An e-mail message from an acquaintance asked for some background on our involvement in Viet Nam for a tangential reference in a book he is writing about the sixties. My lazy response was to send him a copy of a letter I had recently sent to NPR:
     The NPR celebration of our invasion of Viet Nam is weakened by the acceptance of the mendacioU.S. terminology U.S.ed by the war's perpetrators and apologists.
     The Democratic Republic of Viet Nam, with its capital in Hanoi, was founded by Vietnamese nationalists in 1945. The "Republic of Viet Nam" with its capital in Saigon, was a wholly American creation of 1956. Rather than have the national elections called for by the 1954 Geneva agreements, we chose to create and recognize a rival claimant to all of Viet Nam. At no time did the Democratic Republic of Viet Nam truncate itself to a "North Vietnam", and our "Republic of Viet Nam" claimed rule of all of Viet Nam- its constitution insisted that this claim was irrevocable. The 1954 Geneva agreements that followed the defeat of the American-funded French effort to re-colonize Viet Nam specifically ruled out a political division of the country and merely called for temporary separation of the French and Vietnamese armies.
     All of this information was published widely in responsible sources but was ignored by media reaching the broad public. The reason was almost certainly the wish to give the American invasion of Viet Nam the appearance of a response to someone else's invasion. Therefore we invented an invader, "North Vietnam" and a victim of invasion, "South Vietnam".
     Our thirty years war on Viet Nam has been over for a quarter of a century. Isn't it about time for U.S. to start getting it right?
     My acquaintance replied with a fractured summary he had written (which appears below), so I sent him a more thorough summary:
    

     A Brief History of the American Invasion of Viet Nam.
     Viet Nam had been a possession of France from the late nineteenth century, when the U.S.e of quinine to treat malaria made colonization practical. In World War Two, Vichy France gave Indochina to Japan.
     After World War One, Ho Chi Minh, a young Vietnamese photographer living in France, sought to see Woodrow Wilson and press independence for Viet Nam. Wilson ignored him, and after reading Lenin's attacks on colonialism, Ho became a co-founder of the French Communist Party. During World War Two, Ho's nationalists worked with the OSS (later named the CIA) to fight the Japanese occupiers. At the end of the war, he established the Democratic Republic of Viet Nam, with a capital in Hanoi and a constitution based on our Declaration of Independence. (Ho admired Jefferson.)
     At the Yalta conference prior to the end of the war, Churchill had insisted that all colonies revert to their European "owners" after an allied victory. After the Japanese defeat, France had no troops in Viet Nam, but the British were in Saigon, and they armed Japanese prisoners to occupy the city until the French could return. The OSS/CIA urged President Truman to recognize the Democratic Republic of Viet Nam, but the State Department, fearing the strength of the French Communist Party, demanded that we accept French ownership. Since France was broke, we proceeded to pay for their attempted re-occupation.
     In 1954, after suffering devastating casualties in their war against most of the Vietnamese people, France finally surrendered. After the French defeat, the Geneva peace conference called for the Vietnamese forces to relocate in the north and the French to move to the south, prior to national elections and French withdrawal. This gave the U.S. a window of opportunity.
     The United States moved in under cover of the truce, unilaterally cancelled the national elections, and established a puppet government "The Republic of Viet Nam" with a capital in Saigon, led by Ngo Din DIem, a Catholic who had collaborated with the French before WW II and with the Japanese during it. After an escalation that spilled into Cambodia and Laos and killed millions of Indochinese and fifty thoU.S.and Americans, the U.S. gave up in 1975. We had dropped more tons of bombs on that small nation than all sides dropped everywhere in all of World War Two.
     Most Americans knew little of what their government had been doing until the war escalated in the Lyndon Johnson administration and draftees were dying. By then a cover story was U.S.ed to mislead readers and voters about the nature of this undeclared war. The Democratic Government of Viet Nam, with its capital in Hanoi, was founded by Vietnamese nationalists in 1945. The "Republic of Viet Nam" with its capital in Saigon, was a wholly American creation of 1956. At no time did the Democratic Republic of Viet Nam truncate itself to a "North Vietnam", and our "Republic of Viet Nam" claimed rule of all of Viet Nam--- its constitution insisted that this claim was irrevocable. The 1954 Geneva agreements that followed the defeat of the American-funded French specifically ruled out a political division of the country and merely called for temporary separation of the French and Vietnamese armies.
     All of this information was published widely in responsible sources but was ignored by media reaching the broad public. The reason was almost certainly the wish to give the American invasion of Viet Nam the appearance of a response to someone else's invasion. Therefore we invented an invader, "North Vietnam" and a victim of invasion, "South Vietnam".
     Academics and college students were among the well-informed, and they provided most of the opposition to the war. The general public, fed the line that our invasion was a response to "Communist aggression" and part of a global conflict between Christianity and atheism, tended to support the war. And as more Americans were killed, support for the war included a desire to jU.S.tify the deaths with an American victory. That this merely caU.S.ed more American deaths escaped notice.
     Young people were divided between those who knew what they were doing and those who opposed the war. They resisted the military draft, and some sought asylum in Canada. Others, bewildered by the media and government propaganda, thought it their duty to volunteer or be drafted in the apparently noble caU.S.e. A third group, the children of congressmen and other favored groups, did not oppose the war but obtained assorted draft deferments.
     The false history has so permeated American conscioU.S.ness that a quarter-century after the American defeat, the press continues to refer to the mythical "North Vietnam" and "South Vietnam".
     I then receive this reply: "Thanks, Art. That's a lot more detail than I need for the book (I only want a few paragraph, jU.S.t an outline), but it's all VERY interesting to me..."
     To which I replied: "What I found interesting (and depressing) was that your summary, although far from approving, was essentially the fabrication. I sU.S.pect that accuracy will never enter American memories or history."
     My correspondent bounced back: "What about my summary was a fabrication? I didn't see much in my summary that was at odds with what you wrote me..."
     I then returned his original summary with bracketed annotations:

A Really, Really Brief History of the Vietnam War:
     Vietnam had been a possession of France.
     [but from 1941-45 was governed by Japan]
     In 1954, a Vietnamese communist faction under the leadership of Ho Chi Minh rose up against the French and drove them out of Vietnam.
     [In 1945 the Vietnamese formed an independent government. France invaded in attempt to get the country back. They lost in 1954]
     But there were politicians in the U.S. who were so terrified by communism, so obsessed with its perceived threat, that they decided the U.S. had to go into Vietnam and prevent the communists from taking over the county.
     [They decided Viet Nam should again be a French colony]
     These politicians believed that there was an international alliance of communist countries, that if Vietnam fell to the communists, they would then systematically take over the world, country by country, until the U.S. itself fell to communism. Of course, these politicians were wrong - there was no such international threat or alliance.
     [After the French defeat, American presidents thought our prestige demanded a victory. Kissinger, for example, thought nothing of Viet Nam but thought it necessary to show the world that we were not losers and were willing to kill without limit to get our way. Nixon said he "would not be the first American president to lose a war"]
     So, based on this unfounded fear, the U.S. went in and set up a democratic government in the south part of Vietnam, splitting the country into South Vietnam and North Vietnam.
      [In 1956 the U.S. set up a non-democratic puppet government that claimed rule of all of Viet Nam]
     But the South Vietnamese saw the Americans as no different than the French, jU.S.t another foreign power who wanted to control them. In the early 1960s, a coalition of South Vietnamese communist groups, called the Vietcong (which were mostly independent of the communists in North Vietnam) rose up in the south against the democratic government.
     [The puppet government was never able to rule outside of Saigon. One of its first actions was to return land to French owners, which was forcibly resisted in the villages. Resistance was consolidated as the Viet Cong. Southerners in the Vietnamese army had regrouped in the north following the truce terms, but many returned to their homes in the south after 1956 and participated in the Viet Cong]
     In 1965, the U.S. responded by sending combat troops into South Vietnam to put down the Vietcong and fight the North Vietnamese.
     [U.S. troops were in Viet Nam from 1945 through 1975. Activity sharply increased in the Johnson and Nixon administrations. There never was a "South Vietnam", and we recognized only the Saigon puppets as rulers of all Viet Nam. Fighting the "North Vietnamese" was part of our overall strategy to get the country for our puppet]
     By 1969, the U.S. was sending even more troops into Vietnam, escalating the war, while President Nixon talked about plans for U.S. troop withdrawal, promising to end the war within three years. In 1973, a ceas- fire was agreed to and U.S. ground troops left Vietnam, but the bombing of North Vietnam continued.
     [Nixon had no plan. It was only a claim made for campaign purposes in the 1968 presidential election. There never was a "North Vietnam"]
      Eventually, in 1975, the North Vietnamese took Saigon, the biggest city in the south, and effectively "won" the war, forcing the U.S. to pull out. Interestingly, once the communists took over, the U.S. politicians were proved wrong. Instead of communism spreading across Asia and Europe, the communist countries started fighting with each other and Vietnam got into a big, bloody war with Communist China.
     [The conflict with China was not particularly big or bloody, but it did give the lie to the myth of a unified global communist conspiracy. And the leaders and participants in the Democratic Republic of Viet Nam and the Viet Cong were not all communists, but an alliance of anti-colonial nationalists. Many were practicing Buddhists]
     With this reply, the correspondence ended: "Thanks for all the help."
     I'm left with this thought: Were the Germans or Japanese to treat the history of World War Two as most Americans treat the history of our Thirty Years' War on Viet Nam, would we applaud their patriotic mythology?