The Vietnam War – Provocation, Media Lies and Broken Promises (from a lecture ...

The Vietnam War – Provocation, Media Lies and Broken Promises

08.10.2018

On May 28th, 2018, the Swiss historian and peace researcher Dr. Daniele Ganser was in Hannover, Germany. About 1.000 people listened to what he said about the Vietnam war between 1964 and 1974. Though they date back a number of years, the secret documents, declassified in the meantime, and the unprecedented photos of courageous journalists together record the extent and the horror of modern-day wars. Vietnam can teach us how wars are being arranged also today: By provocation, intrigue s, media lies, broken promises and a misguided self-perception. The following Kla.TV excerpt gives a brief summary of the 2½ hour lecture: The conflict in Vietnam began when in 1945 under Ho Chi Minh independence was proclaimed. France, the former colonial power, attempted to force the country under their control again during the so-called Indochina War (1946 – 1954). This is astonishing insofar as France, like many other countries, due to the lesson learned of the Second World War with 60 million dead, signed the UN prohibition on violence on October 24th, 1945. Article 2 states: “All Members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state, or in any other manner inconsistent with the Purposes of the United Nations.” Nevertheless, only one year later, supported by the USA, France was already leading the next war - in Vietnam. In 1954, at the end of the war against France, the country was separated into North- and South Vietnam. Soon-to-be held free elections as well as the reunification were promised. But this agreement was broken and with the help of the American secret service CIA, a counter-president an opposition president was built up in South Vietnam. As a Catholic he from then on cracked down brutally on the communist supporters of the North Vietnamese President Ho Chi Minh and the Buddhists. The situation gained publicity worldwide by the self-immolation of a Buddhist monk in 1963 in Saigon. On November 2nd, 1963, the CIA turned against its own opposition-president and murdered him. In the same year, on November 22nd also the US-President John F. Kennedy was murdered. Shortly beforehand, Kennedy had aimed at the withdrawal of all US military advisors from South Vietnam. Could there be a connection here? Meanwhile the military provocation of South Vietnam went on, supported by the US-Navy. On August 2nd, 1964, in territorial waters of North Vietnam, namely the Gulf of Tonkin, allegedly there was a minor battle between the warship USS Maddox and a few lightly-armed speedboats of North Vietnam. Already on the night of August 4th, the new President Johnson had declared that the USA had been attacked repeatedly on this day, and they had to strike back now in order to secure peace. Years later, in December 2005, the NSA (National Security Agency, a secret service of the USA), admitted that the incident in the Gulf of Tonkin was a fabricated story, for at the time the USS Maddox was no longer on site. With this, President Johnson was exposed as a criminal of war. There were no consequences, for even today reasons for war are still invented or engineered like in Iraq, in Libya, in Yugoslavia, Syria, Yemen and so on. Provocations, broken promises and media lies are omnipresent. War criminals still alive like Bush, Cheney or Colin Powell are not brought to justice. Moreover the USA has never been officially sanctioned although countless times they have violated the ban on violence that they themselves signed in 1945. The completely misguided self-perception of the USA came to light through the My Lai Massacre, where US infantry soldiers killed 504 civilians. The responsible officer Lieutenant Calley argued he had not fought against humans, but against an ideology. A dangerous argument, for no matter which ideology a person stands for, that does not make them a target to be killed. Only terrorists would do that. Calley also defended himself by arguing that he had only followed orders from above. But this very same logic had been rejected by the principle of individual guilt determined in 1945 at the Nuremberg Trials. This shows that the USA is applying different standards of measurement – then as well as now. Back to the year 1964. The media spread the lies of war and the US government proceeded to drive the unsuspecting Americans into a disastrous war. Three million Vietnamese and 58.000 US soldiers died. Rape, beheadings and torture were committed – like in every war. A special aspect was that at the time foreign journalists could move freely and so create authentic pictures of the war as they are no longer shown today. (Or have we ever seen photos from Afghanistan or Iraq showing how the USA and NATO countries are committing war crimes?) In the Vietnam war the USA was fighting with the incendiary weapon Napalm, a sticky gasoline mixture which causes most severe skin burns. They also used the defoliant Agent Orange, which led to extreme birth-defects and malformations among future generations. In the post-war years another 400.000 Vietnamese died of the consequences of these weapons. Comparison with today: The equally inhumane weapons with Depleted Uranium deployed in NATO wars from Iraq to Syria – of which we don't see any pictures in the mainstream. [Documentary “Deadly Dust” in English https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=djv8UyrrC34] But that's not all. In 1964 the USA also attacked Vietnam's neighboring country Laos and dropped 2 million tons of bombs. This equates to one aircraft load every 8 minutes – for nine years! In 1969 Cambodia was also attacked, at first with falsified air-operation protocols which purported that Vietnam was the target. These three illegal wars were carried out without a UN mandate and against the UN ban on violence. By way of war pictures and reporting from Vietnam, by 1967 the Hippie peace movement and the civil rights movement under Martin Luther King gained strength. Also celebrities like the boxer, Muhammad Ali expressed his criticism unequivocally. He said: “White people sending black people to fight yellow people to protect the country they stole from the red people.” Finally the USA had to negotiate a peace treaty. In 1975, after nine years, the Vietnam war ended. Conclusion: The USA has learned their lesson from the Vietnam war, unfortunately the wrong one. Today independent journalists are not admitted to war zones anymore and only filtered material is shown. In 1975 the USA abolished compulsory military service and since then are fighting only with “volunteers” and mercenaries in order to lessen the protests in the country. The argumentation however – from Afghanistan to Syria – is still the same: They would fight only against evil, inhuman criminals or terrorists they say. Whether the causes for the war were uncovered as being fabricated is not of interest anymore to them. Moreover, today wars are not called war anymore, but ‘operations’ or ‘missions’. Where will this take us? Still one has to conclude that the US administrations suffer from an extremely misguided self-perception, because they cannot recognize their own war crimes. They are breaching the UN ban on violence which they had signed, and at the same time keep demanding - under threat of violence - from other countries, such as Iran or North Korea, that they abide by international treaties. But it cannot go on like this. The events during the Vietnam war clearly indicate the direction: Fair reporting by courageous journalists and an active peace movement were and still are the key to peace, particularly with regard to the wars with participation of the US that are still going on.

from sl.

Sources/Links: https://www.unric.org/de/charta
https://de.statista.com/statistik/daten/studie/264176/umfrage/gefallene-us-soldaten-in-vietnam/
https://fpif.org/muhammad-ali-belongs-right-malcolm-x-martin-luther-king-howard-zinn/
http://worldsofhurt.com/chapter-one/