Vietnam, 50 Years on.

Kennedy – The Beginning

In 1961 the Kennedy administration came into office and inherited the Eisenhower policy of sending military advisors to South Vietnam in support of the Saigon government. The American presence in Vietnam had reached 800 by the close of the Eisenhower era and by 1963 President Kennedy would increase the number of military advisors to 16,000. The first strikes came in 1961 as the Kennedy administration sent war planes with South Vietnamese markings against rural targets where 80% of the population lived and the Viet Cong insurgency had taken root in South Vietnam. The war planes were manufactured in the United States.

When John F. Kennedy first took his seat in the Oval Office, the Viet Cong numbered 300,000. The insurgency was composed of a broad coalition united in opposition to the Saigon government. Its demands included the ouster of American military advisers and the reunification of Vietnam. The Diem regime had banned public assembly, political parties, and even public dancing; its demolition of pagodas and preferential treatment of Catholics had drawn the ire of the mostly Buddhist population. The US began bombing to defeat the resistance to President Diem as it seemed that the regime was not succeeding in defeating the Viet Cong.

By 1962 the US had begun to establish “strategic hamlets” in the country where peasants were held behind barbed-wire enclosures under the watch of South Vietnamese troops. By 1970 5 million Vietnamese peasants were displaced in this way. The pretext was to protect the peasants from the insurgents. At the same time the first use of the so-called rainbow herbicides - most infamously, Agent Orange - was initiated. The aims of the programme were to rapidly defoliate the forestry and kill crops with the hope of denying the Viet Cong cover and food.

Eventually the repressive rule of the Saigon government provoked protests from Buddhist monks. A catalytic moment came in May 1963 when South Vietnamese armed forces fired upon Buddhist protestors in the city of Hue on Phat Dan. The Buddhists had been protesting against the ban on their flag on a holy day. The armed forces opened fire on the crowd with live ammunition and killed nine people. Yet more demonstrations followed with President Diem denying his forces had any responsibility for the deaths.

The civil unrest would last until November 1963 at which point the generals of South Vietnam plotted a coup against the sitting government. Popular opposition grew over those six months. In one act of defiance Buddhist monk Thich Quang Duc self-immolated to protest the brutality of the regime. He left a letter reading: “Before closing my eyes and moving towards the vision of the Buddha, I respectfully plead to President Ngo Dinh Diem to take a mind of compassion towards the people of the nation and implement religious equality to maintain the strength of the homeland eternally. I call the venerables, reverends, members of the sangha and the lay Buddhists to organise in solidarity to make sacrifices to protect Buddhism.”

The Kennedy administration understood that this situation was unsustainable and withdrew its aid to the Saigon government in a direct rebuff to President Diem. As the protests continued the US government began to encourage the coup plotters in the South Vietnamese military elite to take action. In November 1963 President Diem was arrested by the army, after an overnight siege of the presidential palace, before being shot and repeatedly stabbed by his bodyguards. His death signalled the end of the Diem government and gave way to direct military rule. The US role is confirmed by the Pentagon Papers: “We maintained clandestine contact with [the plotters] throughout the planning and execution of the coup and sought to review their operational plans and proposed new government”.

Johnson – Escalation

The end of the Diem regime did not signal the end of US commitments, in fact, according to the Pentagon Papers, “our complicity in his overthrow heightened our responsibilities”. Not long after this Kennedy was assassinated on November 22 1963. Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson assumed the responsibilities of the presidency and would go on to strengthen the war effort even further. Before the shooting President Kennedy spoke at a breakfast held at the Fort Worth Chamber of Commerce:

 

We have increased the defence budget of the United States by over 20%; increased the programme of acquisition for Polaris submarines from 24 to 41; increased our Minutemen missile purchase programme by more than 75%; doubled the number of strategic bombers and missiles on alert; doubled the number of nuclear weapons available in the strategic alert forces; increased the tactical nuclear forces deployed in Western Europe by over 60%; added five combat ready divisions to the Army of the United States, and five tactical fighter wings to the Air Force of the United States; increased counter-insurgency forces which are engaged now in South Vietnam by 600%.

Less than a year later the Gulf of Tonkin incident took place. On August 2, 1964 the USS Maddox was on an intelligence mission along North Vietnam’s coastline. The vessel was allegedly fired upon and retaliated by firing on three North Vietnamese torpedo boats that had been talking it in the Gulf of Tonkin. There were no American casualties. The second incident came on August 4 in which the USS Maddox returned to the coastline and engaged in what were believed to be North Vietnamese torpedo boats. The crew had acted on the basis of sonar evidence that had picked up two vessels. But there was no wreckage or bodies found.

Even though it appeared that there had been no attack the Johnson administration quickly decided to retaliate. The bombing of North Vietnam began immediately and President Johnson began to raise the number of US ground troops. The Tonkin Resolution was fast-tracked and passed on August 7. It would signal a change in US policy as the Johnson administration initiated hostilities with North Vietnam to bypass the congressional restraints on the government. The US government now had free rein in its bombing of the North.

By 1965 South Vietnam had been so devastated that the war correspondent and military historian Bernard Fall claimed that the existence of Vietnam (in particular South Vietnam) was “threatened with extinction”. The US sent 200,000 US troops to South Vietnam that year and in 1966, 200,000 more were sent. By 1968 the US troop presence had exceeded 500,000 soldiers at a cost of $2 billion per month. Up until 1969 the military operations in Vietnam had been conducted by the Democratic administration. Originally President Kennedy had hoped that the US would be able to withdraw from Vietnam in 1965, provided that the war had been won; the change in government would lead to the war being extended further.

Nixon – Enter the Mad Man

By 1968 the Johnson administration was in negotiations with North Vietnam in Paris. Henry Kissinger was an adviser to the US negotiators. The negotiations came in election season. Lyndon B. Johnson had made clear he would not be seeking re-election, a shock to the public; instead his vice president Hubert Humphrey would seek the presidency. Richard Nixon had emerged as the Republican contender. He had pledged “peace with honour” in south east Asia, but secretly he feared that the Democratic government would reach a settlement in Paris and win the election.

Dr. Kissinger was in contact with negotiators as well as the Nixon campaign. He was expecting to work for whoever won the election and ingratiated himself with both campaigns. Henry Kissinger told the Nixon campaign that the US negotiators were close to securing a settlement. The prospect of peace would give Humphrey an advantage over Nixon. The Nixon campaign had opened a secret line with the South Vietnamese regime and persuaded them to withdraw from the negotiations thereby scuppering the possibility of a settlement. Richard Nixon had offered South Vietnam much more support than the Johnson administration and a better deal in the future.

The Nixon administration not only set out to extend the war in North Vietnam they intensified the bombing of Laos and launched an illegal bombing campaign against Cambodia. The Nixon administration claimed that the North Vietnamese were stationing their forces and supplies across the border in Cambodia and pursued the bombing on such grounds. By 1970 President Nixon was growing frustrated that the war showed no sign of coming to an end.

In 1972 Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger flew to China and met with Chairman Mao. The US government aimed to open up relations with China to secure its long-term strategic interests. The Sino-Soviet split had left Maoist China isolated on the world stage and if China aligned itself with the US (which it would eventually do) then the Vietnamese would have to choose the side of the Soviet Union over China. The original pretext of US involvement in Vietnam was to contain China and, as the Pentagon Papers confirm, the decision to bomb North Vietnam only made sense in the context of containing communist China.

As the election approached President Nixon began to look at the war effort as an electoral means once again. “I went them to hit everything,” Mr. Nixon told Henry Kissinger. Dr. Kissinger on the orders to General Alexander Haig: “[Nixon] wants a massive bombing campaign in Cambodia. He doesn’t want to hear anything. It’s an order, it’s to be done. Anything that flies, on anything that moves.”

Immediately after re-election was secure the White House sanctioned the Christmas bombing campaign, spanning twelve days, targeting Hanoi and Haiphong. The campaign constituted the heaviest bombing campaign of the entire war and it provoked international outcry. Negotiations resumed soon after and by January 1973 Richard Nixon had announced the end of the war. The terms were settled along the lines that had been negotiated back in 1968. Even still, Henry Kissinger would win the Nobel peace Prize for his efforts and the fighting between North and South Vietnam wouldn’t reach a conclusion for two more years.

The Paris Peace Accords were signed not long after the announcement and the US military withdrew its ground forces in March. The North Vietnamese respected the ceasefire agreement as the US government pledged support to the South Vietnamese and further bombing if the North resumes its operations. The President and Dr. Kissinger were planning a resumption of bombing by April, but the orders for further bombing were rescinded as the Watergate scandal broke out. Richard Nixon could not fight the US Congress and Vietnam at the same time. He would become the first US President to be impeached and Gerald Ford succeeded him in August 1974.

The bombing of Cambodia had not ended with Operation Menu. The bombing continued throughout the early 1970s. This eventuated in the collapse of the delicate balance of social forces and classes in Cambodian society. First this led to the dictatorship of Lon Nol, who seized power in 1970, but this would later be swept aside by then the Khmer Rouge in April 1975. Not long after Phnom Penh fell to Pol Pot the North Vietnamese seized Saigon. The US withdrawal had left little force to resist the offensive and the South Vietnamese army were quickly overwhelmed.

By early 1976 Vietnam was officially reunified and declared a socialist republic. Its main ally was the Soviet Union as China had shifted its allegiance to the Khmer Rouge seeing Cambodia as a counterweight to Soviet influence in South-East Asia. This state of affairs would lead to two more wars in which Vietnam would overthrow Pol Pot and defend itself from Chinese retaliation.

What is Netanyahu playing at?

In all of the whirlwind coverage of the 'conflict' between the IDF and Hamas in the Gaza Strip there are a number of pertinent questions being ignored. I say 'conflict' with inverted commas because the conflict did not begin on July 8. Nor did it begin with the deaths of three Jewish teenagers on the West Bank. The origins go back to 1967 and the absence of any peace settlement acknowledges Palestinian grievances. Israel continues to violate international law in its occupation of the West Bank and its siege of the Gaza Strip prevents any kind of development there since Sharon's unilateral withdrawal from the Strip in 2005 (which came far too late).

It is as though the Israel-Palestine conflict is composed of a series of smaller 'conflicts', such as Operation Cast Lead and the ongoing bloodbath. Of course, for Israelis, peace comes when the rockets stop, but even then there is no peace for the Palestinians. To this day Gaza remains under blockade on all sides, while the West Bank is being gradually broken up into cantons, its most arable land and best resources being taken under Israeli control. The everyday reality of the Occupation does not effect the Israeli public mind and its perception of violence visited upon Israel. The experience of systemic violence in the policing of every aspect of life in the West Bank does not count as a 'conflict'. But it does fit in with the Israeli understanding of 'peace'.

In their search for the murderers, the Israelis arrested 400 Palestinians and, in their raids, killed 5-7 Palestinians. Then came the reprisal killing of a Palestinian boy, the culprits being caught soon afterwards. On July 7 Hamas upped its rocketfire into Southern Israel and Netanyahu sanctioned the first airstrikes on July 8. It was on July 14 that General Sisi offered a ceasefire proposal (without consulting Hamas) to which the Israelis quickly agreed. No doubt Netanyahu knew full well that Hamas would not accept and wanted to retaliate to the airstrikes. Hamas viewed compliance with a non-agreed ceasefire as a surrender and not a truce. The IDF resumed the bombing on July 15 and by the next day the bodycount had risen to 200 Palestinians.

It is all too easy to forget that there are fundamental principles at stake here, in particular the right to self-determination. Netanyahu would like us to believe Israel is a peaceful country trying to secure itself from these outbreaks of irrational violence on its borders. In actuality Israel lays claim to vast swathes of the 22% of Mandate Palestine promised to the Palestinians under international law. As of 1967 the internationally recognised borders of Israel leave the country with 78% of the land of former Mandatory Palestine. Yet the Occupation lays claim to much more than that 78%. The constant expansion of the settlements chisels away at the West Bank and clears land of Palestinian families in the end condemning them to languish in cantons.

On July 16, Hamas put forward 10 conditions for a decade-long truce, which was reported by Ma'ariv and translated by Mondoweiss: 1) withdrawal of Israeli tanks from the Gaza border; 2) freeing all the prisoners that were arrested after the killing of the three youths; 3) lifting the siege and opening the border crossings to commerce and people; 4) establishing an international seaport and airport which would be under U.N. supervision; 5) increasing the permitted fishing zone to 10 kilometers; 6) internationalizing the Rafah Crossing and placing it under the supervision of the U.N. and some Arab nations; 7) international forces on the borders; 8) Easing conditions for permits to pray at the Al Aqsa Mosque; 9) prohibition on Israeli interference in the reconciliation agreement; 10) reestablishing an industrial zone and improvements in further economic development in the Gaza Strip.

Without going into the huge problems with Hamas as an organisation it may be said that the group are at least rational actors. To presuppose otherwise really harks back to the racist stereotyping of Arabs which we have seen since 1956 when Nasser fought off an Anglo-French-Israeli invasion. The formerly supine people of the desert became rampaging savages over night. Hamas fires rockets in many directions mainly to terrify the Israeli population, hoping that they will leave if they just fire enough rockets. Edward Said characterised it as a non-strategy, it's the absence of strategy to be more precise. The Palestinians know that the negotiations are rigged as Israeli politicians do not accept international law from the outset and the entire process is managed by Americans.

There was a brief ceasefire agreement in the morning of July 17 to which both sides complied until the afternoon. By the evening the IDF had began its ground invasion of the country. The bodycount has since risen to over 430 Palestinians and more than 3,000 injured. The ceasefire proposal of the Red Cross, covering the Shuja'iyya neighbourhood, was rejected by both sides on July 20.

It's impossible to understand Israel's position without historical context. The same goes for the attempts by Palestinians to forge some kind of body national out of the remnants of their ancestral lands. The so-called 'peace process' is a fraud, as we all know, as they all know too, its main function is to glorify hawks as doves. The Nobel Peace President needs as much of that as he can get after all of those drone strikes he has sanctioned. The whole process is really the wrangling necessary to draw out non-negotiations and, in fact, allow greater time for greater expansion and aggression to take place. You don't have to look too hard to find this.

As Robert Fisk has pointed out, Benjamin Netanyahu has been consistently evasive, first saying he couldn't talk with Mahmoud Abbas because he didn't represent Hamas, but only the Palestinian Authority. When Abbas formed a unity coalition with Hamas - which he insisted would be based upon "recognition of Israel, renunciation of violence and acceptance of previous agreements" - Netanyahu condemned Abbas for forging an alliance with a "murderous terrorist organisation that calls for Israel's destruction." Netanyahu now claims he can only talk with Abbas if he splits with Hamas. The message is clear: the Israeli government will not talk to Abbas.

The Obama administration used its veto power at the UN Security Council to oppose the Palestinian bid for statehood in September 2011. In February of the same year Obama vetoed a UN resolution that endorsed official US policy on the illegal settlements in the occupied territories. That's right, President Obama went as far as undermining American law to defend Israel's settlements. The Israeli government under Netanyahu has stood in firm opposition to all UN resolutions to the conflict and to the Palestinian bids for statehood. Against all odds, in November 2012, the Palestinians finally achieved a modicum of statehood with 138 countries voting in its favour, 41 abstentions and 9 opposition votes (including Israel, of course).

Here's an important question, Netanyahu is working to break apart the unity between Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank, and he ultimately sees the Occupation as permanent, what happens if he succeeds? Firstly, the Palestinians will be left in tiny fragmented cantons, they'll have enough autonomy to fire rockets, and then the IDF will bomb the shit out of them from time to time (sound familiar?). Of course, this means keeping Palestinians separate from Israelis for the sake of holding onto a majority Jewish state. To any reasonable observer this is intolerable and unjust, but there are two alternatives:

1) A two-state settlement based on the 1967 border giving states to both peoples. Believe it or not this proposal has had overwhelming international support since 1976 and has been blocked at the UN by the US government.

2) A bi-national settlement where the occupied territories are assimilated into Israel and the Palestinians become equal citizens of Jewish and Arab Israelis. This would almost certainly mean the end of Israel as a majority Jewish state.

If Netanyahu succeeds in his aims then it means the second solution will be more likely than the first. That's an irony I suspect is lost in the heads of so many of his supporters. Certainly it is in the twin-case of Lieberman and Bennett.

Israel turns towards Russia.

On March 27^th 2014 Prime Minister Netanyahu abstained from the vote at the UN General Assembly on a resolution on Crimea. It was de facto support for Russian aggression.  The significance of this event may not have hit the mainstream just yet, but it may soon outpace it in its own trajectory. It’s not the first time the Israeli government has looked eastwards with fond eyes. When Putin invaded Georgia in 2008 the Israeli government set a moratorium on arms sales to the tiny republic and in return Medvedev cancelled a delivery of missiles to Iran in 2009.  There’s even talk of a free trade deal between Russia and Israel now.

It would seem that there is a hand full of very exact reasons why the Russian government would seek out a relationship with the Israeli government at this time. Firstly, the Russian repression of the Chechen bid for self-determination has been severe and has engendered a Chechen resistance. Secondly, the need for international legitimation of Russia’s military campaigns in its backyard and, in general, a new pretext as the Cold War is long over. Thirdly, there is the necessity of non-Arab actors as allies in the Middle East. Israel is a top candidate for all of the above. It’s a state that has long understood what it takes to grind a people into dirt. But the Israeli government knows full well that it couldn’t do so without its patron-state.

The US has long played the role of patron-state to Israel’s aggressive expansionism. There are signs that the Netanyahu administration can see far enough to perceive a potential break with the American hegemon. Even Washington cannot support Israeli aggression indefinitely. It has seemed, for a long time, completely incomprehensible that the US would ever abandon Israel and with good reason. The US does need a strong military outpost capable of policing the region and it has built Israel into an armed force greater than any standing NATO power. It has created a strong force at hand in a region ridden with crises and oil fields. The empowered outpost has the capability to pursue its own strategic agenda. The story won’t end there.

This is an excerpt of an article to be published at Souciant where it can be read in its fully edited form as presented on May 14th 2014.