Vietnam - War Protests
A Review of The Hidden History
of the Vietnam War
by John Prados
Author Biography
After being born in New York City and
studying history and international relations at Columbia
University, John Prados went on to become a leading
historian of national security affairs, intelligence
operations, and
international security concerns. He is well-versed in modern
history and has written many books, particularly on the
conflicts in Serbia and Bosnia-Herzegovina. He lives in New
York City with his wife and children.
It is a mark of the incongruity between people and their
government that though ironically serving as a unifying force,
the Vietnam War also brought to light the scandalous
relationships between the government and socially accepted
morals
and principles. Without a doubt the government concealed
information from the American public, though in times of war
this is understandable; what truly added the air of mystique
to the proceedings were the numerous falsifications made
about American troop movements and the decisions that
ultimately led up to the war. “Something happened in the
Tonkin
Gulf in August 1964, but not precisely what the
administration claimed.”1 In The Hidden History
of the
Vietnam War, John Prados describes the unreliability of the
word of the government and alludes to the embarrassment in
store for the administration once the public discovers the
truth about what has been going on. Prados addresses these
and other issues about the Vietnamese conflict, including
the outpouring of resentment and protest that today defines
our view of the past public opinion about the war. With
great alacrity Prados cuts to the heart of the truth and lays
bare the hidden history for all to see.
What makes this book so compelling is its unorthodox way of
dividing subject matter. Instead of chronologically
covering the events of the war and delivering his opinions
on insufficient data, Prados examines the war as a whole and
divides his chapters by events in order of importance.
Every chapter is a separately written essay covering its own
particular subject in the war. This allows the reader to
fully comprehend the impact of the way certain events impacted
the war and the war effort. The first chapters deal with
the controversy surrounding the Vietnam War, everything from
when the war actually started to the eastern reaction and
how we handled the civilians. “While there are many possible
answers to the question of the origins of the American
involvement, and myriad explanations for why presidents made
the
decisions they did, in terms of dates it is undeniable that
Harry Truman, by initiating U.S. military to Indochina in
May 1950, took a giant step toward an American war in
Vietnam.”2 Prados speculates on the controversial
topic
of when the war actually started. The greatest mysteries
however, are all interconnected to one certain incident, the
Tonkin Gulf. In one chapter, Prados devotes all his time to
uncovering and exposing six mysteries of the Tonkin Gulf,
including what United States military ships were actually
doing in the far east and whether or not they were actually
attacked by the Vietminh. As it was the Tonkin Gulf that
served as the initial spark that allowed Lyndon B. Johnson to
send troops to Vietnam, it is interesting to think that
there may not have even been an attack, or perhaps the attack
was wholly instigated by the United States in order to get
media support for entry into a war against Vietnam.
Even more so than the previous chapters, the next ones home
in extensively on military tactics and the lengths the
United States went to in order to drive back their numerous
enemies. Due to the terrain of Vietnam, heavy artillery
such as tanks were hugely ineffective and this forced the
United States into a ground troops battle that was a stalemate
for most of the war, though with only one possible outcome.
The United States was outnumbered and their enemy knew the
terrain far better than they did; there was never a hope at
a quick lightning war, instead it would have to be drawn out
with heavy casualties on both sides. The Tet offensive also
took place during this time, and produced the same results.
It quickly became evident that though the United States was
horribly outmatched in ground combat, their Air force could
provide an aerial threat so tangible that rather than stay
to be massacred, the troops would often retreat, giving the
ground troops much more ground than they could have gained
on their own. Though planes were used in the war, it is
commonly thought that in Vietnam helicopters were the
weapons of choice. Not only could they take off from literally
anywhere, they could also hover in one area, pelting the
ground with machinegun fire. Despite this, Air power was the
undoing of the United States in Vietnam. “In 1961, in
Vietnam, the air power theorists were back, this time with the
expectation that Southeast Asia could be made a laboratory
for the development of techniques for tactical air warfare.
Ten years later Saigon fell to the North Vietnamese and the
United States stood, defeated, amid the shambles of the most
destructive war in history.”3 So though airpower
could have tactically given the United States an advantage
and even the upper hand in the war, it didn’t. Was the end
of the hope for victory in Vietnam caused because airpower
was largely ineffective, or because the United States did
not deploy its aerial units effectively? Prados says neither,
but alludes to the possibility that with its technology at
the time, any aerial war was extremely limited and therefore
ineffective or even detrimental to the war.
Prados lends the next quarter of the book to the details of
military tactics and decisions that were the turning points
of the war against the United States. He also explains in
detail the politics in the area around Vietnam and how they
were affected by U.S. involvement. One of the most tragic
things to come out of the war was the religious sect of
Buddhism, “Finally, it proved tragic for the Vietnamese
people that the Buddhist revival occurred at a moment in
history
which swept it into a maelstrom of conflict and ultimately
led to religious oppression greater than what had existed
before.”4 Prados illustrates the depths to which
Buddhism is forced to sink due to the war; Buddhist monks
even resorted to burning themselves alive in the streets to
spark propaganda and get rid of the prejudice against them.
One of the arguably most brilliant propaganda lies was also
concocted in this era. In order to engender an emotional
attachment to the war for the average American, newspapers
began printing fake accounts of the amount killed on both
sides. Newspapers got so carried away that by the end of
the war the amount of people killed on one side was larger
than the amount of both armies combined.
The final quarter of the book is given over to the
discussion of the domestic fronts of both countries.
Whereas the
Vietnamese people had no other alternative but to watch
their villages burned and their friends killed, the Americans
brought their own discontent upon themselves. While it
would have been difficult to find people against a war in the
defense of their country in Vietnam, seemingly everybody in
the United States spoke out against the aggressive
interference in another country. One of the ways the
president attempted to alleviate the concern of the nation
regarding the success and cause of the war was to give a
propaganda-laden speech to the people and attempt to appeal to
reason and to show them that everything was going according
to plan. “The Cambodian operation ignited a firestorm of
antiwar opposition, including massive demonstrations, campus
shutdowns, and killings at Kent State and Jackson State
universities.”5 This showed the hypocrisy that
the government was entrenched in for much of the war, they
talked about peace yet each time they would start a war and
the American public eventually got tired of it.
The government of the United States during the Vietnam War
withheld information from the public, and because of this
they were allowed greater freedom from the normal
constraints of what is deemed “right” and “wrong” by
society. Because
of this, many atrocities that would normally be condemned
and therefore ceased if the public had known what was going
on, were allowed to keep going and gain momentum until they
became the very evil that was supposed to be prevented.
“When the power of love surpasses the love of power we will
have peace,” said Jimi Hendrix, and this was a statement
keeping in time with the rhythm of the day. With the public
transitioning from the fear of communism to the resentment
of their own government, the general paranoia that had been
worked up by so many worked against the cause of the
administration. It’s tough to fight a war when no one wants
to fight, and that was the difference in the Vietnam War.
The Vietnamese were fighting to save their land, for what
they believed in, whereas the United States soldiers were
simply going through the motions and getting killed for it.
“There is no such thing as a winner in a war,” said
Remarque, and in hindsight you can see that this is very
true. Essentially no good came politically from the Vietnam
War; however, it is quite the opposite culturally. Where
loss and suffering engender resentment against the leaders,
the very same misfortunes teach wisdom and caution. This
was the case with the American people, who gained a pacifistic
nature yet condemned their government for getting them into
a war in the first place. If one burns his hand on the
stove, he will make sure that it isn’t on the next time he
reaches to touch it. Though the war is in most respects a
failure, it sparked (much as the other great wars before it
- WWI, WWI) a relative renaissance for literature and
movies. The great wars lead all involved to become visceral
machines oblivious to many of the joys of life, creating a
“lost generation.” Traditionally, members of lost
generations after wars have created the greatest works of
literature
of their time, knowledge of true pain allows an author to
evoke emotions that are otherwise impossible to convey without
a first hand experience of them. As a result of the
outbreak of Vietnam hysteria during and after the war,
Vietnam War
movies were in hot demand, creating an air of superficiality
about the war with whole generations pledging themselves to
patriotism.
The Hidden History of the Vietnam War carries with it
(as most Vietnam histories do) an undercurrent of
skepticism about the type of government that would allow a
country to emulate villains of the past. Weren’t Hitler and
Mussolini simply trying to spread their own influence
through war just as we were? This book is lined with
accusations
of hypocrisy and though it justifies many of the actions
taken in the war, there are some that can’t be defended. It is
perhaps a byproduct of the military action¾taking place in
Bosnia-Herzegovina¾during the writing of this book that
caused such a negative spin against a large nation warring
with a smaller one. In Bosnia-Herzegovina the Serbs under
the command of General Ratko Mladic systematically selected
and then slaughtered nearly 8,000 men and boys between the
ages of twelve and sixty¾the worst mass murder in Europe
since World War II. Prados’ knowledge of these tragedies is
perhaps why he defends actions leading the United States to
the defense of smaller countries, yet leads him to condemn
any war made simply because of ethnicity or political
alliance. Prados also speaks out against the use of wisdom
gained
in the Vietnam War to justify a war elsewhere. “The issues
raised here are of enduring and legitimate concern. The
‘lessons’ of Vietnam are frequently invoked everywhere
America is engaged abroad. In U.S. interventions in Grenada,
Nicaragua, Panama, the Persian Gulf, Somalia, and Haiti in
the 1980s and 1990s, as well as in would-be interventions
like that in Bosnia and the former Yugoslavia, we are
constantly reminded that the lessons of Vietnam require
America to
act a certain way. What if the ‘lessons’ are wrong, or
misunderstood? Can lessons of Vietnam be valid for another
place and time? There has been too much assertion of
purported lessons, and not enough focused analysis of the
basis of
those claims. Here we try to use history to reveal some of
the flaws in conventional wisdom.”6
The Hidden History of the Vietnam War, though
extremely informative, is also extremely complex; it is not
a book
that someone could simply pick up and read. The book was
written with an audience in mind: the historians of the war.
Prados writes this book with the idea that the reader will
already know the basics of the war and is looking for
something to propel their mental imaginings to a different
level. Leaving its daunting writing style and looking past
the thousands of facts packed so closely together, it is
possible to see the myriad of different takes it offers on the
war. There is nothing left for the reader to ponder except
the morality of the issues portrayed. Prados gives the
reader the facts and then offers his own opinion, he does
not reserve judgment, everything that happens is influenced by
his own opinion, but he does not leave out that though there
are many facts in the book there are still many left to be
uncovered, and it is through his unflinching condemnation of
uplifting glorification of each decision purportedly
executed by the military, the government, or society, that
he colors the war not the red tint of communism, or the
star-spangled color of patriotism, or even the gray drudgery
of defeat, but a multitude of all colors reflected in a
truth-revealing mirror and the lies and the heroics and the
lives of all those affected are judged not as good or evil,
but as true. And truth is what Prados hopes to define.
review by Sean Fortier
- Prados, John. The Hidden History of the Vietnam
War. Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 1995, 48.
- Prados, John 3.
- Prados, John 180.
- Prados, John 88.
- Prados, John 235.
- Prados, John preface.
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