Stuck in the Big Muddy Again

Dear Editor,
   John Moore ["Postmarks," Nov. 21] wonders about a discrepancy in my letter about JFK and Vietnam. How could I say in one place that Kennedy inherited Vietnam and then a little later talk about the "war he started" in Indochina? I wrote that Kennedy inherited "Vietnam"; I did not write the "Vietnam War." He inherited the situation in Vietnam. When he took office, the United States was supporting a corrupt, terrorist government, the Diem regime, in its war against a group of communists. However, U.S. involvement was, according to the Pentagon Papers, "strictly advisory." By the end of Kennedy's first year in office, the U.S. had contributed weapons, aircraft, and logistical support to the Diem government, and shortly after that, U.S. troops, which had numbered several hundred but now reached 6,000, started participating. In other words, it was under Kennedy that the U.S. became directly involved, which transformed the violence from a civil war into an international war. When the world's largest military – which had a budget of 9% of GDP under the peacenik Kennedy, versus 6% under the warmonger Reagan – stepped in, the violence spread to the rest of Indochina as a matter of course. Maybe in my original letter I could have better clarified my terms, but there's nothing in it that was remotely contradictory.

   [Ed.'s note: Anyone claiming that the Vietnam War can be described in clear, generally accepted, factual terms is being disingenuos at best. The event is viewed through, at best, filters at worst interpretations more dependent on ideology than history. My version: After fighting against the Japanese during WWII, Vietnamese nationalists were very disappointed to find that France still regarded their country as a colonial possession. After several generations of war, first against the French, then the Japanese, they went back to war against the French. Detailing the political and leadership nuances of the period is not easy, but Ho Chi Minh was one of if not the most important nationalist leader (and I've read all of the Rev. Tom Dooley's books among many others and know the barbarous atrocities committed by the Communists). By Dien Bien Phu (1953-54) the United States, under President Eisenhower, was funding as much as 80% of the French military effort. After that defeat, the United States, among other countries, participated in the partition of Vietnam and helped set up the South's government. Ironically, Kennedy's East Coast Ivy League brain trust, for many of the same reasons that the Bush administration used for its fourth and sixth explanations as to why we had to invade Iraq, argued for expanding our involvement in Vietnam. This action was not imperialist, they claimed, but for the good of the people. To claim that prior to this our massive manipulative and financial involvement was "advisory" is to torture words in a way that must cause them to roar in pain. My objection to Beck's explanation is that it ignores the trajectory and reality of U.S. involvement under Eisenhower and passes off the contradictory and often misguided internationalism of Kennedy's administration as the straightforward acts of just the president. He didn't contradict himself but did offer an elementary paint-by-numbers explanation. Finally, comparing percentages of the GNP without comparing the overall GNP amounts is misleading. But, this is my very brief interpretation and contribution to the Vietnam discussion, as misleading and insufficient as the rest.]