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Today's
Stories
April
30 / May 1, 2005
Gabriel
Kolko
Lessons from a Total Defeat: the End
of the Vietnam War, 30 Years Later
April
29, 2005
W.
John Green
Rice in Colombia: Silence on the Death
Squads?
Luke
Brothers
Greenwashing Nuclear Power: Nicholas
Kristof, the John Stossel of the NYT
Norman
Solomon
War, Aid and Public Relations
M.
Junaid Alam
The Politics of Smears and Self-Absorption
Jackie
Corr
The Bush Budget and Constitutionally Protected Tax Havens
Hunter
Greer
Feeding Tubes and the SAT: Finally,
a Use for Standardized Testing!
Sharon
Smith
The New Assault on Women's Rights:
Why are the Democrats Silent?
Website
of the Day
Tony Blair's Election Rap
April
28, 2005
Omar
Waraich
Blair's Poodle: the Billy Bragg Interview
Kevin
Zeese
Abu Ghraib One Year Later: Have Those Responsible Gotten Off?
Dave
Lindorff
Bush's Torture Tort Reform
Greg
Moses
Why I'm Not Standing with the Gringo Vigilantes
Toni
Solo
Nicaragua on a Dollar a Day...Forever?
Niranjan
Ramakrishnan
Republican Dole Drums; Democrats in Doldrums
Werther
George Will Revises the Vietnam War
April
27, 2005
John
Ross
Pope Ratzo and the Hucksters of Death
Joshua
Frank
DeLay, Abramoff and Israeli Militias
Ray
McGovern
The Bolton Affair: More Than Meets
the Eye
Mark
Donham
Government Pettiness and Wetland
Destruction
Dan
Smith
Bush's Iraq Poker: Hold, Fold, or Raise?
April
26, 2005
Dave
Lindorff
Church Sex Trumps Torture and Murder
Alevtina
Rea
Magic of the Yellow Emperor
Greg
Moses
The Senator and the Narc Pirates of
Highway 281
Joshua
Frank
Horowitz's Gang of Ghouls and Cowards
on Ruzicka
Diana
Johnstone
The French are At It Again
April
25, 2005
Uri
Avnery
The Persecution of Vanunu
Alison
Weir
The Okrent Perversions: How the NYT
Minimizes Palestinian Deaths
Lee
Sustar
Labor Loses a Hero: the Strong Life
of Dave Yettaw
Leonardo
Boff
A Liberation Theologist on Ratsinger:
a Pope of Fear and Centralized Power?
Gary
Leupp
Bush's Bully: the Career of John Bolton
April
23 / 24, 2005
Alexander
Cockburn
Time's Buried Hitler Cover
Gary
Leupp
The Anti-Japanese Demonstrations
in China
James
Petras
Elections for Democracy or Empire?
Harry
Browne
Springsteen's "Devils and
Dust"
Fred
Gardner
The Custody Threat
Ron
Jacobs
The Desterrados of Colombia: They
are not Collateral Damage
Elizabeth
Schulte
Why Backing Democrats is Pulling
the Anti-War Mvt. to the Right
Chris
Floyd
Oil, Guns and Banks
April
22, 2005
Saul
Landau
The Kinky Moralists: Missionaries
Forever
Kevin
Zeese
Dean Backs the Iraq Occupation
Joshua
Frank
Earth Day Paradox: Enviros vs. Nature
Mike
Whitney
God's Rottweiller: Pope Ratzinger's
Pie-in-the-Sky for the Masses
Michael
Flynn
Wolfowitz on Top of the World
Lee
Sustar
The One-Sided Class War
Website
of the Day
Bitter Greens
April
21, 2005
Bill
Quigley
The Church Picks Its Ashcroft for
Pope: a Catholic Worker Response to the Rise of Ratsinger
Dave
Lindorff
Bush's X-Files
Jason
Leopold
Drilling and Spilling in ANWR: Worse
Than the Exxon Valdez?
Kathleen
Christison
Sharon's 92 Percent Solution:
How the Misperceptions Roll On
April 20, 2005
April 20, 2005
John Ross
Lopez
Obrador: Mexico's Would-be Mandela (Part Two)
Kevin Zeese
Halliburton:
Poster Child of the War Profiteers
Uri Avnery
The
100 Days of Abu Mazen
Website of the Day
The House that Jack Built
April 19, 2005
Jean-Guy Allard
An
Exclusive CP Interview with Ricardo Alarcon on One of the World's
Most Notorious Terrorists: "Is Posada Still Working for
the White House?"
Dave Lindorff
What's
Good for Canada is Good for GM: Health Care Costs and Job Flight
Neve Gordon
Before
the Law: Israel's Military Justice System in the Occupied Territories
Brian Concannon, Jr
Immaculate Evasions in Haiti
Murray Hudson
Chemical Warfare Over Tennessee: Aerial Spraying of Deadly Pesticides
Frank B. Ford
Poem for Marla Ruzicka
Monty Python
Memo to Pope Rat
Michael Dickinson
Cardinal Sins
Paul Craig
Roberts
Outsourcing
the American Economy: a Greater Threat Than Terrorism
Website of the Day
Strindberg and Helium
April 18, 2005
Linda Schade
/ Kevin Zeese
The
Carter-Baker Commission: Corporate Conflicts of Interest
John Ross
Mexico's
Would-Be Mandela Stares into the Darkness
Brian McKenna
Dow
Chemical Buys Silence in Michigan
Mike Whitney
The NYT in Fallujah
Patrick Cockburn
Iraqi
Peace in Tatters
Dave Zirin
Straight Outta High School: Jermaine O'Neal, Race and Hip Hop
Eli Stephens
The Killing of Nicola Calipari: a Math Lesson
Harry Browne
War
and Elections in Britain and Ireland
Website of
the Day
A16: Photos of the World Bank Protest
April 16 /
17, 2005
Alexander Cockburn
Message
in a Bottle: How Coca-Cola Gave Back to Plachimada
Mark Dow
The Art of Jailing: Inside America's Immigration Gulag
Omar Waraich
Blair's Accountability Moment: Lesser-Evilism Grips Britain
Robert Buzzanco
How I Learned to Quit Worrying and Love Vietnam and Iraq
Sherry Wolf
Bitches' Liberation? Whatever Happened to the Struggle for Women's
Liberation?
Fred Gardner
The Pharmaceuticalization of Marijuana
Ron Jacobs
Free Speech with Permission Only: a Tale of Two Universities
Mark Weisbrot
CAFTA will Further Depress US Wages
John Pardon
The High-Tech "Competitiveness" Smokescreen
Yoshie Furuhashi
Debtors of the World Unite! How Dems Went to Bat for the Credit
Industry
Mike Roselle
Cubicle of Doom: the Death of Environmentalism?
Ralph Nader
Scientists or Celebrities?
Ramzy Baroud
Gaza: the Line of Memory and Despair
Jackson Thoreau
Barbara Bush: We Should Have Pulled the Plug on Our Daughter
Michael Dickinson
"Imagine" and the Koran: Listening to Lennon in Istanbul
Richard Neville
Shaking the Walls of TwinWorld™
Poets' Basement
Albert, Engel, Curtis, Ford and Gaffney
Website of the Weekend
Rebel Angel
April 15, 2005
Brian Cloughley
Diplomacy,
Bush Style: Boorish Bolton & Arrogant Rice
Bill Glahn
No
Child Left a Dime
Mickey Z.
One Zimbabwe or Another: an Interview with Greg Elich
Stephanie McMillan
Fear and Art: Feds Raid Another Exhibit
Josh Mahan
Victoria's Dirty Secret
David Russitano
Will the Real Minutemen Please Stand Up?
Jorge Mariscal
Rodolfo Gonzales: the Passing of a Legend
Rodolfo "Corky"
Gonzales
"I am Joaquin"
Tom Reeves
Students
Rise Again in Québec
April 14, 2005
Karyn Strickler
Red
States Rebellion: Montana vs. the Patriot Act
Pat Williams
The
Flattened Economy of the Rocky Mountain West
Jessica Pupovac
What
You Should Know About Bank One's New Daddy
Joshua Frank
Contradictions of the Anti-War Mvt.
Jerzy Mankowski
Jeffrey
Sach's Millennium Plan: a View from Poland
Talli Naumann
Right-to-Know in Mexico
Antony Loewenstein
The Aussie Press Under the Empire of Murdoch
Virginia Rodino
Challenging the Empire: Tactics for the Anti-War Movement
Saul Landau
/ Farrah Hassen
Bush's
Vision of Arab Democracy vs. Two Reports
Website of the Day
The 13th
Moon: Women Poets Read for Peace in Portland
April 13, 2005
Maria Carrión
Bolton
in the Western Sahara
Mike Whitney
Fighting Torture with Art: the Abu Ghraib Paintings of Fernando
Botero
Terry Jones
Let Them Eat Bombs
Dave Lindorff
A Sickening Error
Nathaniel Livingston, Jr.
Ethnic Cleansing at Air America
Kurt Nimmo
Israeli Nuclear Blackjack with Iran
Don Fitz
Battling Dengue Fever with Bats and Birds: the Vietnamese Alternative
to Pesticides
Tom Crumpacker
Democracy and the Multiparty System: The US and Cuban Experiences
JG
The
Abuse of Haitian Kids at PS 34
Jack McCarthy
Horowitz Comes to Tallahassee
Kevin Zeese
Is God Picking a Side in Iraq?: an Interview with Rev. Sekou
Jeffrey St.
Clair
How
Exxon Used the Guise of Homeland Security to Purge One of Louisiana's
Environmental Champions
April 12, 2005
John Wheat
Gibson
The
Goddess of Immigrants: Aeschylus, Thucydides and the Patriot
Act
Kevin Zeese
The Time to Oppose a Draft is Now
Alan Farago
The
Cancer Clusters of Cape Coral: Toxics Trump Democracy in Florida
Dave Lindorff
Blackout in Montgomery: Selling Social Security Destruction to
White Alabamans
Ron Jacobs
Bob
Dylan at the Crossroads
Nelson P. Valdes
Flashback: John Bolton's Big Lie
Dave Zirin
War
Games and War Names
Website of the Day
Parents Against the Draft
April 11, 2005
Tom Barry
Negroponte
and the Eclipse of the CIA
Saul Landau
Love for the Unborn and Brain Dead:
Contempt for the Rest Us
Monique Dols
Scapegoated at Columbia: Smearing Joseph Massad
Phil Gasper
Burning Professors: Resurrection of a Witchhunt
Mike Whitney
See No Evil: Pope TV and the New World Media
Edwin Krales
The Origin of AIDS: an Ethical Inquiry
Paul de Rooij
Undermining
Civil Society: Horowitz's Corrosive Projects
Website of the Day
Academic Freedom at Columbia: a Petition
April 9 / 10,
2005
Jeffrey St.
Clair
Torture
Air, Incorporated
William A. Cook
Janus at the State Dept.: Glossing Over Israel's Human Rights
Abuses
Gary Leupp
My Favorite Papal Moment: a Bonfire in Peru
Alan Maass
Pope-a-Dope: John Paul 2, Death of a Reactionary
Laura Carlsen
Democracy Sinking in Mexico
Joe DeRaymond
Death and Displacement in Colombia
Nikolas Kozloff
Bush Rebuffed in Venezuela (Again)
Dave Lindorff
The Price of Oil and the Bush Dollar
Greg Moses
Growling at Hallliburton
Fred Gardner
Southern Station Session
Justin Smith
The US Prison System: a Hesitant Defense of the Not-Quite-as
Bad Old Days
Ron Jacobs
George Bush's True Religion: From Bob Jones to Jim Jones
M. Junaid Alam
No Intelligence Failure in Iraq; Political Failure in the US
Ira Kay
West Point's Bad Geography: the Conqueror's Warped View of the
World
Elizabeth Schulte
From McCarthyism to COINTELPRO: the Ongoing War on the Left
Jackie Corr
Stranger in a Strange Land: What Bush Didn't See in Montana
Christopher
Brauchli
From Darfur to Iraq: Crime Without Punishment
Leslie A. Fiedler
On Saul Bellow: "The Age of the Jewish-American Novel is
Over"
Ben Tripp
Pocket Furniture
Poets Basement
Lamantia, Engel, Louise, Albert and Curtis
Website of
the Weekend
Military Free Zones
April 8, 2005
Rob Eshelman
Made
in Palestine: the First Exhibition of Palestinian Art in the
US
Hom Raj Acharya
/ Sally Acharya
The
Elephant in Nepal's Parlor
Felice Pace
A Golden Opportunity for Justice on the Klamath
Neve Gordon
Israel
is the Key to Iraq
Mike Whitney
The Economic Tsunami: Coming Sooner Than You Think
Don Monkerud
God's Shock Troops: the Religious Right and US Foreign Policy
Adam Engel
The Code of Frank Conroy
Vicente Navarro
Opus Dei and John Paul II: a Profoundly Rightwing Pope
Website of the Day
Mountain Justice Summer
April 7, 2005
Joshua Frank
The
DeLay Scandal Isn't a Partisan Issue
Yitzhak Laor
Racism
by Any Other Name
Alan Maass
Tug
of War with Terri Schiavo
Steven Sherman
An Open Letter to Daniel Okrent: Why the Times is Not "Assertively
Left"
Dave Lindorff
Bush's Potemkin Town Meetings
Gerry Adams
The IRA Should Change from "Volunteers" to "Activists"
John Chuckman
Hanoi Jane and the City of God
Michael Dickinson
Two Weddings and a Funeral
John Ross
Lost
and Found in the Arizona Desert
Website of the Day
Genetically-Engineered Small Pox?
April 6, 2005
Peter Camejo
The
Crisis in the Green Party
Kevin Wehr
The Eco-Terror Hoax: Domestic Security and the Culture of Fear
Matt Vidal
Bush's
Legacy: Dead Bodies, Dead Wrong, Dead Logic
Robert Creeley
/ Bruce Jackson
On
the Subject of Company
Nikolas Kozloff
Chavez's Oil Gambit
Sea Shepherd Crew
Attack of the Hak-a-Piks
Brenda Child
Ojibwe Have Dealt With Grief Before: From Boarding School Abuse
to School Shootings
Terry Eagleton
The Pope with Blood on His Hands
David Swanson
Why the Media Can't Read the Banktuptcy Bill
Cindy Ellen
Hill
On
the Lists: What's the Patriot Act in Belfast
Website of
the Day
The New Nike?
April 5, 2005
Jim Connolly
The
Pope Who Revived the Office of the Inquisition: an American Catholic
on the Papacy of John Paul II
Paul Craig
Roberts
"Partnering"
the Destruction of the American Economy
Gary Leupp
Bombing
the Malwiya Minaret
Dave Lindorff
The Grassroots Resistance to the Patriot Act
Ron Jacobs
The Terrorism of War
Dan Smith
Riding the Dragon, Soaring on the Eagle: US Economic Decline
and the Rise of China
Mark Engler
John Paul II's Economic Ethics: Moral Values and Global Capitalism
Richard Oxman
Bono for Pope
Greg Moses
Narcowars vs. Civil Rights
Website of the Day
Impeach Cheney and Bush
April 4, 2005
Kevin Zeese
Liberals
and Neocons for a Draft
Paul Craig Roberts
American Rot: When Opposing Voices Do Not Oppose
Larry Birns
/ Sarah Schaffer
Bush's Arms Sales Hypocrisy
Karyn Strickler
Blood on Ice: Seal Pup Slaughter on the St. Lawrence
Joshua Frank
The Minuteman Project: Paramilitaries on the Border
Michael Dickinson
It's Too Late Now for John Paul II to Repent
Surendra R.
Devkota
Ending the Deadlock in Nepal
Derrick O'Keefe
Haiti, Yesterday and Today: an Interview with Laura Flynn
Uri Avnery
Djinn
in the Box
Website of the Day
Libby, Montana: America's Most Toxic Town?
April 2 / 3,
2005
Alexander Cockburn
Death,
Depression and Prozac
Jeffrey St. Clair
Trippwired
Stan Goff
A Trojan Jackass for the Anti-War Movement
John Ross
How to Change the World Without Taking Power
Saul Landau
Guns, Vitamins and God
Robert Creeley
Goodbye
Mike Roselle
Riding Shotgun with Woody Harrelson
Joshua Frank
Dead Wrong Intelligence
Fred Gardner
The Obvious Green Issue
Greg Moses
Photo ID Movement as White Privilege
Fran Quigley
The Economics of Global Poverty: an Interview with Jeffrey Sachs
Kurt Nimmo
The Strange Allure of Paul Wolfowitz
Nicole Colson
Pentagon Greenlights Murder in Iraq
Chris Genovali
Killing Grizzlies for Fun
Alan Farago
Dirty Water and Land Speculators in the Florida Keys
Lawrence Reichard
The M-19 and the Siege of Bogota
Ben Tripp
Civilization and War
Avantika Regmi
Chaos in Nepal
Lee Sustar
Off the Script in Kyrgyzstan
Ron Jacobs
Death of a Revolutionary: Vermont Loses an Honest Man
Dave Lindorff
The Black Arrow: a Review
Poets' Basement
Smith-Ferri, Curtis, Louise, Engel and Albert
Website of
the Day
O2 Collective: No Breathing Tube Required
April 1, 2005
Tom Barry
Michael
Chertoff: Legal Storm Trooper
Rahul Mahajan
WMD
Commission: Yet Another Intelligence Failure
Charlie Cray
/ Jim Vallette
Dancing
with Wolfowitz
Dave Lindorff
News Media Anguish Over Schiavo's Death
Zeynep Toufe
The Terri Schiavo Success Story
Suzan Mazur
Pension Funds and the Price of Oil
Michael Dickinson
Shut Your Mouth or Go to Prison!
Stan Cox
Iraq Reconstruction Funds Invested on Wall Street
Ra Ravishankar
Et Tu, George?
Daniel Wolff
Patti
Scialfa's Conversation with America
March 31, 2005
Sharon Smith
Leftwing
Apologists for the Occupation
Ron Jacobs
Rounding Out Iraq's History
Tariq Ali
British
Elections: Punish the Warmongers
Michael Dickinson
Cartoon Capers: Turkey's War on Political Cartoonists
Kanak Mani
Dixit
The Struggle for Nepal's Future
Mitchell Zimmerman
The Bizarre Legal Philosophy of Justice Janice Rogers Brown
Xuan-Trang
Ho
Guatemala and CAFTA: Return to the Bad Old Days?
Dave Zirin
Pay the Damn Players!
Joe Bageant
In
Praise of Holy Madness
Jeff Halper
The
End of a Viable Palestinian State
Website of
the Day
Free Nepal
Hot Stories
Alexander Cockburn
Behold,
the Head of a Neo-Con!
Subcomandante
Marcos
The
Death Train of the WTO
Norman Finkelstein
Hitchens
as Model Apostate
Steve Niva
Israel's
Assassination Policy: the Trigger for Suicide Bombings?
Dardagan,
Slobodo and Williams
CounterPunch Exclusive:
20,000 Wounded Iraqi Civilians
Steve
J.B.
Prison Bitch
Sheldon
Rampton and John Stauber
True Lies: the Use of Propaganda
in the Iraq War
Wendell
Berry
Small Destructions Add Up
CounterPunch
Wire
WMD: Who Said What When
Cindy
Corrie
A Mother's Day Talk: the Daughter
I Can't Hear From
Gore Vidal
The
Erosion of the American Dream
Francis Boyle
Impeach
Bush: A Draft Resolution
Click
Here for More Stories.
|
Weekend Edition
April 30 / May 1, 2005
Lesson from a Total Defeat for the US
The
End of the Vietnam War, 30 Years Ago
By
GABRIEL KOLKO
Amsterdam.
The war in Vietnam that ended 30 years
ago with a complete triumph for the Communists was the longest,
most expensive and divisive American war in its history, involving
over a half-million U.S. forces at one point-plus Australian,
South Korean, and other troops.
If we use conventional military
criteria, the Americans should have been victorious. They used
15 million tons of munitions (as much as they employed in World
War Two), had a vast military superiority over their enemies
by any standard one employs, and still they were defeated.
The Saigon army commanded by
Nguyen van Thieu also was far stronger than their adversaries.
At the beginning of 1975 they had over three times as much artillery,
twice as many tanks and armored cars, 1400 aircraft and a virtual
monopoly of the air. They had a two-to-one superiority of combat
troops-roughly 700,000 to 320,000. The Communist leadership
in early 1975 expected the war to last as much as a decade longer.
I was in South Vietnam at the end of 1973 and in Hanoi all of
April 1975 until the last four days of the war, when I was in
Hue and Danang in the south. I am certain  the Communists were almost as surprised as the
Americans that victory was to be theirs so quickly and easily;
I told them from late 1973 onward to expect an end to the war
by the Saigon regime capsizing without a serious fight-much as
the Kuomintang had in China after 1947. As a future Politburo
member later confessed, they regarded my prediction as "crazy."
They were completely unprepared to run the entire nation, and
their chaotic, inconsistent economic policies since 1975 have
shown it.
The Americans and Communists
alike shared a common myopia regarding wars. What happens in
the political, social, and economic spheres are far more decisive
than military equations. That was true in China in the late
1940s, in Vietnam in 1975, and it is also the case in Iraq today.
South Vietnam was an artificially
urbanized society whose only economic basis was American aid.
The value of that aid declined when the oil price increases
that began with the war in the Middle East in 1973 caused a rampant
inflation, at which point the motorized army and society the
Americans had created became an onerous liability.
South Vietnam had always been
corrupt since the U.S. arbitrarily created it in 1955 despite
the Geneva Accords provision that there should be an election
to reunify what was historically and ethnically one nation.
Thieu, who was a Catholic in a dominantly Buddhist country, retained
the loyalty of his generals and bureaucracy by allowing them
to enrich themselves at the expense of the people. The average
Vietnamese, whether they were for or against the Communists,
had no loyalty whatsoever to the Thieu regime that was robbing
them. After 1973, soldiers' salaries declined with inflation
and they began living off the land. The urban middle class was
increasingly alienated, the Thieu regime's popularity fell with
it. It admitted there were 32,000 political prisoners in its
jails, but other estimates were far higher.
By the beginning of 1975 the
regime in South Vietnam was beginning to disintegrate by every
relevant criterion: economically and politically, and therefore
militarily. The Saigon army abandoned the battlefield well before
the final Communist offensive in March 1975. Moreover, with the
Watergate scandal, the Nixon Administration was on the defensive
after 1973, both with the American public and Congress, and after
Nixon's forced resignation the new American President, Gerald
Ford, was simply in no position to help the economically and
politically bankrupt Thieu regime. The American army, at this
point, was too demoralized to reenter the war. Washington correctly
assumed that its diplomatic strategy had won Moscow and Peking
to its side by threatening to swing its power to the enemy of
whatever nation would not support its Vietnam strategy-triangular
diplomacy.
But it was irrelevant what
Hanoi's former allies did--and essentially they did what the
Americans wanted by cutting military aid to the Vietnamese Communists.
The basic problem was in Saigon: the regime was falling apart
for reasons having nothing to do with military equipment. The
Communists were stunned by their fast, total victory over the
nominally superior Saigon army, which refused to fight and immediately
disintegrated.
Thus ended the most significant
American foreign effort since 1945. There are so many obvious
parallels with their futile projects in Iraq and Afghanistan
today, and the lessons are so clear, that we have to conclude
that successive administrations in Washington have no capacity
whatsoever to learn from past errors. Total defeat in Vietnam
30 years ago should have been a warning to the U.S.: wars are
too complicated for any nation, even the most powerful, to undertake
without grave risk. They are not simply military exercises
in which equipment and firepower is decisive, but political,
ideological, and economic challenges also. The events of South
Vietnam 30 years ago should have proven that. It did not.
Gabriel Kolko is the leading historian of modern
warfare. He is the author of the classic Century
of War: Politics, Conflicts and Society Since 1914 and
Another
Century of War?. He has also written the best history
of the Vietnam War, Anatomy
of a War: Vietnam, the US and the Modern Historical Experience.
He can be reached at: kolko@counterpunch.org.
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