Show Transcript: The Vietnam War and Why it Still Matters

Opening Theme

(John Pilger - “Heroes” (ATV 1981) clip “The Grunt is taking no more bullshit”) (Buffy Saint-Marie “The Universal Soldier”)

(Matt Jones – “Hell no, I ain’t gonna go!”) (Album: “Relevant”)

Hello brothers and sisters, comrades and friends.  You’re listening to Back in the USSR here on CFRU 93.3 FM, I am Siegfried, and first of all I want to apologize for the lack of a show last week.  Well, I want to apologize, but not really.  There were some circumstances beyond my control, so I ended up having to play a talk by Michael Parenti for the full two hours, but I know those of you who still tuned in weren’t overly disappointed because listening to any talk by him is time well spent.

Now, this week I’m going to do what I was going to do last week.  Me and a very special guest are going to talk about the Vietnam War (mention the songs from the intro).  Why? Because here at Back in the USSR we are very sensitive to the distortion and re-writing of history, and that’s exactly what’s been going on with how the Vietnam War has been portrayed in Western media.  And while this certainly isn’t new, some very blatant examples have emerged recently, including a PBS documentary series which we’re going to talk about, that effectively whitewashes the whole thing -   

It was the case back then, and remains the case today, that mainstream commentators on the Vietnam War can be divided into two groups: the people who thought the war could be won, and those who thought it could not be won and concluded it was a mistake.  People who tell the truth that it was a criminal, brutal, racist, imperialist war are still not welcome in the mainstream capitalist press, it was the same with the Iraq War.  And this has allowed history to be distorted in many ways, commonly downplaying the American atrocities there as a “mistake” or even a “good-intentioned mistake”.

Well let’s look a little at this “good-intentioned mistake”.  The follow is an excerpt from an article by Michael Yates in Monthly Review Magazine entitled “Honor theVietnamese, Not those who killed them”.  This section of the article is called “McNamara’s business model of war”: 

(Play The Covered Wagon Musicians “Napalm Sticks to Kids”) (Album: “We say no to your war!”)

Brendan Campisi in Conversation on the Anti-War movement.

(Read The Black Panther, September 13, 1969 “To the Courageous Vietnamese People, Commemorating the Death of Ho Chi Minh”)

(Play Donovan “The Ballad of a Crystal Man”) (Album: “The Ballad of a Crystal Man”)

(Play Ewan MacColl "Ballad of Ho Chi Minh")