VIETNAM VETERANS FOR ACADEMIC REFORM
The University of Kansas Student Auxiliary
V.V.A.R.: Leading the student revolt on campus against speech codes, political correctness, multiculturalism, gender feminism, dormitory re-education, lying about Vietnam, and other instruments of academic oppression.
Leonard Magruder - Founder/President
Former professor of psychology - Suffolk College, N.Y.
Member: National Association of Scholars
CONTACT: Magruder44@aol.com - Phone: 785-312-9303
STUDENTS AT UNIVERSITY OF KANSAS TOLD HOW CAMPUS LIES ABOUT VIETNAM CONTINUED EVEN AFTER TET OFFENSIVE PROVED THEM WRONG
by Leonard Magruder
October 15, 2003
In a week-long program at the University of Kansas, (Ending the Academic Lies About Vietnam), Leonard Magruder, President of Vietnam Veterans for Academic Reform, the student auxiliary, told students last night how campus and media continued to lie about the Vietnam War even in the face of totally contradictory evidence. The Tet Offensive, he said, was an excellent example.
The Tet Offensive, which was portrayed by the New York media as a defeat for the U.S. was in fact, as Westmoreland and all historians agree, an almost disastrous defeat for the North Vietnamese. Not only did they lose half of the 90,000 troops they had committed to battle, the Viet Cong was virtually destroyed.
Contrary to the expectations of the North, the people of the South took not one step to assist the invaders. Instead, they rose up in revulsion and resistance, with the government and the people galvanized into unity for the first time and volunteers for the South Vietnamese army almost doubling.
In the U.S., the facts made clear by the Tet Offensive, that the war was not just a”civil war,” that the Viet Cong was indeed, as all U.S. presidents had argued, linked to the North, that the South clearly did not wish to live under Communist rule and welcomed American aid, and that it was the North Vietnamese who were”immoral,” engaged in”genocide” and”aggression” with the mass murders at Hue and the rocket attacks on helpless civilian populations, should have ended the arguments of the campus”peace” movement. All of these arguments rested on lies given to them by faculty in the infamous university “teach-ins” to help them avoid serving. It was the moment of truth for those in the universities and the media. But they failed the test. The lying continued with renewed fury.
The New York media, Mr. Magruder told the students, recognizing an opportunity to manipulate the news to effectively impose its view of the war on the American people now created, and deliberately sustained, an image of “disaster,” even in the face of incoming battlefield reports that contradicted that image.
This image was taken seriously by advisors to President Johnson, totally altering the outcome of the war at the very moment when victory might have been possible. The university and the media robbed the United States government and the American people of the ability to make critical judgements about their most vital security interests in a time of war. The main reason Mr. Magruder is offering this program is to help insure this does not happen again in the current crisis.
The true reason for the tragic change in policy after the Tet offensive is seen in what Johnson now told Westmoreland, that to pursue the war more aggressively was politically unfeasible, that he had “no choice but to try to calm the protestors lest they precipitate an abject American pull-out.” (“America in Vietnam,” Lewy) In the two films coming up, from “The Long Way Home Project,” introduced by Gen. H. Norman Schwartzkopf, students will learn how Nixon faced the same dilemma, and tried to solve it in the very flawed plan of Vietnamization. This involved withdrawing troops at a dizzying pace to placate the growing danger of the “peace” movement at the same time that South Vietnam had been 95% pacified, and American soldiers had repeatedly mauled the enemy at an horrifying 15 to 1 or better KIA (Killed in Action ) ratio. Still, for two years South Vietnam held its own alone against the North, until vengeful anti-war elements in Congress cut off their ammunition. leaving them helpless before the Communist onslaught of 1975.
In one of the most incredible phenomenon in the history of warfare, there was during this period, thanks to the lies of the “peace” movement and the media, there was no logical connection between what was actually happening in Vietnam and response on the home front. The response to victory was despair. This is what the media calls the “psychological victory,” which they themselves created.
And to their everlasting shame, the “peace” movement responded to any hint of success by American forces at Tet with panic, fearing that their own country might win the war. As presidential candidate George McGovern said to Vietnam vet and former Sec. of the Navy James Webb,”What you don’t understand is that I didn’t want us to win that war.” (American Enterprise Mag. May/June 1997) At the height of the war the Harris Poll reported that 51% of the campus protestors wanted the Viet Cong to win.
Mr. Magruder backed up his account of the media and the Tet Offensive, which the media hides from by calling the issue a”right-wing fantasy,” by quoting from a number of contemporary histories of the war, some of which follow.
“The enemy has been hurt badly… he committed a total of about 84,000 men. He lost 40,000 killed.” (Report of General Earle G. Wheeler, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, on the Tet Offensive. Feb. 27,1968) (Note: the allies lost 1,892. This is the disaster for the North Vietnamese that CBS called a “stalemate.”)
“The North Vietnamese regulars and the Viet Cong guerrillas were defeated utterly on the battlefield. Granted the American superiority at that time, there is at least the probability that North Vietnam forces could have been destroyed.” (Crossroads of Modern Warfare - Drew Middleton, military expert for “The New York Times.”
Of the Tet Offensive he said, “Our losses were staggering. If American forces had not begun to withdraw under Nixon they would have punished us severely..we suffered badly in 1969 and 1970 as it was.” -Bui Tin, the colonel on the general staff of North Vietnam who accepted the surrender of South Vietnam on April 10, 1975, in “The Wall Street Journal.”
“Visitors to the Lyndon Johnson Library are told, “While the President was reading reports from the war that made it clear that the enemy had suffered a severe military loss (Tet), newspaper and TV gave the impression that the loss was ours and that defeat was imminent.” (New York Times News Service)
Jack Fern of NBC suggested to producer Robert Northfield that NBC do a documentary showing that Tet was indeed a decisive military victory for the United States. “We can’t,” said Northfield,”Tet is already established in the public mind as a defeat.” (Between Fact and Fiction - Edward J. Epstein)
“Essentially the dominant themes of the words and film from Vietnam added up to a portrait of defeat for the Allies. Historians, on the contrary, have concluded that the Tet Offensive resulted in a severe military-political setback for Hanoi in the South. To have portrayed such a setback for one side as a defeat for the other - in major crisis abroad - cannot be counted upon as a triumph for American journalism… and it could happen again.” (Big Story - 2 vols. - Peter Braestrup)
(Note: We note that President Bush complained just yesterday that the media is not telling the whole truth about Iraq.)
“The Tet Offensive proved catastrophic to our plans. It is a major irony of the Vietnam War that our propaganda transformed this debacle into a brilliant victory. The truth was that Tet cost us half our forces. Our losses were so immense that we were unable to replace them with new recruits.” (Truong Nhu Tang - Mnister of Justice - Viet Cong Provisional Revolutionary Government - The New York Review, Oct. 21, 1982)
“If there is to be an inquiry related to the Vietnam War, it should be into the reasons why enemy propaganda was so widespread in this country, and why the enemy was able to condition the public to such an extent that the best educated segments of our population (college people) gave credence to the most incredible allegations.” (Final Report - Chief of Military History - U.S. Government)
When does this inquiry begin? The last four years of the war, the lives lost, and the final abandonment by the anti-war elements in Congress of the peoples of South Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia, were prices paid to indulge the tantrums of the campus ‘peace’ movement and the New York national media. (“The press has become more sympathetic to the enemy than to our own national interest.” --Senator Margaret Chase Smith,”Congressional Record,” June 16, 1971.) America, through the lack of moral and intellectual sophistication of its liberal academics and journalists, had succumbed to the most successful propaganda effort the world has ever seen.
How the university, and then the media, lied about Vietnam is the one great trauma in the tissue of American history that has yet to be dealt with honestly on our campuses. If it ever is dealt with, it means by definition a total reformation of higher education for having been so misguided on so crucial an issue. If this happens again in the current crisis, it means, of course, another defeat for America, this time involving destruction on the homeland. The campus protestors used to say, “I won’t fight until they reach our shores.” Well, they are here.
Next on the Magruder program at K.U., the film “Terrorism in America,” Islamist militants in America, including in Lawrence, Kansas, a PBS documentary. Also a discussion of how many academics are applying the lies about Vietnam to the new war on terrorism (“imperialism,” ”racism,” ”genocide,” those toothless old hags still haunting the faculty lounge), plus a discussion of the need for a plan of deterrence, mutually assured destruction, or MAD.
For our recent Manifesto declaring war on leftist academics, see A Manifesto of Student Liberation from Leftist Tyranny. Also see the related articles, Students Challenge Professor on Vietnam, and We Don’t Want your Views on War - You Lied About Vietnam.
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Founder/President, V.V.A.R.
Phone: 785-312-9303
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