Walter Cronkite's Ridiculous Spin on the 1968 Tet Offensive in South Vietnam

[Hector12]

They often did

Can you show me a news story of that happening?

 

[mikegriffith1]

Guess who said this about the Tet Offensive on February 13, 1968, two weeks after it began and after most of the fighting was over:

First and simplest, the Viet Cong suffered a military defeat. Its missions proved suicidal. If they intended to stay in the cities as a negotiating point, they failed at that. The Vietnamese army reacted better than even its most ardent supporters had anticipated. There were no defections from its ranks, as the Viet Cong apparently had expected. And, the people did not rise to support the Viet Cong, as they also were believed to have expected.

This was spot-on reporting. This was the televised report that Walter Cronkite filed from South Vietnam on February 13, 1968. This footage was buried until recent years. It is included in the AVVBA documentary Truth and Myths About the Vietnam War (13:12-14:03 in the video).

North Vietnamese sources later confirmed that Hanoi’s leaders truly believed that the South Vietnamese people would rise up and help the NVA and the VC overthrow the Saigon government after the offensive began. They also believed that the South Vietnamese army (ARVN) would collapse after the offensive began. Hanoi’s leaders were so certain about these beliefs that, incredibly, they did not even make withdrawal plans, a grievous error that caused many casualties after the attacks were repulsed.

Yet, Cronkite, just 13 days after giving the above spot-on report, got on national TV and offered the inexcusable, erroneous spin that Tet proved that the war was an unwinnable stalemate.

Using Cronkite’s warped logic, American news outlets should have reported in the first two weeks of the Battle of the Bulge that the battle proved that the predictions of imminent German collapse were unfounded, that the government had been lying to us, and that perhaps we should seek a negotiated end to the war. But, of course, no one but the Germans spewed such propaganda, and we and the Allies did not halt our bombing of Germany and did not issue a call for peace negotiations in response to the German offensive.

In stark contrast to how we responded to the Battle of the Bulge, in response to Tet the American media painted a smashing victory as a sobering defeat and LBJ lost his nerve, announced a halt to all bombing north of the 19th parallel, and issued a call for peace negotiations. Just imagine if the media had done this during the Battle of the Bulge and if FDR, Churchill, and Stalin had halted all bombing of Berlin and had called for peace negotiations.

As I’ve noted, the Bulge and Tet situations were not identical, but they were not that drastically different either. Certainly, 1944 Germany was in worse shape than 1968 North Vietnam. But we now know that Hanoi’s leaders were initially shocked by the scale of the Communist defeat in Tet, that the VC were essentially wiped out as a viable fighting force, and that NVA-VC morale was devastated.

The most conservative figure for NVA-VC killed-in-action (KIA) during Tet puts the number at 12,800 out of the 84,000-man attacking force, with 22,300 wounded, for a staggering casualty rate of 41%. And those numbers are most likely low.

Many history books overlook the fact that Hanoi’s leaders, buoyed by the American media’s coverage of Tet and by LBJ’s display of weakness, recovered from their initial shock over Tet’s failure and launched two follow-up offensives, one in May and the other in August, known as Mini-Tet and Phase III respectively, both of which ended in severe Communist defeats and enormous losses.

About 60,000 Communist soldiers (the vast majority of them NVA) took part in Mini-Tet and in Phase III, as opposed to the 84,000 who participated in Tet. Mini-Tet only lasted four weeks. Phase III lasted six weeks, running from August 17 to September 27, and was an even worse debacle than Tet and Mini-Tet.

The most conservative estimate for total Communist losses in Mini-Tet and Phase III is 32,000 KIAs and 38,000 wounded. Both numbers are very probably low. The weaker attacks and the higher casualty rates in Mini-Tet and Phase III were due to the use of new, inexperienced soldiers who were rushed to the south to fill the decimated ranks of the NVA and VC units that had taken part in Tet.

Indeed, major Communist operations in 1968 ceased with the end of Phase III in late September. By December 1968, even Communist harassment attacks (local ambushes and village raids) had dropped to their lowest level in two years. Desertions among the NVA-VC began to rise sharply, with over 10,000 in 1968. A whopping 49,000 NVA-VC soldiers deserted in 1969. Many of these deserters renounced communism and became South Vietnamese citizens.

Hanoi’s thugs had blundered horrendously and suffered three devastating defeats in 1968, but the Johnson administration was crippled with doubt and hesitancy and refused to take advantage of this golden opportunity to end the war.

If we had occupied southeastern Laos and the eastern strip of Cambodia after Tet, this would have ended North Vietnam’s use of the Ho Chi Minh Trail, making it impossible for them to move large numbers of troops and supplies into South Vietnam and effectively stranding the NVA forces that were still in the south. With only a trickle of incoming supplies, the NVA units in the south could have been easily isolated and smashed in detail. And if we had carried out sustained Linebacker II bombing and mined Haiphong Harbor after Tet, Hanoi’s air defenses would have vanished in a matter of days (as they did during Linebacker II in December 1972) and Hanoi’s import tonnage would have been cut by at least 80% (as it was when we mined Haiphong Harbor and other harbors in mid-1972).

We could have ended the war in a matter of months if we had taken these actions right after Tet in 1968. If we had taken them at the end of Phase III, we may have ended the war in a matter of weeks.

 

[Hector12]

Guess who said this about the Tet Offensive on February 13, 1968, two weeks after it began and after most of the fighting was over:

First and simplest, the Viet Cong suffered a military defeat. Its missions proved suicidal. If they intended to stay in the cities as a negotiating point, they failed at that. The Vietnamese army reacted better than even its most ardent supporters had anticipated. There were no defections from its ranks, as the Viet Cong apparently had expected. And, the people did not rise to support the Viet Cong, as they also were believed to have expected.

The Communist Tet Offensive was a great propaganda victory for the Communists. It pumped vigor into the American anti war movement. It guaranteed the eventual Communist Victory. Communist soldiers who died in the Tet Offensive did not die in vain.

 

[mikegriffith1]

The Communist Tet Offensive was a great propaganda victory for the Communists.

Only because of our news media. Only because of the warped, dishonest way that our news media reported the offensive.

It pumped vigor into the American anti war movement.

But it also caused a much larger majority of Americans to support a stronger war effort. Did you not watch the video by Dr. James Robbins that I linked in a previous reply? He presents the polling numbers. He also documents them in his book This Time We Win: Revisiting the Tet Offensive.

It guaranteed the eventual Communist Victory.

It did no such thing. Tet decimated the Viet Cong. Go read what former VC leader Truong Nhu Tang said about Tet in his book A Vietcong Memoir.

Tet essentially wiped out the VC as a southern-based fighting force; from that point on, the majority of VC soldiers were NVA replacements. The VC basically ceased to exist in many areas after Tet. Because of Tet, an even larger percentage of the rural areas came under ARVN/GVN control from 1969 onward. These facts are confirmed by North Vietnamese sources.

Communist soldiers who died in the Tet Offensive did not die in vain.

Yikes. Are you saying that the Communist victory was a good thing? Do you know that the Communists executed over 60,000 South Vietnamese after Saigon fell? Do you know that the Communists sent some 800,000 other South Vietnamese to brutal concentration camps ("reeducation" camps), where at least another 40,000 died from starvation, maltreatment, and harsh labor?

Former VC official Truong Nhu Tang described the tyranny that North Vietnam imposed on the south as a "reign of terror." You should read his firsthand account of the mass looting, the oppression, and the brutality that the NVA imposed on the South Vietnamese. Some of his own family ended up in concentration camps. This tyranny was what caused him to leave Vietnam and come to America.

 

[Hector12]

Only because of our news media. Only because of the warped, dishonest way that our news media reported the offensive.


But it also caused a much larger majority of Americans to support a stronger war effort. Did you not watch the video by Dr. James Robbins that I linked in a previous reply? He presents the polling numbers. He also documents them in his book This Time We Win: Revisiting the Tet Offensive.


It did no such thing. Tet decimated the Viet Cong. Go read what former VC leader Truong Nhu Tang said about Tet in his book A Vietcong Memoir.

Tet essentially wiped out the VC as a southern-based fighting force; from that point on, the majority of VC soldiers were NVA replacements. The VC basically ceased to exist in many areas after Tet. Because of Tet, an even larger percentage of the rural areas came under ARVN/GVN control from 1969 onward. These facts are confirmed by North Vietnamese sources.



Yikes. Are you saying that the Communist victory was a good thing? Do you know that the Communists executed over 60,000 South Vietnamese after Saigon fell? Do you know that the Communists sent some 800,000 other South Vietnamese to brutal concentration camps ("reeducation" camps), where at least another 40,000 died from starvation, maltreatment, and harsh labor?

Former VC official Truong Nhu Tang described the tyranny that North Vietnam imposed on the south as a "reign of terror." You should read his firsthand account of the mass looting, the oppression, and the brutality that the NVA imposed on the South Vietnamese. Some of his own family ended up in concentration camps. This tyranny was what caused him to leave Vietnam and come to America.

Only because of our news media. Only because of the warped, dishonest way that our news media reported the offensive.


But it also caused a much larger majority of Americans to support a stronger war effort. Did you not watch the video by Dr. James Robbins that I linked in a previous reply? He presents the polling numbers. He also documents them in his book This Time We Win: Revisiting the Tet Offensive.


It did no such thing. Tet decimated the Viet Cong. Go read what former VC leader Truong Nhu Tang said about Tet in his book A Vietcong Memoir.

Tet essentially wiped out the VC as a southern-based fighting force; from that point on, the majority of VC soldiers were NVA replacements. The VC basically ceased to exist in many areas after Tet. Because of Tet, an even larger percentage of the rural areas came under ARVN/GVN control from 1969 onward. These facts are confirmed by North Vietnamese sources.



Yikes. Are you saying that the Communist victory was a good thing? Do you know that the Communists executed over 60,000 South Vietnamese after Saigon fell? Do you know that the Communists sent some 800,000 other South Vietnamese to brutal concentration camps ("reeducation" camps), where at least another 40,000 died from starvation, maltreatment, and harsh labor?

Former VC official Truong Nhu Tang described the tyranny that North Vietnam imposed on the south as a "reign of terror." You should read his firsthand account of the mass looting, the oppression, and the brutality that the NVA imposed on the South Vietnamese. Some of his own family ended up in concentration camps. This tyranny was what caused him to leave Vietnam and come to America.

The War in Vietnam is over. The Communists won. Get used to it.

 

[John Edgar Slow Horses]

Tet was a military defeat but a victory of morale for the communists. It broke the will of the American citizenry to continue the war.

 

[Mr Natural]

The War in Vietnam is over. The Communists won. Get used to it.

And now they’re making our T shirts and sneakers.

 

[mikegriffith1]

Tet was a military defeat but a victory of morale for the communists. It broke the will of the American citizenry to continue the war.

It actually did not break the American people's will to continue the war. Polls showed that Tet actually caused a larger percentage of Americans to support a more aggressive war effort. Dr. Robbins reviews all the poll numbers in his lecture and book. So does Dr. Mark Moyar in Victory Regained.

Hector12 said:
The War in Vietnam is over. The Communists won. Get used to it.

You again resort to juvenile polemic after your arguments get refuted. You seem to have no interest in genuine discussion or serious research.

FYI, Vietnam remains one of the most repressive, brutal regimes on the planet, even according to liberal human rights groups such as Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International. Go read their reports on Vietnam for the last 30 years, starting with last year.

Beginning in the 1990s, the Communist thugs running Vietnam finally began to allow some free enterprise, which has markedly increased the standard of living, but they continue to violently deny the basic rights of freedom of speech, freedom of movement, freedom of religion, freedom of the press, and freedom of association.

The only difference between Vietnam and North Korea is that Vietnam's Communist thugs have decided to allow a certain amount of free enterprise.

Had it not been for people like you, we could have kept South Vietnam independent, and South Vietnam would have become another prosperous Asian democracy ala South Korea and Taiwan.

 

[Hector12]

And now they’re making our T shirts and sneakers.

And my underpants.

That war would have been so easy for us to avoid. All we had to do was to sign and honor the Geneva Agreement of 1954.

 

[John Edgar Slow Horses]

Actually it did, MikeGriffith1, and continued every year, until Nixon gave in.

Stay with the history.

 

[John Edgar Slow Horses]

The poll numbers were not the real expression of American feelings.

The growing marches and moratoriums etc reflected the will of the people, Mike.

 

[mikegriffith1]

Actually it did, MikeGriffith1, and continued every year, until Nixon gave in.

Stay with the history.

The poll numbers were not the real expression of American feelings.

The growing marches and moratoriums etc reflected the will of the people, Mike.

Actually, it did not. Did you watch the Robbins video and catch the poll numbers?

Dr. Mark Moyar talks about the polling numbers in his recent book Triumph Regained:

The precipitous drop in support for Johnson was not accompanied by a similar decline in American popular support for the war. Following the surge in hawkish sentiment in February, support for hawkish measures subsided in March as Johnson rejected escalation and pursued diplomacy, but there was no rise in sentiment for American withdrawal. On March 25, pollster Louis Harris reported that a poll just taken had found that 72 percent of Americans believed that “we are right in trying to stop the Communists without getting Chinese or Russian troops into the war,” while only 13 percent disagreed with that statement. . . .

The American people persisted in supporting the war in February and March 1968 because of their enduring perception that international Communism threatened the United States and because of their conviction that the nation had to stand firm when subjected to a devious sneak attack. At Tet, as at other times of international crisis, most Americans rallied around the flag, believing that national security demanded national unity. Contrary to what doves had hoped and hawks had feared, the gloom-ridden and unduly negative reporting of the press did not cause a loss of heart among many Americans, excepting the liberal elites. (pp. 445-446)

Dr. Robbins delves even more deeply into the poll numbers in his book This Time We Win: Revisiting the Tet Offensive:

More important, the American people’s response to Tet was not defeatist. In fact, the Tet attacks made the country more belligerent. A Harris survey taken February 3–4 showed that 61% of the public believed the Tet Offensive justified continued bombing of the North, compared to 15% that didn’t. By 48% to 29% the public believed the Tet attacks were useful because they brought the enemy out into the open, where they could be engaged, which if nothing else demonstrated that the public had a better grasp of the basic problem of counterinsurgency warfare than much of the press. And 43% believed allied forces would win the battle, as opposed to 3% who felt the enemy would win.

A Gallup poll released February 6 showed similar results. According to this survey, 69% wanted to continue the bombing campaign in the North, up from 63% in October 1967. The number calling for a bombing halt dropped from 27% to 16%. The poll also showed that the Tet attacks had made America more hawkish: the percentage self-identifying as “hawks” climbed from 52% in December 1967 to 56% in early January 1968 to 60% in the week after the start of Tet. (p. 255)

And, FYI, there were plenty of pro-war demonstrations and marches, but they rarely got news coverage, even though they were often as large or larger than the anti-war protests.

That war would have been so easy for us to avoid. All we had to do was to sign and honor the Geneva Agreement of 1954.

This is as surreal and bizarre as saying that all we had to do to avoid the Korean War was to withhold weapons and aid from South Korea before North Korea invaded.

We did not sign the 1954 Geneva Accords (1) because they did not allow for a free and fair election, and (2) because they ignored the fact that Ho Chi Minh had solidified his control of the North Vietnamese government by murdering numerous northern non-communist nationalist leaders, by shutting down any newspapers and radio stations that did not parrot the Communist line, and by setting up a Stalinist regime of oppression over the northern population.

I'm guessing you are unaware that Ho and the Communists came to power in the north through murder and repression, and that North Vietnam began violating the Geneva Accords almost as soon as the ink was dry on them. You really should do some serious reading on this issue. You could start with Dr. Pierre Asselin's book Hanoi's Road to the Vietnam War, 1954-1965 and with Dr. Christopher Goscha's book The Road to Dien Bien Phu: A History of the First War for Vietnam.

 

[John Edgar Slow Horses]

Mike, if you wish to keep embarrassing yourself, go for it.

I bet you are one of those "spit on troops" deniers during Vietnam and after.

 

[Hector12]

Actually, it did not. Did you watch the Robbins video and catch the poll numbers?

Dr. Mark Moyar talks about the polling numbers in his recent book Triumph Regained:

The precipitous drop in support for Johnson was not accompanied by a similar decline in American popular support for the war. Following the surge in hawkish sentiment in February, support for hawkish measures subsided in March as Johnson rejected escalation and pursued diplomacy, but there was no rise in sentiment for American withdrawal. On March 25, pollster Louis Harris reported that a poll just taken had found that 72 percent of Americans believed that “we are right in trying to stop the Communists without getting Chinese or Russian troops into the war,” while only 13 percent disagreed with that statement. . . .

The American people persisted in supporting the war in February and March 1968 because of their enduring perception that international Communism threatened the United States and because of their conviction that the nation had to stand firm when subjected to a devious sneak attack. At Tet, as at other times of international crisis, most Americans rallied around the flag, believing that national security demanded national unity. Contrary to what doves had hoped and hawks had feared, the gloom-ridden and unduly negative reporting of the press did not cause a loss of heart among many Americans, excepting the liberal elites. (pp. 445-446)

Dr. Robbins delves even more deeply into the poll numbers in his book This Time We Win: Revisiting the Tet Offensive:

More important, the American people’s response to Tet was not defeatist. In fact, the Tet attacks made the country more belligerent. A Harris survey taken February 3–4 showed that 61% of the public believed the Tet Offensive justified continued bombing of the North, compared to 15% that didn’t. By 48% to 29% the public believed the Tet attacks were useful because they brought the enemy out into the open, where they could be engaged, which if nothing else demonstrated that the public had a better grasp of the basic problem of counterinsurgency warfare than much of the press. And 43% believed allied forces would win the battle, as opposed to 3% who felt the enemy would win.

A Gallup poll released February 6 showed similar results. According to this survey, 69% wanted to continue the bombing campaign in the North, up from 63% in October 1967. The number calling for a bombing halt dropped from 27% to 16%. The poll also showed that the Tet attacks had made America more hawkish: the percentage self-identifying as “hawks” climbed from 52% in December 1967 to 56% in early January 1968 to 60% in the week after the start of Tet. (p. 255)

And, FYI, there were plenty of pro-war demonstrations and marches, but they rarely got news coverage, even though they were often as large or larger than the anti-war protests.



This is as surreal and bizarre as saying that all we had to do to avoid the Korean War was to withhold weapons and aid from South Korea before North Korea invaded.

We did not sign the 1954 Geneva Accords (1) because they did not allow for a free and fair election, and (2) because they ignored the fact that Ho Chi Minh had solidified his control of the North Vietnamese government by murdering numerous northern non-communist nationalist leaders, by shutting down any newspapers and radio stations that did not parrot the Communist line, and by setting up a Stalinist regime of oppression over the northern population.

I'm guessing you are unaware that Ho and the Communists came to power in the north through murder and repression, and that North Vietnam began violating the Geneva Accords almost as soon as the ink was dry on them. You really should do some serious reading on this issue. You could start with Dr. Pierre Asselin's book Hanoi's Road to the Vietnam War, 1954-1965 and with Dr. Christopher Goscha's book The Road to Dien Bien Phu: A History of the First War for Vietnam.

Ho Chi Minh came to power in North Vietnam because he successfully led an independence struggle against French colonialism. That is why the Communists eventually won in the South also.

 

[Soupnazi630]

Ho Chi Minh came to power in North Vietnam because he successfully led an independence struggle against French colonialism. That is why the Communists eventually won in the South also.

He siezed power he did not ascend to power he then slaughtered tens of thousands who disagreed with him

he was a slaver not a liberator

 

[Hector12]

He siezed power he did not ascend to power he then slaughtered tens of thousands who disagreed with him

he was a slaver not a liberator

Ho won because most of the Vietnamese supported him. We should have left Vietnam alone.

When the Communist won in the South Newsweek and Time ran cover pictures of triumphant, victorious Communist soldiers, with the words, "The Winning Side." By then a lot of Americans in important positions wanted the Communists to win. Many additional Americans had tired of the forever war in Vietnam.

My own views on the War in Vietnam followed the usual trajectory. Initially I wanted total victory in Vietnam. I believed, with no evidence, that 90% of the South Vietnamese supported the South Vietnamese government. Right now even Trump thinks the War in Vietnam was wrong.

As I learned more about the War I came to favor a negotiated, compromise settlement. When the War finally ended I was glad, and did not care that the Communists won.

 

[mikegriffith1]

I wonder how many of the anti-war people in this thread know who Doan Van Toai was. I bet none of them have heard of him, much less read his book and articles. Toai was a leading South Vietnamese pro-communist and anti-war activist who welcomed the Communist victory and who assured his fellow citizens they had nothing to fear from an NVA triumph. After the Communists took over, he soon realized he had been badly duped and horribly wrong.

Toai was elected vice president of the Saigon University Student Union in 1969 and led student demonstrations against the Saigon government and American intervention. He published an anti-war magazine titled Self-Determination. He traveled to America in 1971 to give anti-war lectures at Berkeley and Stanford.

In 1986, he wrote a book titled The Vietnamese Gulag to share his experiences and awakening. The book is available for free online on the Internet Archive website (LINK). You can also order the hardcover version on Amazon.

Here’s an excerpt from a long article Toai wrote in 1981 titled “A Lament for Vietnam,” which was published in the New York Times on March 29, 1981:

Naively, I believed that the Hanoi regime at least had the virtue of being Vietnamese, while the Americans were foreign invaders like the French before them. Like others in the South Vietnamese opposition movements, I believed that our Communist compatriots in the North would be more amenable to compromise and easier to work with than the Americans. Moreover, I was hypnotized by the personal sacrifices and devotion the Communist leaders had demonstrated. Ton Duc Thang, former President of North Vietnam, for example, had been imprisoned for 17 years in a French jail.

I was hypnotized also by the political programs advocated by the N.L.F., which included a domestic policy of national reconciliation, without risk of reprisal, and a foreign policy of nonalignment. Finally, I was influenced by progressive movements throughout the world and by the most prestigious intellectuals in the West. My impression was that during the 1960’s and early 70’s the leaders of the American peace movement shared my convictions.

These convictions endured through the signing of the 1973 Paris peace accords and the subsequent collapse of the South Vietnamese Government two years later. When liberation was imminent, I was the one who told friends and relatives not to flee. “Why do you want to leave?” I asked. “Why are you afraid of the Communists?” I accepted the prospect of enduring hardships to rebuild my country and I decided to stay in Vietnam and continue working as a branch manager at a Saigon bank, where I had been for more than four years, writing secret reports about the economic situation in South Vietnam for the N.L.F. (After leaving the university, I had not been drafted by the South Vietnamese Government because I was the only son in my family. And I had not joined the Vietcong because the N.L.F. felt I could serve a more useful role providing financial reports from the bank.). . . .

Several days after Saigon fell, the Provisional Revolutionary Government, formed by the N.L.F., asked me to join the finance committee, a group of intellectuals whose job it was to advise the Government on matters of economic policy. I complied willingly, taking a pay cut of 90 percent.

My first assignment was to help draw up a plan for confiscating all the private property in South Vietnam. Shocked, I proposed that we should expropriate only the property of those who had cooperated with the former regime and those who had used the war to become rich, and that we distribute it in some fashion to the poor and to the victims of the war, Communist and non-Communist alike. My proposals, of course, were rejected. I was naive enough to think that the local cadres were mistaken, that they misunderstood the good intentions of the Communist Party leaders. I had many fights with them, believing as I did Hanoi’s previous statement that “the situation in the South is very special and different from that of North Vietnam.” A few months before the liberation of Saigon, Le Duan, the First Secretary of the Communist Party, had said, “The South needs its own policy.”

In the end, I could not obey the order to help arrange the confiscation of all private property, a plan that was subsequently carried out. Such a scheme had nothing to do with fulfilling the aspirations of the South Vietnamese, and it went against my conscience. I decided to resign. But no one resigns in a Communist regime. The implication of nonconformity is intolerable to Communists. When I submitted my resignation, the chief of the finance committee warned me that my action “would only serve as propaganda to excite the people; here we never do it that way.” Several days later, while I was attending a concert at the great National Theater (formerly the National Assembly Hall, which my fellow students and I had occupied so many times under the Thieu regime), I was arrested. No charges were made, no reasons were given.

After the fall of Saigon, many progressive intellectuals and former antiwar-movement leaders believed that the new Vietnamese regime would bring internal democracy and freedom from foreign domination. They believed that the new regime would pursue the best interests of the people, honoring its promise to carry out a policy of national reconciliation without fear of reprisal. Far from adhering to their promises, the Vietnamese rulers have arrested hundreds of thousands of individuals — not only those who had cooperated with the Thieu regime but even those who had not, including religious leaders and former members of the N.L.F. . . .

Vietnam today is a country without any law other than the arbitrary directives of those in power. There is no civil code.

Individuals are imprisoned without charges and without trial. Once in jail, prisoners are taught that their behavior, attitude and “good will” are the key factors in determining when they may be released -whatever crimes they may have committed. As a consequence, prisoners often obey the guards blindly, hoping for an early release. In fact, they never know when they may be released — or when their sentences may be extended.

How many political prisoners are there in Vietnam today? And how many of them have died in prisons during the first six years of Communist rule? Nobody can know the exact numbers. The United States Department of State has said there are from 150,000 to 200,000 prisoners; Vietnamese refugees estimate about one million. Hoang Huu Quynh, an intellectual, a graduate of Moscow University, who served as a director of a technical school in Ho Chi Minh City (formerly Saigon), recently defected to France during his Government sponsored tour of European countries. He told the French press: “There are at least 700,000 prisoners in Vietnam today.” Another witness, Nguyen Cong Hoan, a former member of the reunified National Assembly, which was elected in 1976, who escaped by boat in 1978, said that he himself knew “about 300 cases of executions” in his own province of Phu Yen. In 1977, officials in Hanoi insisted that only 50,000 people, who posed the greatest threat to national security, had been arrested. But Prime Minister Pham Van Dong said, in the French magazine Paris Match, on Sept. 22, 1978, “In over three years, I released more than one million prisoners from the camps.” One wonders how it is possible to release more than a million after having arrested only 50,000.

When I was arrested, I was thrown into a three-foot-by-six-foot cell with my left hand chained to my right foot and my right hand chained to my left foot. My food was rice mixed with sand. When I complained about the sand, the guards explained that sand is added to the rice to remind prisoners of their crimes. I discovered that pouring water in the rice bowl would make the sand separate from the rice and sink to the bottom. But the water ration was only one liter a day for drinking and bathing, and I had to husband it carefully.

After two months in solitary confinement, I was transferred to a collective cell, a room 15 feet wide and 25 feet long, where at different times anywhere from 40 to 100 prisoners were crushed together. Here we had to take turns lying down to sleep, and most of the younger, stronger prisoners slept sitting up. In the sweltering heat, we also took turns snatching a few breaths of fresh air in front of the narrow opening that was the cell’s only window. Every day I watched my friends die at my feet.

In March 1976, when a group of Western reporters visited my prison, the Communist officials moved out all the prisoners and substituted North Vietnamese soldiers. In front of the prisons, one sees no barbed wire, no watchtowers, only a few policemen and a large sign above the entrance that proclaims Ho Chi Minh’s best-known slogan: “Nothing Is More Precious Than Liberty and Independence.” Only those detained inside and those who guard them know what kind of place is hidden behind that sign. And every prisoner knows that if he is suspected of planning to escape, his fellow inmates and relatives at home will be punished rather than he himself.

We will never know precisely the number of dead prisoners, but we do know about the deaths of many well-known prisoners who, in the past, never cooperated with President Thieu or the Americans: for example, Thich Thien Minh, the strategist of all the Buddhist peace movements in Saigon, an antiwar activist who was sentenced to 10 years in jail by the Thieu regime, then released after an outpouring of protest from Vietnamese and antiwar protesters around the world. Thien Minh died in Ham Tan prison after six months of detention in 1979. Another silent death was that of the lawyer Tran Van Tuyen, a leader of the opposition bloc in the Saigon Assembly under President Thieu. This well-known activist died in Communist hands in 1976, although as late as April 1977, Prime Minister Pham Van Dong was telling French reporters that Tuyen was alive and well in a re-education camp. One of the greatest losses has been that of the famous Vietnamese philosopher Ho Huu Tuong. Tuong, a classmate of Jean-Paul Sartre’s in Paris in the 1930’s, was perhaps the leading intellectual in South Vietnam. He died in Ham Tan prison on June 26, 1980. These men were arrested, along with many others among the most prominent and respected South Vietnamese, in order to pre-empt any possible opposition to the Communists.

Some American supporters of Hanoi have ignored or rationalized these deaths, as they have the countless other tragedies that have befallen Vietnam since 1975. It is more than likely that they will continue to maintain their silence in order to avoid the profound disillusionment that accepting the truth about Vietnam means for them. Yet if liberty and democracy are worth struggling for in the Philippines, in Chile, in South Korea or in South Africa, they are no less worth defending in Communist countries like Vietnam. Everyone remembers the numerous demonstrations protesting United States involvement in Vietnam and the war crimes of the Thieu regime.

But some of those people who were then so passionately committed to democratic principles and human rights have developed a strange indifference now that these same principles are under assault in Communist Vietnam. For example, one antiwar activist, William Kunstler, refused to sign a May 1979 open letter to the Socialist Republic of Vietnam in which many former antiwar activists, including Joan Baez, protested Hanoi’s violations of human rights. Kunstler said, “I don’t believe in criticizing socialist governments publicly, even if there are human-rights violations,” and, “The entire Baez campaign may be a C.I.A. plot”. . . .

Looking back now on the Vietnam war, I feel nothing but sorrow for my own naivete in believing that the Communists were revolutionaries worthy of support. In fact, they betrayed the Vietnamese people and deceived progressives throughout the world. The responsibility for the tragedies that have engulfed my compatriots is mine. And now I can only bear witness to this truth so that all former supporters of the Vietcong may share their responsibility with me. (Reprinted at Đoàn Văn Toại : A Lament for Vietnam – Thổn thức cho Việt Nam [1981])

This excerpt is only about one-third of the article. The whole article is educational and worth reading.

 

[Hector12]

I wonder how many of the anti-war people in this thread know who Doan Van Toai was. I bet none of them have heard of him, much less read his book and articles. Toai was a leading South Vietnamese pro-communist and anti-war activist who welcomed the Communist victory and who assured his fellow citizens they had nothing to fear from an NVA triumph. After the Communists took over, he soon realized he had been badly duped and horribly wrong.

Toai was elected vice president of the Saigon University Student Union in 1969 and led student demonstrations against the Saigon government and American intervention. He published an anti-war magazine titled Self-Determination. He traveled to America in 1971 to give anti-war lectures at Berkeley and Stanford.

In 1986, he wrote a book titled The Vietnamese Gulag to share his experiences and awakening. The book is available for free online on the Internet Archive website (LINK). You can also order the hardcover version on Amazon.

Here’s an excerpt from a long article Toai wrote in 1981 titled “A Lament for Vietnam,” which was published in the New York Times on March 29, 1981:

Naively, I believed that the Hanoi regime at least had the virtue of being Vietnamese, while the Americans were foreign invaders like the French before them. Like others in the South Vietnamese opposition movements, I believed that our Communist compatriots in the North would be more amenable to compromise and easier to work with than the Americans. Moreover, I was hypnotized by the personal sacrifices and devotion the Communist leaders had demonstrated. Ton Duc Thang, former President of North Vietnam, for example, had been imprisoned for 17 years in a French jail.

I was hypnotized also by the political programs advocated by the N.L.F., which included a domestic policy of national reconciliation, without risk of reprisal, and a foreign policy of nonalignment. Finally, I was influenced by progressive movements throughout the world and by the most prestigious intellectuals in the West. My impression was that during the 1960’s and early 70’s the leaders of the American peace movement shared my convictions.

These convictions endured through the signing of the 1973 Paris peace accords and the subsequent collapse of the South Vietnamese Government two years later. When liberation was imminent, I was the one who told friends and relatives not to flee. “Why do you want to leave?” I asked. “Why are you afraid of the Communists?” I accepted the prospect of enduring hardships to rebuild my country and I decided to stay in Vietnam and continue working as a branch manager at a Saigon bank, where I had been for more than four years, writing secret reports about the economic situation in South Vietnam for the N.L.F. (After leaving the university, I had not been drafted by the South Vietnamese Government because I was the only son in my family. And I had not joined the Vietcong because the N.L.F. felt I could serve a more useful role providing financial reports from the bank.). . . .

Several days after Saigon fell, the Provisional Revolutionary Government, formed by the N.L.F., asked me to join the finance committee, a group of intellectuals whose job it was to advise the Government on matters of economic policy. I complied willingly, taking a pay cut of 90 percent.

My first assignment was to help draw up a plan for confiscating all the private property in South Vietnam. Shocked, I proposed that we should expropriate only the property of those who had cooperated with the former regime and those who had used the war to become rich, and that we distribute it in some fashion to the poor and to the victims of the war, Communist and non-Communist alike. My proposals, of course, were rejected. I was naive enough to think that the local cadres were mistaken, that they misunderstood the good intentions of the Communist Party leaders. I had many fights with them, believing as I did Hanoi’s previous statement that “the situation in the South is very special and different from that of North Vietnam.” A few months before the liberation of Saigon, Le Duan, the First Secretary of the Communist Party, had said, “The South needs its own policy.”

In the end, I could not obey the order to help arrange the confiscation of all private property, a plan that was subsequently carried out. Such a scheme had nothing to do with fulfilling the aspirations of the South Vietnamese, and it went against my conscience. I decided to resign. But no one resigns in a Communist regime. The implication of nonconformity is intolerable to Communists. When I submitted my resignation, the chief of the finance committee warned me that my action “would only serve as propaganda to excite the people; here we never do it that way.” Several days later, while I was attending a concert at the great National Theater (formerly the National Assembly Hall, which my fellow students and I had occupied so many times under the Thieu regime), I was arrested. No charges were made, no reasons were given.

After the fall of Saigon, many progressive intellectuals and former antiwar-movement leaders believed that the new Vietnamese regime would bring internal democracy and freedom from foreign domination. They believed that the new regime would pursue the best interests of the people, honoring its promise to carry out a policy of national reconciliation without fear of reprisal. Far from adhering to their promises, the Vietnamese rulers have arrested hundreds of thousands of individuals — not only those who had cooperated with the Thieu regime but even those who had not, including religious leaders and former members of the N.L.F. . . .

Vietnam today is a country without any law other than the arbitrary directives of those in power. There is no civil code.

Individuals are imprisoned without charges and without trial. Once in jail, prisoners are taught that their behavior, attitude and “good will” are the key factors in determining when they may be released -whatever crimes they may have committed. As a consequence, prisoners often obey the guards blindly, hoping for an early release. In fact, they never know when they may be released — or when their sentences may be extended.

How many political prisoners are there in Vietnam today? And how many of them have died in prisons during the first six years of Communist rule? Nobody can know the exact numbers. The United States Department of State has said there are from 150,000 to 200,000 prisoners; Vietnamese refugees estimate about one million. Hoang Huu Quynh, an intellectual, a graduate of Moscow University, who served as a director of a technical school in Ho Chi Minh City (formerly Saigon), recently defected to France during his Government sponsored tour of European countries. He told the French press: “There are at least 700,000 prisoners in Vietnam today.” Another witness, Nguyen Cong Hoan, a former member of the reunified National Assembly, which was elected in 1976, who escaped by boat in 1978, said that he himself knew “about 300 cases of executions” in his own province of Phu Yen. In 1977, officials in Hanoi insisted that only 50,000 people, who posed the greatest threat to national security, had been arrested. But Prime Minister Pham Van Dong said, in the French magazine Paris Match, on Sept. 22, 1978, “In over three years, I released more than one million prisoners from the camps.” One wonders how it is possible to release more than a million after having arrested only 50,000.

When I was arrested, I was thrown into a three-foot-by-six-foot cell with my left hand chained to my right foot and my right hand chained to my left foot. My food was rice mixed with sand. When I complained about the sand, the guards explained that sand is added to the rice to remind prisoners of their crimes. I discovered that pouring water in the rice bowl would make the sand separate from the rice and sink to the bottom. But the water ration was only one liter a day for drinking and bathing, and I had to husband it carefully.

After two months in solitary confinement, I was transferred to a collective cell, a room 15 feet wide and 25 feet long, where at different times anywhere from 40 to 100 prisoners were crushed together. Here we had to take turns lying down to sleep, and most of the younger, stronger prisoners slept sitting up. In the sweltering heat, we also took turns snatching a few breaths of fresh air in front of the narrow opening that was the cell’s only window. Every day I watched my friends die at my feet.

In March 1976, when a group of Western reporters visited my prison, the Communist officials moved out all the prisoners and substituted North Vietnamese soldiers. In front of the prisons, one sees no barbed wire, no watchtowers, only a few policemen and a large sign above the entrance that proclaims Ho Chi Minh’s best-known slogan: “Nothing Is More Precious Than Liberty and Independence.” Only those detained inside and those who guard them know what kind of place is hidden behind that sign. And every prisoner knows that if he is suspected of planning to escape, his fellow inmates and relatives at home will be punished rather than he himself.

We will never know precisely the number of dead prisoners, but we do know about the deaths of many well-known prisoners who, in the past, never cooperated with President Thieu or the Americans: for example, Thich Thien Minh, the strategist of all the Buddhist peace movements in Saigon, an antiwar activist who was sentenced to 10 years in jail by the Thieu regime, then released after an outpouring of protest from Vietnamese and antiwar protesters around the world. Thien Minh died in Ham Tan prison after six months of detention in 1979. Another silent death was that of the lawyer Tran Van Tuyen, a leader of the opposition bloc in the Saigon Assembly under President Thieu. This well-known activist died in Communist hands in 1976, although as late as April 1977, Prime Minister Pham Van Dong was telling French reporters that Tuyen was alive and well in a re-education camp. One of the greatest losses has been that of the famous Vietnamese philosopher Ho Huu Tuong. Tuong, a classmate of Jean-Paul Sartre’s in Paris in the 1930’s, was perhaps the leading intellectual in South Vietnam. He died in Ham Tan prison on June 26, 1980. These men were arrested, along with many others among the most prominent and respected South Vietnamese, in order to pre-empt any possible opposition to the Communists.

Some American supporters of Hanoi have ignored or rationalized these deaths, as they have the countless other tragedies that have befallen Vietnam since 1975. It is more than likely that they will continue to maintain their silence in order to avoid the profound disillusionment that accepting the truth about Vietnam means for them. Yet if liberty and democracy are worth struggling for in the Philippines, in Chile, in South Korea or in South Africa, they are no less worth defending in Communist countries like Vietnam. Everyone remembers the numerous demonstrations protesting United States involvement in Vietnam and the war crimes of the Thieu regime.

But some of those people who were then so passionately committed to democratic principles and human rights have developed a strange indifference now that these same principles are under assault in Communist Vietnam. For example, one antiwar activist, William Kunstler, refused to sign a May 1979 open letter to the Socialist Republic of Vietnam in which many former antiwar activists, including Joan Baez, protested Hanoi’s violations of human rights. Kunstler said, “I don’t believe in criticizing socialist governments publicly, even if there are human-rights violations,” and, “The entire Baez campaign may be a C.I.A. plot”. . . .

Looking back now on the Vietnam war, I feel nothing but sorrow for my own naivete in believing that the Communists were revolutionaries worthy of support. In fact, they betrayed the Vietnamese people and deceived progressives throughout the world. The responsibility for the tragedies that have engulfed my compatriots is mine. And now I can only bear witness to this truth so that all former supporters of the Vietcong may share their responsibility with me. (Reprinted at Đoàn Văn Toại : A Lament for Vietnam – Thổn thức cho Việt Nam [1981])

This excerpt is only about one-third of the article. The whole article is educational and worth reading.

I had no illusions about the Communist side in Vietnam. Nevertheless, I thought the South Vietnamese government was the lesser of two evils, and that the lesser of two evils was not worth fighting for.

 

[Soupnazi630]

Ho won because most of the Vietnamese supported him. We should have left Vietnam alone.

When the Communist won in the South Newsweek and Time ran cover pictures of triumphant, victorious Communist soldiers, with the words, "The Winning Side." By then a lot of Americans in important positions wanted the Communists to win. Many additional Americans had tired of the forever war in Vietnam.

My own views on the War in Vietnam followed the usual trajectory. Initially I wanted total victory in Vietnam. I believed, with no evidence, that 90% of the South Vietnamese supported the South Vietnamese government. Right now even Trump thinks the War in Vietnam was wrong.

As I learned more about the War I came to favor a negotiated, compromise settlement. When the War finally ended I was glad, and did not care that the Communists won.

Most did not support him

Most did not support anyone and wanted to be left alone

he forced himself on them

 

[Hector12]

Most did not support him

Most did not support anyone and wanted to be left alone

he forced himself on them

We should have left them alone.