Everything You Think You Know About Vietnam Is Wrong — Historian Mark Moyar

25:24Now, you have the military at this point continuing to say we need to either invade Laos, invade North Vietnam, bomb in a much more powerful fashion. But the war will continue to go pretty well for the Americans for the next several years. And there's still, I think, a pretty strong feeling among the troops that this is something worth fighting for. But there is also this growing realization that the politicians are tying our hands behind our back and not letting us win this conflict. And that will increasingly become the sentiment of American troops.

26:01Francis Foster:What was the stated war goal? What was the objective for the U.S.? Well, officially it was to protect South Vietnam against North Vietnamese aggression. You had the model of the Korean War where you had North Korea invading South Korea. And so the hope was that we could maintain independent South Vietnam. Now, once once the American troops go in, you know, again, there is pressure from the military. Let's go into the north. Lin John said, well, we tried that in Korea and the Chinese came in. Now, it turns out to have been a huge miscalculation because we now know the Chinese. they had taken a terrific beating in Korea and they said, we're not doing that again.

26:46But the United States, again, decides to limit itself to the southern half of the country. And so you're playing defense all the time and you have an enemy that can keep infiltrating through the Ho Chi Minh trail. You know, ultimately, the hope is we can build up the South Vietnamese to the point that they can deal with most of this on their own, which will bear some fruit later in the war, ultimately runs into trouble.

27:13Francis Foster:Well, it sounds, for younger generations, it feels kind of like Afghanistan. You stabilize it, you train the local people, everything's great, but the moment the American forces aren't there, it reverts to the mean. Yes, well, I will say that the South Vietnamese government was quite a bit better than what we saw in Afghanistan and Iraq. But on the other hand, the enemy was also much stronger. And the U.S. shot itself in the foot several times in Vietnam in terms of promoting, especially this coup in 1963. You know, I do think in the case of Vietnam, we had viable partners. In the case of Afghanistan, I think clearly that was kind of doomed because we never really found anybody.

28:02And of course, as soon as we withdraw our air support, the head of the country flees the country. I mean, the South Vietnamese will continue to fight as the U.S. and the Congress pull out aid.

28:13Francis Foster:And so you mentioned that it's going pretty well for the first couple of years, first few years. And the first demoralization for the American forces there is the realization that they're not being allowed to go in and do the job that they need to do to win the war. And they're basically sitting ducks just waiting for the Viet Cong to attack rather than going out and cleaning them out, basically. Yeah, that's right. You know, the initial period is kind of an emergency rescue operation. You got to push all the North Vietnamese back. And so that's all quite effective. But after a while, when things just start to drag on, then you do increasingly have people wondering, you know, are we just going to sit here forever?

29:02And this is similar to Afghanistan in that you have in Afghanistan, when the Americans were there, we kill Taliban day after day after day. but they kept coming in from Pakistan. And so the American people generally don't have an unlimited patience for that sort of thing. And, you know, I think a big part of the problem, too, was Lyndon Johnson never really made an effort to solve a war. He himself will admit that. He will admit that he was so focused on becoming a domestic policy president, he was going to have the Great Society and Civil Rights, that if he talked too much about the war, that was going to distract from this.

29:40But again, that that that will lead to some of the ultimate disillusionment when if the president's not out there explaining to you why you're fighting, it's hard to understand. But not only did he not explain why they were fighting, didn't he also downplay the way that the war was going and the casualties that were being incurred as a result of war? Yeah, and he was certainly trying to put a positive spin. And, you know, he'll initially is going to be a candidate in 1968 for the presidency. and so he will bring General Westmoreland back to kind of give pep talks and say how things are going well, rather than saying it himself, but this is partly to assure people that, in fact, things are going okay.

30:23Then you get to the Tet Offensive in 1968, which seems to contradict that.

30:30Francis Foster:Tell us about the Tet Offensive before we talk about this. What happened? So in early 1967, the North Vietnamese, and they keep losing battle after battle. And so they at first think things are going well. In early 1967, they finally figure out that they're taking crippling losses and that their own commanders in the South were kind of deceiving them about how things were going because they didn't want to lose face. So they were always claiming they killed all these American South Vietnamese. Somebody finally did the math and said, well, wait, the Americans and South Vietnamese are getting stronger even though you claim you did.

31:05So they finally kind of figured out we got to come up with a new game plan. So since fighting in the remote areas of South Vietnam is not working, what they're going to do is target the cities of South Vietnam, which they've largely left alone. And these are controlled by the government. Their thinking is that if we go in there, the people there are going to rise up because they hate the South Vietnamese and American capitalists. And they think it's going to be kind of like a 1945 when they go into Hanoi. So they attack, they decide to attack during the Tet holiday, which is the biggest holiday of the year, violating a ceasefire.

31:44So they have the element of surprise, but it turns out the people are not ready to rise up. In fact, almost none of them do. And so now they're stuck in the cities and it's not easy for, they don't, you know, they're not familiar with the cities, so they don't know where to go. They can't just run away easily. So they take crippling losses at the hands of American and South Vietnamese forces. But you have an American media that focuses on just the magnitude of this, suggesting that they showed that they were stronger than they were, which isn't really the case. But again, Lyndon Johnson has mismanaged the the war of ideas.

32:21And, you know, some of the American hawks say, OK, this is like a Pearl Harbor moment. We can tell the people there was this dastardly surprise attack. Time to really, you know, you know, take the shackles off, send any more troops. But Johnson doesn't want to do that. And so there again, you know, people that you have an opportunity to capitalize on this, you know, let's win the war sentiment. But instead, he decides he doesn't want to do that. And, you know, he ends up dropping out of the presidential race, partly because of Vietnam, partly for other reasons.

32:54Francis Foster:So reading between the lines of everything you're saying, my sense and correct me if I'm wrong, is your perspective is. You either don't fight or if you do fight, you fight to win. And the reason that the Vietnam War ended up not being a success is Lyndon Johnson, McNamara, they tried to sit on two stools and end up falling in between them. Is that fair assessment? Yes, there's certainly, I think, a lot of truth to that. Now, there is there were other opportunities, too, I think, because one of the central controversies of the war just was it something that could have been won or not? And a lot of historians, especially on the left, will say, no, this was you could never have won it.

33:35Again, I think. The Americans could have gone North Vietnam and maybe there was still been some resistance, but it would have been a much more manageable problem where we could have cut the Ho Chi Minh Trail. But you also do have towards the end of the war. The U.S. decides to cut off aid to South Vietnam, but South Vietnam is actually getting better over time. And so that was another missed opportunity. And then the one other huge missed opportunity was this coup in 1963. I think had we not done that and sort of torn the government apart, it never would have gotten to the level that it gets to.

34:12Francis Foster:And why does America cut off aid to Southend down? Because Congress is getting fed up with the war. It also happens, coincides with Watergate. And so Congress is getting angry at Nixon. Nixon has promised that he'll go help the South Vietnamese, but because of Watergate, his hands are tied. And you have, you know, increasingly large anti-war sentiment within Congress who thinks and has a very benign view of Vietnamese communism and unduly harsh, I think, view of of our Vietnamese allies. Is that really fair, Mark? Is it possible also that, you know, because of the draft and because the people who are going to fight and die and be maimed in Vietnam are just normal people who didn't volunteer for this, who didn't want to be professional soldiers, that the sentiment among the American public at this point has already turned?

35:08Francis Foster:Or is that not true? Oh, the Nixon actually has been very mindful of this, and he actually will end the draft for that reason. And so he does take that issue away. I do think a lot of the hesitation and reluctance is because of this draft issue. In fact, when you look at how the war is written, a lot of the people who dodge the draft end up becoming very harsh critics of the war. But towards the end, you know, it's not a big, you know, the draft is no longer an issue, but it's part of it's just, you know, some people are saying, you know, we're tired of this. We need money for other things. Again, I think a lot of it, too, was naivete.

35:51You have George McGovern as the presidential candidate for the Democrats in 1972, and he's saying Ho Chi Minh is the George Washington of Asia. You have just incredibly, I think, misguided notions that these Vietnamese communists are nice people. Of course, after the war, they do all sorts of terrible things to to clearly show that's not who they are. I have a theory that the best summers happen when you have absolutely nothing nagging at the back of your mind. No lucerne, no vague sense that you should probably be doing something you're not. Finances are usually somewhere on that list of things quietly nagging.

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37:07You can ask the AI assistant direct questions about your finances and get a straight answer. There's also an investment view that tracks your portfolio against the S &P 500, which I now check with the same frequency I probably shouldn't admit to. Use code TRIGGER at Monarch.com to get 50 % off your first year. That's 50 % off your first year at Monarch.com with code TRIGGER. But also as well, we have to say that, you know, the draft and the people who were going to war were blue collar people, blue collar men from, you know, deprived backgrounds, working class backgrounds, etc. And there were plenty of people in the upper classes, the middle classes who dodged the draft.

37:52That must have caused a hell of a lot of resentment. It did cause some. And if you look at the numbers, the lower classes are disproportionately represented. You do have some of the upper income classes are contributing, but actually there's a big regional divide. So from the southern and western United States, you'll have people of all classes signing up in the northeast or the upper Midwest. that's where you tend to find a lot of the more affluent people are finding ways not to go into the military. And that does, I think, certainly cause a lot of friction and distrust and anger, which, you know, I think some senses is still with us.

38:40If you look at the group of Americans from the baby boom who did not go to Vietnam, most of them ended up on the political left and came to dominate the media, academia, play a very important role in our politics. Because a lot of those people, like you said, they got scarred by this war because they see this war. It's a place, Vietnam, most of them have never been. Most of them, if you're going to be honest, probably didn't quite understand what was going on. But then they would see young men being sent away, some of them as young as 17, returning in coffins. And eventually they would probably think to themselves, not only is this deeply unfair, but what are we getting out of it?

39:26Why are our boys dying? Yeah, and that's why it was so problematic that Lyndon Johnson is not out there explaining to people. And a lot of his own aides are saying, look what Franklin Roosevelt did in World War II. He was out there telling people why it's important for our sons to be going over there and risking their lives. And that did a lot to help sustain morale because it's an enormous risk any family takes or any young man to go put your life at risk. So it should be something that the people understand and understand its importance. Now, when Richard Nixon comes in, he does address this problem and he gives his famous silent majority speech where he does make a real effort to explain the war to the people, which should have been done long ago.

40:20But as I said, I do think actually a pretty strong case to be made of why this war was important. But unfortunately, Lyndon Johnson doesn't really make that case. But it's also as well, there were huge figures at the time like Muhammad Ali, who's, you know, no, no, no Viet Cong has ever called me the N word. You know, this huge cultural and sporting figure who refuses to draft on principle. I mean, that's got to have a huge impact, not only on the zeitgeist, but also on the black population as well. Yes. The black population is interesting because in the early years of the war, it's not a big issue for the most part.

40:58You do have Martin Luther King coming out. But, you know, the the American forces in Vietnam are seen as sort of a model of racial integration because you don't have much in the terms of racial friction from 65 to 68. Now, after 68, you increasingly see the influence of the black power movement. And that causes a lot of problems in Vietnam as well as in the U.S. And increasingly you have this notion that this is a white man's war. And you also have some prominent media actresses, Jane Fonda being the most well-known example, who come out basically in support of the enemy. And so that was also very distressing for American troops.

41:44A lot of them still will never forgive Jane Fonda. I mean, she goes to North Vietnam and poses with the North Vietnamese anti-aircraft weapons. Basically, it looks like she's helping the guys who are trying to shoot at our pilots. So you really have a sense of betrayal that you don't see really in earlier conflicts.

42:02Francis Foster:And you mentioned that the perception was eventually that this was a white man's war. is the implication it's a white man's war being fought by black, disproportionately by black people. Well, there will be allegations made like that in around 1967. And at that point, I mean, it's interesting, too, because previously until the Korean War, blacks were generally kept out of the combat units. And so at least the combat units that were doing, you know, in the most difficult parts of the fighting. And so through integration, you know, some senses it was an advance for now they're integrated in these combat units.

42:46But I don't know the exact number, something like maybe 15 to 20 percent in those first few years of the casualties were blacks at a time when they were about 12 percent of the population. So they are overrepresented. Now, after that becomes an issue, the U.S. actually changes the policy so that there is not this disparity. And so for the war as a whole, the blacks are right around there. It's right around 12 percent of the population overall. And they are also 12 percent of the casualties. Because there was a lot of talk and it'd be good to actually delve into this. So there was a real problem with racialization, racism within the armed forces in Vietnam.

43:28Yes. And now the having spent a great deal of time looking at that, I think just about anyone, any veteran will tell you that this problem was not that big of a deal once you were in the field because your life depended on cooperation. And so the real frictions all took place in the rear areas. You know, you have people with too much time to do, you know, maybe 10 percent of, you know, American forces are actually out, you know, the rest of them are all in these support units. And so that's where problems are really bad. But you also see this happening all over the world where the U.S. has military bases, Germany, Korea, etc., you have this strong racial antagonism that is really corrosive starting around 1969.

44:15Francis Foster:And when you say starting around, I would assume that the racial antagonism is simply the legacy of the history of slavery and Jim Crow and all the rest of it in this country. Is that what's driving this or is there a new dimension? You know, you mentioned the Black Power movement, et cetera. Yeah, I do think the Black Power movement is sort of starting to change people's attitudes. You had, I mean, for one thing, a lot of the blacks who fight early in the war had volunteered for service. You know, a lot of them, I think, believed in sort of the vision of Martin Luther King that we want sort of a colorblind society.

44:52and, you know, of course, a lot of people decide after you have the Civil Rights Act, there's not progress as rapidly as some people might want. So then you start to see, I mean, it's a little bit like what we saw, too, with the George Floyd movement more recently where people say, well, the colorblind society isn't doing enough for us, so we need to take a more radical approach and one that is more confrontational towards whites. Because you had the problems within the army. There was also problems with drug taking, wasn't there? Yes, and that also is more prevalent in the rear areas because, again, people kind of know that this could get you killed.

45:38Now, the combat troops, they may use drugs. They probably won't be doing it when they're out in the field. probably too because, you know, there are other soldiers who get really angry at them for doing that because you're putting everyone's lives in jeopardy. But, yeah, the drug problem is also getting worse about the same time, and it's very easy to get marijuana, and heroin then also becomes a problem. That, of course, is a much more serious matter, and so there are real problems. You know, it's not the case, I would say, that the U.S. forces are becoming less effective. I mean, there is one thing that's happening in this period that probably does more than either race or drugs to undermine performance.

46:21And that is when the Americans start withdrawing under Nixon, you start to have people saying, you know, I don't want to be the last guy to die in Vietnam. And here Nixon does not probably do a good enough job. Although you also will see this in World War II or in Korea, you also have this. Near the end of the war, nobody wants to be like the last guy to die. So you do have morale problems as a result of that in the latter stages. And you also have scandals going on. So that had a very real impact, particularly on Americans' view of their boys. I mean, there was a scandal with rape, mass rape happening.

46:59So let's talk about that. What were these scandals that really damaged Americans' viewpoint of their army? Well, the one big war crime was the My Lai Massacre, which took place in 1968. And you had a part of a company of American forces went into a village and killed and or raped over 400 people. and now he actually was stopped when an American pilot saw this was going on and came in and intervened and then told higher headquarters. But it was a horrific war crime. And now this was done by low-level officers, but officers at a higher level thought that if this word gets out that this is going to be a catastrophic PR nightmare, so let's try to hide it.

47:51So they were able to hide it at first, but about a year later, the story comes out. And so that is hugely controversial. You know, there's Lieutenant Callie, who's the leading perpetrators put on trial, will get convicted. Americans actually have divided on this. I mean, some people think that Callie was just being made a scapegoat. Other people thought, you know, Callie fully deserves this. He was doing this. Now, there's then speculation. Maybe there's this was happening all the time. I think clearly we know So it wasn't this was an aberration, but it does become sort of a rallying call for anti-war movement and others who are saying, look, we're committing war crimes.

48:35I would add to, you know, Americans have committed war crimes. I mean, most wars have some crimes and oftentimes they don't get as much publicity. But this one, you know, they have pictures that are circulated. And so it is very harmful for the American cause. And then you have the Pentagon Papers where Daniel Ellsberg releases this study that had been put together actually under the Johnson administration. Now, it doesn't come out until Nixon's president, but it does reveal some of the deceit and mistakes that were committed by people like McNamara and Johnson and all the disastrous errors that came from that.

49:15So that will certainly provoke a lot of controversy. You know, Nixon himself is not covered in the Pentagon Papers. And at first he's kind of thinks, I'll just let this go. But then Henry Kissinger, who is his leading, his national security advisor, tells him that we have to figure out who did this and punish them ruthlessly and that there's actually probably a conspiracy involved. Can I just pause you there, Mark? Because we skipped over. We didn't skip over, but we kind of didn't really delve into what the Pentagon Papers actually said. What were the accusations? What were the mistakes made?

49:53What were the crimes that were committed? And then we can come back to this bit, which is Kissinger and saying we need to punish our enemies and the people who did this. Yeah. So the Pentagon Papers expose the American rule in the coup of 1963. And at the time, up until this time, it wasn't clear what role the Americans had actually played. But now these make clear that fact the U.S. embassy is supporting this coup. The CIA is involved. And so that that was quite disconcerting for a lot of people, both the right and the left, who are wondering why. Why are we actually overthrowing this allied government of ours?

50:32You have information about the Tonkin Gulf suggesting that maybe it was not quite what we were told, that in fact there was some provocation involved. You have documents indicating that they're actually planning to go to war when Lyndon Johnson is saying that he's the peace candidate. And you have talk of the war strategy. And one thing we haven't talked about yet is Robert McNamara had what he called the strategy of gradual escalation. And his skin goes back to these game theories that he's pulled from academia. But he argues that when we start bombing North Vietnam in early 1965, we should start off at a low level and build up gradually.

51:14And that's part of our plan to communicate our intent and also to limit our risk. Now, the Joint Chiefs of Staff at the same time, this also comes up in the pending papers. as a Joint Chief Stafford saying, that's crazy. Let's hit him hard right away. And so, and clearly the strategy of gradual escalation doesn't work. And in fact, what happens is it gives the North Vietnamese time to build up their anti-aircraft defenses. So you have a lot of strategic incompetence being exposed here in the Pentagon Papers. Right. I'm going to level with you. I'm not a gamer, even though I look like one. I'm not going to pretend I've been grinding through RPGs between recordings or that I have strong opinions about which Final Fantasy was the best one.

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53:11Francis Foster:And, Mark, this takes us into the realm of Hollywood, which actually is a big part of this, but probably after the war. Well, one of the things that's been depicted in a number of movies, one of them, I think, American Gangster with Denzel Washington, is the idea that actually the Vietnam War becomes a big drug trafficking operation, and a lot of drugs are coming to the United States through that. A lot of the army is involved. The CIA is involved. How much truth is there to that? I think a lot of it's been exaggerated. probably some truth to it you know a lot of the drugs uh taking place are just taking place within that theater they're not going back and forth necessarily with the united states um i mean it does get a little murky when uh the u.s is supporting various groups in laos and cambodia that um are also involved in the drug trade and so it sometimes looks like the U.S.

54:10is supporting them. A lot of that's... The CIA side of it still, actually, we don't know that much about it. They don't release records on those things. But, yeah, I don't think it's probably as serious as people might imagine. Hollywood's dramatizing things. It is, yes. Yes, yeah, there's a lot of Hollywood. Hollywood hasn't done a very good job on Vietnam.

54:35Francis Foster:Well, we'll talk about that, but before we get there, Take us through to the end of the war. We've got to this point where the morale is dipping. The soldiers on the ground are starting to realize we can't actually win because the politicians won't let us. Eventually, the rot sets in. The American media is on it. You've got these racial tensions. Morale is dropping further. As you said, no one wants to be the last guy to die in Vietnam. What happens then, and how do we get through to the American withdrawal? And just before, probably we'll do with the Kissinger, actually go and punish the enemies, then get to that point.

55:09Okay. Yeah. So after the Ellsberg disclosures are made, Ellsberg turned himself in, but Henry Kissinger and others tell Nixon that there may be a broader conspiracy here. It might involve some State Department people, some think tanks. And so Nixon decides to set up a group that will become known as the Plumbers to go find out and dig dirt on these people. And so one of the people they target initially is a psychiatrist of Daniel Ellsberg, and they go and raid his apartment without really proper legal clearance. They end up not finding anything, but this will become important because it basically sets the stage for the actual Watergate break-in, which is what's going to take Nixon down ultimately.

55:58And so Nixon... So he has to give a silent majority speech in November of 69, 1970. There's a coup in Cambodia, throws out the pro-communist leader and the U.S. then decides to go into Cambodia to help the Cambodian government, which is useful in reducing sanctuary. And one of the things we find out is that the Cambodian port of Sihanoukville was a massive hub for North Vietnamese supplies coming in. So we're able to shut that down. So that means the only place really they're getting supplies is Laos. So the next year, 71, Nixon supports a South Vietnamese effort. It's all South Vietnamese forces to go in and they have a big fight.

56:45It's not as successful as they want, but it has short term benefit, buys time. In 1972, the North Vietnamese decide they're going to launch a huge offensive. This is 14 divisions. This is clearly far beyond any sort of guerrilla war, and it's almost all North Vietnamese coming into the South. At this point, American ground troops are gone, but U.S. air power is there and inflicts a crushing defeat on the North Vietnamese. And so this is one of the indicators that the South Vietnamese are getting their act together, that they can fight off 14 divisions without American ground troops. Now, then what happens is you have a peace agreement in late 72 that is really, I think, mismanaged by Kissinger.

57:30What Kissinger ends up doing is cutting a deal that allows the North Vietnamese troops to stay in South Vietnam. And South Vietnamese go crazy when they hear this. And Nixon was actually doing this without telling the South Vietnamese. And so there's a huge conflict between the Americans and the South Vietnamese. And then the North Vietnamese are also... Why does Kissinger do that? He, I think, partly didn't realize how bad of an idea it was. Really? Yes. He also... So Nixon, for a while, he's been trying to sort of cement his legacy as a great diplomat. And so if you look at other diplomatic endeavors, it's actually not all that similar.

58:19Some people get so obsessed with the deal that they just start giving things away just so they can say they struck the deal. And so what ultimately happens is, so the South Vietnamese complain. Then Kissinger goes back to the North Vietnamese and says, well, we kind of need to change what we agreed to because maybe that wasn't a great idea. But the North Vietnamese say, well, we're not, you already agreed to this other stuff. So then Nixon bombs them in what's called the Christmas bombing, very heavy bombing in December of 72. and Nixon easily thinks, we're going to clobber North Vietnam. They're going to be hurt for so long and they won't be able to do anything, at least not for a while, and we're going to declare this peace agreement.

59:06And he promises the South Vietnamese that he will protect them if the North Vietnamese, in fact, do launch another big offensive. Now, whether he was going to actually live up to that, we don't know because he's gone by 74. The South Vietnamese, you know, basically the peace never really happens. The South Vietnamese are fighting North Vietnamese, and it's going pretty well until about the middle of 74 when the American aid cuts by the Congress are taking effect. So now South Vietnamese don't have enough fuel for their aircraft, and to defend someone like South Vietnam, you need aircraft. You know, they don't have enough ammunition, and this gradually gets worse and worse.

59:49And so the North Vietnamese see this and launch an offensive in early 75, and they kind of wait to see too, are the Americans going to come do anything? By this time, Nixon's gone. The Americans don't do anything. And so the North Vietnamese then are able to, with 600 ,000 troops, defeat this depleted South Vietnamese force. When you tell the story and you outline it like this, it does sound more and more, and something that I didn't appreciate through watching the movies, and we'll come on to that, it just sounds like political and strategic incompetence. But what you said about Kissinger, I mean, to me, that just blows my mind.

1:00:29I mean, this was obviously a fantastically intelligent man. I'm not the brightest, but even I can work out leaving the enemy in the cities isn't a good idea. Yeah, that's right. And he will catch a lot of heat. Yeah, as you said, he was a brilliant man. McNamara also, again, brilliant guy. But yet they commit some terrible strategic blunders, which, you know, again, I think this was not a foregone conclusion that it was going to end the way it did. You had both of those guys making a very terrible decision. Now, you also had McNamara and Nixon who, you know, listen to these guys. And I think that's part of the problem is they thought, well, these guys are so smart, they must know what they're talking about.

1:01:10Now, we do know in the case of McNamara, Johnson actually, near the end of his presidency, concludes that McNamara doesn't know what he's talking about because McNamara wants to, in late 67, he wants to cut the bombing because he says the bombing is really not doing anything. But there's so much information that says it's, in fact, doing things that McNamara has become deluded. And, yeah, Nixon also, excuse me, Kissinger commits some huge and costly mistakes. I mean, another thing he does is he comes up with this whole agreement with the North Vietnamese before he even shows it to the South Vietnamese.

1:01:46And then keeping the North Vietnamese troops there is not the only huge problem they have in there. and Kissinger didn't even appreciate that some of the, just the language that's in the document, the Vietnamese are very attuned to language and he had signed off on these terms that he didn't, he had no idea that the Vietnamese were going to attach some importance. For example, how do you describe the demilitarized zone between North and South? The U.S. didn't think it was a big deal, but the semantics of this were huge to both Vietnamese and so he just tied the U.S. to this deal that had all these problems without even getting the concurrence of our allies.

1:02:28And it just, yes, it just did not go at all well.

1:02:32Francis Foster:So the war was for because of the domino theory, the idea that if you let Vietnam get overrun by communists, communism will spread in Asia. Well, Vietnam does get overrun by communists. Was domino theory correct? Yes, great question. So I think it's first worthwhile. Meanwhile, one of the big problems with the Vietnam War is oftentimes people don't understand the different phases. I mean, it goes from 60 to 75, and a lot of times people think the world's kind of static. But in fact, the world's vastly different in 65 when the U.S. goes in than when South Vietnam's overrun 75. What you see in 65 is that, in fact, there are lots of countries under threat from communism.

1:03:17The most important one, which doesn't often get its due attention, is Indonesia. At this time, there's a civil war brewing between Sukarno, who is a communist, essentially, and his military. And that will actually come to a head in September of 65. And the military will end up overthrowing Sukarno. But they will actually say later that the reason they took the stand was because they realized the Americans were not bailing out. And had we given up on South Vietnam? I mean, no country in Asia is going to want to be your ally if they see you send 50 ,000 troops to a country and then leave when the going gets rough.

1:03:58So it was actually, I think, very important in the case of Indonesia, also Thailand, Singapore. and Singapore's Lee Kuan Yew, it's very explicitly come out and said that Vietnam bought time for Southeast Asia to solidify and build up its strength against communism. And another thing that happens is American intervention will drive North Vietnam and China apart for a few reasons. One, as I mentioned, there's now all the Soviet aides coming in. American intervention also, I think, plays a role in the Cultural Revolution in China in 1966, which Mao had fought. He had this big period of expansion in Vietnam and Indonesia.

1:04:43Both those get crushed, and he now turns inward for enemies, and he loses interest in international affairs. And so by the time you get to 75, Chinese and North Vietnamese have turned against each other, and in fact they'll fight a war in 1979. So most of the dominoes don't fall, but Cambodia and Laos fall. So those are significant. And it's also worth noting, this leads then to the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia, who kill some two million people in this genocidal conflict, which, again, I think is worth keeping in mind that this is a fanatical ideology. Vietnamese also kill a lot of their own people.

1:05:24Most of it goes under the radar. But, you know, I think ultimately the U.S., while it ultimately loses South Vietnam, it holds on to a lot of other Asian countries, which today are actually the main U.S. allies in this ongoing competition with China.

1:05:42Francis Foster:And again, reading between the lines of what you're saying, it sounds to me like your view, and of course there'll be historians who disagree on this, but your view, I guess, is it was the right war to fight. It was just fought in the wrong way. Is that fair? That's correct, yes. Yes, and that is, yeah, and those are, I mean, really the central issues of the war and, you know, unfortunately, so politicized in this country that to make that argument is sort of radioactive in American academia. The show is called Trigonometry for a reason. By the way, I honestly didn't know that was going to be your perspective.

1:06:19Francis Foster:You know, you were recommended to us by a friend and really interested in your thoughts on it. So it's an interesting perspective. It's one I have heard from other people. And as you say, it is very toxic. And I imagine that is partly because, well, look, it might not be true. There'll be people who say it's not true. But also, I think, because of just how powerful the Hollywood narrative that was created after the war was. And I'm not saying that narrative is false. I'm not qualified to assess whether it's true or false. What I'm saying is, even as someone who's not American, who wasn't brought up in America, if I had to tell you what the story of the Vietnam War was, it would be, you know, Platoon.

1:07:04Francis Foster:It would be, what's the one with Tom Cruise? Born on the 4th of July. Right. Yes. Like, those are not positive war movies. You're not looking at that going, we're the good guys here, and this was the right war to fight. Yeah. And I mean, the country very much split along political lines. You know, Ronald Reagan, you know, described this as a noble cause. But most of the left has taken the view that it was unnecessary, unwinnable. And, you know, part of a big part, in my view, of why the left pushed that so hard is that. what's interesting, look what's going on in college campuses in the middle of the 60s.

1:07:38When the U.S. goes into Vietnam, there's actually very little protest. Again, this is one of those areas where it's worth keeping in mind the chronology. The protests don't start until 1967, and it coincides exactly with the reduction of draft deferments for students, for college students. And so suddenly, and I'm not the first person today, but I think it's true that a lot of this opposition is driven by the fact that when you tell some students these college students didn't care that much about the war until they said well we're going to send you there and now some of them don't want to go and if you look in the nation's history it's almost always the case that the manly thing the you know civic thing to do is to go when your country calls you so if you're going to not go and not answer the country's call you have to come up with a reason and so the reason is this was a terrible war and we never should have fought it.

1:08:34Again, I think much of this is for self-serving reasons. And if you actually look into the facts of the war, they don't bear those things out. A little bit of bush back to that. So I have American friends and I know some people who've actually, Vietnam veterans, one whose father committed suicide, came back completely damaged because of what he saw. Young man ended up killing himself before the age of 30. Another one had addiction issues. I think as well, we need to acknowledge, Mark, that there was a very real psychological scar that was imprinted amongst a generation of young men, particularly blue collar working class young men.

1:09:13Well, I think there's certainly cases of that. Now, it is interesting. The polls that have been done, Vietnam veterans, there was a survey done a few years after the war. It's about 90 percent of them say they were actually proud of their service. Now, most of those people also said the problem was that we tied our hands behind our back. So again, they did have gripes, but it was about how it was fought. Now, the question of psychological damage is an interesting one, too, because you have

1:09:47the rise of certain psychiatrists who are arguing that there is some unique mental illness, and we're going to call PTSD, that's coming out of Vietnam. I think that's mostly been debunked just in that if you look at any war, there are people with these same problems coming back. Probably a little bit worse, given that when people came home, they weren't greeted as heroes. I would say that. But any war, I mean, if you talk with veterans of World War II or Korea or Afghanistan, there's a lot of veterans come back from Afghanistan and Iraq who have committed suicide as well, tragically. But, yeah, I think it's worth keeping in mind that, you know, in many senses, it's really not any worse of a war than most of the wars we've fought.

1:10:39Because, you know, all the wars we've fought have been pretty awful. But again, when you compare the Hollywood, you know, the Hollywood version of World War II movies don't look quite like Platoon or, you know, Apocalypse Now. Look, I'll be honest with you. I was skeptical. A green powder that claims to do everything sounds exactly like something I'd tear apart. I've seen enough people pushing miracle solutions to know what that looks like. But I take AG1 every morning and I'm not someone who sticks with those things out of habit if they're not delivering. One scoop in water, that's it. Over 75 vitamins, minerals and nutrients designed to support your energy, mood and digestion.

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1:11:59And with your first month subscription, you'll get 10 travel packs, a bottle of vitamin D3 plus K2, and a welcome kit that includes your scoop and shaker completely free. Again, to get this offer, go to drinkag1.com slash trig or click the link in the description of this episode. Give it a go. And do you think the Vietnam War has made a profound impact on how America sees wars moving forward? I do. And I think, you know, the left and the right took different lessons. I mean, the left's lesson was basically we want to stay out of wars. And the left pretty much stuck with that, you know, for decades.

1:12:37And, you know, every time a war came, they said, no, this is another Vietnam. And it's been interesting with Ukraine. Suddenly they've now become the party of war. You know, they were actually for they got us into several wars in the 20th century. You know, the political right, you know, came out with the message that you're going to fight, you fight to win. And so we saw in the first Gulf War, the Bush administration was very intent on saying we're going to use maximum force and work there. Now, then you get to Afghanistan, Iraq, In both of those cases, I think the US didn't really know what was coming.

1:13:13We weren't even expecting a war. We thought we were a protracted war. And so and neither of those went quite as expected. Yeah, you can say that. Yes. So I think that's what's, you know.

1:13:29Francis Foster:I was going to ask you about that, because do you think the Vietnam War and the portrayal of it, rightly or wrongly in the media, in Hollywood, among, you know, a lot of people in the country as well. It's the template onto which the failure of Afghanistan and the failure of Iraq fit very nicely. Because, you know, I hinted at this when we, right at the beginning of our conversation, I kind of, it's strange for us because we're not immersed in American culture nearly as much. When we look at conflicts that are happening now, Ukraine, Israel, and, you know, the left and right split in different ways on those issues, both within and against each other, etc.

1:14:10Francis Foster:But you hear a lot of people say this thing, like, I'm not dying for Ukraine, or we're not sending American boys, which is kind of like, weird in the current context, because that really isn't remotely what's happening in either of those conflicts. Nor is it the direction of travel, nor does the United States have a draft. So even if America did put boots on the ground, which it has no intention of doing, they would be people who volunteered for that. But the cultural dominance of this thing of like, we're not going to, we're not dying for a foreign country. Does that come from Vietnam? I think on the left, but it's been interesting on the right.

1:14:51You know, that was not, as I said, that was not the main message that the right took. The right took away the message that you fight to win. It's not that you just don't fight. Whereas I think in recent times, mainly I think because of Iraq and Afghanistan, you increasingly hear people on the right who are questioning whether we should get involved in these interventions. But again, I think the right now is thinking more in terms of, you know, Iraq, Afghanistan, how those things were costly. And again, you know, at a time when we've got rampant inflation, people here conscious of how much we spend abroad.

1:15:31And so, yeah, there is a lot of reluctance. And I think there is within the Republican Party, you know, of which I'm part, there's been this big split between the neoconservatives and the neo isolationists. You know, the neocons kind of get blamed for Iraq and Afghanistan and they were kind of the principal architects. And so now you've had this, you know, this other element that's very hostile to them. You know, there's also, I think, in between those, a large group, which I would say maybe sort of the Reagan conservatives who are, you know, sort of not either super eager to get in every war, but also, you know, not necessarily opposed to war and willing to fight when American interests are at stake.

1:16:15Francis Foster:Well, again, as an outsider, that does seem like the smart position because those two other extremes, you know, the neocon wars of the 2000s don't seem to me to have been beneficial to anybody, especially America. Say nothing of the people that were killed, etc. And the neo-isolationist position or the isolationist position seems to me a little bit naive. We had a big debate about this with a guy called Dave Smith, who is very popular, representing that point of view. Because if you are going to be the most powerful country in the world, you are going to have to control territory beyond your own borders.

1:16:55Francis Foster:And sometimes that means getting physical. So to go so far in other extremes seems kind of incompatible with America being the most powerful country in the world. Yeah, I think that's right. And I do think there is some naivete. And I have debates with people. I kind of consider myself in the middle on this. But there are some who would say, well, yes, having a military is important for deterrence purposes. What we should do is just have a big military, but then we never use it. But I don't think you can really have deterrent power if you take that position, because people are going to call your bluff or if you're out there advertising this.

1:17:38So, you know, sometimes, as you said, if it's the world's greatest power, sometimes you are actually going to have to do something or you're not going to be the world's greatest power, especially we have this rising China. I do think we also see today what we saw before is that American politicians have not done a good job explaining to the American people why Ukraine or Israel or whatever other causes, why this is actually so important to us. um and you know i spent a lot of time teaching college students and that's one thing they say they don't really understand you know why are we spending all this money here but it hasn't really been explained to us how do you explain it to your students um well you know i take i think both of them are tricky issues they're not as not as compelling as the case you have for um vietnam I mean, I think in the case of Ukraine, we obviously still have great interests in Europe.

1:18:37You know, it's not a, you know, if Eastern Europe gets unsettled, we have, you know, problems of migration, which, of course, that's a big issue here. Potentially, you know, Russia could keep pushing Western. I'm not convinced that Russia is going to ever go attack Poland, but there is also the human element that you have mass killings of civilians. And at some point, as the world's greatest power, that's something we may not want to be willing to tolerate.

1:19:08Francis Foster:I'm not hearing much strategic interest for the United States in that explanation, though. Right. Well, that's that's the thing, too, is I think it's harder to make the case for strategic interest, which is perhaps part of why, you know, you don't hear a lot of people in Washington make that case. I mean, the other reality you have is. You know, we now have a situation where Russia seems to be just using attrition and they've kept sort of calculating on their larger population that they're eventually going to grind Ukraine down, which I think would just be terrible for all concerned. And so, you know, my own view is ultimately need to find some kind of solution to stop this, which probably means, you know, the Ukrainians may have to give some things up, which is not great either.

1:19:51I mean, you don't want to set the precedent for countries taking territory and then keeping it. But it's really, to me, just a nasty problem without a lot of very good solutions at this point. But I think the Biden administration, I remember a couple of years ago, they thought that the Ukrainians were going to prevail militarily. And the Russians did very poorly at the beginning. And so I think they thought that was going to continue. Well, it's not. And so I think they miscalculated.

1:20:26Francis Foster:Well, the weird position of the Biden administration was, is like, Ukraine is going to win, but we're not going to give them the weapons to do it. So it's like, well, they could have won, maybe. Look, it depends. The Ukrainian flag is not going to be flying over the Kremlin anytime soon, but they could have pushed Russia back to the 1991 borders. Now, unlikely, but if you've given them proper support, they might have done that. But it was all pom-poms and no actual support. It wasn't zero, but it wasn't the support that they needed. So this is kind of how I certainly think, and I'm from Russia and I have a lot of Ukrainian family, how we've ended up where we are.

1:21:04Francis Foster:What about Israel and the war against Hamas? How do you talk to your students about that? That's an interesting one, too, because they are... Historically, the Republican Party has been pretty strongly pro-Israel. It's much more divided now. And I think partly because, well, certainly we have some very influential figures on the right here who are kind of questioning us from the national interest perspective. you know exactly does America have a national interest in being allied with Israel with being allied with Israel yes I think the harder point the people what people struggle with more is you know do we have a national interest sort of supporting what's going on in Gaza I mean the but I mean I think even on the question in terms of is in our national interest I think that one's you know something's been debated too.

1:21:58I mean, you probably saw that there was a big flap with the president of the Heritage Foundation a week or so ago. So clearly, there's a lot of conflict around this.

1:22:09Francis Foster:I think - By the time this episode goes out, everyone will have forgotten about Kevin Roberts, who we've had on the show, by the way. But what I'm asking is, what is the strategic interest for the United States in being allied with Israel? Forget about Gaza. That's where the conversation on the right in America really is, and by the way, on the left too, I think. Why is America allied with Israel? Well, a lot of it, I think, has to do with history. I mean, we have, there's a sense in this country still, although again, this is sort of fading, that in the aftermath of World War II, after all that was inflicted on the Jewish people, that they deserve to have a homeland and a place where they could live in safety.

1:22:53You know, we've always also had this competing view, well, we also want to be friends with the Arab countries and Islamic countries around them. You know, I think this was an easier case to make when the U.S. was more concerned about the Middle East. We had these fears of terrorism, that, you know, Israel's an ally in terms of dealing with the terrorist threat. But I think that's partly why it's harder to get support now because most Americans, I don't think, now think about terrorism in the same way. I think also there is, in terms of we consider Iran to be one of our top enemies, which makes sense, clearly Israel is critical in terms of keeping those guys in check.

1:23:38Mark, doesn't it also represent what we're talking about, the scars of Vietnam, and that there's a lot of people in this country who simply don't trust government because they go, you've lied to me repeatedly. You lied to me over Vietnam. And it's just gone right the way, weapons of mass destruction. Why should I believe you? Why should I believe a single word you say about Israel, Ukraine, or anything else? Yeah, I think that's a valid point. I mean, certainly you hear a lot of that coming out and not just Vietnam, but also, you know, Watergate reinforces this. And I said the Pentagon papers are part of this because clearly people are being lied to.

1:24:16I do think it's exaggerating. Some people say, well, up until Vietnam, America trusts its leaders. Well, if you actually go back and look at your history, Americans have always had a certain suspicion of our leaders, you know, going back to, you know, George III. So I don't think it's quite the case that we just never thought there are leaders. I mean, if you look in the early Republic, too, they're flinging all sorts of mud and saying how the other sides are all a bunch of scoundrels. So I think it goes in cycles, too. I mean, yes, in the 90s, and that's partly what, you know, when you get to the first Gulf War, there is, you know, a lot of people think, OK, well, yes, there are weapons of mass destruction.

1:24:57And they seem to know what they're doing. But again, obviously, that turned out to be huge. And so now we're back in one of those periods of deep distrust. And, yeah, I'm not sure what gets you out. I mean, I think it could be a president who, you know, I think that's one of Ronald Reagan's big accomplishments, is that he was the kind of person who could help restore a certain degree of trust in the government. And I don't think we've really had a figure since then in this country who's been able to do that.

1:25:27Francis Foster:The thing is, the media environment is now so, so different. Social media, podcasting, the plurality of voices as such. And also, you know, as I said, this episode will go out some time ago, but we just had a story in the UK. And who knows if the BBC still exists by the time this conversation is aired. because, I mean, we now know that large swathes of the media, and I say this as no fanboy of President Trump. You know, I think he's great on some things and not so great on other things, but they lied so much about him. They literally did election interference while accusing him of election interference that it's just hard for people, I think, to trust the media they don't already agree with, you know?

1:26:14Yes, I think, and certainly there's been great distrust in this country. And actually Vietnam really saw, I think it's probably the first time you had very deep distrust of the media among some parts. because it clearly became evident that the media was increasingly monolithic ideology and clearly left of center. And so conservatives complained for a long time there really actually wasn't much recourse. And when you have Fox News and the Internet, it's actually changed things a lot because people have other sources of news to go to. And I think it's important. But yeah, I mean, it is unfortunate.

1:26:56and I think we, I think, in this country gave up a while ago on hoping for something more impartial, which I guess the BBC still strives to be. But RLR Media here pretty much is either left or right. And I always tell students you want to listen to both to make sure you're getting the information, but a lot of people only listen to the side they agree with, which isn't healthy. No, it's not. And, you know, Constance and I always talk about this. and forgive me because it might be slightly offensive to our American viewers and listeners, but you bloody love a conspiracy theory here. You are the nation of conspiracy theories.

1:27:34Whenever you sit down with somebody, it doesn't matter how smart they are, what side of the political spectrum, they all go, you know, who's really interesting? How much of that really is to do with Vietnam? Where expose after expose after expose, people lying. I mean, that government gaslit a nation whilst they're at war. That's got to have an effect. And then weapons of mass destruction again. That has got to make a population more conspiratorial. I mean, you do have a good number of conspiracies before Vietnam on the political right in terms of, although what was sometimes seen as communist conspiracies actually have been validated to have been true.

1:28:19But, yeah, you certainly see a rise in the distrust of government and a willingness to believe that the government is going to do bad things. And I said I think it did subside for time. I will tell you more recently things that might have been some kind of conspiracy theory. Crossfire Hurricane is an example of the government's actually doing some crazy things. And you think there's no way the government is actually going to do this. And, you know, I personally tend not to believe in conspiracy theories. But at the same time, when you see something like that, you say, my God. Tell us about that a little bit.

1:28:53What was that? Well, that was surrounding in the 2016 campaign. The FBI, and this was when Obama was still in power, they used this so-called Steele dossier, which had all these crazy allegations against Trump, which turned out to be false. They used that to open FBI investigations into Trump's associates. And some of this is still being sort of pushed out now by the new government. But you have, you know, the FBI basically being used to try to interfere with the 2016 campaign and senior, very senior FBI officials. And some of them, you know, end up getting fired. I mean, Kevin Clinesmith, this is one I like to tell my Democratic friends, I'll say, tell me who Kevin Clinesmith is.

1:29:40Most of them don't even know what he was, you know, this FBI official who falsifies a warrant to spy on the Trump campaign. And there's, you know, Peter McCabe or Andrew McCabe, excuse me, he gets fired by. I mean, there's actually quite a few of these very senior FBI officials who are caught up in this. And so things like that, I think, have made certainly the right. And I think partly what you're seeing on the right is sort of a backlash against this and a broader sense. Yes, the government is broken and it needs radical surgery. Now, how you actually fix it tends to be a little more difficult than destroying the bad parts.

1:30:20Because what we also saw, and it was people stopped talking about it because of the tragic assassination of Charlie Kirk. But people kind of forget that before that, the big story was Epstein. And it looked like the Jeffrey Epstein scandal was going to do significant damage to Donald Trump's presidency. And you go, look, well, obviously the Epstein scandal is a big thing, but why this above everything else? And to me, it was the conspiratorial element that was almost making people lose their minds. Like they couldn't get past that. Yeah, I do think this is one area I think the Internet's been problematic because theories like this would not have been spread 30 years ago in the way they are.

1:31:08But we now have, you know, probably because, you know, people just go to where they like to get their information and they tune out things that might contradict that. And so, yeah, I mean, certainly it's been incredible how much play that issue, the Epstein issue, has been has been receiving. Now, again, a lot of other people aren't paying much attention to it. But, of course, you also saw with the Charlie Kirk thing, you have all these conspiracy theories about who was involved in that as well. So it is an unfortunate element of our politics.

1:31:41Francis Foster:Well, it's been great having you on. Thank you so much for talking to us. Before we head over to our sub-stack where our audience get to ask you their questions, what's the one thing we're not talking about that we really should be? Yeah, I'd say the question of public ethics in this country is something we don't talk enough about. Now, people are getting very spun up about corruption scandals, and rightly so. You had some experience yourself with the law. I did, yes, in the first Trump administration. I became a whistleblower, essentially, about reporting corruption, and then they came after me.

1:32:17And I certainly saw a deficit of ethics in our government. And this is part of a broader cultural problem where, historically, this country was comfortable talking about ethics in terms of the Judeo-Christian tradition. some of our population still does, but we also have large segments who want to be so secular that we can't talk about any of that stuff. And they assume that through some sort of cosmopolitanism, we can still maintain a culture of of ethics. But from my experience, ethics isn't something that just arises out of thin air. This is actually a problem. And we see a lot of unethical behavior in our society.

1:33:02And if we really want our government to cause us less harm, we probably need to figure out our cultural, social, religious mooring so that we are actually behaving ourselves better.

1:33:13Francis Foster:All right, Mark, thanks so much for joining us. Head on over to triggerpod.co.uk where you get to ask Mark your questions. To what extent did Nixon and Kissinger sabotage the Democrats' peace negotiations ahead of the 68th election? And to what extent does Mark think they should be held as culpable for tens of thousands of potentially unnecessary deaths in the years that followed?