REWRITING HISTORY
BEYOND SHAMEFUL': DON'T FALL FOR THIS DECEITFUL VIETNAM FLICK
Exclusive: Maj. Gen. Patrick Brady exposes startling omissions, distorted facts in war film.
Editor’s note: Maj. Gen. Patrick Brady is a recipient of the United
States military’s highest decoration, the Medal of Honor. He is former
president of the Medal of Honor Society.
Needless to say, Ken Burns’ “documentary,” “The Vietnam War,” has caught
the attention of Vietnam veterans Except for the John Kerryites, the
feedback is decidedly negativMany call Burns’ “Vietnam” a hatchet job.
That attitude certainly has merit, but I barely got past Tet when it was
clear to me that what Burns was doing was more subtle than a hatchet
job. A better description is: Burns damned us – not only the veterans,
but America as well – with faint praise.
He uses a deceitful journalistic tool of gathering token credibility
bites from those on the other side of his preordained narrative in an
effort to appear objective. Burns’ “Vietnam” is plagued with media
malfeasance including obfuscation, omission and some really messed up
moral equivalences.
North Vietnam would have fallen in weeks if the American media had been
there and treated it as they did our efforts in the South. The GIs knew
this and would often declare that we should not fear the enemy – they
will only take your life. Instead, they’d say, fear the media because
they will steal your honor
In Burns’ effort to highlight the GI disdain for Vietnam’s people, I was
amazed to learn that we ridiculed their homes by calling them hooches.
Really? We called our own living quarters hooches. And mama-san was a
term of endearment for our hooch maids, not in any way an insult.
The Grantonian remark that U.S Army Gen. Creighton Abrams “drank a lot”
disturbed me. What was the point? That he was a drunk? I knew Abrams,
and he was unquestionably one of the greatest soldiers we ever produced.
I never heard a word about him drinking a lot.
I was especially disturbed by the notion that we wouldn’t carry the
Vietnamese dead. In one tour in Vietnam, my unit and other helicopter
ambulance units (“Dustoff”), carried hundreds of Vietnamese dead, as
well as Communist dead and wounded.
Burns repeats Walter Cronkite’s apocalyptic version of Tet despite the
fact that it was surely one of the greatest military victories in the
history of warfare. We killed 41,000 and captured 2,500 of 84,000 enemy
combatants. Gen. Vo Nguyan Giap, the Communists’ supreme commander, was
ready to quit. (Years later, I would represent Army Gen. William
Westmoreland in a visit with Giap, who was willing to go on the record
with Westy and admit what a catastrophe Tet was for his side.) Yet it
was portrayed as a defeat, thanks to the likes of Uncle Walter, who had
his nose up Ho Chi Minh’s posterior. It was like America turned around
after Normandy and retreated across the English Channel or George
Washington quitting after Yorktown.
Burns repeatedly reminds us that we didn’t understand the Vietnamese.
How then do we understand that they would vote for a Communist over a
nationalist? As for Ngo Dinh Diem’s popularity, it is worth emphasizing
that after the Vietnam division of 1954, hundreds of thousands fled Ho
Chi Minh’s North in favor of Diem in the South. How many went North? We
have no idea of Ho’s popularity since Communists don’t do polls.
I have seen the terrors of Communism up close – in Berlin, watching them
build a wall around their own people; in the DMZ in Korea, where I saw
human beings turned into robots; in Russia, where the people were still
paranoid of Communists well after the fall of the wall; and in Vietnam,
where I personally picked up the remnants of Communists’ atrocities
beyond evil. Diem and the refugees recognized those evils, as did many
in the South. We saw the fruits of that evil after the fall in the
tragedies of the concentration camps and boat people.
Contrasting Burns’ fawning depiction of Ho versus that of Diem is
instructive. Ho embodied many of the characteristics of Burns’
Hollywood. He was an atheist. He was a Communist. He was a propagandist
who controlled the media, and he certainly was not celibate. Diem was
far from the Hollywood denizens. He was a devout Catholic, so devout
that he lived a celibate life in emulation of Christ and many saints. He
was an anti-communist, pro-nationalist, and he lived an extremely
austere life. He was not a man who coveted opulence. His extraordinary
faith and austere lifestyle belies any motive of personal
aggrandizement.
The Buddhist burning was covered, but not the Buddhist Communist
connection – nor was the fact that many members of Diem’s family were
murdered by the Buddhists, some buried alive. Still almost half of
Diem’s staff were Buddhists. Diem was a dedicated nationalist with the
best interests of his country at heart.
After our complicity in the murder of Diem, Ho said, “I can scarcely
believe the Americans would be so stupid.” Ho had a very high opinion of
Diem and tried to recruit him. I was in flight school with some
Vietnamese pilots at the time we murdered Diem, and I remember their
distress, not only because of his death but over the fact that some
Americans celebrated it. They would remind us how it felt three weeks
later as we mourned President John F. Kennedy’s death.
To draw a moral equivalence between Ho and Diem, Communism and
nationalism, is bad enough. But to draw a moral equivalence between the
war cowards at home and those who risked their lives for them in
Vietnam, as Burns does, is beyond shameful.
Let me give you Vietnam in a nutshell. It matches in unselfishness
anything we ever did. There was really nothing in it for us in a
materiel sense. We were simply trying to help a helpless people be free
from the horrible evil of Communism. And the Vietnam veteran fought with
a valor and humanitarianism never before seen in any war in our
history.
Look at the facts ignored by Burns. The American soldier was never
defeated on any significant battlefield in Vietnam. The average
infantryman in the Pacific in World War II saw about 40 days of combat
in four years His counterpart in Vietnam saw about 240 days of combat in
one year. The percentage of those who died is similar to other wars,
but the prevalence of traumatic amputation and crippling wounds was 300
percent higher in Vietnam than in World War II and 70 percent higher
than in Korea. Multiple amputations occurred at the rate of 18.4 percent
compared to 5.7 percent in World War II. Approximately 75,000 Vietnam
vets were severely disabled.
Above our magnificent grunts, the aviation accomplishments in Vietnam
are unprecedented. In World War II, aircraft losses were 16 percent,
and, in Vietnam, 43 percent. I read that in World War II, some pilots
completed tours after 25 missions at an average of four hours per
mission, or total 100 hours! In Vietnam, 100 hours was an average month
for many, and 25 missions an average week.
As an aside, Mike Novosel, a fellow “Dustoff” pilot, and I were playing
golf with a famous fighter pilot much celebrated for having flown 100
combat missions. Between us, Mike and I had more than 5,000 combat
missions! Needless to say, we reminded the fighter pilot of this as he
bent over an important putt.
Burns’ narrative is woefully dismissive of the extraordinary valor and
humanitarianism of the Vietnam GI. I saw mention of only one of 260
Medals of Honor awarded. What is remarkable is that 30 percent of the
Medals of Honor earned in Vietnam, far more than any other war, were for
soldiers covering explosives with their bodies to save their fellow
soldiers. That is not only a remarkable statistic, it is a remarkable
tribute to the quality of our troops.
Burns ignores perhaps the most amazing story of the war, Charles Kelly
and “Dustoff,” the most famous call sign of the war. Kelly gave his life
to save aeromedical evacuation. His dying words uttered when he refused
to leave patients while under fire – “when I have your wounded” – set
the standard for life-saving on the battlefield to this day.
“Dustoff” has been singled out by every supreme commander in Vietnam for
special recognition. They led the humanitarian effort and set
battlefield survival records unparalleled in combat. Over 500,000 combat
missions and more than 900,000 rescued – men, women, children, enemy as
well as friendly.
Although one in 10 GIs was wounded, less than 1 percent died, thanks to
“Dustoff.” Your chances of survival were greater if you were wounded on a
battlefield in Vietnam than if you were on an accident on a highway in
America. How in the hell could any documentary of Vietnam omit
“Dustoff”?
Burns also ignores the fact that it was the outstanding veterans from
that war who were responsible for the unprecedented victory in Desert
Storm.
By the way, Congress continues to ignore the “Dustoff” crews. Although
they have been recommended for a Congressional Gold Medal, Congress
ignored them but found time for the Filipinos in World War II (surely
deserving). Not one unit from Vietnam has received this honor.
In addition to the humanitarian efforts of “Dustoff,” Burns fails to
highlight the contributions of the GI to the welfare, health and
education of those wonderful people. Vietnam may be the only war we ever
fought – or perhaps that was ever fought – in which the American
soldier added to their heroism a humanitarianism unmatched in the
annuals of warfare. And the U.S. soldier did so during the heat of the
battle. He cared for and about those people, especially the young. The
Vietnam veteran fixed as he fought. He cured and educated and built
hospitals and orphanages in the middle of the battle. He vaccinated
thousands, adopted the children, educated them. He cared for and about
those people. No barrier, no political system, will erase what our
Vietnam veterans gave to those people.
And the fruits of our humanitarian effort are still there in psyche of
the people of Vietnam, in their hearts and souls – as they are in the
hearts of so many people all over the world who have been touched by the
American GI. I have been back three times and was amazed at the
treatment I received. Of all the countries in the world that the young
want to visit, America ranks No. 1. (Their favorite city is Las Vegas.)
Our defeat was at the hands of our elite in the courtrooms, the
classrooms, the cloak rooms and the newsrooms: cowardly, media-phobic
politicians; an irresponsible, dishonest media; and other cowards and
spoiled brats and professors from Berkeley to Harvard.
Living with the scars of war is difficult. For some, it’s unbearable.
But all veterans suffer. The Vietnam veteran suffered physically as
much, perhaps more, than any veteran of the past century. But no other
veteran has suffered the mental agony of the Vietnam veteran.
The thing that makes Vietnam so intolerable is what the elite tried to
do to dishonor the source of those scars, to intensify the pain of
Vietnam veterans and destroy their unselfish and honorable legacy. They
opened a gash in the psyche of veterans and then rubbed salt in it. And
equally as bad were the atrocities committed by the Communists targeting
the friends we abandoned.
The Vietnam veterans not only distinguished themselves in combat, they
came home and became model citizens. They were the best educated forces
our nation ever sent into combat – 79 percent had a high-school
education or better. Contrary to media reports, Vietnam vets didn’t
abuse drugs more than their civilian cohorts. They were less likely to
go to prison than non-vets. Their income exceeded non-vets by 18
percent, and their unemployment rates were lower.
We see horrifying suicide rates among today’s warriors, yet Vietnam
veterans, who saw as much or more combat than any warriors ever, after
living through the media calumny of their service and sacrifice, had a
lower suicide rate than their civilian counterparts. And, as a tribute
to their patriotism, despite their shoddy treatment, more than 90
percent of the veterans are glad they served. And so are 87 percent of
the American people who saw through the media distortion of their
service. Burns is obviously not among the 87 percent.
The Burns/Cronkite babble that Vietnam was a war we couldn’t win is sad.
There is no such thing as “a war we cannot win” if we decide to win.
The immeasurable and irredeemable tragedy Burns labels Vietnam is true
only the manner in which we abandoned our allies and mistreated our
veterans.
It was our vets in Vietnam who slowed the onslaught of Communism to this
day. And Communism is dead in Vietnam; they just don’t know what to do
with the corpse.
Humanitarianism was our great victory in Vietnam, a victory as great as
in any war. There is an inscription on the wall of a veteran’s cemetery
that says they sacrificed their youth that liberty might grow old. There
is no one anywhere to whom that better applies than the veterans of
Vietnam. Humanitarianism and a roadblock to communism were our great
victories in Vietnam.
Next to the Vietnam Wall, we need a John Kerry/Fonda Wall of Shame
listing those who prominently blasphemed the Vietnam GI. And let’s add
the names of every member of Congress who voted in December 1974 to
betray our allies and leave them to be slaughtered by an evil, vicious
enemy.
