I was disappointed that the Star Tribune gave credibility to a deeply uninformed editorial by publishing it on February 4. In it, Stephen B. Young asserts that the war against Vietnam was lost by dishonest reporters, effeminate intellectuals, and weak leaders. “Stabbed in the back” was exactly the same argument that Adolf Hitler made for the German loss in World War I. The US lost the war in Vietnam not only because no one had any idea what winning would look like, but mostly because the entire project was ethically repellant and uninformed by history. At least the Star Tribune put the article on the opinion page.
Washington had taken extreme measures to create a government in Saigon pliable to its directives. One relatively free election had been set aside because the results didn’t suit Washington. The assassination of another president had been sponsored by the American ambassador. Three times the tonnage of bombs had been dropped on little Vietnam than had been dropped on the whole world in World War II. Selective torture and assassination of suspected members of the Viet Cong infrastructure, known as the Phoenix Program, hadn’t rolled back sympathy for the nationalist cause against Saigon and Washington. The Strategic Hamlet Program of moving populations off land people had lived on for generations had only the effect of creating a vast pool of recruits for the Viet Cong. Declaring huge “free fire zones” had not stopped the dwindling of areas controlled by Saigon, but had also contributed to the pool of recruits for the Viet Cong. Bombing the dikes to flood populated areas, mining the harbor in Haiphong, destroying crops and animals, burning to the ground hundreds of villages, spraying poison on the landscape, dropping antipersonnel bombs and napalm on civilians were violations of international law, in some cases violation of US law, and in many cases crimes against humanity. Sacrificing 60,000 Americans, killing 3,000,000 Vietnamese, and spending nearly a trillion dollars: what more would Stephen B. Young have advised Washington to do? There was no such thing as winning that war, and even if there were, no civilized or rational country would aspire to do so. Please note that I do not blame US soldiers. They fought valiantly. I blame Johnson, Nixon, Kissinger, and conservative senators.
It is my hope that in the future the Star Tribune examine more closely what it publishes for truthfulness, rationality, and decency.