“The Pentagon Papers” (1971) is a secret, 7,000-page history of the Vietnam War ordered by US Defence Secretary Robert McNamara in 1967. Although much of it was marked “secret” or “top secret”, Daniel Ellsberg, who helped write it, gave a copy to the New York Times in 1971. President Nixon stopped the Times from printing it in the name of “national security”, but was overruled by the Supreme Court, 6 to 3, in the name of “freedom of the press.”
Daniel Ellsberg, like Edward Snowden in our time, was charged under the Espionage Act. But that was not enough for Nixon. He wanted to discredit Ellsberg. Thus was born what became his Enemies List and the Plumbers (for stopping leaks). The Plumbers, headed by E. Howard Hunt (former CIA) and G. Gordon Liddy (former FBI), would be caught by the police a year later in the Watergate break-in, which in turn would bring down Nixon two years after that.
Months before the Watergate break-in, the Plumbers broke into the office of Ellsberg’s psychiatrist. When that came to light during Ellsberg’s trial, the judge dismissed the charges against him.
“The Pentagon Papers” documents the years 1945 to 1967, from President Truman, who helped the French in the First Indo-China War, to President Johnson, who fought the Second. It shows presidents saying one thing in public and doing another in private. In public they were all about freedom and democracy, peace treaties and just wars, but in private they were all about tin, rubber, oil, rice, military bases and, above all, US power. To that end they undermined democracy in Vietnam and the US (by means of fake news). Regardless of public image or party label, the presidents acted amazingly alike, all of them Machiavellian. It does not cover the Nixon years, but from what we know of him, he was not much different.
Excerpt:
“Strikes at population targets (per se) are likely not only to create a counterproductive wave of revulsion abroad and at home, but greatly to increase the risk of enlarging the war with China and the Soviet Union. Destruction of locks and dams, however – if handled right – might (perhaps after the next Pause) offer promise. It should be studied. Such destruction does not kill or drown people. By shallow-flooding the rice, it leads after time to widespread starvation (more than a million?) unless food is provided – which we could offer to do ‘at the conference table’.”
Surprised: anti-war Jonathan Schell in the New Yorker wrote:
“Almost none of us, it turns out, were cynical enough or ungenerous enough in judging the policymakers, and almost all of us were living in a dream world furbished by official lies and by our own innocent, or complacent, desire to trust our government.”
Not surprised: Noam Chomsky, speaking of himself and historian Gabriel Kolko:
“With regard to long-term United States objectives, the Pentagon Papers again add useful documentation, generally corroborating, I believe, analyses based on the public record that have been presented elsewhere.”
– Abagond, 2017.
Sources: mainly “A People’s History of American Empire” (2008) by Howard Zinn; “The Chomsky Reader” (1987) edited by James Peck; “Observing the Nixon Years” (1989) by Jonathan Schell; “The Time of Illusion” (1975) by Jonathan Schell.
See also:
- Vietnam War
- Watergate
- New York Times
- Chomsky
- Machiavelli
- Apple Pie America
- Obama is like a different person
- fake news
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Eh. The soviets were training NVA troops and pilots, and flying MiGs over Vietnam and obviously Chinese troops, materiel, and advisors were involved…
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I think we really saw the military industrial complex unleashed from public opinion, excepting perhaps, as was alluded to here, ‘carpet bombing’ and defoliation…
After Dolottle’s raids, the air wars over europe and obviously, nuking Japan, civilian casualties became pretty much expected.
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I think it was chines 57mm aa. Obviously the ak47 not sks. The wood rotted on yhe stock. Russian sam’s and migs. It’s kinda like cuba but mexico maybe instead? Especially for the chinese.
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shooting white men’s guns at each other enchante!
can we please get rid of nuclear missiles?
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https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_America_(airline)
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good link, v8
looks like nobody else is interested.
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This highlights the reality that civic discussion becomes impossible if there is not a shared understanding of factual reality. This paradox has only become worse in this internet age, where confirmation bias mixes with information overload to balkanize people to the nth degree. Trump’s victory is a victory for the forces of disinformation. Rational people at one time sneered at the idea of an illuminati — the world is way to chaotic and polyglot for that to be real — but ironically the internet and its effect on information entropy now makes the emergence of a high tech illuminati a very real possibility.
But I digress. Back to the original post. As a teen boy coming of age in the Vietnam era, in a small, backwater town in the middle of nowhere, the truth about the war filtered in to me only gradually, by degrees, mostly from older siblings of my peers who were returning from the war, or from college in places like Ann Arbor or Berkeley. As I began to question my parents about it, I heard over and over that childlike belief in the goodness of leaders: “He is the President. He must have information that we don’t have; he must know things we don’t know. We have to trust him.”
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Air america: probably the template for iran/contra and mena, arkansas
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@ Blanc2
” As I began to question my parents about it, I heard over and over that childlike belief in the goodness of leaders: “He is the President. He must have information that we don’t have; he must know things we don’t know. We have to trust him.”
I didn’t know a single Black adult in my family, among my parents friends or in my community that felt that way about any politician during that period, especially the president.
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*mena, Arkansaa and ‘freeway’ ricky ross
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I remember my dad saying that we should put Kissinger in a boxing ring with a Viet Cong leader, let them duke it out, and whoever won, that would decide the victor of the war.
Not an original thought with him, but that’s his stance on war in general. I grew up hearing him say repeatedly if the leaders of nations can’t find another way to solve their differences, they should be the ones who have to fight the war amongst themselves instead of sending young men to die and causing massive destruction and loss of innocent civilian life. He said if our leaders knew they were the ones who had to fight, they’d find another solution pretty d@mn quick.
I was little during the war and don’t remember much. I remember my parents stopped letting us watch the national news to protect us from the images, which is ironic considering children my age and younger were being massacred in Vietnam and their parents were helpless to protect them.
I remember some of the high school girls showing me their metal bracelets and explaining that each one was inscribed with the name of a POW and soldered onto their wrist and each girl had sworn not to remove the bracelet until their specific POW came home. I doubt if any of them actually waited that long.
I remember we made up a playground game called Hippies and Cops where some of us would pretend to be protesting the war and then the others would pretend to beat us over the head and take us to jail.
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Solitaire said,
“I remember some of the high school girls showing me their metal bracelets and explaining that each one was inscribed with the name of a POW”
I remember those; some were copper and some were red or blue. Name, rank and year lost.
I was in grade school.
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