So, I was on YahooNews today, and saw this Chicago Tribune Article in my Newsfeed.

An ugly war, seen through the lens of the Vietnamese by Dahleen Glanton

...and after reading it, I felt the urge to respond.

I know, I know.  It's a losing battle trying to respond to everything wrong on the Internet.  But indulge me on this one.  It's an interesting case study in the kind of propaganda we Americans are subjected to day in and day out through our media.

First of all:

On a recent visit to Vietnam, I followed the path of the war — from Hanoi to Danang to Ho Chi Minh City. In rural towns in the North, the Vietnamese flag — a red banner with a single gold star — waves from pole after pole along busy streets. In the South, a 23-foot-tall bronze statue of former President Ho Chi Minh stands in a downtown square in the city that was once called Saigon.
For anyone who might have any doubts about the outcome of the war, the message throughout Vietnam was clear: The Communists won.

The publication date on this article was May 2nd.  It's unclear when the actual trip took place, but let's assume she wrote this article up just as she was coming off of the trip that she's writing about.
The two days preceding May 2nd were April 30th (the anniversary of the re-unification of Vietnam) and May 1st (International Communist Holiday).  If ever there is a time when the Communist flags are going to be out in full force, this is it.
For comparison's sake, imagine a visitor going to the United States during the week of the 4th of July, and then writing about all the American Flags they saw everywhere.
By the way, as a side note, many visitors to the United States actually do pick up on exactly this--how prevalent the American flag is everywhere you go.  It's not actually like this in all other countries, so it's something that people always remark upon when they visit the United States.  I've had several friends (British, Japanese, Australians, Canadians) make comments to me about how they were so surprised by the prevalence of the American Flag everywhere during their visits to the United States.

So you get what I'm saying here.  For an American to comment on this, as some sort of unique quirk that the crazy communists have, is a bit rich.

Moving on...

In the 40 years since the war ended, most Americans have moved on. Unless you lost a loved one — there were nearly 60,000 American fatalities — or know a veteran suffering in the aftermath, Vietnam has been filed away as ancient history. It has taken a back seat to the more recent conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan.
That is not the case in Vietnam. The civil war that dragged on for 21 years is ingrained in the country's cultural and political landscape. And telling the story has become an industry.

Yes, this is true enough.  Although at least some of this obsession with Vietnam War history as tourism is demand driven.  Every day thousands of backpackers arrive in Vietnam, almost all of whom have no knowledge or interest in Vietnam's 2,000 year old history other than the American War they've seen in the movies.  So Vietnam caters to the tourists' expectations.
Moving on...

From the Cu Chi tunnels, used as hiding spots and supply routes by Viet Cong soldiers, to the "Hanoi Hilton" prison, where a future U.S. senator named John McCain was among those held as prisoners of war, the Vietnamese government makes a faulty case against good and evil. According to its officials, the captured U.S. pilots were treated like guests at a country club.

One of the interesting little tidbits I picked up from Vietnam: The Ten Thousand Day War is that there is debate among the captured U.S. pilots themselves as to whether or not their treatment constituted torture.  Some of them feel that they were tortured, but others maintain that they were treated a bit rough at times, but they were certainly not systematically tortured in any fashion.

In the government-run War Remnants Museum in Ho Chi Minh City, America is portrayed as the archenemy of the Vietnamese people. The exhibits depict U.S. soldiers as heartless villains — even criminals — whose sole mission was to slaughter families, torture innocent villagers and spread ruin across the region.

What?  You mean they don't see us as pure hearted defenders of liberty and freedom?  Why, wherever did they get that impression?

Moving on to the next part of the article:

Displayed among the three floors are remnants of the weapons used by U.S. troops: tanks, missiles, bombs and machine guns. There are life-size pictures of children missing limbs, born without eyes or with tumors covering their faces — the result of Agent Orange, used by the U.S. military to clear foliage in the jungle where the fighting occurred.
But perhaps one of the most startling photographs is that of a young, gun-wielding U.S. soldier standing over the decapitated remains of Vietnamese bodies.
I realized that much of the presentation was just propaganda. Yet my initial reaction was shame. I lowered my head and silently cried.

The phrase "just propaganda" is a loaded phrase.  In one sense, it's true because the War Remnants Museum is guilty of sins of omission.   There is nothing there about the atrocities committed by the Communists (like the Hue Massacre (W)). Sins of omission are of course a form of propaganda.
But in another sense, it's denigrating the exhibits in the museum to label them as "just propaganda" . It makes it sound as if their truth value is questionable.  But it's not.  Everything documented in that museum happened.  Agent Orange happened.  The massacres happened.  The bombings happened.

Continuing to quote from the article, the very next line is:

Then I remembered that these were simply boys, far from home, fighting a war that had no rules.

The conjunction "Then" here is problematic, because it implies a logical progression from completed action to subsequent action.  It reads as if the author is saying "Confronted with photographic evidence of the massacres my country perpetrated, I initially gave in to the impulse to feel shame and sorrow, but THEN I remembered that the soldiers were simply boys far from home, and the feelings of shame vanished."
That is what she's saying here, no?

It is undoubtedly true that the Vietnam War was a war without rules.  But whose fault was that?  When the US army had instituted free fire zones, and started massacring villages, undoubtedly the war was operating without any rules.
But having begun to fight a war without rules, the fact that there were no rules then becomes the excuse?

The My Lai massacre, for example, was not an example of soldiers simply getting out of hand in a war without rules.  It was a massacre lead by the officers.  Officers Captain Medina and Lieutenant Calley were on the ground with the men, ordering them to conduct the massacre.



In other cases, it was clear that discipline broke down among the ranks.  But this has never historically been accepted as an excuse.  For example the Japanese General Masaharu Homma (W) tried to stop the atrocities committed by his troops in the Philippines, but was unable to do so as discipline broke down.  This was not accepted as an excuse, and he was executed by the Americans as a War Criminal.

Moving on, a little bit further down the page Dahleen Glanton writes:

For so many reasons, Vietnam was a war that was impossible for America to win. But isn't freedom worth fighting for?

Oh, where to begin with this one?
First of all, the people living in a country have the freedom to choose their own form of government.  There's no freedom more basic than that.
Secondly, the government in Saigon was never free or democratic.  The government changed frequently in Saigon during the course of the war because of various coups, but it was never a democracy, and it did not allow freedom of speech or freedom of expression.  The Saigon Governments were a series of increasingly unstable military dictatorships that would never have lasted if they hadn't been propped up the United States military.
Thirdly, if you accept that "freedom is worth fighting for" as a justification for getting into foreign wars, then there are all sorts of despotic regimes all around the world that the United States would have to go and overthrow.

The tourist attractions might tell one story, but outside, the impoverished living conditions of many Vietnam people tell another.

Ah gee, a third world country has impoverished living conditions.  Imagine that.  If communism was so great, why didn't Vietnam magically transform into a first world country with American standards of living?  Huh?  Huh?  Answer me that, communism!

In point of fact, Vietnam has made remarkable progress towards modernization the past 30 years.  It's much more advanced than it's neighbors in Laos and Cambodia.  There are, to be sure, still areas of poverty in the countryside, and Dahleen Glanton is going to harp on this for the rest of her article.  But there's also been remarkable progress.

Also, although Dahleen Glanton completely neglects this in her article, some of the problems Vietnam has had overcoming poverty are directly attributable to the massive American bombings.  To this day large parts of the center of Vietnam can not be farmed or built upon because of all the unexploded American bombs buried in the soil.

Next, Dahleen Glanton writes:

During my two weeks in the country, the Vietnamese people I met were kind and welcoming. Without doubt, young people in Vietnam had been taught about the war from the government's perspective. Schoolchildren surely were brought to the museums on field trips.
Why didn't they seem to hate Americans?
The answer, it occurred to me, is that the younger generation isn't buying the message that the government is selling.

First of all, it's always problematic when you describe the opinions of a whole nation of people as if they were a monolithic entity.  Everyone does it, I know, but it's wrong.  Some young Vietnamese people hate their government, some people love it.  Some young Vietnamese are very cynical of the official communist story of the war, some of them buy into it completely.  Some of them are conservative, some of them are liberal.  In short, you have the same diversity of opinion in Vietnam that you would have in any other country.

It is true that Vietnamese people don't hate Americans.  In fact they're very friendly and welcoming to American visitors.  But in my experience, there is no connection between their view of history and their attitude towards Americans.  Some of my best Vietnamese friends have completely accepted the communist version of the war history, but they're also able to understand that individual members of a country do not share the collective guilt for the actions of their government officials.

In Vietnam, the government controls the media — from television to radio to print. The Internet is regulated and censored. Officially, social media are off-limits.

Not true.  Not true at all.  I'm writing this blog post right now from within Vietnam.

But young people know how to get around the rules. Facebook and Google are very popular, particularly among the educated.

Yes, Google and Facebook are very popular in Vietnam.  But notice how she makes it sound like this is true inspite of government laws.  Currently there are no laws prohibiting use of Facebook or Google.

The canals and rivers flowing to the Mekong Delta are polluted and strewn with rubbish. The river water is undrinkable and even the rats, which are considered a delicacy by some Vietnamese, are unfit to eat.

Okay, this is true but...This is true of a lot of regions under a number of different governments.   There are plenty of places in the United States where the river water is undrinkable.  That's why we have treatment plants for our drinking water.
The fact that the Mekong is strewn with rubbish is a societal problem.  It's because individual Vietnamese people are making the choice to throw their rubbish in the river.  It's not because of an evil communist government ordering everyone to throw their rubbish in the Mekong.  If anything, it's a problem from lack of government action, not because of government oppression.

Depending on how poor the family is, the government provides a one-time stipend of up to $10,000 to find better housing. But an apartment in the city costs twice that amount. It is cheaper to live on the banks of the river in the city. Otherwise, they must stay in the countryside, where education and jobs are even harder to come by.

Here I must admit that I don't know anything about the specifics of what she's talking about.  Given how shoddily this whole piece is researched, and how much she gets wrong, I wouldn't be surprised if the details of what she's saying here turned out to be not as she is presenting them.
But for the sake of argument let's go with her version.
Given that housing prices in Saigon are much cheaper than they are back in America, $10,000 actually strikes me as quite generous.  I pay $450 per month, and almost all of my Vietnamese friends tell me I'm paying triple what a normal Vietnamese person pays for rent.  But even given my exorbitant apartment, I could pay my rent for 22 months with $10,000.
Secondly, note once again that what she's complaining about is not tyrannical Communist governance.  She's complaining about the problems of free-market capitalism here, and complaining that the government is not intervening enough to solve the problems of capitalism.  In other words, she's complaining that the Communist government of Vietnam isn't Communist enough.

These problems can't be blamed on the Americans. These are visible failures that the Communist regime cannot hide.

It would be wrong to think that the Vietnamese people don't love their country. They do.

But when it comes to the two-decade war, not everyone sees a clear winner. This was a war in which everyone lost, and its ramifications continue to haunt.

Oh come on!  This is the best you could come up with to describe the failures of communism?  You can go to any country in the world and find poor people who can't afford housing.  Vietnam is a third world country.  Of course it's going to have these problems.

Look, if you want to find problems in Vietnam, you can find them.  The same way you can go to any country in the world and write about how the poor are getting a raw deal, or how government programs aren't working perfectly, or how the rivers are polluted.
But to use this to imply that the wrong side won the war is just lazy propaganda.

And one last point: Both Dahleen Glanton in her article, and me in this rebuttal, have been using the word "communism" as synonymous with the Vietnamese style of government.  But just for the sake of accuracy, I should state that Vietnam abandoned Communist economics back in 1986 (W).  It's essentially now a capitalist economy in a one party state bureaucracy (similar to modern day China).