Fred Hutchison
Liberal myths about the Vietnam War
By Fred Hutchison
Columnist Bob Herbert has historical amnesia about the Vietnam war but has total recall about the liberal myths of the anti-war movement. The central theme of his essay of 6/08/09 was that it was the Vietnam war was unwinnable and therefore a pointless waste of lives. It was not unwinnable but it lasted much longer than it should have because of the Johnson — Mc Namera rules of engagement and the micro-management of the war.
The Nixon-Kissinger team went China to give China what they wanted, namely prestige and world celebrity. In return, China agreed to allow America to bomb North Vietnam aggressively, with a Chinese promise not to come into the war as they did in Korea.
Contrary to liberal myths, this bombing was very effective because it brought the North Vietnamese to the Paris Peace Talks (1973). The result was stalemate similar to the Korean War. In order to ensure that North Vietnam did not renege on the agreement, it was necessary to keep some American troops in Vietnam, give aid to South Vietnam and to retain the option of bombing. This was a win in terms of our goal to prevent the spread of Communism in South East Asia.
When Nixon was in Paris, enjoying the crowning triumph of his career, The Watergate burglars were captured. In the process of his downfall, the rage of the Democratic congress against Nixon reach a fever pitch. In this environment, the angry democrats in Congress were ready to swallow the all the myths of the antiwar movement. They cut off funds for the war, pulled out the troops and banned bombing.
Historically, a blood purge follows the violent take-over of power by Communists of the Marxist- Leninist brand. The blood purge in Cambodia in involved in the murder of an estimated 2,000,000 people. 3,500,000 or one tenth of the men, women and children of South Vietnam died from political violence after the war and one third of these, or 1,250,000 were murdered. Bob Herbert puts the number at 2 or 3 million, not mentioning that most of these deaths were murders of communist blood purge and not civilian casualties of American military operations. As a lefty, he wants to cover up the communist blood purge and make America look bad.
The Paris Peace talks should have saved the lives of all those blood purge victims. The Democratic Congress who threw all those lives away. They did it willfully even after they had been warned about blood purges. None of the Democratic congressmen who pulled the troops out and none of the anti-war leaders have ever apologized for engineering American defeat or for facilitating the blood purge.
A message from Stephen Stone, President, RenewAmerica
I first became acquainted with Fred Hutchison in December 2003, when he contacted me about an article he was interested in writing for RenewAmerica about Alan Keyes. From that auspicious moment until God took him a little more than six years later, we published over 200 of Fred's incomparable essays — usually on some vital aspect of the modern "culture war," written with wit and disarming logic from Fred's brilliant perspective of history, philosophy, science, and scripture.
It was obvious to me from the beginning that Fred was in a class by himself among American conservative writers, and I was honored to feature his insights at RA.
I greatly miss Fred, who died of a brain tumor on August 10, 2010. What a gentle — yet profoundly powerful — voice of reason and godly truth! I'm delighted to see his remarkable essays on the history of conservatism brought together in a masterfully-edited volume by Julie Klusty. Restoring History is a wonderful tribute to a truly great man.
The book is available at Amazon.com.
© Fred Hutchison
July 10, 2009
Columnist Bob Herbert has historical amnesia about the Vietnam war but has total recall about the liberal myths of the anti-war movement. The central theme of his essay of 6/08/09 was that it was the Vietnam war was unwinnable and therefore a pointless waste of lives. It was not unwinnable but it lasted much longer than it should have because of the Johnson — Mc Namera rules of engagement and the micro-management of the war.
The Nixon-Kissinger team went China to give China what they wanted, namely prestige and world celebrity. In return, China agreed to allow America to bomb North Vietnam aggressively, with a Chinese promise not to come into the war as they did in Korea.
Contrary to liberal myths, this bombing was very effective because it brought the North Vietnamese to the Paris Peace Talks (1973). The result was stalemate similar to the Korean War. In order to ensure that North Vietnam did not renege on the agreement, it was necessary to keep some American troops in Vietnam, give aid to South Vietnam and to retain the option of bombing. This was a win in terms of our goal to prevent the spread of Communism in South East Asia.
When Nixon was in Paris, enjoying the crowning triumph of his career, The Watergate burglars were captured. In the process of his downfall, the rage of the Democratic congress against Nixon reach a fever pitch. In this environment, the angry democrats in Congress were ready to swallow the all the myths of the antiwar movement. They cut off funds for the war, pulled out the troops and banned bombing.
Historically, a blood purge follows the violent take-over of power by Communists of the Marxist- Leninist brand. The blood purge in Cambodia in involved in the murder of an estimated 2,000,000 people. 3,500,000 or one tenth of the men, women and children of South Vietnam died from political violence after the war and one third of these, or 1,250,000 were murdered. Bob Herbert puts the number at 2 or 3 million, not mentioning that most of these deaths were murders of communist blood purge and not civilian casualties of American military operations. As a lefty, he wants to cover up the communist blood purge and make America look bad.
The Paris Peace talks should have saved the lives of all those blood purge victims. The Democratic Congress who threw all those lives away. They did it willfully even after they had been warned about blood purges. None of the Democratic congressmen who pulled the troops out and none of the anti-war leaders have ever apologized for engineering American defeat or for facilitating the blood purge.
A message from Stephen Stone, President, RenewAmericaI first became acquainted with Fred Hutchison in December 2003, when he contacted me about an article he was interested in writing for RenewAmerica about Alan Keyes. From that auspicious moment until God took him a little more than six years later, we published over 200 of Fred's incomparable essays — usually on some vital aspect of the modern "culture war," written with wit and disarming logic from Fred's brilliant perspective of history, philosophy, science, and scripture.
It was obvious to me from the beginning that Fred was in a class by himself among American conservative writers, and I was honored to feature his insights at RA.
I greatly miss Fred, who died of a brain tumor on August 10, 2010. What a gentle — yet profoundly powerful — voice of reason and godly truth! I'm delighted to see his remarkable essays on the history of conservatism brought together in a masterfully-edited volume by Julie Klusty. Restoring History is a wonderful tribute to a truly great man.
The book is available at Amazon.com.
The views expressed by RenewAmerica columnists are their own and do not necessarily reflect the position of RenewAmerica or its affiliates.
(See RenewAmerica's publishing standards.)
