a mental exercise. I could see introducing COIN operations during conventional hostilities to help build an intelligence foundation we could use once things de-escalate enough to begin the stability phase. I’m not saying that using elite units to carry out sabotage missions while others carry out pure SPYOPS within the population could not work. First we would have to link up with the locals and build the necessary networks and we know from experience that native forces and other government structures will have to come into play because the nature of nation building is to return that country to an improved state of peace.

By removing the threat to security in this effort we’re increasing our success rate, of course, this cannot be edged in stone as the nature of warfare is ever changing and not every threat to our operations can be mitigated ahead of time. Perhaps there should be a series of scenarios, preferably worst case scenarios already worked out to aid in the introduction of NGOs as well as a trained and capable constabulary waiting to deploy. Combat troops should have some exposure to law enforcement training but that is not their main purpose and only a civilian constabulary should be in place to assist with these duties.

In essence, had we employed of COIN action before the loss of law and order as it stood before the invasion, the overall environment might have been more accommodating to a continuation of routine life in Iraq while helping them re-build. It’s just a theory but COIN would have been more effective in pushing the Iraqis into wanting their situation to return to some level of normalcy. Just like the Northern Vietnam PSYOPS campaigns, the objective would be to create a real or illusionary revolution or political movement to get the population to be more receptive to change and to reject helping the insurgency. A strong government in place is another necessary element which did not exist in Iraq post-invasion unlike the Vietnamese who had at least strong leadership from the top and was able to rally the people to be part of the fight. This could only be done with the balanced combination of COIN and local support. I think if this is not currently the doctrine to use COIN along with all other military and clandestine resources then that could be the future of warfare; prepare them ahead of time for what’s to come – whatever many outcomes we can devise – unlike current doctrine which to me, appears to mitigate problems as they come up…little or no vision of potential issues.

Sources:
The Coalition Provisional Authority’s Experience with Governance in Iraq, Celeste Ward, United States Institute of Peace, May 2005, www.usip.org
The Coalition Provisional Authority’s Experience with Public Security in Iraq, Robert Perito, United States Institute of Peace, April 2005, www.usip.org
U.S. Police in Peace and Stability Operations, Robert Perito, United States Institute of Peace, August 2007, www.usip.org

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Vietnam, the Media and Lies

by Bill  Laurie

“There were some worthy, honest, and intelligent reporters in Vietnam and Southeast Asia. Dickey Chapelle, Robert Shaplen, Liz Trotta, Peter Braestrup, Hugh Mulligan, Keyes Beech, Neil Davis, Denis Warner, were among those who objectively, and without resort to sensationalism, conveyed elements of truth, parts of the puzzle, to the American public. Their efforts notwithstanding, the fog of nonsense spewed out by others obscured and effectively censored honest, logical, comprehensive reporting, denying the American public information needed to develop accurately informed opinions. News media malfeasance was complemented by brilliant manipulative Hanoi propaganda, and a corresponding U.S. government inability or unwillingness to make a case for its own efforts. The American public could not hope to understand what was taking place, and does not today.

No one, least of all South Vietnamese, American, or other allied forces, was oblivious of or happy with the endemic corruption and incompetence, yet, because of flawed and narrowly focused “reporting,” the story of South Vietnam’s progress and improvement remains untold. American reporters never wrote or televised stories about DR, Phan Quang Dan, Gen. Ngo Quang Truong, Gen. Nguyen Khoa Nam, the 81st Biet Kich, the Hau Nghia RF, Col. Mach Van Truong, Gen. Le Minh Dao, Tran Ngoc Chau, Col. Ha Mai Viet, writer Nguyen Manh Con, or RVN Marine Sergeant Van Luom, who stood alone on the Dong Ha Bridge and knocked out the lead tank in an NVA armor column with a shoulder-fired antitank missile, an act, in the words of an American witness, of inspiring “defiance and bravery.”
Knowing little of this, the American public was understandably disenchanted.

The news media seldom, if ever, accompanied American or Australian troops on MEDCAPS or DENTCAPs (Dental Civic Action Projects, extremely welcome to rural people with painful tooth conditions). In the first six months of 1969, more than 200,000 villagers received medical care and 15,000 received dental care from the 3rd U.S. Marine division alone. Instead, the American public was subjected to repeated coverage of the My Lai atrocity, which, like the photo of Gen. Loan, was considered symbolic and representative of the entire war.

Wolfgang Leonhard, a Soviet communist agent before defecting to the West, was tasked with analyzing Western news media stories. He and his colleagues were puzzled over superficial news coverage predominating in the newspapers they read. “Generally, we could only shake our heads over them, and often we were exceedingly disappointed. There was usually not even mention of the really significant events that were causing endless discussions amongst ourselves and on which we were passionately eager to read a serious Western commentary. ‘They don’t seem to know what is going on’ was the main theme of our conversations when we talked to each other on the subject.”

One of the more tragic ironies of Vietnam and the news media failure is that there were many fascinating and positive stories to be told. The American people would have appreciated seeing hour-long specials on, for example, U.S. Marine Corps CAP units, a squad of 14 Marines living in one hamlet for their entire tour, working with and defending “their “ hamlet alongside local PF. USMC CAPs had a higher voluntary extension rate than among their line unit counterparts. Why? It would have made for a good story. It would have been equally enlightening to see programs showing U.S. troops helping an orphanage, or volunteering to teach English. The American public deserved to know about a VNAF Skyraider pilot who had been shot down five times, and continued flying, despite his several fused vertebrae. They deserved to know that American forces could take on the NVA, in their own backyard, and prevail. Something might have been learned from Americans who volunteered for three, four, five, six, or even seven tours as advisors, choosing to serve in Vietnam again and again, not as bloodthirsty and uncaring killers, but as very normal, decent human beings who could eloquently and convincingly explain their motivations, which was ultimately to see Vietnamese people have a life of peace and decent government. Geopolitics and the Cold War, all relatively abstract concepts, were not a primary concern, taking a back seat to basic human concerns for that which is fair.

Americans would have benefited by hearing of Captain Nguyen Quy An, Lt. Vu Tung, and Warrant Officer Nguyen Quang Hien of the famed 219 Kingbees. Were it not for the action of these men, John Litter, Bob Stratliff and Wiley L . Craney, by their own testimony, would have been killed or captured after their helicopter had been shot down in Laos. They were rescued by Captain An and his crew while under fire and surrounded by NVA. Captain An would later lose both his hands by keeping control of a burning helicopter, saving the lives of others on board who would have died had the flame-engulfed chopper fallen from the sky.

Americans were mesmerized by the NVA’s (North Vietnamese Army) 25-day hold on Hue City in 1968, and presumably would be similarly impressed by the 92nd Ranger Battalion 400-day stand at the remote base of Tong Le Chan. Completely cut off, resupplied only by air, the 92nd held, with ambulatory wounded refusing evacuation. Had an NVA unit held out for over 400 days, surrounded and cut off, it would have made headline news. The 92nd Rangers did it and nothing was said.  Had a handful of VC (Viet Cong) high school boys held off an allied attack, it would also would have made headlines. A handful of high school boys did resist VC/NVA forces at the “Truong Tieu Sinh Quan,” a junior high school military academy for sons of RVNAF (South Vietnamese) military fatalities. They resisted to the end in 1975, with twelve- and thirteen-year-old boys sending younger kids home, staying in their barricaded school and fighting on. Many of them were killed and when the Communists came in, they fought them. The Communists could not get into that academy. NVA forces eventually surrounded the school, threatened to level it with rockets, kill everyone inside, and negotiated a surrender. This last stand would presumably have had all the drama and “human interest” for a “big story,” and had VC adolescents been involved opposing RVNAF, the story would undoubtedly have been trumpeted to the American public. To this day, next to nothing has been said or printed, and the cadets at Truong Tieu Sinh Quan are not even a footnote to history.

Coverage of these stories could have gone on and should have gone side-by-side with negative reporting on corruption, civilian casualties, drug use, and other presumed universal evils of American involvement in Southeast Asia. It is neither suggested nor desired that blemishes or morally repugnant aspects be ignored or covered up. It is asserted, however, that it would have been far more honest to have contrasted examples of deplorable behavior with other aspects, not in the least rare, of which many Vietnam veterans are familiar with and participated in. Fairness and objectivity also demand that equal coverage be applied to the VC/NVA shortcomings and ruthless excesses shown in proportion to their existence and occurrence. Had all this been done, the American public would have been able to understand something, and certainly much more than the psuedo-understanding derived from the “shoot-em-up-bang-bang” reporting they were continually exposed to. For any number of reasons, “positive” news did little for a reporter’s career or ego, a career based on finding or inventing “stories” accentuating the negative while heightening public discontent.

Ignorance of military and Southeast Asia matters, of communist revolutionary warfare, fueled by potential for lucrative career advancement, unwilling or unable to report on South Vietnamese or Laotian troops except in cases of failure, apparently enthused by the visual impact of war and the destruction it causes, sometimes disdainful of South Vietnamese if not American troops while ignoring Australian, Korean, Thai, and New Zeland forces, the news media proved incapable of depicting Vietnam, and Hanoi’s War, in its entirety . The American public saw the same “bang-bang” every year, and were misled into assuming nothing had changed, nothing was accomplished. Allied temporary defeats were portrayed as permanent setbacks, while victories and accomplishments went unreported, or were, with smug theatrics, cast aside as government propaganda.

News media misrepresentation not only misled and uninformed the American public, but also prohibited its ability to think and make logical inferences on its own.

In the final analysis, Vietnam, Southeast Asia, Hanoi’s war, and American involvement could not be, and cannot be, understood, in good part because of media failings, moral, intellectual, and otherwise. Without recognizing this, and knowing that what was reported was not the all-comprehensive truth of the matter, the subject itself cannot be understood. Overall, and efforts of responsible reporters notwithstanding, the nature and extent of news media failure in Vietnam exceeds that of allied military forces who were attempting to and succeeding, despite documented lies and bumbling, to stop Hanoi’s War. Many people died and millions more have greatly suffered simply because the whole story was never told. And because what was portrayed in media reporting was demonstrably not, to use the famous Cronkite phrase, “the way it is.”  This bitter judgment is itself based on beliefs articulated by Robert Elegant, himself a journalist :

“Illusionary events reported by the press as well as real events within the press corps were more decisive than the clash of arms or the contention of ideologies. For the first time in modern history, the outcome of a war was determined not on the battlefield but on the printed page, and above all, on the television screen.”

Looking back coolly, I believe it can be said that South Vietnam and American forces actually won the limited military struggle. They virtually crushed the Viet Cong in the South, the “native” guerillas who were directed, reinforced, and equipped from Hanoi, and thereafter they threw back the invasion by regular North Vietnamese divisions. Nonetheless, the war was finally lost to the invaders after the U.S. disengagement because the political pressures built up by the media had made it quite impossible for Washington to maintain even the minimal material and moral support that would have enabled the Saigon regime to continue effective resistance.”  Elegant, a highly acclaimed British reporter on Vietnam, later added these terrible words:

“Never before Vietnam had the collective policy of the media sought by graphic and unremitting distortion, the victory of the enemies of the correspondents own side.”

Could this possibly be the truth about the performance of the U.S. media in Vietnam? In ending this series, from my extended observation and study of the media while on the home front during the war, this is certainly the way it looked to me. And many others. Said Senator Margaret Chase Smith, “The press has become more sympathetic to the enemy than to our own national interest.” (Congressional Record, June 16, 1971)

—Bill  Laurie -Vietnam War historian

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by Leonard Magruder

Following in the footsteps of Rep. Joe Wilson  who is now famous for his “You Lie!” outburst during Pres. Obama’s speech.  The universities and media are still promoting the same Leftist views about the current War on Terror, as they did, and continue to do on the War in Vietnam.  Let’s review their record on Vietnam to see if they can be trusted now.

We have in our archives a rare book, although some libraries have it, containing 118 of the most important pieces of literature handed out by the antiwar movement between the years 1964 and 1974. Mutiny Does Not Happen Lightly: the Literature of the American Resistance to the Vietnam War. Edited by G. Louis Heath, a professor of sociology at Illinois State University, it was published in 1976 in a limited edition, “selected so as to present an accurate cross-section of the American resistance to the Vietnam War during 1964-1974.”

Containing mostly information on Who, What, Where of the various demonstrations and marches, we, however, are interested in the Why. We carefully went through all 597 pages of this book for all material that focused on the reasons for the anti-war protests. Here are all the statements of that type that we found. The essence of what the anti-war movement told others as to what the war was all about, is found here.

FROM THE LITERATURE OF THE WAR PROTESTS OF THE 60’S (0ur comments added):

“The May 2nd movement is launching an anti-induction campaign on the campuses. …based on the refusal to fight against the people of Vietnam. Some chapters of May 2 plan to campaign to donate blood and other medical aid to the National Liberation Front of South Vietnam (Viet Cong) to concretely show our support for national liberation struggles. Receiving blood from U.S. college students will be a terrific morale booster for the Vietnamese people.”

May 2nd Movement- Sept. 8, 1965

(comment: a little aid and comfort from a U.S. branch of the Viet Cong)

“The game of the rich has caught up to Pig America. The Vietnamese have kicked ass out of U.S. occupational troops. More and more G.I.’s will no longer listen to Pig Nixon’s orders and are turning their guns around on the real enemy. The Provisional Revolutionary Government in Vietnam (Viet Cong) has led the Vietnamese people to complete victory.”

Roxboro School SDS- Cleveland Heights – June 4, 1972

(comment: by 1972 the Americans had won all five major offensives at a KIA (killed in action) ratio of 15 to 1, and South Vietnam was 95% pacified. After the Americans fought the enemy to a peace treaty and left, South Vietnam defended itself for two years until bitter anti-war Democrats in Congress betrayed them by cutting off their ammunition. These are the kinds of elementary facts that students never seem to know.)

“Recently many articles have appeared in the movement press expounding the virtues of deserting and going AWOL. ‘Come to Canada and be a man.’ ‘Soldiers are pigs.’ ‘To remain in the imperialist U.S. Army rather than leaving is comparable to being a Nazi.’ Last year there were, by Pentagon counts, 250,000 AWOL’s and over 53,000 deserters. This has not made much of a dent in the fighting strength of the U.S.Army. That dent has clearly come from the heroic struggle of the Vietnamese people under the leadership of the NLF and the Provisional Revolutionary Government.”

New York Regional SDS distributed at Boston University – Feb. 22, 1969

(comment: you really had to be gullible to join the anti-war movement)

Letter from Ho Chi Minh to a radical activist in Youth Against War and Fascism, Free University of New York:

“My Dear ——-

I have received your letter. You and the progressive American people, especially the youth, feel indignant at the barbarous crimes perpetrated in Vietnam by the U.S. imperialists who have thus besmeared the honor of the American people and the noble traditions of the United States. I am glad to learn that you and many other young Americans are actively endeavoring under varied forms to help push forward the movement against the war of aggression in Vietnam and in support of the Vietnamese people. With affectionate greetings, Signed, Uncle Ho”

June 18, Nov. 25, 1965

(comment: congratulations on your treason from Uncle Ho)

“The U.S. government is planning shortly to order the bombing of Haipong, an industrial city of half a million people, which is Hanoi’s seaport, and of Hanoi itself. The U.S. also plans to bomb the system of dikes in the Democratic Republic of Vietnam which keeps the North Vietnamese from drowning and starving. Just as the U.S. is attempting to drown in blood the liberation struggle of the South Vietnamese people because it is the model for liberation struggles everywhere, so North Vietnam is being bombed to bits because it shows all colonial and former colonial countries, by living example, that Socialism can solve their problems.”

Youth Against War and Fascism, Free University of New York – Aug. 27, 1966

(comment: no one bombed any dikes. Leftist editor Harrison Salisbury started this myth.)

“As far as the Vietnamese are concerned , we are fighting on the side of Hitlerism, and they hope we lose. Most people support the NLF. Why? The war in Vietnam is not being fought according to the rules. Prisoners are tortured. Our planes drop incendiary bombs on civilian villages. Our soldiers shoot at women and children. Your officers will tell you that it is all necessary, that we couldn’t win the war any other way. We believe that the atrocities which are necessary to win this war against the people of Vietnam are inexcusable.”

Vietnam Day Committee, San Francisco – Aug. 2, 1966.

(comment: spreading atrocity lies was a specialty.)

“It is important for us to tell people why the demands of the NFL and the PRG represent the only hope for peace, independence and unity in Vietnam. To anyone who knows the political-military situation in Vietnam, to declare for immediate withdrawal is to support the NLF without saying it. What is important…is to show that Vietnam is only a place where U.S. policies of neocolonialism have met with active resistance.”

Stanford University – November 15, 1969

(comment: hypocrisy was another specialty)

“Just when Westmoreland was boasting that there were only small guerrilla groups left, he was hit in October 1967 with a division-sized unit. While he was explaining that this was a desperate last fling, he was hit by another division- sized unit. The U.S. forces never recovered from this. Westmoreland started panic measures. Forced to disperse, he opened the way for the NLF’s mighty Tet offensive in late January that sealed the fate of the ‘limited war’ because from then on Westmoreland, and General Abrams after him were forced onto the strategic and tactical defensive.”

Radical Student Union – Univ. of California- Berkeley- Dec. 11, 1969

(comment: in the “mighty” Tet Offensive the enemy lost 40,000 dead, half his forces, and the Viet Cong was decimated, never again a credible force. The allies lost 1,231. This is what CBS’s Walter Cronkite called a “stalemate.”)

“I want Spiro Agnew to know that I bring this assembly a message of greetings and solidarity with the American people from the Viet Cong. I want Agnew to know that this generation is establishing its own diplomatic relations, because we are not at war with the people of Vietnam. Our war is with the Pentagon, Wall Street, and Spiro T. Agnew. Nixon plans to win…by withdrawing enough troops to deflate antiwar sentiments at home , while fortifying major cities like Hue and Saigon and from this position of fortification carry out the raging air war against the countryside that most students of Vietnam now understand is controlled by some 80% of the National Liberation Front.”

Speech by Rennie Davis, San Francisco Peace Rally – Nov. 15, 1969

(comment: 80% !! ole’ Rennie in solidarity with Viet Cong lies. Could subversion be more obvious? Student leaders just made up things and everybody, like sheep, believed them.)

“The resistance of the people of South Vietnam is an indigenous movement of politically and religiously diverse groups and individuals which was organized in response to years of oppression and illegal action by the U.S. government and its various ‘puppet’ regimes in Saigon. In order to counter the U.S. government’s propaganda –which falsely teaches the public that the ‘enemy’ is an outside, ‘communist’ aggressor – we will continue to make use of various educational means. The U.S. government is trying to stifle, at tremendous cost and risk, a liberation struggle which is setting the example for all oppressed peoples.”

The U.S. Committee to aid the National Liberation Front of South Vietnam (Viet Cong) New York City,- May 10, 1966

(comment: apparently professors forgot to tell them there was an “outside enemy,” called the Communist North)

By the simple device of charging American soldiers with aggression against the “freedom fighters” of the Viet Cong, legions of students, using this excuse to justify their “moral outrage” (and avoid the draft), engineered a movement that spread to the gullible throughout the nation, helping to defeat a noble cause to bring freedom to others. Not a single one of these attacks on the war mentions that America was helping South Vietnam to fight Communist aggression.

As Jamie Glazov, noted historian, once pointed out on FrontPageMag:

“The most putrid lie of the Left – was the assumption that the U.S. was somehow fighting the people of South Vietnam, when it in fact was actually fighting the Communists who were seeking to imprison them.”

And today they are crawling back in bed with those same old toothless hags of the 60’s—“aggression,” “immoral,” “imperialism”—and re-cycling the same old lies.

As late as the thirtieth anniversary of the Vietnam War, Stephen Young could write, “Our national recollection of the war matches that of the New Left.” Because that is what is preserved and taught in our universities. For thirty years, for example, they have continued to use Karnow’s, “Vietnam: A History”, a work so biased that when presented as a PBS series people who had been there rioted in Los Angeles, New Orleans, New York, Houston, and Paris.

The election of 2004 was a massive repudiation by Vietnam vets of the New Left version of the war. The new Vietnam Veterans Legacy Foundation says they lied. The above article makes it very clear that they lied.

So how can they be trusted to tell the truth now? In the end we do not want your views on war: “You Lie!”

magruder44 <@> aol  com

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Dan Rather (left)

In light of the scandal  involving Dan Rather and Democratic Party fundraising, we decided to share an incident involving him in l986. Mr. Magruder, President of V.V.A.R., because of his long involvement with Vietnam veterans, was invited by Dr. Theodore Kennedy, Professor of Anthropology at the New York State University at Stony Brook, to help him put together the largest symposium on Vietnam ever assembled. “As National Coordinator, Mr. Magruder has responsibilities for helping design the program and contacting and inviting some of the leading figures of the Vietnam period to speak.” (Lawrence Journal World, Oct. 10, 1986) “The first of its kind in the country and a model for other universities.” (Newsday, Sept. 6, 1986.) It was the most comprehensive, in-depth examination of both the war in Vietnam and the “war on the home front” ever put together, unique because of the participation of some 800 Vietnam veterans.

There were 60 speakers from all over the country, representing the military, the media, the protestors, the government, and academia. Among those invited and who spoke were Bruce Hare, Prof. of Philosophy, Stony Brook Univ.; Kenneth Steadman, Director, VFW; General William C. Westmoreland; Jan Scruggs, Vietnan Veterans Memorial; Leroi Jones (Baraka), activist and poet; Florynce Kennedy, Co-founder, N.O.W; Allen Ginsburg, poet and activist; Senator Eugene McCarthy; David Horowitz, co-editor,Ramparts; Hung Van Ho, Army of South Vietnam; and William Gibbons, National Defense Division.

The media was singularly under-represented. In the beginning, Dr. Kennedy spent hours on the phone with representatives of the New York national media emphasizing the national significance of the Symposium and the need for them to cover it. When this failed, Mr. Magruder wrote the following open letter to Dan Rather, reviewing the performance of CBS during the war and challenging him to a debate at the Symposium. Copies of the letter were hand-delivered by students throughout the New York media community.

Dear Mr. Rather:

As you are probably aware, numerous sociological studies have documented the fact that during the 60’s the television networks were strongly biased on the subject of Vietnam in the same left/liberal direction as the universities that educated their reporters. One of the best of these studies is The News Twisters, by Edith Efron, a book that CBS desperately tried to suppress. The quantitative data in this and other studies show that the networks consistently misinformed and even lied to the American people. Reporting by CBS, ABC, and NBC over an extended period in 1968 show a steady drumbeat of anti-government voices, unified in an assault on the war. Little or no opinion in support of the war was allowed on any of the three networks even though as late as Oct. 1969 the majority of Americans, according to pollster Lou Harris, still supported a military victory in Vietnam.

The data also shows that the networks never allowed the true neo-fascist views and tactics of the New Left and the S.D.S. to be known, protecting them as part of a larger body of “harmless” or “idealistic” youth and using them to project an image of “youth in revolt against the war” and in general actively helping to promote their Marxist version of the war. The data shows how, through biased editorial selection, the views of the left had a virtual stranglehold on opinion on the war. If fact, reporter and enemy opinion constituted a majority of opinion advocating a unilateral bombing halt. Out of 37 such statements, one third came from enemy sources. Said Senator Margaret Chase Smith, “The press has become more sympathetic to the enemy than to our own national interest.” (Congressional Record, June 16, 1971). Said Theodore White, the highly respected author of The Making of the President series, “There is a new avante garde which dominates the heights of national communication and has come to despise its own countrymen and its traditions.”

On occasion, as in the case of the Vietnam War, the university and the media act as an unelected counter-government, certain that they only know what is best for the nation. But if the world view that they share is in fact closer in its basic philosophical assumptions to those of totalitarianism than to those of the Judeo-Christian majority, the danger is obvious, they can misinform and mislead the country. There is, therefore, great fear abroad in the land that in another time of crisis, the university and the media, unless reformed, may again allow themselves to be manipulated by enemy propaganda or exploit the crisis to further ideological interests hostile to the national interest.

One of the most significant consequences of the Vietnam conflict was its exposure of the breakdown that has occurred in intellectual and journalistic circles with regard to objectivity and truth. The truth is that the left-liberal media, informed in its analysis of world events by the impoverished moral sensibility of secularism and hostile to traditional American values, and wanting to see Hanoi win the war to prove those values wrong withheld information from the American people throughout the war. In particular, it created a “disaster” image of the Tet Offensive (perpetrated 15 years later in The Uncounted Enemy – CBS) because it served its ideological purposes, even in the face of incoming victorious reports from the battlefield. Said Ronald Reagan, “CBS under World War II circumstances would have been charged with treason.”

The philosophy of life that allows for such blatant disregard for truth is rampant throughout the New York media and Eastern academic circles. Said Theodore White in Newsweek, “I regard the growing gap between the cult that dominates New Yorkintellectual thought today, and the reality perceived by thoughtful people elsewhere, as a political fact of enormous importance and danger.”

Part of the problem was no doubt touched upon by Carolyn Lewis, former Associate Dean of the Columbia School of Journalism when she wrote in The Washington Monthly recently, “So lacking in intellectual substance is the Columbia curriculum in journalism that students can go through the entire program without having to read a book.”

Another part of the problem is revealed in two well-known studies done by Columbia University and George Washington University that show that media persons, almost all college educated and liberal, “not only differ sharply on moral issues from attitudes of the general public, but shun religion and actively seek to reform society towards their views.” Search Institute, in its landmark study of the importance of religion on Capitol Hill said, “An important factor in our national ignorance of religion on Capitol Hill…is the national press. A predominant characteristic of the media elite is its secular outlook. Perhaps the reporters and commentators are unable to recognize religious influence when they see it.”

It follows that they would also not be able to recognize the true danger of an ideology such as atheistic Communism. It is no accident that Howard K. Smith, the noted television newscaster, warned during the 60’s that “the media is not giving a true picture of Vietnam,” and that the reporters are “especially naïve about Communist intentions and Ho Chi Minh.” Bias in the media, he said, was “massive” and “anti-American.”

The facts seem to be clear. Television networks are dominated by a world-view contemptuous of majority traditional values and they actively seek to impose their views on the rest of America. In this they serve as the propaganda arms of the academic establishment. In summary, it seems that “liberal” today means uneducated, uninformed, and naïve. For the media, with the power it yields, to have no understanding of the significance of contemporary events makes it a very dangerous force in American society and clearly in need of a thorough airing of the problem.

I hope you will accept my invitation to join me in airing the problem at the Symposium – Courage.”

Leonard Magruder

Mr. Rather did not respond to the letter. And when the Symposium ended, the press release prepared by Mr. Magruder summarizing the findings of the Symposium was uniformly boycotted by the New York media. More on that in Part 2.

Leonard Magruder

Academic Advisor VAF

Magruder44 <at> aol <dot> com

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by Leonard Magruder

October 23, 2006

In the 60’s-70’s, my thing was walking out in the middle of a campus anti-war protest and handing out literature showing that they were idiots. One of these protests took place at the University of Nevada in 1968, the year of the Tet Offensive. Vets returning home told me the media was lying about it coming and going.

The last of these protests took place at the University of Colorado on June 22, 1972. A Special Consultant on Mental Retardation with the State of Colorado at the time, I denounced the university for “their indoctrination of students and the manipulation by liberal faculty of students to influence national policy on Vietnam,” (Boulder Daily Camera, June 23, 1972) and charged that the American university had become nothing but “a breeding ground for indoctrination, irrationality, and subversion.” (United Press International, June 23, 1972).

Actually, this is still going on, worse than ever, with the university still producing reporters misrepresenting or hiding the ideology behind what they are reporting.

Although the Colorado protest was covered by three newspapers, four television stations, the United Press and the Associated Press, the Washington news gatekeepers would not let any of this get out to the people. Dissenters were not allowed to join the debate on the issues of the hour . Only liberals could play. The event was suppressed as incompatible with the “advocacy journalism” of the day. And that is still the way it is today.

But it was exactly this suppression of opinion contrary to their views of the war by left/liberals in the university and the media that created the polarization and breakdown in national debate in the 60’s and led directly to the loss of South Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia. And if we don’t speak out this time, and let this happen again, we are in trouble.

Years later, on May 10, 1981, at the nation’s first rally on any campus to honor the Vietnam veteran, organized with my students, I resigned my position as professor of Psychology at the college to protest “the damage done to the Vietnam veteran by the erroneous views of liberals in the university and the media in the 60’s and their perpetuation of these views.” (The Compass,” the college newspaper, May 11, 1981)

“Newsday had been notified of the rally in advance, and although a reporter was present , the newspaper did not publish the event.”(The Compass.)

It was this betrayal by the media of their rally to honor the veterans that led my students, working with local vets, to the formation of Vietnam Veterans for Academic Reform, the Manifesto of which I delivered to the White House by appointment some time during that May.

The subsequent story of our many battles with media and university versions of the Vietnam War, generally supported by Vietnam vet groups and some noted by General William C. Westmoreland, can be seen in the 10-part series, Vietnam and the Media. In response to my 31-page exposé of the lies in the CBS prime-time TV program, The Uncounted Enemy, Westmoreland wrote, “You have done an exhaustive bit of research, and I congratulate you. I am sending this to my lawyer,” (letter, September 13, 1982). Westmoreland filed a $21 million lawsuit over the program against CBS.

But the high point of our long campaign against the campus and media lies of the 60’s came in the election of 2004. The American people, by a significant majority, rejected the anti-war movement as represented by the candidacy of Senator John Kerry. But neither media nor campus accepted the defeat graciously. Nothing changed. They are still lying, and Karnow’s notorious 35-year-old history of the Vietnam War is still used at universities all over the nation, even though the bias in it triggered off riots all over the world when it appeared in TV form.

As columnist Stephen Young wrote on the 30th anniversary of the Vietnam War, “Our national recollection of the war still matches that of the New Left. No wonder certain questions are no longer asked, chief among them the question, a central one thirty years ago, of whether the U.S. involvement resulted from a tissue of lies from Washington or whether its assessment of conditions and consequent policy response to the plight of the South Vietnamese people was rational and justifiable.”

How the campus and the media lied about Vietnam is the one great trauma in the tissue of American history that has never been dealt with.

That this issue of lying about Vietnam has continued to be a problem up to today is shown by the fact that even as Kerry was being nominated at the Democratic Convention in Boston, right next door at Simmons College some of the nation’s top historians and military experts on Vietnam were holding a symposium, Examining the Myths of the Vietnam War. Out of this came the Vietnam Veterans Legacy Foundation, “A non-profit educational organization to expose the myths about Vietnam and those who perpetrate them.” The President of the group, Col. George E. Day, said in a press release, “A false history of Vietnam had been used to endanger and demoralize our troops in combat, undermine the public confidence in U.S. foreign policy and weaken our national security. Leftists lied about the war 35 years ago and are lying about it today. Our goal is to counter more than three decades of misinformation and propaganda and set the record straight.”

The media at the Convention next door knew all about this, but did not report on it to the American people. Not long after, the group published a booklet to be used on college campuses, Whitewash/Blackwash – Myths of the Vietnam War, by Bill Laurie, who is a member of our Board of Advisors, and R. J. Del Vecchio (available at TechConsultServ@Juno.com).

The truth is that even though there is now nothing that opponents of the war can point to that vindicates their position, they continue in our universities and the media to urge the nation to ignore the correct historical conclusions. To admit to having been wrong would be to face, not only guilt, but disproof of their ideological assumptions. But it is these same assumptions that are causing the wave of anti-Semitism on campus, the dangerous “Islam is peaceful” mythology, and the anti-Americanism being pressed on students: “It is because of something we did to them.”

Our contribution to the 2004 election was a number of critical articles on Kerry that may be seen at v-v-a-r.org, plus a poll we put together from data sent us by 32 Vietnam vet organizations showing that 80% of Vietnam vets were going to vote against Kerry. This story was covered in an article by United Press International.

Sometime in 1972, the American soldier having fought the war successfully to a peace treaty left South Vietnam, leaving the South Vietnamese army to fight the North alone, which they did successfully for two years until a Democratic majority in Congress, led by Senator Ted Kennedy of Chappaquiddick fame, in a totally gratuitous betrayal of an ally, cut off all their ammunition and drowned them in the South China Sea.

The American soldier won the war, but it was thrown away by the Democrats. Is this about to happen again?

The biggest uproar in the 60’s over media bias came over its reporting of the Tet Offensive. Unbelievably, as if totally unaware of this uproar charging the media with lying about the offensive, and apparently also unaware that the 2004 election was a repudiation of the anti-war position on Vietnam, New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman set off a firestorm last week by asking if the recent violence in Iraq could be seen as another Tet Offensive. In other words he was still clinging to the media interpretation that Tet had been a loss for America that so disheartened the nation that it then turned against that war.

There is a problem here. The Tet Offensive was a victory for America, but portrayed by the media as a defeat. I was there and I remember it all well. Here is the true story about that:

The Tet Offensive, which was portrayed by the New York liberal media as a defeat for the U.S., was in fact, as Westmoreland and all historians agree, an almost disastrous defeat for the North Vietnamese. Not only did they lose half of the 90,000 troops they had committed to battle, the Viet Cong was virtually destroyed.

Contrary to the expectations of the North, the people of the South took not one step to assist the invaders. Instead, they rose up in revulsion and resistance, with the government and the people galvanized into unity for the first time and volunteers for the South Vietnamese army almost doubling.

In the U.S., the facts that finally came out about the offensive, that the war was not just a “civil war,” that the South clearly did not wish to live under Communist rule and welcomed American aid, and that it was the North Vietnamese who were engaged in “genocide” and “aggression” with the mass murders at Hue and the rocket attacks on helpless civilian populations, should have ended the arguments of the “peace” movement. It was the moment of truth for those in the universities and the media. They failed the test. The lying continued with renewed fury.

The New York media, recognizing an opportunity to manipulate the news to effectively impose its view of the war on the American people created, and deliberately sustained, an image of “disaster,” even in the face of incoming battlefield reports that contradicted that image. This image was taken seriously by advisors to President Johnson, totally altering the outcome of the war at the very moment when victory might have been possible. The liberal media robbed the United States government and the American people of the ability to make critical judgments about their most vital security interests in a time of war. We need to make absolutely sure that is not what they are up to now. Wolf Blitzer and the folk at CNN are beginning to sound awfully funny to me.

In one of the most incredible phenomenon in the history of warfare, there was during this Tet period, thanks to the media, no logical connection between what was actually happening in Vietnam and response on the home front. The response to victory was despair. This is what the media calls the enemy’s “psychological victory,” which they themselves created.

And to their everlasting shame, the “peace” movement responded to any hint of success by American forces at Tet with panic, fearing that their own country might win the war. As presidential candidate George McGovern said to Vietnam vet and former Sec. of the Navy James Webb, “What you don’t understand is that I didn’t want us to win that war.” (American Enterprise Magazine, May/June 1997)

The media has always tried to dismiss the charge of having lied about the Tet Offensive as a right-wing fantasy, but in material I once distributed to Congress asking for an investigation, I quoted from 21 standard histories and commentaries on the Vietnam War, some of which follow:

“The enemy has been hurt badly, he committed a total of about 84,000 men. He lost 40,000 killed.” (Report of General Earle G. Wheeler, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, on the Tet Offensive. February 27, 1968) [Note: the allies lost 927. This is the disaster for the North Vietnamese that CBS called a “stalemate.”]

“The Allied counter-offensive following Tet destroyed the Viet Cong based in the South and was a major defeat for the North. Yet despite this victory the press in the United States turned Tet into an American defeat.” (Great Battles of the 20th Century – Sir Basil Liddell Hart)

“The North Vietnamese regulars and the Viet Cong guerrillas were defeated utterly on the battlefield. Granted the American superiority at that time, there is at least the probability that North Vietnam forces could have been destroyed.” (Crossroads of Modern Warfare – Drew Middleton)

“Newsmen countered official claims of a Communist defeat by saying that even if it were true (which they refused to accept as they did the official account of enemy losses) the communists had achieved a psychological victory.” (The Vietnam War – an international panel of historians)

“This is the only war lost in the columns of The New York Times. They created an image of South Vietnam that was as distant from the truth as not even to be a good caricature. There were those who invented, distorted, and lied. (Certain Victory - Dennis Warner)

“Visitors to the Lyndon Johnson Library are told, “While the President was reading reports from the war that made it clear that the enemy had suffered a severe military loss (Tet), newspaper and TV gave the impression that the loss was ours and that defeat was imminent.” (New York Times News Service)

“COSVN, Viet Cong Headquarters, in its internal report #6, March 1968, admitted the Tet Offensive had been a failure. ‘We failed to seize a number of primary objectives. We also failed to hold the occupied areas. In the political field we failed to motivate the people to stage uprisings.’”(The Magruder Expose – Leonard Magruder)

“For the first time in modern history, the outcome of a war was determined not on the battlefield but on the printed page and television screens – never before Vietnam had the collective policy of the media sought, by graphic and unremitting distortion, the victory of the enemies of the correspondents own side.” (Encounter-British journalist Robert Elegant)

“Jack Fern of NBC suggested to producer Robert Northfield that NBC do a documentary showing that Tet was indeed a decisive military victory for the United States. ‘We can’t,’ said Northfield, ‘Tet is already established in the public mind as a defeat.’ (Between Fact and Fiction – Edward J. Epstein)

“When General Westmoreland publicly announced that the Tet Offensive had been a major defeat for the Communists and a major victory for the Allied forces, a fact obvious to anyone who viewed the events dispassionately, he was treated like a self-deluding fool by the news media.” (Battles and Campaigns – Tom Carhart)

“The Tet Offensive proved catastrophic to our plans. It is a major irony of the Vietnam War that our propaganda transformed this debacle into a brilliant victory. The truth was that Tet cost us half our forces. Our losses were so immense that we were unable to replace them with new recruits.”(Truong Nhu Tang – Minister of Justice – Viet Cong Provisional Revolutionary Government - The New York Review, October 21, 1982)

“If there is to be an inquiry related to the Vietnam War, it should be into the reasons why enemy propaganda was so widespread in this country, and why the enemy was able to condition the public to such an extent that the best educated segments of our population (that is, media and university elite) gave credence to the most incredible allegations.” (Final Report – Chief of Military History – U.S. Government)

The suggestion that the media and university may once again be setting the stage for another, even more deadly betrayal, to forward their philosophical agendas, is seen in this article by German Munoz, professor of international relations at Miami Dade College. He recently wrote:

“The story being missed, or purposively kept away from the American people, is the direct connection between the actions of Muslim terrorists and the commands of Allah and Muhammad in the Koran. Our secularized elites do not want us to understand or discuss the religious base underlying the terrorists’ political agenda for world domination. If they would read the Koran, they would find out that Allah wants Muslims to kill the infidels (Koran 9:5) wherever they are found. That the heads and fingers of unbelievers should be cut off, and that Muslims should fight and humiliate Jews and Christians.

“Why are the establishment media and academia keeping all this information from the American public? These are the types who sacrifice national security on the altar of political correctness and of a self-righteousness and irresponsible tolerance. They cannot be trusted to provide America the accurate information Americans need to protect themselves. These killers have not ‘hijacked’ Islam as our elites argue absurdly. They are implementing verses found in the Koran itself.

“The crucial thing now is how to inform the American people about the religious threat to their existence. The first step is to tell the truth about the Koran and its impact on the present jihad.”

The point:

We know the media lied about Vietnam to further the goals of the leftist anti-war movement. We know Dan Rather and others lied about Bush to help the Democrats in 2004. Is it lying again to further an agenda of defeating the Republicans and getting the U.S. to abandon Iraq?

Under no circumstances should the media ever use the case of Vietnam to make a point about the war in Iraq. For the simple reason that the Vietnam War they have in mind is a fiction they invented. It never existed.

The importance of still trying to tell the truth about Vietnam, that it was a noble cause betrayed to tyranny and genocide by the student left on campus in the 60’s, is that this would discredit and throw into disarray the left that is tyrannizing our universities and creating a polarization on the war against terrorism that could lead the nation down the path to destruction.

***

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Leonard Magruder

Academic Advisor VAF

Magruder44@aol.com

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By Michael Fowler

Edmund Burke said, “All that is necessary for evil to prevail is for good men to do nothing.” Whereas pacifism—as promoted by Leo Tolstoy, the moral hero of the left—demands that good men do nothing even in the face of genocide.

Liberal pacifism is subversive theology designed to disarm Christians from ethics. It is rhetoric expounded to Christians not to fight against evil by people who reject Christianity, rather than a moral code. Christians can and must fight when fighting is more ethical than not fighting. It was ethical to fight the Nazi’s to free the world from Hitler’s jack-booted brutality; it was ethical to fight the North Vietnamese Army to prevent the killing and enslavement of millions of Vietnamese.

Iraqi woman at mass grave in Iraq

When the history of the Liberal pacifists is examined all that is seen is blood. Anti-war activists successfully protested and forced the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Vietnam that resulted in the killing of 1.4 million Vietnamese by Ho Chi Min’s forces. Vietnamese “boat people” were dying in the Pacific, while President Jimmy Carter did nothing. As Serbians attempted to fight off the Islamic Crusade, the left made up false reports of genocide, needlessly destroyed bridges, hospitals, and defended the bombing on Easter. When American Forces freed Kuwait from Saddam, the pacifists cried foul. Iraqis were freed from Saddam’s genocide of over 400,000 and leftists wanted the United States to pull out and leave them to the wolves as President Barack Obama’s administration is doing as we speak. Yes, they are pacifists, with other people’s blood.

Fr. Stanley S. Harakas, dean emeritus of Holy Cross School of Theology in Boston stated, “The just war theory holds that war is an evil, and seeks to make it less so.” This was Patrick Henry’s appeal in his Give me Liberty or Give me Death speech, “Gentlemen may cry, Peace, Peace– but there is no peace. The war is actually begun! …Our brethren are already in the field! Why stand we here idle?” When war exists, fighting it or standing in ethical opposition to it is to reduce its effects. To prove this, I need only submit millions of Russian Orthodox corpses killed by those who earlier extorted Tolstoy’s pacifism. Moral authority cannot be claimed when standing aside in permissiveness to allow murder.

Liberal pacifism is the soothing lie of communists who know that so long as people still believe in God and ethics, communism cannot win. They have learned that killing millions will not effectively change culture. They now believe that the best way to change culture is to corrupt its theology rather than eliminate it outright, because man is a “religious animal.”

Pacifism cannot be justified from Christian ethics, so they corrupt them. Pacifists will point to the Old Testament teaching of “Thou shall not kill.” Yet, they show themselves hypocrites when three pages later the explanation of the law is, “Anyone who curses his father or mother must be put to death.” (Exodus 21:17), a law they will reject. Thus, “Thou shall not kill” refers to murder and manslaughter.

Pacifists proclaim, “Turn the other cheek” as Christ taught. Christ also approved of the Law of Moses, and when Roman soldiers confronted him and asked the open question, “What about us?” He did not tell them to lay down their weapons of war and killing, rather “your pay is enough,” do not use extortion. (Luke 3:14) When Christ says turn the other cheek, this is not permission to allow others to murder, rape and pillage, nor is it the end of civil authority.

Liberal pacifism is not the pacifism of Quakers who refuse to be involved and separate from society. Quakers believe in the totality of scripture. Whereas Liberals only use “thou shall not kill” as the one law they wish to use to fetter all that resist them. Meaning “thou shall not kill me.”

The faith of a Liberal pacifist is one who has abandoned all of God’s tenets and adopted the law of witchcraft, “harm none, and do what thou will.” They erroneously assert themselves as the highest moral authority and above Christianity because “small-minded Christians still believe in killing. Therefore we, the pacifists, are superior in our morals;” morals that only extend as far as their own noses.
Pacifism of liberals is merely a weapon to disarm their opponents in order to take control of the levers of power. They are not truly interested in morals but in the acquisition of power over the people. How else can their actions be justified? Thinking that liberals believe in pacifism is as foolish as Neville Chamberlain’s belief in Adolf Hitler’s peace treaty. Pacifism as preached by liberals is only a seduction to allow the promulgation of evil, whereas love as preached by Christians is to destroy evil.

-Michael Fowler is the director of Veterans for Academic Freedom, a former Force Recon Marine, instructor of Christian apologetics, author and talk-radio host.

http://www.ebireflections.org/index.php?vol=001_vol&iss=007_issue&section=03_foreign_affairs&item=01_foreign_affairs.html#id03_foreign_affairs

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