New Ho book: Is the American War a descriptor non Grata?
Review of Ho Chi Minh: A Portrait by Dan Duffy
C. David Thomas and Lady Borton
I just got a copy of Ho Chi Minh: A Portrait, by C. David Thomas and Lady Borton with an introduction by Charles Fenn (Youth Publishing House, Ha Noi, 2003).
David Thomas designed the book. Its beauty rests on consistently thoughtful, painstaking layout of new and striking reproductions. There are photographs, maps, charts, facsimile documents, and dozens of postage stamps. It is one of the best-designed, most appropriately-produced, and beautiful things I have ever handled.
Part of the beauty is exhaustive documentation of all the images and sources. David's previous series of dozens of mixed-media paintings of Ho, available in an art book, had for me a flat quality. Each image of Ho would be familiar and so would the outlines in the background from news-service photos.
I know that the paintings provoked excitement and discussion among artists in Ha Noi but I don't know what they talked about. One day when the paintings were on display in Oakland, one man walked in from the angry crowd outside, looked around, and asked, "Is that all?"
If his reaction and mine were as David intended, the point of the series of paintings would be that we all have heard about this man but few know much about him.
In the book, by contrast, every reader will find both familiar and unfamiliar presentations of Ho. They are presented with the depth of supporting text. A reader falls right into the attributions and discussion and narrative.
Lady Borton did the research and the writing. Besides nailing down what the images are, she tells the story, gives chronologies and geopolitical context, and selects from accounts of Ho by people who knew him.
The unique quality of her work is that Lady's veneration of Ho and his nation is expressed with the fact-checking spirit of a free journalist, as if by a can bo with a strong liberal arts education. That the incidents in the Gulf of Tonkin were a hoax, for example on page 106, is a tendentious point of view but it can be supported. On page 103, the definite but ambiguous US role in the murder of Diem and Nhu is more deftly put.
I didn't notice anything plain wrong or mendacious in the book, as I do in Nguyen Khac Vien's histories and journalism, while Lady shares Vien's sense of story and patriotic passion. I did notice choices that I wouldn't make. For example, the "Chronology of Viet Nam Prior to Ho Chi Minh's Birth" on page 126 includes the legendary and lovable Hung kings and omits the historical and difficult Mac, Trinh, Tay Son and Nguyen.
That is a fairy-tale touch. Calling the war with Saigon "the American war" in another chronology on page 109, and not mentioning the Republic of Viet Nam anywhere, are pure cant. She does refer to some country called " South Viet Nam" once on page 106. Not even the Front makes it in. But, after all, the book is about Ho.
Closer to her topic, Lady tells the story of the disastrous land reform, on page 100. I wonder why, since anyone who has heard of it will disagree with her version. She stresses Ho Chi Minh's apology, reprinting selections on page 101.
I object to her interpretation, laying the fault of "excesses" at the feet of "local firebrands." I think that the cruelties of the land reform were part of an effort by the Party to eliminate or neutralize smart people who had joined the revolution. Some say that Ho was one of them.
The rest of the book is a respectable introduction to the life of Ho Chi Minh, chairman of Viet Nam, especially enriched with revolutionary lore. The period from Ho's arrival in Ha Noi to the defeat of the French is the highlight of the narrative.
The fascination with the cleverness and dedication of the revolutionaries which Lady showed in her After Sorrow works to good effect in, for example on page 89, the night retreat from Ha Noi. Pages 90 through 99 strikingly narrate the eventual victory in terms of Ho's organizing in Viet Bac.
Illustrations for this section include two of of Ho's inspirational poems from the time, pages 90-1 and 96-7, each on its own page facing an appropriate Dong Ho print. The customary focus of history of this period, the lugubrious set-piece of Dien Bien Phu, is relegated to two postage stamps and a map in the background of a photo of Ho speaking to Giap and others, pages 98-9.
This is a book about Ho. If you really want to get into the topic of Ho Chi Minh, of course William Duiker's biography is longer than Lady's and uses a greater variety of sources to examine each stage of his life on its own terms.
Duiker's method also contrasts with Lady's in that he accords Ho the civility of assuming that the revolutionary was a rational man whose motives can be apprehended by reasonable observer. William Duiker started adult life as a diplomat.
At one point in the Paris talks Le Duc Tho tried to disabuse Henry Kissinger of this way of thinking. Look, Kissinger, he said, we are not your colleagues. We have all spent more than fifteen years apiece in jail fighting the people you work for with such bonhomie.
I write with the same ideals as Duiker, but Lady is the one of us who understands Ho. He wasn't an individual as we imagine ourselves to be. Through poverty and sickness, as a criminal, he led a nation into existence against all odds.
Before the cult of personality and eventually the overbearing posters and the silly songs in the criminally vacuous curriculum of the schools and prisons, he was a man who played a role in world history by the force of his face-to-face interactions.
That he was one of several such Vietnamese patriots, and that his Communists as well as the foreign invaders killed the others, doesn't change the fact that he was different than you and me. A rational man would have done something else with his life.
I should add that Ho cannot be reduced to Le Duc Tho's triumphant revolutionary heroism any more than he can be to the liberal individual. Plenty of hard revolutionaries, Tho among them, contested the major decisions of Ho's career.
It is difficult at this time to imagine him as a human being but to my ear he is best caught by French authors who were adults when he stepped forward as Ho Chi Minh. Phillip Devillers' remarkable "contemporary history", published in 1952 with the title "Histoire du Viet-Nam de 1940 a 1952", is the most plausible representation of the man as a man that I've read.
It is an eerie book, from the real past, when a different future was possible. Some Americans look back and say that we could remained close to Ho. French at the time and since have said that our token encouragement gave him prestige over the nationalists that he could not back up with authority among the communists, and kept him from making a compromise with the West.
His Vietnamese critics don't entertain either conjecture and point out that the dark elements of the Party were already at work. In any event, the most alive, mature and happy photos of Ho in the book are from those years. He was back in Viet Nam and no one knew how badly it would all turn out.
You can read about this stuff forever. If you like to read it is a candy store. For a short introduction to Ho, I would choose Daniel Hemery's Ho Chi Minh de L'Indochine au Viet Nam or Pierre Brocheux's Ho Chi Minh. The very best French researchers write educational materials, something that I wish we would do over here.
If I put together my own book it would include the works that attack the icon: Nguyen Chi Thien's poems against Ho in Flowers From Hell; the lampoons by Le Dat in Giai Pham in the 1950 and by Tran Huy Quang in Bao Van Nghe in the 1980s; any Trotskyist memoir, and a few of the articles from the overseas press that attack everything about the man, from the poems to the photographs, as a clever fraud.
I would also print the rumors about what Ho did for sex and the ghastly jokes about his preserved body that any roomful of Vietnamese can tell. They have mixed feelings about the man.
People line up to view his body in that Soviet mausoleum, but an awful lot of people don't. In a very nice touch, instead of the mausoleum, David and Lady rather show on pages 122-125 photos of Young Pioneers crying the day Ho Chi Minh died.
Well, really it would be the day after he died, because the authorities lied about the date of his death. Now on page 125 Vu Ky recounts some piffle about how Ho died on Independence Day on purpose.
That is as may be, but at the time the leadership felt that revealing the true date would be bad for the war effort. Lying to the public about the facts of life for national security doesn't make any more sense over there than it does here.
Sure, children really did cry when Uncle died. So print the photos. But why not also tell the bitter jokes of the skeptics? For that matter why not also include David's often-told story about toasting Ho's death with his fellow soldiers down below the 17th parallel?
A person grows and changes over his life and it is hard to show that when you dip him in wax and stick him in a glass box. That also makes it hard to show your own views changing. Obviously, my principal criticism of David and Lady's work is that I wish they had done it in a free Viet Nam.
But if you want a reliable, detailed outline in English of Ho Chi Minh's life and times, with a collection of pictures and documents whose selection, quality of reproduction, and composition all convey the purity with which people around the world love the man who founded Viet Nam, this is the book to get.
Youth Publishing House put it out, after all, and we want the young to have beautiful dreams, right? Anyone growing up in Viet Nam will already know the reality of Ho's vision. The book has already appeared in Vietnamese there.
What is needed is distribution of this English version overseas, to let those who did not watch the liberation of Viet Nam learn and teach how you can love Ho without being a stooge. But David says that Lady refuses to allow any reprint of the English, even for Viet Nam, and bars translation into any other language, and even export of the Vietnamese version.
I would like to hear why. Any book this good relies on a single driving author, and that would be Lady, but any good book draws on the lives and work of a multitude, who have expectations.
For now, order your English-language copy directly from David Thomas, 20 Webster Court, Newton, MA 02459, with a check for $25 USD.
Dan Duffy
Vietnam War vs. American War
From MGilbert@ngcsu.edu Mon Dec 13 12:02:47 2004
Date: Mon, 13 Dec 2004 14:56:46 -0500
From: Gilbert <MGilbert@ngcsu.edu>
Reply-To: vsg@u.washington.edu
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: Re: New Ho book: Is the American War a descriptor non grata?
Re: Review of new book on Ho Chi Minh
While I, too, would find any absence of references to the Republic of
Vietnam _pure cant_, I would like Dan to explicate his inclusion of use
of the term the _American War in Vietnam_ in that catagory.
I would imagine we all prefer the Second Indochina War (I personally
would include the war against Japan, making this war the third, as this
is what older Vietnamese told me was their conception, though for many
reasons I quite understand this is impossible). I also can think of many
reasons why the usage of the American War in Vietnam might be
objectionable (Hey , it was a Vietnamese war, too, and what about
Laos/Cambodia/Thailand, and the Aussies!) But I would very much like to
hear Dan's version of why it would be "cant." Perhaps that is not what
he meant. But if he did, I would like to know why. I can think of no
one I would rather have such things deconstructed for me than Dan!
Marc
Professor Marc Jason Gilbert
Department of History
North Georgia College and State University
Dahlonega, Georgia 30597
Phone: (706) 864-1911
Fax: (706) 864-1873
E-mail: mgilbert@ngcsu.edu
From mchale@gwu.edu Mon Dec 13 12:45:44 2004
Date: Mon, 13 Dec 2004 18:44:11 -0200
From: Shawn McHale <mchale@gwu.edu>
Reply-To: vsg@u.washington.edu
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: American War in Vietnam . .
Dear Marc et al.,
I may not be Dan Duffy, but I will weigh in on the issue of calling the war between 1959/60 and 1975 the "American" War.
I can understand the desire to have symmetry: the Resistance War against the French followed by a War against the Americans. But desire for symmetry doesn't cut the mustard.
The wars for Vietnam were, first all, part of larger Indochina conflicts. (Yes, yes, Indochina is a colonial construction: is that reason enough to dump the term?).
Within Vietnam itself, the wars were, all at once, civil wars and international wars. Calling the war the "American" war serves the purpose of *obscuring* the civil war that dragged on for thirty years. It also obscures the ways that, strategically, the DRV used much of Indochina as a battlefield (particularly, Laos, but also Cambodia).
It implies that all Vietnamese are *reacting* to American aggression: an idea which implies, for example, that the DRV was composed of altar boys who would never meddle in the affairs of other countries. Yeah, right.
I prefer -- in lieu of a better term -- to stick to the Second Indochina War. It is easy enough, when doing so, to highlight the extent to which the American military caused great destruction in the region.
Shawn McHale
Associate Professor of History and International Affairs
Associate Director, Sigur Center for Asian Studies
George Washington University
Washington, DC 20052 USA
From mike.high@starpower.net Mon Dec 13 15:23:25 2004
Date: Mon, 13 Dec 2004 18:21:52 -0500
From: Mike High <mike.high@starpower.net>
Reply-To: vsg@u.washington.edu
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: Re: American War in Vietnam . .
All of these reasons & distinctions are persuasive, but in the arena of common usage, I think the name for the war of the 60s and early 70s will continue to vary according to one's frame of reference. It makes sense for most Americans to remember it as the Vietnam War, since it's the only war in Vietnam they know.
Similarly, while it may be imperfect to refer to the "American War," I can see why some would find it an easy way to distinguish it from the earlier war with the French. And in truth, we did a heck of a lot to earn the "naming rights" for that war. The "American" character of the war started with regime-selection, accelerated with the introduction of ground forces and overwhelming air power, and culminated in peace negotiations with the US at the table with the northern government. It was partly our own self-absorption, but it's no wonder that we talked of "Vietnamization of the war" as we left. (Admittedly, the phrase leaves out the contribution and casualties of the South Vietnamese forces.)
As a practical matter, I'm probably the only person among my family and associates who would recognize and appreciate the meaning of "the Second Indochina War." (I'd even recognize allusions to the Third or Fourth Indochina War, depending how you're counting, in 1979)
:: Mike High
Alexandria, VA
From dduffy@email.unc.edu Mon Dec 13 18:21:49 2004
Date: Mon, 13 Dec 2004 21:20:20 -0500
From: Dan Duffy <dduffy@email.unc.edu>
Reply-To: vsg@u.washington.edu
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: Re: American War in Vietnam . .
I tried to edit all gratuitous insults out of my review, but "pure cant" got by me. Sorry. Here is why I think "American War" in the Ho book is cant:
It seems to me that the "American War" is a helpful name for the air war in the north. When a Vietnamese who lived through those events in Ha Noi extends that usage over the whole war, he or she knows that it is to use the part for the whole. He or she might do that for convenience's sake, or deliberately to elide the active role of the Saigon government as a protagonist in the conflict. Someone unfamiliar with Vietnamese history, hearing of the "American War", might actually think that the war was between Viet Nam on one side and Washington on the other.
I favor "Second Indochina War" for the reasons Shawn suggests, and also because that is the title of William Turley's book, which is the good short account of the war as an Asian political event.
But, as Mike High says, "Second Indochina War" confuses people. So I think"Viet Nam War" works okay. It was a war in Viet Nam. Marilyn Young's "Viet
Nam Wars" and Bob Brigham's "Wars for Viet Nam" are both recognizable and
also suggest complexities.
Dan Duffy
From ben.kerkvliet@anu.edu.au Mon Dec 13 19:56:09 2004
Date: Tue, 14 Dec 2004 14:57:50 +1100
From: Ben Kerkvliet <ben.kerkvliet@anu.edu.au>
Reply-To: vsg@u.washington.edu
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: Re: American War in Vietnam . .
Naming wars isn't easy. It's one of those tasks that, regardless of the outcome, can never capture the complexities of the matter. One needs to have several lines, even a paragraph or two, to begin to signal those complexities.
A book I've just completed about certain aspects of northern Vietnam from the mid 1950s to the late 1980s refers to "the war against the United States" or, shorter still, the "US war" because that is how most of the people I interviewed and read about when doing the research referred to it. ("chien tranh trong My" - literally, war against America, but that lumps all of America into one category, which most Brazilians, Argentinians, Canadians, et al. object to and which my Vietnamese sources are not including when they refer to "My"). Vietnamese informants, documents, etc., certainly didn't call it the Vietnam war or the Second Indochina war. I can understand why some other Vietnamese and many people in the US or Australia insist on other names. They're not wrong, but such names are incomplete just as is the name I use.
We have today a new war-naming problem: the war on terrorism. I find it a total misnomer, for reasons I can't go into now.
Cheers,
Ben
ps. By the way, my book referred to above will probably be out in March or April. Its name is The Power of Everyday Politics: How Vietnamese Peasants Transformed National Policy ( Ithaca: Cornell University Press). No doubt some - maybe many - readers will take issue with the title (not to mention the contents)!
From michaudjean@yahoo.com Mon Dec 13 20:11:15 2004
Date: Mon, 13 Dec 2004 20:10:04 -0800 (PST)
From: Jean Michaud <michaudjean@yahoo.com>
Reply-To: vsg@u.washington.edu
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: Re: American War in Vietnam . .
Dear all
Can I ask for some advice on this question (and take a short sidetrip from the initial direction of this debate)? I am currently completing one of those Scarecrow Press 'Historical Dictionnaries' (this one on highland minorities) and I have chosen to use 'Second Indochina War' throughout. I claim no expertize on this issue, clearly, but it simply seems to me (and others) that for a broad audience, it is the fairest description of those years from the widest possible range of viewpoints.
However, and here's my question, I am stuck with the years I should use to frame that SIW. Putting the end at 1975 needs little debating. But the starting year is more delicate to assign. Any suggestion, bearing in mind that readership for this publication is international, and many will be non-specialist?
Thanks in advance.
Jean Michaud
U. of Montreal
From markustaussig@mac.com Mon Dec 13 20:28:29 2004
Date: Tue, 14 Dec 2004 11:26:34 +0700
From: Markus Taussig <markustaussig@mac.com>
Reply-To: vsg@u.washington.edu
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: Re: American War in Vietnam . .
I would be interested to know, in this discussion of naming the war, whether there is any correlation between where researchers' main Vietnam experience is (i.e., North or South) and what name they prefer. I, for example, would probably favor the "Indochina" label for academic looks at the war, especially given that this very colonial sounding name not only does not refute the civil war element of the war, but it further does fairly clearly implicate the foreigners who dictated the borders. I spent my first years in Vietnam in Ho Chi Minh City.
_______________________________
Markus D. Taussig
Private Sector Development Research
VOIP (Global Access) Tel: (202) 204 0963
Vietnam Mobile: (84) 903 25 8774
markustaussig@mac.com
http://homepage.mac.com/markustaussig/
From cjr11@cornell.edu Mon Dec 13 21:13:00 2004
Date: Tue, 14 Dec 2004 00:11:35 -0500 (EST)
From: Christophe J.p. Robert <cjr11@cornell.edu>
Reply-To: vsg@u.washington.edu
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: Re: American War in Vietnam . .
I think the point that Markus made is quite important (which region of VN one worked in), as is obvious to researchers who spent most of their time in the south and worked on what Philip Taylor called the idea of VN's south.
It's quite interesting to reflect on the usage of official terminology among southern Vietnamese in S VN today, who may use terms such as "giai phong" or even "che do cu" either unselfconsciously or strategically to make a point when speaking with a foreigner. There are many examples of such "detournements" of official meanings or else "simply" of usage of official terms.
"American war," then, appears in conversations in SG/TPHCM (more interesting naming issues when referring to the city, of course). The next question may be to figure what people mean when they speak of America or Americans... especially given how they may "place" the person they are talking to.
I'm stating the obvious but I think it pays off to reflect about who uses what terms when, especially when dealing with the ways southern Vietnamese people are still experiencing the war(s) today in recollections, and when discussing their current lives (seen through the prism of the "mo cua" period and in opposition to the bad years that preceded). Clearly, quite a different story in N and S.
Benedict Anderson's hypothesis on the role of print media and language in nationalism seems quite relevant here, especially when thinking of the language the younger generations use to speak of the recent, "phuc tap" past of the war(s). And perhaps especially so in the south.
Christophe
From leductony@yahoo.com Mon Dec 13 21:53:34 2004
Date: Mon, 13 Dec 2004 21:52:18 -0800 (PST)
From: Anthony Le <leductony@yahoo.com>
Reply-To: vsg@u.washington.edu
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: Re: American War in Vietnam . .
I, a South Vietnamese born of South Vietnamese parents, son of a South Vietnamese soldier, would object to the war being called the American War, because I think this name undermines an entire party in the conflict, i.e. South Vietnam, who had a proactive role in the war. Of course, if you take the point of view of the winner, North Vietnam, and its long standing claim of fighting to free the South from American domination, then calling it the American War is appropriate. On an academic level, I would opt for the "Second Indochina War" for some of the reasons that others have already mentioned.
I would caution that just because the name "American War" is used by many Vietnamese, it doesn't mean that the individual who uses the term has given it much thought since the Vietnamese propaganda machinery has an amazing ability to get people to repeat words and phrases that are propagated extensively to the masses.
An example is the term "Liberation Day". I've heard many overseas Vietnamese employ it to refer to April 30, 1975. Though if they were pressed further, they probably wouldn't call it that at all. They simply got used to it while they were still living in Vietnam.
anthony
From phamhtung@hotmail.com Mon Dec 13 23:45:17 2004
Date: Tue, 14 Dec 2004 07:42:29 +0000
From: pham hongtung <phamhtung@hotmail.com>
Reply-To: vsg@u.washington.edu
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: Re: American War in Vietnam . .
Dear all,
I'm following the discussion on naming of the war and find it is quite interesting. In North Vietnam nobody have ever thought of this. Recently, as we are preparing for a workshop on the war, some of us (historians at the Vietnam National University Hanoi) realise the impossibility of all used names of the war. In North Vietnam the war has been called "Cuoc Khang Chien Chong My Cuu Nuoc" (The Resistance War against the US). Until now this is the most popular (and official) name of the war. Ho Chi Minh also used this term in his testament (the first sentance: Cuoc khang chien chong My cua nhan dan ta co the con kinh qua nhieu gian kho, nhung nhat dinh se thang loi....). Shortly it is also called "cuoc khang chien chong My" (the anti-american resistance). Ofcourse, this way of naming reflected one-side point of view.
But it is also impossible to call the war as "American war", as somebody has pointed out. It seems that the "Second Indochina War" acceptable. But pleae note that of that time (1954-1975) there no " Indochina" more! Above all the war, I think, was a Vietnamese event, even it is internationalized from both sides and it's effects and consequences it very international. Thus, I wonder, whether it is possible to call it "the struggle of Vietnamese for national unification" (Cuoc dau tranh thong nhat dat nuoc cua nhan dan VN) ?
Secondly, in the literature there are differences in periodization of the war history. While in North Vietnam the war is thought to beginn in 1954 (War time then 1954-1975), in USA some author think it began 1965 and ended 1973 or 1975 (thus, "American War"). I do not know the periodization of the South Vietnamese historians. Thus, it is interesting to hear from your opinion concerning this question.
Pham Hong Tung
From markustaussig@mac.com Mon Dec 13 23:53:15 2004
Date: Tue, 14 Dec 2004 14:50:51 +0700
From: Markus Taussig <markustaussig@mac.com>
Reply-To: vsg@u.washington.edu
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: Re: American War in Vietnam . .
of course, many cleverly place a "bi." in front of their use of "liberation"!
_______________________________
Markus D. Taussig
Private Sector Development Research
VOIP (Global Access) Tel: (202) 204 0963
Vietnam Mobile: (84) 903 25 8774
markustaussig@mac.com
http://homepage.mac.com/markustaussig/
From dieuhien@u.washington.edu Tue Dec 14 00: 14:36 2004
Date: Tue, 14 Dec 2004 00:12:33 -0800 (PST)
From: Hoang thi Dieu-Hien <dieuhien@u.washington.edu>
Reply-To: vsg@u.washington.edu
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: Re: American War in Vietnam . .
The "Door-On-My-Right" is the "Door-On-His-Left", and the "Door-In-Front-Of-Him" and the "Door-Behind-Her." Like Mike High said, which name is appropriate depends on whose frame of reference is used. Each name mentioned so far favors one point of view and excludes at least one other, maybe more.
I reject the notion that one name has to be more appropriate than others period. Let's take the favorite on this list so far: The Second Indochina War. Would anyone advocate calling the American Revolutionary War the First United States War, the War of 1812 the Second United States War, the Civil War the Nth United States War, and so forth...? (Please forgive my ignorance if there is another significant war between the Revolutionary War and the War of 1812.) I imagine that the way these names (FUSW, SUSW, etc.) sound to an American would be similar to the way the names First Indochina War and Second Indochina War sound to me, a native Vietnamese.
It's interesting, though, that there hasn't any mention of a specific name from the perspective(s) of the South Vietnamese. I've tried to think of one and all I can come up with is a nondescript civil war among others, nothing that I can write with capital letters. (I was born and raised in the former Republic of Vietnam.) Would love to hear what others think.
Hien
From dieuhien@u.washington.edu Tue Dec 14 00:27:26 2004
Date: Tue, 14 Dec 2004 00:25:40 -0800 (PST)
From: Hoang thi Dieu-Hien <dieuhien@u.washington.edu>
Reply-To: vsg@u.washington.edu
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: Re: American War in Vietnam . .
I'd venture that for nearly all South Vietnamese, the war in question started in 1954 and ended in 1975, although some are still fighting it fiercely in my opinion. That said, once, I heard a pro-Diem person referred to the period during his presidency a peaceful time. I wonder when would she, and others who think like her, think the war started?
Hien
From chucksearcy@yahoo.com Tue Dec 14 02:45:22 2004
Date: Tue, 14 Dec 2004 02:43:59 -0800 (PST)
From: Chuck Searcy <chucksearcy@yahoo.com>
Reply-To: vsg@u.washington.edu
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: Re: American War in Vietnam . .
For ease of reference and familiarity, at least here, nowadays, I usually adopt the Vietnamese terminology and refer to "the American War" or if I'm speaking to a group of Americans, I'll call it the Vietnam War and point out that the Vietnamese call it the American War. Arguing that it was a civil war, in my view, is something of a stretch although there were clear differences among various segments of the population in different areas, but the war on such a scale would never have occurred without massive U.S. intervention. In any case, I doubt that this discussion will have much influence on the Vietnamese.
CHUCK SEARCY
From khoa.le2@verizon.net Tue Dec 14 08:25:46 2004
Date: Tue, 14 Dec 2004 11:24:17 -0500
From: Khoa Le <khoa.le2@verizon.net>
Reply-To: vsg@u.washington.edu
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: Re: American War in Vietnam . .
The Vietnam War or the American war actually is a "Civil War" and at the same time a "Proxy War" because:
1. It was fought between communist and non-communist (better known as "nationalist") Vietnamese. Approximately 3.6 million Vietnamese died during the war, including 1,200,000 fighters and 2,400,000 civilians from both sides. (Spencer C.Tucker, The Encyclopedia of the Vietnam War, Oxford University Press, 2000, p. 64.) The origin and nature of this communist-nationalist conflict is described in chapter one (pp.33-74) of my book " Vietnam 1945-1995".
2. It was also a "proxy war" because it was fought on behalf of the "free world" headed by the U.S. on one side and the "communist world" directed by the former Soviet Union and China on the other. It was called "the American War" because the U.S. was directly involved and played the major role in the war from 1965 to 1973. It was called "the Vietnam War" because Vietnam was the battlefield.
Le Xuan Khoa
From wturley@siu.edu Tue Dec 14 09:29:14 2004
Date: Tue, 14 Dec 2004 11:26:39 -0600
From: William Turley <wturley@siu.edu>
Reply-To: vsg@u.washington.edu
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: Re: American War in Vietnam . .
Naming wars, as this thread makes clear, is an arbitrary and context-specific exercise, and the context may not be what it seems. The choice of "Second Indochina War" for my book resulted from a plan by Georges Boudarel, Bui Xuan Quang and myself to publish, in French, a three-volume set on the "que sais-je" format, with each of us concentrating on the period defined by "our" country's dominant role. Thus Georges was to cover the "French" war, I was to cover the
"American" war, and Quang was to cover the war among the Vietnamese (and others) after the Americans had left. But we also wanted to make the point that the wars were linked across time and space enveloping all three countries of " Indochina," and not so incidentally to emphasize this in the title of the set. Well, the plan collapsed on the floor of a Paris publisher, but by then I had a rough draft and had to name it something. So, what the heck....
Bill Turley
William S. Turley
Professor & Director of Graduate Studies
Department of Political Science
Southern Illinois University
Carbondale, Il 62901-4501
Tel: 618-453-3182
FAX: 618-453-3163
E-mail: wturley@siu.edu
From Chung.Nguyen@umb.edu Tue Dec 14 10:26:20 2004
Date: Tue, 14 Dec 2004 13:16:29 -0500
From: Chung Nguyen <Chung.Nguyen@umb.edu>
Reply-To: vsg@u.washington.edu
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: Re: American War in Vietnam . .
This is a very interesting discussion. Just reading different perspectives expressed, I have a sense of how far we have been from, say, just 5 years ago. I do not have any problem if it's called the Second Indochina war, the Vietnam war, or the American war. I would have objections, however, to objections that it should be called any of these, esp. that it is not an American war.
I, like Anthony, am from South Vietnam and can very well sympathize with his position. But in the end, historical facts do not support it, which is, of course, very hard to take, esp. considering the attending turbulence and traumas of the aftermath.
For the majority of the Vietnamese, I believe, it is an American war because the US government played the most decisive role in it.
- without the US, there would not have been the First Indochina war because France, by then almost bankrupt, could hardly sustain a 9-year pacification attempt to reimpose colonialization in Vietnam. The US provided 78% of the cost of the First Inodchina war.
- without the US, national election would have been held in 1956 as specified in the Geneva agreement, Vietnam would have been unified, and there would have been no war.
- without the US, South Vietnam would remain a temporary partition, as specified in the Geneva agreement, and not an independent state.
- without the US, South Vietnam would collapse within a few months, for lack of independent resources. North Vietnam would not have collapsed, regardless of what paths China and the Soviet Union did.
Of course the South Vietnamese fought the war, but only in a secondary role because the most critical decisions related to the conduct of the war were made in Washington, not in Saigon. The North Vietnamese did receive assistance from China and the Soviet Union, but neither China nor the Soviet Union could determine who could be on the party~Rs polibureau, nor who should be its secretary general. Nor could they make strategic decision for the Vietnamese. That was not the case in the South. Without the US, Ngo Dinh Diem could not be President, and neither could Nguyen van Thieu. Most of the elections in South Vietnam were fraudulent. Had there been a genuine election, a peace candidate would have won.
Perhaps it should also be noted that Ho Chi Minh didn't not want the war, first or second. The wars were imposed on him and Vietnam. Had Metropolitan France accepted the Sainteny Agreement of 1946, there would have been no war against the French. Ho Chi Minh made a last ditch effort to prevent the breakout of war. He came to the US embassy in France, asking the US to use its good office to persuade France to accept the Sainteny agreement. In return Vietnam would allow the US to use Cam Ranh bay and to pour capital investment in the semi-independent Vietnam within the French Union. That offer didn't work. When envoy Abbot Low Moffat came to Hanoi for the US last-ditch effort to prevent the war, Ho Chi Minh repeated the same offer, this time through his minister Hoang Minh Giam. Moffat was very sympathetic to the Vietnamese, but hobbled by Dulles' personal instruction, his hands were tied. The offer, again, fell by the wayside.
On hearing report that French troops carried by US ships had just landed in Saigon, Ho Chi Minh at night came to ask Archimedes Pattie, the OSS chief of Indocina, if that was true. After Pattie in a roundabout way confirmed that it was, a crestfallen Ho Chi Minh said, "and you know that now we have to find allies, what allies we can find" (quote from memory). For he knew very well that Vietnam perhaps had just entered one of its darkest periods of its hard-fought existence. Vietnam did not just face the power of modern France, but behind its modern army stood the US, the victor of World War II.
Based on this narrative, it was the French, and then the US, that the Vietnamese fought against to regain independence. Without external support, the nationalist-communist conflict would certainly occur and might even endure, but practically it would be short. It would not lead to a 21-year year.
What would have happened had the US used its good office to persuade France to accept the Sainteney Agreement, or the French colons realized the greater benefits of a Vietnam within the French Union ? Vietnam would still perhaps have a socialist orientation, but surely not the hard-bitten Stalinism that followed later. And there would have been no war, first or second, Vietnam or American.
But there is no ifs or buts in history. We live with the history as it unfods, however it unfolds. From this narragtive, at least as legitimate as any, with over three million deaths, the Vietnamese certainly has the right to call it by its name.
Nguyen Ba Chung
From ProschanF@folklife.si.edu Tue Dec 14 11:09:48 2004
Date: Tue, 14 Dec 2004 14:00:54 -0500
From: Frank Proschan <ProschanF@folklife.si.edu>
Reply-To: vsg@u.washington.edu
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: Re: American War in Vietnam - exercises in cant
In starting us off on this particular thread, Dan charged that "Calling the war with Saigon "the American war" in another chronology on page 109, and not mentioning the Republic of Viet Nam anywhere, are pure cant." I take his meaning to be consistent with two of the OED definitions of "cant": "To say or exclaim in the pet phraseology of the day, to use the phrases currently affected at the time" and "To affect the conventional phraseology of a school, party, or subject," neither of which are particularly offensive. He may also have intended to use it to mean "to talk unreally or hypocritically with an affectation of goodness or piety" (this latter interpretetation is consistent with his perceived need to apologize later for engaging in gratuitous insult). (I'm assuming he didn't mean to liken Lady to "vagabonds, thieves, and the like" from elsewhere in OED's definitions.)
But there is also another OED definition which perhaps best captures the discussions that followed: speaking cant is "To use the special phraseology or jargon of a particular class or subject." In that sense, Lady's use, as all of those proposed or defended here, is simply the "special phraseology or jargon" of a particular set of speakers/readers who are concerned in specific ways with the subject being referred to. In that sense, there is nothing to apologize about for identifying the formulation "American war" as the special phrasing of a certain group of authors/audience members. Nor do I think there is anything particularly odious in Lady's use of the term, echoing as it does the way in which the subject was evidently perceived by Ho himself: she is doing what many authors (and some of us anthropologists) do, which is to take indigenous categories and local terms ("the phrases currently affected at the time") seriously and respectfully and adopt them in our own discussions and analyses.
For an exercise in pure cant, consider the bizarre distinctions that bibliographers and library cataloguers are forced to make in describing the various wars that have engulfed Vietnam and her neighbors over the last century. These are among the LoC Subject Headings used to describe these various periods:
Vietnam History August Revolution, 1945
Indochinese War, 1946-1954
Vietnamese reunification question (1954-1976)
Vietnamese Conflict, 1961-1975
Cambodia History Civil War, 1970-1975
Vietnamese Conflict, 1961-1975 Cambodia
Vietnamese Conflict, 1961-1975 Campaigns Cambodia
Vietnamese Conflict, 1961-1975 Campaigns Laos
Vietnamese Conflict, 1961-1975 Laos
Laos--Politics and government
Sino-Vietnamese Conflict, 1979
Cambodian-Vietnamese Conflict, 1977-1991
Cambodia--Politics and government--1975-1979
So, Vietnam, of course, had no war between 1961 and 1975, only a "conflict" (the "recent unpleasantness" diplomats speak of). From 1954 to 1961, Vietnam had neither war nor conflict, simply a "reunification question." When the CIA was recruiting mercenaries in Laos in 1959, there was neither war nor conflict, simply "politics and government" (or, more bizarrely, "description and travel"). When Pol Pot was massacring his own people and those across the border in Vietnam in 1976, there was simply more "politics and government." Vietnam had a revolution, but neither Cambodia nor Laos did. Cambodia had a "civil war" between 1970-75 but not between 1977-92. Laos, of course, has never had a war at all. The unpleasantness in Laos from 1961-75 and in Cambodia (from 1961-70? 1961-75?) are simply appendages of the "Vietnamese conflict." The head swims.
If anyone deserves to be called "vagabonds, thieves, and the like" it is those who would steal people's history. The erasure of Laos and Cambodia, their subjugation to Vietnam, the euphemisms that deny that the U.S. was at war with both (or even at war with Vietnam, or with DRV)--these are the kinds of things that warrant condemnation. And it's a bunch of harmless librarians who have to engage in these exercises in cant... (apologies to Alan, Judith, Hong, Lien, Dan, etc.). That Lady Borton, in a book published in Vietnam, licensed by Vietnamese censors, addressed to Vietnamese readers and foreigners sympathetic to Ho Chi Minh, uses a formulation straight out of Ho's mouth or pen, doesn't seem especially worthy of criticism to me.
Best,
Frank Proschan
Project Director
From judithh@u.washington.edu Tue Dec 14 14:55:17 2004
Date: Tue, 14 Dec 2004 14:53:15 -0800 (PST)
From: Judith Henchy <judithh@u.washington.edu>
Reply-To: vsg@u.washington.edu
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: Re: American War in Vietnam - exercises in cant
Frank,
I refuse to be held responsible for the Library of Congress Subject Headings, about which the less said the better. It is, however, my understanding that the "unpleasantness" in Viet Nam, and the other neighboring countries, was never carried out under any official declaration of war, but under the authorization of the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution. It is clearly in the interest of the US Congress, and its Library, to maintain the fiction that no war was declared, and no war took place, particularly in Cambodia.
By the way, we do have the means to challenge LC on their terminology, and we have enlisted the help of many on this list to do just that, so please feel free to raise these questions.
judith
From sdenney@uclink4.berkeley.edu Tue Dec 14 12:11:39 2004
Date: Tue, 14 Dec 2004 12:11:18 -0800
From: Stephen Denney <sdenney@uclink4.berkeley.edu>
Reply-To: vsg@u.washington.edu
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: Re: American War in Vietnam - exercises in cant
At 02:00 PM 12/14/2004 -0500, Frank Proschan wrote:
><snip>
>
>For an exercise in pure cant, consider the bizarre distinctions that
>bibliographers and library cataloguers are forced to make in describing the
>various wars that have engulfed Vietnam and her neighbors over the last
>century. These are among the LoC Subject Headings used to describe these
>various periods:
>
> Vietnam History August Revolution, 1945
>Indochinese War, 1946-1954
>Vietnamese reunification question (1954-1976)
>Vietnamese Conflict, 1961-1975
> Cambodia History Civil War, 1970-1975
>Vietnamese Conflict, 1961-1975 Cambodia
>Vietnamese Conflict, 1961-1975 Campaigns Cambodia
>Vietnamese Conflict, 1961-1975 Campaigns Laos
>Vietnamese Conflict, 1961-1975 Laos
> Laos--Politics and government
>Sino-Vietnamese Conflict, 1979
>Cambodian-Vietnamese Conflict, 1977-1991
> Cambodia--Politics and government--1975-1979
>
>So, Vietnam, of course, had no war between 1961 and 1975, only a "conflict"
>(the "recent unpleasantness" diplomats speak of). From 1954 to 1961, Vietnam
>had neither war nor conflict, simply a "reunification question." When the
>CIA was recruiting mercenaries in Laos in 1959, there was neither war nor
>conflict, simply "politics and government" (or, more bizarrely, "description
>and travel"). When Pol Pot was massacring his own people and those across
>the border in Vietnam in 1976, there was simply more "politics and
>government." Vietnam had a revolution, but neither Cambodia nor Laos did.
> Cambodia had a "civil war" between 1970-75 but not between 1977-92. Laos, of
>course, has never had a war at all. The unpleasantness in Laos from 1961-75
>and in Cambodia (from 1961-70? 1961-75?) are simply appendages of the
>"Vietnamese conflict." The head swims.
>
>If anyone deserves to be called "vagabonds, thieves, and the like" it is
>those who would steal people's history. The erasure of Laos and Cambodia,
>their subjugation to Vietnam, the euphemisms that deny that the U.S. was at
>war with both (or even at war with Vietnam, or with DRV)--these are the
>kinds of things that warrant condemnation. And it's a bunch of harmless
>librarians who have to engage in these exercises in cant... (apologies to
>Alan, Judith, Hong, Lien, Dan, etc.). That Lady Borton, in a book published
>in Vietnam, licensed by Vietnamese censors, addressed to Vietnamese readers
>and foreigners sympathetic to Ho Chi Minh, uses a formulation straight out
>of Ho's mouth or pen, doesn't seem especially worthy of criticism to me.
Is "conflict" really an objectionable description for a war? It did not really occur to me to think of that as a euphemism.
As for Cambodia and Laos, I believe because there are relatively few books published on the recent histories of these two countries in comparison to Vietnam, that they are less likely to be divided into as many categories as Vietnam in the Library of Congress classification system.
- Steve Denney
library cataloguer, U.C. Berkeley
From leductony@yahoo.com Tue Dec 14 12:21:44 2004
Date: Tue, 14 Dec 2004 12:16:59 -0800 (PST)
From: Anthony Le <leductony@yahoo.com>
Reply-To: vsg@u.washington.edu
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: Re: American War in Vietnam . .
All of this just seems like a fussy exericse in semantics, but for my satisfaction, let's just consider the name "American Revolution". Some of the causes that led up to that war would be the British imposition of new taxes on the colonies in 1764, which was later exacerbated by the Townshend Acts in 1767, the arrival of British troops the following year, the Boston Massacre two years after that, then the more coersive acts imposed by Britain after that... To call this war the "American Revolution" is accurate because it speaks to the nature of what the colonies were doing in their rebellion against British control. It could just as well be called the "War against Britain" because that was who the colonies were fighting. But to call it the "American Revolution or "War against Britain" is not the same as "The British War" which places the emphasis primarily on British actions in Britain and vis-a-vis the colonies. None of us would argue that Britain's despotic and unjust treatment of the colonies were instrumental in bringing about the war, but I have never heard of the "American Revolution" being referred to as "The British War".
With the American Revolution, it is primarily a two-party war, thus making the process of naming it not so complicated. Vietnam is quite a different situation. However, I would argue that by calling it the "American War" simply because of the U.S. playing the primary antagonist in Vietnam is not justified.
anthony
From willpore@gwu.edu Tue Dec 14 12:33:56 2004
Date: Tue, 14 Dec 2004 15:30:24 -0500
From: William Pore <willpore@gwu.edu>
Reply-To: vsg@u.washington.edu
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: Re: American War in Vietnam . .
Anthony,
...and don't forget that the British still consider the American Revolution (or whatever)a civil war. So, even in that analogy to Vietnam, there is the complication of internal conflict.
Will Pore
From TURNER@holycross.edu Tue Dec 14 14:53:43 2004
Date: Tue, 14 Dec 2004 17:49:27 -0500
From: Karen Turner <TURNER@holycross.edu>
Reply-To: vsg@u.washington.edu
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: naming war
Just to add to the mix, some of the northern Vietnamese volunteers that I interviewed divided the war into the "Johnson war" and the "Nixon war." They knew where the bombs came from. Karen Turner
From sdenney@uclink4.berkeley.edu Tue Dec 14 15:32:33 2004
Date: Tue, 14 Dec 2004 15:33:24 -0800
From: Stephen Denney <sdenney@uclink4.berkeley.edu>
Reply-To: vsg@u.washington.edu
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: Re: American War in Vietnam - exercises in cant
At 02:53 PM 12/14/2004 -0800, Judith Henchy wrote:
>Frank,
>
>I refuse to be held responsible for the Library of Congress Subject
>Headings, about which the less said the better. It is, however, my
>understanding that the "unpleasantness" in Viet Nam, and the other
>neighboring countries, was never carried out under any official
>declaration of war, but under the authorization of the Gulf of Tonkin
>Resolution. It is clearly in the interest of the US Congress, and its
>Library, to maintain the fiction that no war was declared, and no war took
>place, particularly in Cambodia.
>
>By the way, we do have the means to challenge LC on their terminology, and
>we have enlisted the help of many on this list to do just that, so please
>feel free to raise these questions.
I doubt that even the most conservative member of the US Congress would
deny that a war took place in Vietnam and Cambodia.
- Steve Denney
From dgm405@coombs.anu.edu.au Wed Dec 15 15:41:04 2004
Date: Thu, 16 Dec 2004 10:37:51 +1100
From: David Marr <dgm405@coombs.anu.edu.au>
Reply-To: vsg@u.washington.edu
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: Re: American War in Vietnam . .
When I was growing up in New York my teachers taught me about the American Civil War. At home, my father, a southerner, would always correct me, saying it was the War Between the States. And this was 80 years after the war in question had ended. I now wonder if this sort of conflicting interpretation/terminology help lead me to a career in history.
David Marr
From Chung.Nguyen@umb.edu Tue Dec 14 13:47:24 2004
Date: Tue, 14 Dec 2004 16:37:34 -0500
From: Chung Nguyen <Chung.Nguyen@umb.edu>
Reply-To: vsg@u.washington.edu
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: Re: American War in Vietnam . .
I would agree that there are complications whatever way we look at it. That's one reason that I have no problem calling it either the Vietnam War, the Second Indochina war, or the American war. Its usage will depend upon contexts and the intended emphasis.
I don't think any analogy so far works as well as it should, simply because, I would submit, of the existence of the First Indochina war, and the US role in it, for better or for worse. To the majority of those who fought against the French, the Second Indochina war was perceived as the continuation of first. I think it was either Shaplen or Fall who observed that, unfortunately, it was the same play, only with a different cast of characters. Ngo Dinh Diem, as it turned out, did not represent the genuine nationalist grouping of the Vietnamese.
As with any complex issue, there are many possible narratives. My argument is not that "the American war" is the only legitimate one, but certainly is legitimate from the narrative provided.
And perhaps the real question is who has the power to decide ? And why ?
I, for one, would be very leery of any monopoly in this area.
Nguyen Ba Chung
(Sorry for all the typos in the earlier message. Corrections below.)
From mchale@gwu.edu Wed Dec 15 19:35:36 2004
Date: Thu, 16 Dec 2004 01:34:16 -0200
From: Shawn McHale <mchale@gwu.edu>
Reply-To: vsg@u.washington.edu
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: "American war" -- good points
Dear list,
I started writing a long post on the discussion about naming the war, then ditched it. I simply don't have any animus towards those who prefer different terminology than I do!
I am actually pulled in two very different directions over this issue. On the one hand, I prefer the broad term of the "Second Indochina War" because it captures the spatial extent of the war, one which affected more than Americans and Vietnamese.
On the other hand, so much of the particular experiences of war have eluded scholars. I have become somewhat interested in what we could call the phenomenology of war: how different communities interpreted this event in different ways. From the 1940s to 1975, we have secular modernists, Buddhists who saw the wars as evidence of the decay of the dharma, hopeful Buddhists like Chan Khong, Vietnamese Cold Warriors, fans of Nguyen Binh Khiem, long haired Vietnamese hippies, Catholics, writers like Son Nam, fans of modernization theory, nationalist generals, those wistful for monarchical rule, true believers in the Communist party, jaded believers, poor Algerian and African troops stuck fighting for the French, American Cold Warriors, Mekong delta peasants caught in the middle of it all, Cong An assassins, Filipino rock musicians playing for US troops, Korean troops, and on and on. For all that foreign writers on the war have talked about capturing Vietnamese voices, there is suc
h a richness of experience that has been overlooked.
Americans tried to shape all aspects of the war from 1965 to 73, and in that sense it was an American War. But they never were able to refashion "indigenous" phenomenologies of perception. In that sense, the war was not American at all. It's the kind of lesson that seems lost on succeeding generations of individuals responsible for the execution of American foreign policy.
Cheers,
Shawn McHale
From vern.weitzel@undp.org Wed Dec 15 20:35:55 2004
Date: Thu, 16 Dec 2004 11:34:45 +0700
From: Vern Weitzel <vern.weitzel@undp.org>
Reply-To: vsg@u.washington.edu
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: Re: American War in Vietnam . .
This is something that I (who also started out in the US) have tought a lot about, even since the 1960s. Our perceptions of what the war could and did become.
I especially appreciate Shawn's commentary on the 'richness' of experience which defies a single name.
For many of my Northern colleages, to say Truong Son is enough ...it represents the harrowing experience of just getting there not to mention the fighting in the South.
When I was young, I saw the war as an ideological issue and considered the same events as a Communist invasion of the south. Different threads emerged later in the 1960s as the US reflected on its own changing values and the horrible things from viet Nam that we were seeing in the media. American society shifted remarkably over this decade, as did the perceptions of many, maybe most, people.
And when I say that I saw this as ideological it was primarily from the viewpoint of Catholic philosophy, which of course was not very keen on atheist end-justifies-the-means Communism. Those of you who were around in the early 1960s will remember the memebers of Diem's family, notably Madamme Ngo Dinh Nhu, campaining srongly in the Catholic community in the US. So I saw my self as joining the revolutionary movement on the anti-communist side, not as a US citizen doing his duty to his country. I was always very uncomfortable with the latter concept as a rejection of individual morality (another Catholic concept).
While we are speaking of ideology, I remember some time ago reading about the discussion among Communists how they percieved the revolution how they perceived the Revolution and how much they adhered to Marx-Leninism. There is agreat difference in the perceptions of those who just wanted foreigners out and those advocating Year Zero.
In conclusion, I do not think that it is possible to have a name that we all can agree to.
Thanks, Vern
From dduffy@email.unc.edu Thu Dec 16 10:13:19 2004
Date: Thu, 16 Dec 2004 13:10:30 -0500
From: Dan Duffy <dduffy@email.unc.edu>
Reply-To: vsg@u.washington.edu
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: Re: American War in Vietnam . .
It is a blessing that a piece of careless writing on my part sparked such a productive discussion. Thanks.
I was introduced to work in Viet Nam by Lady Borton, in concert with a loose network of reconciliation activists including David Thomas. I wrote about their book in order to promote a beautiful and substantial piece of work, the product of lives I respect.
The difficulty of this particular review was that my commitments have migrated from those of my friends. I think that at this point reconciliation among the many parties betrayed by the war demands a candor that the VCP does not allow in Viet Nam, and that the scholarship of such as Nguyen Khac Vien, transmitted through the antiwar movement, makes hard to come by in the United States.
It is a difficult situation, since the overwhelming reality is that most of the country does not want to talk about Viet Nam at all. Of those intellectuals that do, the ones with most ready access to the media subscribe to another set of lies entirely, the revanchiste myth which H. Bruce Franklin has documented so well.
Hence my affection for vsg, and for the French milieu, where people are expected to have differing commitments and opinions as well as to know what they are talking about. My anthropological fieldwork focuses on such differences in worldview and in how they play out in material terms in the activity of using books about Viet Nam.
I try to lay out other people's way of looking at things while making my own as apparent as those of the people I am observing. My review of Lady and David's book was a fieldnote in this research, as most of my postings are. I regret the inflammatory language and appreciate all the responses.
David asked me to pass along some comments of his own, which I will do in moment under the subject heading of the book review.
Dan Duffy
From giebel@u.washington.edu Fri Dec 17 03:55:56 2004
Date: Fri, 17 Dec 2004 03:52:44 -0800
From: Christoph Giebel <giebel@u.washington.edu>
Reply-To: vsg@u.washington.edu
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: Re: "American war" -- good points
An interesting discussion about the academic politics of naming the war.
Adding an aside, another aspect of "American War" is its subversive effect on US popular culture (the nationalistic, narcissistic, and militaristic kind) and its attendant political-historical mythologies of messianic exceptionalism, where an entirely altruistic US is either heroically victorious or haplessly victimized. Where it likes to take all the credit, but is never accountable. Accountability, in fact, has to be banished like a dark spirit -- or externalized in finger pointing of "but they did"-s. Hence, the shorthand " Vietnam": not even a "war." " Vietnam" happened; " Vietnam" did something to us. America is always strangely absent from this naming when things become "unpleasant," when perpetrators would have to be identified. Most often in US popular discourse, I'd venture, " Vietnam" was a "tragedy," somehow fated, helplessly endured. At best, " Vietnam" was a "mistake" ("Oops!"). (Or, as my fellow UDubber Judith Henchy has pointed out, a mere "conflict.") There's a whole slew of Orwellian euphemisms in US public speak that seeks at its core to defend and reinforce the country's messianic-exceptionalist image (my current favorites: "evildoers," "tasked by the Almighty to spread freedom and democracy," "liberty's messy," and, grudgingly, "abuse" [in lieu of "torture" or "murder"], alongside hardy perennials like "collateral damage" and the sweetly innocuous "going in" [that is, illegally invading other people's countries, which in turn are called "on the ground"]).
On the other hand, had the US and its RVN allies somehow won this war, I bet we wouldn't have this discussion: it would be "American War for Vietnam" in one triumphalist, credit-taking version or another any time, all the time, carpet-bombed and cruise-missiled onto the global tongue and mind like the current vacuous "War on Terror." And our concerns for historical/spatial accurateness would probably be branded "relativist" nitpicking by "America-hating" intellectuals. (You think this is over the top? You're probably reading this outside of the US.) So we have to be aware that, whatever can be said for or against "American War" in scholarship, there is "out there" a US-American resistance to the term precisely because it insinuates a positionality of accountability that must not be permitted. In that context, I actually like the term and its appearance in English in print.
Likewise, there're all kinds of problems with "Vietnamese Civil War," along similar argumentative lines that VSG's just covered with "American War." And so I reject it. But in the context of current political-historical mythologies (and publishing realities) in Viet Nam, I would like to see the term "Vietnamese Civil War" (for, say, 1949-1975) appear there in Vietnamese in print simply for similar reasons of mnemotic subversiveness.
Finally, in this discussion on "American War," there popped up, in the contributions of my fellow VSG-listers Le Xuan Khoa and Anthony Le, the old characterizations of the war as "communist vs. nationalist," on the one hand, and, on the other, "South Viet Nam [as 'an entire party in the conflict'] vs. North Viet Nam." Now, the scholarly merits of "American War," "Viet Nam War," "Second Indochina War," civil war, proxy war, etc. and their respective contexts are debatable, but I would posit that both of these Cold War-era pairings are false dichotomies, and " South Viet Nam" especially is just a self-serving US fiction without explanatory value. For one, neither the RVN nor the DRVN ever saw themselves as only "South" or "North" Viet Nam. The RVN and the US never controlled more than, what is it?, between 45% and 60% (?) of the territory south of the DMZ; arguably, it never enjoyed the support of a majority of southerners. And throughout its existence, the RVN was vigorously fought by a sizable portion of southerners. For all of the terms mentioned before to describe the war, there existed certain realities. But no matter what perspective/context, " South Viet Nam" as one discrete war party (and the related "communist North Viet Nam attacking South Viet Nam") exists in no reality that could characterize or explain the war (as Shawn McHale has pointed out so nicely below). There is no single South. Now let's debate that!
Christoph Giebel
Univ. of Washington ("UDub")
and sleepless in Seattle
On Fri, 17 Dec 2004, Wilson, Dean wrote:
Dear Chung Ba Nguyen, and list:
Here are a couple of questions related to my research that touch on the discussion. The use of terminology is often a response to various media. I would really appreciate some guidance:
1) Robert Chandler's 1981 book "War of Ideas: The US Propaganda Campaign in Vietnam" covers textual materials like pamphlets and posters in-depth, during the 1965-1972 period.
My question is, do list members know of any more or less objective studies on the effects of Psychological Operations by USIA, USIS, JUSPAO, MACV, or any of the military media groups that were active in Vietnam from the Marshall Plan days onward?
JUSPAO supported a number of feature films, some of which can be found on the Tu Luc website, but it's unclear what the audience response was at the time, or whether or not the ideas in the films stayed with people.
2) Can list members recommend studies on the economic effects of US wartime spending in RVN? For example: banking studies, or studies on the demand for US commodities, impact on the Vietnamese traditional arts, or local television advertising?
I'd especially like to know if anyone has studied the local impact of US government contracts with Kellog, Brown and Root or others involved in large-scale construction projects that flooded dollars into RVN, in addition to direct military spending.
The American Motion Picture Association apparently ran a thriving business importing Hollywood movies.
Dean Wilson
French PhD Program
City University of New York
Graduate Center
365 Fifth Avenue
New York NY 10017
(212) 817-8365
(212) 741-1312
From dtsang@lib.uci.edu Fri Dec 17 15:38:59 2004
Date: Fri, 17 Dec 2004 15:37:17 -0800 (PST)
From: Dan Tsang <dtsang@lib.uci.edu>
Reply-To: vsg@u.washington.edu
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: RE: "American war" -- good points
Dean, have you looked at this set of JUSPAO collected documents? ...
http://www.lexisnexis.com/academic/2upa/Imhw/VietnamDocumentsResearchNotes.asp
VIETNAM DOCUMENTS AND RESEARCH NOTES SERIES:
Translation and Analysis of Significant Viet Cong/North Vietnamese
Documents
...
"Students and other researchers will consult the 5,608 pages of this collection repeatedly for information on American involvement, changes in Southeast Asia, military campaigns, economic and psychological warfare, political systems, and the effectiveness of propaganda."
d
Daniel C. Tsang