I saw things from the perspective of a child whose father was sent to fight in that war (whether he wanted to go or not, doesn’t matter) it matters that he was there. It matters what the teachers who were supposed to be educating me said..I had very liberal teachers while telling me my dad was a ‘baby killer’ and that spread to my classmates saying the same thing. Imagine being on the playground in 1st, 2nd, and 3rd grade and having other children call you a supporter of ‘killing babies” because your dad was called to war.

However, the irony was NOT lost on me (even at that young age) that these same people who were calling my dad a baby killer, and calling me one who supports the killing of these babies..were the same ones who were screaming for legalized abortions. They hated the killing of innocent babies except when it came to their own or other American’s to be–I did not support killing babies in Vietnam and I do not support the killing of babies through abortion..

My teachers wanted us to debate the war, and they always called on me to debate the side in favor of the war, knowing full well the entire class would then go on a verbal barrage against me (including the teacher)–not just in class but on the playground, during lunch and walking home from school.

My conservative views were formed from a very early age and yes, they were formed based on emotion..and from seeing the very very ugly side of liberalism at a very young age.

So while I posted in another segment of your history If your not a liberal in your 20’s you have no heart, and if your not a conservative by your 40’s you have no brain..I skipped the liberal stage–some may say I don’t have a heart..but I know I do..

“This is not a fact.”

Well, rather belatedly, but it was originally (vis-a-vis the Geneva treaty which ended the French Indochina war) intended to be a temporary accord with Vietnam-wide elections to be held in July of 1956. But when the North evidenced systematic bad faith, it became a de facto sovereignty/border dispute which eventuated in the protracted conflict.

Neo and the rest:
The bloodbath was made by Pol Pot in Cambodia. Which surprised everybody in the States. The Vietnamese were the ones who put an end to it. So the bar of what constitutes a bloodbath was set high.

And the Vietnamese were perceived to have preferred the Communist government over the US-backed government. The pain the government inflicted was seen (by us) as being legitimate in the eyes of the Vietnamese. The US has 2 million people in jail now, but it is largely seen as legitimate by the American people. A good essayist (especially outside the US) could make it seem as horrible as we see the Vietnamese re-education camps today.

Also, not known, the “South Vietnamese” government was deeply infiltrated by the communists and was inneffective, for that and other reasons. This is supported by a pretty good book by Neil Sheehan “A bright and shining lie”. Well worth reading. The book is about the war and an American officer John Paul Vann. Vann didn’t write the book, he was dead by then.

Reagrading the “myths” you cited from Thomas Lipscomb (NYPost):
The 1954 Indo-china Cessation Of Hostilities Agreement hammered out in Geneva can be found under Command Paper 9239, Great Britain Parlimentary Sessional Papers, XXXI. London, 1953/54, pp.9-11, also 27-38, also the follow up Internaional Control Commision reports on the monitoring of the Cease-fire zones. I would ask you not to believe me, or Mr. Lipscomb, but to get a copy and read it yourself.

Firstly the Agreement guaranteed Vietnam’s territorial integrity throughtout, referring repeatedly to the demarcation line as “provisional”, pending elections”.
Neither the North or South were ever “sovereign countries” as you state, as they were never accepted into the U.N. Being an internationally brokered Cessasation of Hostilities Agreement, ending a terribly ugly international conflict, any threat to it would constitute a “threat to peace” under international law, a war crime. France and Representitives of the North, the Viet Minh, signed the document because they were the belligerents in the Cessastion of Hostilities Agreement. Just because “we” didn’t sign it didn’t mean we weren’t bound to it under international law. We didn’t have to sign it, because we weren’t one of the belligerents, we weren’t at war (yet anyway). Again, any threat to the agreement would constitute a threat to peace, a war crime. Not America’s first. You can read the ICC monitoring reports yourself, documenting in detail infringements of the cease-fire agreement.

Neither do I see the logic in starting yet another war “to save 10,000,000 people from slavery”, as it was as false a statement then as it is now, a McCarthy era demonization that has no place in justifying our crimes then or today. That perhaps those non-catholic Vietnamese that wanted to feed their people (a third of Vietnam’s population died of starvation in W.W.II under French-japanese collaboration, feeding two armies) and break the chains of colonial slavery were anything other then devils to American’s is more a testimony to U.S.-Cold war brain-washing techniques then what actually happened in North Vietnam, or any other communist country for that matter.

Lipscomb is not the first either to remind us of Vietnamese “voting with their feet” in their mass migration south, into the French zone, undeniable proof the Vietnamese were refuting Ho Chi Minh. Firstly, most Catholics were in the North, as Hanoi was the administrative capital of their Colonial Administration. And almost all those regrouping were Catholic. In addition it would be negligent to overlook the fact that the U.S. military was running an enormous scare campaign, dropping leaflets identifying where we were going to drop Atom bombs on the North for instance, and horrific stories of Communist atrocities to come. The message: “get out while you still can”, Ho Chi Minh was going to cut the babies out of pregnant mothers and eat them (I’m not making this up). These U.S. militry scare tactics are documented, and one can easily access them from U.S. military archives, if you care to look. Having said that there were few Viet Minh southerner’s in the North, and many saw no need to go north because the zones were to be united soon anyway. Besides, if we were so sure of ourselves we would have had a ballot count, not a foot count (and a U.S. tax payer scare campaign).

I will not respond to “Ho Chi Minh’s Maoist liquidations and despotic regime in general, prior to Geneva”, ..because I don’t have time. But you can be sure I will 🙂

In the meantime perhaps you can look up “The Myth of the Bloodbath”, by D. Gareth Porter, International Relations of East Asia,, Cornell University, Interim Report No.2, September 1972. Also “Land Reform in China and North Vietnam”, Edwin Moise, Assistant Professor of History (now professor), Clemson University, University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill and London, 1983.

“Origins of the Sourthern Resistance (the NLF) will have to wait for another sitting as well. I hope we can “read the whole thing” together, for I believe it is you who is “given to vacantly repeating the historical dogmas of the would-be betters” ..on the Right.

Until then.

I did not say you “have a dislike or hatred” for me. I said you had some rage and some anger. I differentiated that from a personal hatred for me. And I based my statement about rage and anger on the fact that you came in here accusing me of two pretty nasty things: the first, that I was only against the Vietnam War originally because it was “cool” at the time (therefore accusing me not only of lying here, but of being shallow and thoughtless), and the second, having lied about ever having been a “leftist.” Both statements demonstrate anger on your part, I believe–an anger that you have backed off from quite a bit in subsequent posts.

Your statement that I (and my fellow neocons) don’t have to rewrite my past or erase it is beyond puzzling; it simply makes no sense in the context of these posts. What I am actually doing here is writing about and facing my past, which is the opposite of rewriting it (changing the story) or erasing it (eliminating the story).