Title: From Fable to Fumble: Vietnam to Kosovo…Submitted by: (Ian) W. A. C. Adie, Faculty of Business and Economics, Monash University, AustraliaCold War lies and legends persist in published opinion and hamstring poll-led politics, despite evidence now available from declassified archives of both sides. I witnessed the origins of this "Vietnam Trauma" in Saigon, at the transition from the French to the American Indochina wars. It explains the repetition in present crises of the flawed policies and rhetoric of the USA and its allies in those wars - graduated pressure, bombing, dribbling in of ground troops, botched ceasefire negotiations…today in former Yugoslavia, and tomorrow? In spite of the air power myth, the USA lost 58,000 men in Vietnam trying to control the chaos that followed Press misrepresentation and official termination 'with prejudice' of the Ngo family regime (1963). Ngo Dinh Diem and his brother Nhu (Vietnam's Robert Kennedy) were murdered ostensibly because Nhu's methods were undemocratic, i.e. like those of Ho Chi Minh; but really because Ho's people and the Ngo brothers had been secretly negotiating peace and neutralization of both Vietnams since 1961/1962, when Jack Kennedy began to 'escalate' and the fatal 'Averell Harriman Freeway' opened in Laos… Return to Abstracts menuCarol Burnett Phone: 61 - 3 - 9349 1899 Email: c.burnett@asialink.unimelb.edu.au
|