Bob Buzzanco-Vietnam: 50 Years Later

Show Transcript

[00:01:19] Bob, welcome to Lean to the Left. 

[00:01:21] Bob Buzzanco: Thanks for having me on again, Bob. I really appreciate it. It's always fun. 

[00:01:26] Bob Gatty: Let's get right into talking about Vietnam. Can you put into context what led to the 1973 Peace Treaty and its aftermath? 

[00:01:37] Bob Buzzanco: Yeah. Essentially it was the kind of prolonged nature of the war and, the continued destruction that Nixon and Kissinger. Nixon had won promising to end the war. Peace with honor, and actually began to withdraw troops, which to some degree I think helped with, anti-war sentiment at home. Since you went to the draft lottery, and then eventually to a volunteer army.

[00:02:07] But at the same time, Nixon and Kissinger didn't want to just leave because that was clearly a, would've been a huge failure. So the war continued by other means, especially the Air War. And Nixon ramped up air attacks, not just in Vietnam. And, one thing that I always point out, which I think is really important, the vast majority of attacks occurred below the 17th parallel in South Vietnam, right? The country that the US was there to allegedly save. Yeah. So the United States was blowing up its ally. And then they also began to really ramp up Aox in the two countries to the West Cambodian Laos, which is why you get over 4 million tons of, bombs dropped the number.

[00:02:55] Nixon withdraws troops. However, the war itself continued. After. The enemy was suffering great losses, but was never in a position where it didn't have the military initiative. And then in like around 1970 and 71, Briefly, Nixon and Kissinger began discussing some kind of negotiated terms with, the Northern Vietnamese.

[00:03:18] The main negotiator was a, guy named Le Duc Tho from the, Vietnamese Communist Party. And essentially by 1970, the outline of what would become the Peace Treaty in January of 1973 was really already there. However Nixon and Kissinger continued the Air War. The Vietnamese in 1972 decided to go for kind of a not necessarily a final offensive, but to really try to break the back of the Americans. This was the Easter offensive that started in March of 1972 and actually did quite well in the early stages advanced through the northern provinces of South Vietnam below the 17th parallel, actually took over a Quang Tri province, which is in the north, and it was only Americans bringing in like massive air power B 52 s that, that stopped that. Then later the negotiation, I'm obviously going through this very quickly. The negotiations began in earnest again.

[00:04:17] Nixon wanted. the, war over before the 1972 elections, he thought that could be an issue. Turns out obviously it wasn't. And Kissinger and Le Duc Tho began negotiating pretty seriously. And by October they had a, an agreement in hand. Kissinger in, fact, told the media peace is at hand.

[00:04:38] However, the South Vietnamese government had been left out of this, Kissinger just left them out of this. Nguyen Van Thieu, and when Thieu heard about the peace agreement he publicly rejected it. He issued what were called 69 objections and four nos. And the biggest issues were like the continued presence of communist troops in the South.

[00:04:57] They weren't gonna leave that. No. You're never gonna do that. No. And no war would end with, that happening. And then the composition of the government, the communist wanted obviously the provisional revolutionary government, communist government in the south to take over, and obviously the South wouldn't agreed to that.

[00:05:14] So they ended up agreeing that there would be two, what they called administrative entities, the government led by Nguyen Van Thieu, and the the provisional revolutionary government, which is the communist group, kinda like the National Liberation front in, in the South. And Nixon by late October, early November said I don't really need a peace treaty to win the war. And Kissinger withdrew those terms. So basically everybody's stabbing everybody else in the back by this point. Yeah. The, US had left the south out of negotiations. The south had monkey wrenched the agreement, and then Nixon in December famously said those bastards are gonna be hit like they've never been hit before.

[00:05:59] Kissinger had sent out a directive saying what was it? To anything that flies against anything that moves. Basically just everything's a target. And so in, in in December 18th, 1972, Nixon began the Christmas bombings, right? And in 11 days, unleashed the most intense short-term air campaign ever.

[00:06:23] Something like 40,000 sorties, just brutal destruction. The, mainstream interpretation was always that the Christmas bombings forced the North Vietnamese, the communists to give in and, agree to the terms. The reality is actually quite opposite. The, US was condemned everywhere, allies, enemies across the globe.

[00:06:42] It was compared to, Nazi atrocities. They attacked they blew up the biggest hospital in Hanoi schools. Facility homes it was just a, brutal this is around the time they, they also mined Haiphong Harbor. And by January of 1972, Nixon and Kissinger had to go back to the negotiating table and accepted the terms that they clearly had in October, it was the same deal, but terms that were pretty much already there in place a year or two even before that. 

[00:07:15] Bob Gatty: So that Christmas bombing and all the death and destruction was just a big waste. 

[00:07:21] Bob Buzzanco: Yeah. One of two of Kissinger's aides resigned. One of them, Roger Morris, called a calculated barbarism. And John Negroponte, who was no dove, he was one of Reagan's people in Central America, said Our bombing forced us back to the negotiating. Our, tho those bombings forced us to accept our own concessions, basically , but the media still, I think for the most part, accepts the kind of, oh, we we the, Christmas bombings forced them to and the reality was that after up went, They'd been fighting since at the end of World War ii against the French.

[00:08:00] That wasn't, they weren't, certainly, wasn't weren't, gonna surrender at that point. And they clearly had the initiative, and public opinion had wildly, and Nixon had won big election in 1972. And by January, his approval rating was like, way below 40%. Yeah. Local 35%. I think so.

[00:08:17] Yeah. He was condemned, like at home abroad by enemies, by allies. The Europeans were just saying look get, Vietnam over with, you have to deal with Europe. This is not that Vietnam's not that important in the big picture. And, so he, in Kissinger cut accepted a deal that was already there.

[00:08:36] Kissinger and Le Duc Tho won the Nobel Peace Prize for that. And late October refused it just symbolically of course. But Nixon won the Nobel Peace Prize. The, famous satirist, Paul Krasner said when Kissinger won the Nobel Peace Prize, that that was the end of satire.

[00:08:53] Satire was dead. Kissinger won the Peace prize. 

[00:08:59] Bob Gatty: Right. All right. Today, , we're Vietnam's a, trading partner of the United States, right? Yeah. 

[00:09:08] Bob Buzzanco: It's, yeah 

[00:09:10] Bob Gatty: And, I was just gonna say, in last year, Americans. Invested nearly 3 billion there. Was that worth it? 

[00:09:19] Bob Buzzanco: That's, the question, right?

[00:09:20] Yeah. There are a few of us people I think on the left who basically say that if you look at things really from the nineties onward, the US got what it wanted. It won the war. They went to war to prevent Vietnam from being this communist country that would control markets in Asia and oppose American allies in the region. And that's what's happening today. Vietnam is really deeply integrated into Asian economies and into the world economy. It's, part of the World Trade Organization. The US even though it lost the war, continued war by other means.

[00:10:00] The US withdrew in 1973. The peace treaty was signed in 1973, but the Americans continued to send, I think about three or 4 billion dollars in military equipment to the South. However, that didn't really work. And in, in April of 1975, Vietnam fell and the communists unified the country and created what they call the Socialist Republic of Vietnam, the S r V.

[00:10:22] So the US continued to my argument, I call it like the Empire Strikes back argument, which is, I think the US really early, I think from 1970 or so on, knew that ultimately they weren't gonna win, but they wanted to create as much destruction against the Vietnam as they could to make reconstruction difficult if not impossible, hence the, bombings, not just in Vietnam, but in, in Laos and Cambodia. The continued supply after 1973, after the Peace Treaty, in fact the April of 1975, Gerald Ford went to Congress to ask for I forget how much billions more in aid to prevent the final offensive.

[00:11:01] And for the first time, Congress just shut it down. But even then they didn't want to can see, but it was the writing more than the writing was on the wall was clearly over. But after that, they continued to put pressure on Vietnam so that it was a, I don't wanna call it a period victory, but it was a, difficult victory.

[00:11:20] After that the United States, really as soon as the war ended in 1975, continued to put pressure on this time economic pressure, more than military pressure, which is America's strength. It's, the biggest economy in the world. Yeah. And has incredible power over institutions like the World Bank or the I M F or various United Nations lending groups.

[00:11:39] And so they, started to do that And the Vietnamese really weren't able to recover from that is, is especially on top of the war. Plus they had I don't wanna keep talking. I wanna give you time for questions, but No, that's fine. Keep going. There's a lot going on there.

[00:11:55] It's, not complex, but there's a lot going on. Yeah. So first, Richard Nixon and his secret kind of deal, a codicil to the treaty had agreed to give Vietnam 3.25 billion in reconstruction aid. And, this has been verified. There were stories that came out later they, that's been legit.

[00:12:17] However he and then Ford reneged on that, and this is a lot where the POW/MIA issue came in. The POW/MIA issue was secondary, but they realized they could use that to make Vietnam look bad. So they kept saying we're not gonna give you your aid because you're keeping all these POWs and Mia, which is mostly a contrived issue.

[00:12:38] There weren't any real POWs who weren't accounted for. MIAs is a different story because it's a war. People get downed in airplanes, they get killed, their bodies are never found. And the Vietnamese did not that, that did not serve them well. It wouldn't serve them well to keep America's prisoners, cuz they have 3.25 billion hanging in the balance.

[00:12:57] But Nixon and then Ford and Ross Perot was really important in this, too, were able to use that POW/MIA issue to, to not give that aid to the Vietnamese. In addition to that, the US used its power over the World Bank and, the International Monetary Fund to not give loans to the Vietnamese.

[00:13:16] Early on, on the Vietnamese side, , they had a couple things going on as well too that really damaged their own economy. First in 1975 at the very same time that the Vietnam War ended, a revolution Civil War in Cambodia ended with the, they're a brutal Khmer Rouge taking over, as we all know, Khmer Rouge started killing their own people.

[00:13:39] Huge numbers, hundreds of thousands of people. And in 1978 and this is this part, I think Americans, again don't really get that much of. But in 1978, the Vietnamese government. went into Cambodia to get rid of the Khmer Rouge, to end the killing fields. And they did that. However, they then had massive occupation costs.

[00:14:02] So while they're trying to rebuild their own economy, that now they're supporting this huge occupation army in Cambodia. The, part about this that, that I think most people don't know, and when I tell 'em they, they think I'm making it up and I have to prove it. But the United States supported the Khmer Rouge.

[00:14:17] The US continued to say, no, the Khmer Rouge is the real government in Cambodia, not the, government the Vietnamese put in place. And in fact, in 1981, after Reagan was elected, Jean Kirkpatrick the ambassador of the United Nations right. Went there, the United Nations and said, no, the Khmer Rouge should have this seat at the United Nations.

[00:14:36] So the United States continued to support Cambodia against Vietnam. Yeah. At the same time. Oh, go ahead, . 

[00:14:44] Bob Gatty: That's incredible to me that we did that. I remember all of this cuz I was working on Capitol Hill at the time and you're bringing it all back the way you were doing the timeline here.

[00:15:00] And it's just incredible to me that the policies that we had during that period and the ultimate impact that it had on our troops our young men and women who, who were I don't know, victims Yeah. of of these international policies that the politicians were dreaming up.

[00:15:29] And it's just hard to understand how those troops on the ground, if they were aware, I guess they probably weren't aware of what was going on that was affecting what they were doing there. Must have been, if they did understand it, it must have been really difficult to go about the job that they had.

[00:15:55] Bob Buzzanco: I think more than most soldiers they had an awareness because this is a media war too, and, yeah. Wasn't censored. In fact, I think one of the reasons and, it's hard to verify this because of the documentary evidence, but the, army became very concerned, especially after, like around 1968 with troop morale and, troop discipline.

[00:16:19] Because you started to see a lot of soldiers there say why are we here? Drug use was pretty significant. A lot of soldiers were attacking their own officers like fragging them, fragmentation grenades. They, they would. little symbols on their helmet that said FTA, which you know, what the F stands for F the Army.

[00:16:42] And I think that really also, I think forces. Nixon and Kissinger to say, okay, we gotta figure something out. Which is one another reason to bring troops home and use air power. Because the, discipline in morale and the army talked about this all the time. This one reason they eventually went to a volunteer army rather than a draft, because it's probably easier to maintain discipline with volunteers than a draft.

[00:17:04] But yeah, there's no doubt. I've talked to a lot of vets over the years, many of whom were anti-war vets or were in groups like Vietnam Veterans Against the War, who still had a great deal of resentment for McNamara, for Westmoreland, and all, of those guys. Sure. They're 19, 20, 21 years old.

[00:17:26] They're 8,000 miles away. It's real hard to say that the Vietnamese pose a threat to you. And and, Yeah, absolutely. And they were exposed to agent Orange and all kinds of other dioxin, which still affect them today. Serious psychological issues.

[00:17:45] It's, it was clearly. Yeah, absolutely. Those soldiers were, in the crosshairs too. Victimized as, as much, yeah. 

[00:17:51] Bob Gatty: Earlier today I interviewed a Vietnam vet. He was 22 years old at this time. He was a first lieutenant. He was a platoon leader, an active combat on helicopters. His name is Robin Bartlett, and he described the emotional toll that his service there has taken on his life.

[00:18:17] One of his responsibilities was to help prepare the bodies of, of the troops that had been killed for shipment home. And that included preparing an index card, listing the details of the soldier's death and attaching it to the body of the soldier, along with the dog tag of that soldier. Yeah. After all these years, the emotions were still raw.

[00:18:47] He almost cried on the interview today that when he began thinking about all of this again, 50 years later and, I just wonder what your thoughts might be about what these guys had to go through and how they were victimized by the political policies that were taking place. 

[00:19:12] Bob Buzzanco: No, I years ago I we, were talking before and I lived in Maryland and, I, when I began working on a lot of this, I've started talking to a lot of soldiers.

[00:19:22] I, I had experiences like that where they'd tell a story and they'd have to stop because it was so emotional and overwhelming. Yeah. And in fact in 1971 a group of vets started something called the Winter Soldier Organization based on Thomas Payne Sunshine Soldiers.

[00:19:38] But it's the winter soldiers who really are, dedicated. And they went around the country. as witnesses to what they had seen and done in Vietnam. And it was, it's horrific. I, have trouble reading it, and there's a video of it, which I really can't watch because it's pretty horrific what they saw.

[00:19:55] I know. And a lot of people in the government, a lot of the right wingers said, oh, they're just making that up. But they had paperwork, they had they, verified it and it was, it really was horrific. And if you see something like that I, don't think you ever unsee it it never really goes away.

[00:20:11] Yeah. And you. talking about children who were blown up and your best friend and you're walking through and yeah, there's a there's a, sabotage or a gorilla attack or a firefight where you just kill anything that moves and things like My Lai unfortunately was not the only time something like that happened that was actually and, more and more work is coming out now that showed that was not rare.

[00:20:36] Unfortunately, those kinds of attacks on villagers and. . And, since then you've seen a significant obviously things like ptsd, but you've had a lot of veterans suicides. Yeah. Yeah. It's the kind of thing where I've had a lot of conversations like that too with people who and this, was a while ago, so this is probably what, 20 or 30 years later now it's 50 years later.

[00:21:01] And I'm sure it still affects them. And you have things like Agent Orange, right? Yeah. Is going in Vietnam. Obviously all this stuff is way worse. in Vietnam, there are still orphanages with children. What is this? Third generation, fourth, I don't know, third or fourth generation since the war who are being born without limbs or with encephalopathy and the the environmental destruction.

[00:21:26] I don't think we still know the, full impact of that, the psychological and, emotional environmental destruction continues long after the re the physical reconstruction. 

[00:21:37] Bob Gatty: Bob, are there lessons to be learned from all of this? 

[00:21:41] Bob Buzzanco: I don't know. , that's it. I don't know. We haven't yet have we?

[00:21:45] Bob Gatty: I don't think so. 

[00:21:46] Bob Buzzanco: I, don't know. I it's all the basic stuff, right? We let other people create their own society. I don't like doing counterfactuals let's say if the United States had not gotten involved in Vietnam in the 1950s it's almost certain it, is certain that Ho Chi Minh in the National Liberation Front would've taken over Vietnam, but and they would've done land reform and I, don't know how brutal or oppressive or not it would've been, but we do know that the US did it, and it started to send soldiers and weapons and money in and force governments on the Vietnamese people, it rigged elections.

[00:22:30] And, because of that, it led to, to what you mentioned up front. 58,000 Americans dead, obviously probably the equivalent of maybe a trillion dollars. A huge economic impact too. When you look at the economy in the seventies. And, that's really people usually talk about the oil shocks, which is huge.

[00:22:48] But the spending on Vietnam had huge impact on, the economic crises of the seventies, and then obviously subsequently. And then in Vietnam, of course maybe 3 million dead and just such aa deep resentment and animosity toward each other. These are they're Vietnamese, they're the same country.

[00:23:06] It'd be like the American Civil War. You're the same. Exactly. But it's the same country. Yeah. And and that led to recriminations afterward, reeducation camps. People who were associated with the southern government and army were often essentially put in in imprisoned after the war.

[00:23:27] Just hey destruction, hatred, anger that contributed to that. Which if the US hadn't been involved, you, we can't say what would've happened, but we, do know what did happen and it's hard to imagine something worse than that. 

[00:23:44] Bob Gatty: Yeah, it is. 

[00:23:45] Bob Buzzanco: The Vietnamese, there's no indication that the Vietnamese were any, anything white.

[00:23:49] The Vietnamese ended up going in and getting rid of the Khmer Rouge. cuz Nixon and others would say we're, we prevented a Vietnamese killing fields. But there's, there was never any, and even after the war with the reeducation camps and things like that I'm not defending it or anything like that, but it was nothing, not nowhere near what had happened in Cambodia.

[00:24:08] And in fact, the Vietnamese got rid of the, Khmer Rouge. The legacy is in a simple way as let countries determine their own fate. And, the Vietnamese had been they had this nationalist uprising. In the modern era since World War ii, when France had left, Japan had left the Vietnamese, and naturally said, okay, now we're, a sovereign country.

[00:24:31] And France came back in and then the US started to pour money in to help the French. And then when the French left after defeat, once again, the Vietnamese said, okay, now we're an independent country. We're sovereign country. And again, the US didn't allow that happen. They cut the country in half.

[00:24:46] They created a government in the south. And this just when you think about 30 years of this creates so much destruction ecological warfare 4.6 million tons of bombs the refugee crisis, 15 million refugees. And, many of those refugees were attacked in the seas by pirates.

[00:25:08] And just a just a I've met people who fled in 1975. And just these, stories are amazing little kids on a boat. Their parents put 'em on a boat by themselves and they're with strangers and they somehow make it to a refugee camp and they don't know anybody there.

[00:25:27] And then they finally make it to like Fort Smith, Arkansas, and they get to the United States and they're put with a family. just a, human tragedy. 

[00:25:36] Bob Gatty: Can you imagine how tough it must have been for parents to do that? 

[00:25:39] Bob Buzzanco: Yeah I've, good friends who, who have stories like that whose parents just, oh, said here, go with this person.

[00:25:47] Hopefully somebody you know from the village who might take care of 'em. But they in, probably in many cases, I don't know, most, but certainly in many cases, they never knew. They never made contact again. Brothers sister split up and could could be on different boats.

[00:26:04] One boat might sink. One boat might be attacked, right? Another boat might make it to a refugee camp in Thailand or yeah. Indonesia or yeah. So clearly one of the greatest human catastrophes, right? Obviously not in the level of World War ii, which is massive anything beyond like a, global war.

[00:26:25] This is as big and really as catastrophic cataclysmic really for the people involved. 

[00:26:32] Bob Gatty: And the impact is still being felt because these guys who are now, or the, not just men, but men and women who served there, they're now our age in their sixties and seventies.

[00:26:47] And they're still dealing with the consequences, with the impact. 

[00:26:53] Bob Buzzanco: There have been a lot of American vets who've gone. . And to, go back, they, sometimes they'll have reunions where they'll meet Vietnamese soldiers and many of them have gone back and they've set up like schools and health clinics.

[00:27:10] So there's I think they're trying to find some kind of redemption in this. So there have been Vietnam groups, Vietnam Veterans of American groups, and others who have done that, who are very active in trying to warming relations and then the nineties, then the United States formally recognized Vietnam. Yeah. And now, I mean it's it's easy to say nobody wins, but in fact, a lot of people have won the Vietnam War. These, multinational corporations have done quite well. American investors have done quite well. There are people in the Vietnamese government who have who, who have control of key industries.

[00:27:47] They've done quite well. 

[00:27:50] Bob Gatty: Is that why Noam Chomsky says that the US actually won the war? 

[00:27:56] Bob Buzzanco: Yeah he, I got, I stole the idea from Noam because, Yeah. If you're gonna steal an idea from somebody 

[00:28:02] I 

[00:28:02] Bob Gatty: saw I, saw the conversation on your show with him, . I just thought I'd get you to say it.

[00:28:08] Bob Buzzanco: Yeah. And it's something that, that he, and there are others. He said this a long time ago and it's something I've always been intrigued by, which is why I've continued to, do some stuff to study that and I'm convinced of it. Not in a conspiratorial sort of way I think it was just there.

[00:28:28] There's I don't wanna get too esoteric here. There's a lot of work done on kind of the aftermath of wars. And the persistence of one famous historian called it the old regime, the old way of doing things it's hard to get rid of it. And I think this is a good example of that, you had this particular group of people who have multinational investments and they have power. Look at who was running the war. People like Macnamara came from the Ford Corporation and you have all kinds of businessmen and Joe Kennedy and Clark Clifford and Huge Wall Street connections.

[00:28:59] So when the war ended, these people haven a gone there. They haven't gone away. And so they find new ways to get what they want. And so that old regime is really hard to get rid of. And in Vietnam's case and there's a debate even on the left about you know how sincere the Vietnamese revolutionaries were.

[00:29:18] Yeah. But they were denied aid by the IMF and World Bank in the eighties. They were finally given aid, but with all kinds of strings attached, which is why they had to abandon any kind of socialist economy and, go to a market economy. It was when Gorbachov was creating what they called Para the Vietnamese did something called perestroika , which essentially really harmed the workers and the veterans, the people who had.

[00:29:44] the backbone of their country, their society as well. And it, helped the Vietnamese ruling class too. The Vietnamese developed a, an investor class, a commercial class out of the old communist party, which is done very well. And because they've had to accept, it's very hard to buck the, market.

[00:30:01] Look at place like Cuba it's been embargoed for over 60 years now. It's a tiny little island. So it's really hard to create an independent society, and especially an independent economy. and the US didn't allow that to happen. And the Vietnamese, like I said, they had these occupation costs in, in Cambodia.

[00:30:21] In addition to that, the United States actually, and this is Jimmy Carter, who I think is a magnificent post president, can't guy doing all kinds of great stuff. But as president, he's a typical American president. Carter and Brazinski encouraged the Chinese to invade Vietnam in 1979.

[00:30:37] That's another thing I think most people don't know about. China invaded Vietnam in 1979. Vietnam, they're tough. You don't mess with them. They, fought back and they, stopped it. But again, they lost about 10,000 men. And again, they had massive costs involved. It's real hard to rebuild your society when you're going into Cambodia, you overthrow the Khmer Rouge you're staying there.

[00:30:57] Then you have this war against China. You can't get loans from the IMF or the World Bank or United Nations, the US reneged on the reparations. So essentially they're at the mercy at that point of, multinational investors in the market. And by 1994 any thought of creating a revolutionary society or, socialism or whatever was gone. It has a socialist healthcare system.

[00:31:21] Did a pretty good job against Covid. It's this government. it's like, China in that regard, has these, government bureaucracies, which also run the economy. But and they provide basic healthcare and things like that.

[00:31:37] But for the most part it's, not the vision that ho Chi Minh had 60 years ago. Yeah. And I don't, that was probably never possible, yeah. 

[00:31:47] Bob Gatty: Now, Bob, when our soldiers returned, home from Vietnam, and many of them were treated like, Crap and there were no parades.

[00:31:59] There were no welcome home events. They were left to deal with their own terrors with little help. You got any thoughts about what's happened since then to these guys? . 

[00:32:10] Bob Buzzanco: Yeah one thing about that though, I think is important because a lot of people like to put the blame on the hippies or whatever.

[00:32:18] If you study the v the any war movement they, love veterans. Nothing, was better to have than to have vets it your thing. One of the things I've talked to vets about, one of the, one of the biggest complaints they had was actually the VA system at the time. And I dunno if it's gotten better but a lot of 'em said it was real hard and plus PTSD wasn't even acknowledged as a real thing. Yeah. By, the va. Yeah. And then some of them said that the older generation was rough on them because they had come back from the Good War, world War ii and these guys they saw almost as losers or something like that.

[00:32:53] So yeah. They came back to a in some ways a society that was very d obviously very different. When they left some of them left in the early sixties and, then by the late sixties the countercultures emerged. You have just like everything is different, right?

[00:33:07] Sex, drugs, rock and roll. It's a very different society and it's very hard to readjust. The economy in the seventies wasn't great. So you had unemployment and inflation. And so yeah the it was not a soft landing. No. What is it? I, don't know. I think. The sense I get.

[00:33:26] I've have talked to vets from Iraq and Afghanistan and many of them who've had like psychological issues, I think get the, VA and other groups are more responsive to them now than let's say in the Vietnam era. Because like I said, PTSD wasn't even recognized. At the time.

[00:33:46] And I think I think vets are often kind of everybody's pawn, right? Everybody wants to say, I love the vets I support the troops, that kind of thing. A lot of the people who claim they support the troops were, cutting VA funding. I think if you support the troops you, should fund va that's one of the government agencies that actually does something.

[00:34:07] Bob Gatty: And Exactly. 

[00:34:09] Bob Buzzanco: So there's a lot of rhetoric. I support the troops. I love the troops. You don't like the veterans, but the reality is to some degree they're, pawns. 

[00:34:16] Bob Gatty: It's just like the Republicans who say they love the love seniors, and now they're trying to cut social security and Medicare.

[00:34:23] Bob Buzzanco: Yeah, exactly. And I mean they're the va look at Trump's VA leaders, one of 'em had to resign. And when you have to resign in the Trump cabinet, it's pretty bad cuz they get, it's pretty bad. 

[00:34:35] Bob Gatty: The head of the vA turned out to be a crook under Trump, ? 

[00:34:39] Yeah, I, and I forgot about it.

[00:34:42] Bob Buzzanco: And, so yeah, there's the rhetoric there, especially from the right, about how much they love the troops. But the reality is, no, at sometime you actually do have to throw money at problems. And the VA clearly, Is one of those who especially after what these guys went through in, Vietnam, to, to abandon them is really horrific.

[00:35:02] It's tragic and cruel actually, yeah. But you see this look, look at like the 9 1 1 first responders look at how long it took to get a aid to them. It took years. Yeah. And and a lot of these vets. Yeah, there was a settlement on Agent Orange. Oh, what was it like a long, like 30 something years ago, I think.

[00:35:23] And at the time a lot of vets weren't happy with it because the amount of money it was, I don't know, it was like under 50 million or something. It wasn't a huge even in the eighties, that's not a huge amount of money. Yeah. And so you have a lot of, vets who might have late stage cancers or cancers would would emerge later, which might be connected to their exposure.

[00:35:43] To Dioxin or Agent Orange or whatever in, Vietnam. And, it's really hard for them a lot of red tape just to get support in many of them die before their cases are settled. Yeah. So it's I mean there's a lot of rhetoric about veterans, but if you look at it historically America's never treated vets all that great.

[00:36:05] I mean it's had the GI Bill after World War II, I think is a huge example where, yeah, that actually significantly helped create like this much, much larger middle class and gave vets the ability to go to college and things like that. But there's a lot of counter examples of that where vets came back and they were lost and betrayed and world War I, they had Shell shock and, World War ii, a lot of 'em came back.

[00:36:25] Cause World War ii, they were there for four years. The Vietnam, you had a one year tour and then you could re-up of course. In, in World War ii, a lot of those guys were there for four years, the whole time. So you can imagine just the, anxiety and the trauma and the stress that would've caused to, to be in a, combat theater for four years.

[00:36:43] Bob Gatty: You know what, this guy that I talked to today, Robin Bartlett, he was telling me that one of one of his jobs was to document the number of enemy troops that were killed in a battle, in a firefight. But he said that the Vietnamese would, the North Vietnamese would take their dead away and there was no way to quantify how many were killed.

[00:37:15] And so when he filled out his form, he put down that there wasn't any way to quantify it because the north Vietnamese had taken the dead away and he was told by his superiors, just put in this number. 814, whatever in the hell it was. Yeah. And that's what went down as the official body count of the enemy.

[00:37:45] So, the statistics that come out have come out from that war are probably not correct. 

[00:37:54] Bob Buzzanco: Yeah. That's, they're certainly not, yeah I've, heard stories like that where, yeah and think about it it's, a dumb way to gauge a war. Like how many that's just dumb.

[00:38:05] How many did you kill versus how many did we lose? 

[00:38:07] Bob Gatty: Yeah, exactly. It's, 

[00:38:09] Bob Buzzanco: the Vietnamese had a huge reserve. American military officials. And one of the, book I did, Masters of the War that you mention. Actually, what I found in there is that the military was never excited about Vietnam.

[00:38:21] They, weren't enthused. They thought it was a bad idea. They, thought there were all kinds of problems there. And one of the things they often criticized was the body count. . They said what's the point? They said, we can keep killing 'em. But they keep re replacing 'em. They're this huge supply of young men in Vietnam.

[00:38:37] You can't send there were over 500,000 Americans there in 1968. That's an immense number. Yeah. You can't send a million Americans to Vietnam. You, can't do that. Yeah. So you can't get in that numbers game. You can't win it. And every Most military officials I, encountered just said that.

[00:38:55] I was like, we can't win. Who cares about the body count? They can keep sending more people in. There's no crossover point. Where you're killing more of the, I forget who it was, it may have actually even been Westmoreland of all people who said that killing the vehicle would be like killing termites with a screwdriver.

[00:39:10] It's it's hard to do when they just keep multiplying. Yeah. , the body counts. Yeah. They were clearly Jimmy rigged, they were fudged and, even more, he's just what a dumb way to, to figure out if you're winning or not. Yeah. In fact many of those American body counts were alienating people.

[00:39:29] Like I said, the US was essentially attacking South Vietnam. The country had it created and there was a, there was significant morale problems in the Southern Vietnamese military. A lot of desertions, I mean the Easter offensive, which I mentioned to you, there were, I forget how, like 150,000 desertions or something like that.

[00:39:49] A lot of these guys They've been fighting for who knows how long and what, for exactly. 

[00:39:57] Bob Gatty: Is there anything that can be taken from this experience in Vietnam? With respect to our policies with other countries today China or Russia or North Vietnam?

[00:40:16] Bob Buzzanco: I, wish it's interesting you, mentioned China because one of the, things that the US said always said was that it had to stop Vietnam because, of China, did the Vietnamese and Chinese hate each other? They always have. They, have a decent trade relation, I thing like that, but.

[00:40:35] The Vietnamese the United States creates these, monsters, right? John Quincy Adams in 1821 famously said, America goes not abroad in search of monsters to destroy, but the US does. It creates these monsters. The Vietnamese were never a puppet of China. And China today. China has emerged as a global power in the last 30 years.

[00:40:55] It hasn't fought any wars. It's, done kind of what the US did at the end of the, 18 hundreds and early 19 hundreds. It's sending out trade missions, it's sending out investors, commercial junkets, things like that. China clearly has its ambitions, but the United States has a military budget that's almost three times more than China's. It has I think 11 carriers versus three, 800 bases versus five. Just an overwhelming if you want to defend Taiwan, that's one thing, but the US has a 50 year old policy called the One China Policy, where the United States diplomatically recognized that China has sovereignty over Taiwan. If you wanna change that, that's fine, but you can't go out right now and say China's turning.

[00:41:48] That's actually the, diplomatic settlement that the US agreed to. Yeah, but 

[00:41:53] Bob Gatty: Well, China also has big spy balloons that they're sending around that, the US has to shoot down . 

[00:42:01] Bob Buzzanco: Yeah. The other day I, when that happened, I looked it up. The United States has, I forget the numbers, but I think two and a half times the surveillance planes as, China the, balloon thing is just ridiculous.

[00:42:13] That was just the media getting his, it's like TikTok and balloons. Your phone is conducting more surveillance on you every day than that balloon did. But I think just and, that's, I think true of Vietnam too. That hysteria like they used to call Ho Chi men the new Hitler.

[00:42:28] You can hate Ho Chi Minh all you want, but Hitler took over Europe. That's and I think you, you need to be settled and, somewhat resolute. I it's interesting in Ukraine about two months ago the, chair of the Joint Chiefs of staff, Mark Milley, who I think is a really impressive guy, actually, really.

[00:42:47] Call for. He said, we're gonna have to negotiate this. And you're starting to see more and more people, like from the establishment talk that way. And in Vietnam there were people like in the si early sixties, mid sixties saying, we need to negotiate. And at some point I, Putin is a monster, I'm not gonna defend him.

[00:43:06] But the reality is both Ukrainians and Russians are getting killed. And, I think like what, harm can be done by talking By negotiating. Exactly. Maybe you won't come through a settlement, but, Yeah. You're try and you never know. Sure. And at that point you do wonder because there is so much money being invested in this I'm here in Houston, Texas, which is where Keller, Brennan Ru is from, which has created Lyndon Johnson's career and made a ton of money.

[00:43:35] And I'm not, it's not a conspiracy, but Kello Gran Root Halliburton have. Billions, hundreds of billions of dollars off of defense contracts. There's a story in the New York Times, was it yesterday, I think? Yeah, yesterday about all these ships that the Navy doesn't want. The Navy doesn't want them, they don't work.

[00:43:53] They're, they stink ships. And the ships, they're like, I forget, eight major ships. The Navy wants to get rid of 'em. But the, defense contractors went to the congressmen in those districts and they're not doing it. They're, rejecting the advice of the admirals to keep these ships in the armada rather than to, to get rid of 'em because they suck basically.

[00:44:15] And it's on the front page of New York Times. I'm pretty sure it was yesterday. 

[00:44:18] Bob Gatty: And, they're refusing why? 

[00:44:20] Bob Buzzanco: Because the money invested in them. The, they're money, that can be used to replace them, to fix them, to repair them, to build ships in their districts, ah-huh . Essentially these military, these defense contractors, I always said that the military industrial complex is very important, but the industrial part of it is way more important than the military part of it.

[00:44:42] At the end of the day, they're gonna listen to the defense contractors and Raytheon and General Dynamics and all those companies far more. Then the military when I began studying this a long time ago, I thought Dr. Strangelove, right? All these guys wanna blow up everything.

[00:44:57] And the more I studied it for a long time now I, that's not really the case at all. And a lot of these military people are pretty impressive. There's a, guy named Andy Bass Ofit, who has a. An institute called the Quincy Institute. With a lot of ex vats and, Andy's retired colonel.

[00:45:11] They do great stuff. Like I said, I think Milley is an impressive guy. Milley stood up to Trump throughout 2020. And as much as anybody did these guys they're gonna be responsible for war. They're gonna see people killed. I think a lot of 'em some of 'em are like Flynn who's insane and Gungho.

[00:45:29] Yeah. General Flynn is nuts and there are some like that, but a lot of these guys are very sober and judicious. Don't really have any stomach to fight a, war when you don't have to. And, I think Vietnam showed that, but yeah, we'll see. 

[00:45:45] Bob Gatty: Okay. I saw that the Department of Veterans Affairs said that the number of Vietnam veterans who served on active duty between November of 1955 and May of 1975 was close to 7 million people.

[00:46:03] And now in May, may 11 to 13, there will be a special Vietnam war commemoration event in Washington to honor those who served during that period. Seems to me like that's long overdue. Do you agree? 

[00:46:20] Bob Buzzanco: Yeah Yeah, that's 7 million. I don't know how many actually were in theater and how many in that group saw combat, but yeah, I mean I think clearly Vietnam, I think everybody wanted to try to forget it, yeah. There was nothing good came out of it. Yeah. Just nothing. I think the only thing, like I do remember I was. When it ended, I do remember people saying like this won't happen again. Finally, the US kind of we've learned our lesson, this won't happen again.

[00:46:49] Oh and for a time there was, and same with Watergate, I think people thought, oh, we're not gonna have a corrupt government anymore. Uhhuh Nixon, looks better than he than he did. Then I'm not have we learned Afghanistan, Iraq all these other places.

[00:47:07] Interventions, money, military spending yeah. It's just that to me, my politically, it bothers me when like railroad workers are forced to go back to work, and you can spend who knows how much, how many hundreds of billions on foreign interventions. So 

[00:47:25] Bob Gatty: railroad workers are forced to go back to work without sick pay.

[00:47:30] Bob Buzzanco: Yeah. Yep. Yep. 

[00:47:31] Bob Gatty: All right. Without sick pay. Who in this country works for a company that doesn't provide sick pay? 

[00:47:38] Bob Buzzanco: Yeah. Congress doesn't . 

[00:47:41] Bob Gatty: I mean, to me that was just incredible. 

[00:47:43] Bob Buzzanco: Flint, Michigan hasn't had clean water for what? I don't know how long.

[00:47:47] Eight years. I don't know. It's, yeah. And, this comparatively would be nickels and dimes compared to, what you're spending really pentagon's budgets. 

[00:47:56] Bob Gatty: Exactly. Robert, it's been great talking to you, pal. Always 

[00:48:02] Bob Buzzanco: thank you. I, always enjoy talking to you too and I appreciate small, independent media. I think we do a lot of stuff that the big guys never touch I appreciate what you do too. 

[00:48:14] Bob Gatty: Thank you very much. I enjoy it. I like to talk with people who know what they're talking about. A lot of people who are experts in their field, but don't get to be on the big networks and so on and so forth.

[00:48:27] I got a lot to share and the this podcast at least mine, I love the opportunity to to bring those folks you included and thank you very much. 

[00:48:41] Bob Buzzanco: Thank you.