Good evening I would like to begin by accenting thanks to our distinguished guests, faculty and my colleagues for attending tonight. My name is Stefan Han and I am an economics major and it's been my honor to study here in Hillsdale for the past three years and it will be an even greater honor to graduate this coming spring. It is also my pleasure to introduce to you our speaker this evening. Dr. Mark Moyar holds the Bachelor of Arts, summa cum laude in history from Harvard and a PhD in history from Cambridge. He is the author most recently of 'Triumph Forsaken: The Vietnam War, 1954-1965 which was the subject of a scholarly conference at Williams College in March 2007. It is also the subject of expert book forums at three scholarly publications. Trying on the wealth of new evidence from all sides, Triumph Forsaken overturns most of the historical orthodoxy on the Vietnam War. Later this year, Bison books will be publishing a revised edition of Dr.Moyar's first book entitled 'Phoenix and the Birds of Prey: Counterinsurgency and counterterrorism in Vietnam'. Dr. Moyar has been published in the New York Times, Wall Street journal, Washington post, Christian Science Monitor, National Review, The New York Post, The New York Sun, The Historical Journal, Intelligence National Security and Modern Asian Studies. He started at Cambridge University, the Ohio state university, Texas A&M University and at present, he holds the Kim T Adamson share of insurgency in terrorism of the United States marine court university in Chronicle, Virginia. He also serves as a consultant on contemporary national security issues. So as we are blessed to have him with us tonight, please join in welcoming Dr. Mark Moyar. Thanks to that introduction and I want to thank Hillsdale and its benefactors for arranging for this event and for everyone else who's had a role in organizing it I think it's a tremendous event and I am going to talk about the other people who are got to be participating in this. It is for me a great honor to be here - until today my closest connection to Hillsdale was a New York sun article on my experiences with imbalanced - the ideologically imbalanced college faculties. In that article Boston college professor Alan Wolfe explained that while there are two few conservative professors at Lefleinen and universities such as those in the IV leads, which is really I know - no big deal because there are plenty of conservative professors, ecologists like Hillsdale and group city. It reminded me of of Vietnamese communist officials I have come across of who will tell you that their country has political freedom because some people which was actually about 0.1 percent of the people actually vote for count - candidates who are not the top choices of the communist party. So fortunately those - since this is the United States where totalitarian and elections cannot control everything. Aren't there other participants and you the audience are privileged to gather here this week without fear of being hustled away for party indoctrination or sensitivity training. Now Vietnamese communist officials and American professors would prefer to ban what I think we have come here to discuss this week which is the rebellion against their version of the Vietnam War. Having commenced a decade ago this rebellion was not a product of the Iraq war but Iraq is increased its importance exponentially since it is the conflict most often compared with Iraq. A small group of historians most of whom are participating in this event have spent the last ten years ripping apart the prevailing pieties about the Vietnam War. They were moved to act I think principally by the slandering of Vietnam veterans in the United States and by the shady and wise character of existing historical works. Now these new history sprang from people out side of the academic and media main streams which is no coincidence, the comments of professor Wolfe not withstanding big academia and big media remained what it to the tenants of the Vietnam are anti war movement and they continued to believe that any one who rejects those tenants should be suppressed. But this new history has nonetheless tat a certain degree of influence on them, there are quite a few professors and journalists who have quietly stopped recycling the discredit interpretations and a few have actually acknowledged the validity of the new history or elements of it much to this dismay of their faculty colleagues and with respect to the rest of the America, the influence has actually been much greater within the military - most field grade and general officers you will meet today have read of these one Vietnam book written by some one who is speaking at this seminar. Three of those books are among the ten books on the US marine core. Professional reading list for the tenant colonels and above and President Bush's discussion of Vietnam in his veterans of foreign wars speech that Dr Casper mentioned earlier on august 22nd which ignited mass hysteria on the American left echoed the conclusions of this new history. The rebellion began in 1997 with the publication of HR McMaster's "Dereliction of Duty" which on earth critical flows in America's leadership during the 1960s. Also appearing during that year was my book "Phoenix and The Birds of Prey" a reprisal of counterinsurgency in the war's later years. Next came B.G Burkett's "Stolen Valor" of 1998 vantage which demolished the mythology surrounding Vietnam veteran. Following year in a book entitled "The Better War" showed how General Creighton Abrams and other Americans helped the South Vietnamese vanquish the Vietnamese communists after the Tet offensive. Michael Lind's 1999 book "Vietnam A Necessary War" attacked the historical orthodoxy on a wide range of issues. In 2001 book entitled carnage and culture Victor Davis Hanson broke a new ground of the Tet offensive and McCubbin owens, a veteran commentator has written over the years many trenching critics of the anti war orthodoxy and my book "Triumph Forsaken" the most recent one published this past year is a multive front offensive against the convectional wisdom the years 1954 to 1965. The standard standard narrative of the Vietnam war which still grips most on the left and some on the right originated with the reporters David Halberstam, Neil Sheehan and and Stanley Karnow and subsequent journalists and historians have refined this without altering its basic contours. The narrative begin with the premodern history of Vietnam and that's where I will begin. Any one who has read much about the Vietnam war will have heard that Vietnam has a long history of fighting against Chinese and other foreign invaders and this searching is then inevitably followed by the conclusion that China and North Vietnam could not have manintened a lasting partnership in spreading communism across Asia which was what America fought the war to stop. Now while researching the origins of the war, I found flaws all along this line of thinking, first of all the Chinese fought the Vietnamese on only three occasions between the end of the tenth century and the middle of the 20th century, and in all three of those cases, the Vietnamese actually initiated the war. This centaury is leading up to the Vietnam war, Vietnam had actually been faithful vassal state of China and Ho Chi Man whose devotion to Marxist Leninist internationalism had has always been missed by the standard narrative, lived for many years in China, he served in the Chinese communist army and he worked closely with the Chinese leader Mao Tse-Tung in expanding communism domains. Then both during and after the war, anti American anti war Americans characterize North Vietnam's rulers as independent nationalist and South Vietnams as American puppets, but we now know that the North Vietnamese usually showed greater difference to the wishes of their great power allies than did the South Vietnamese who were actually themselves much more nationalistic, and North Vietnam's repeated attacks on South Vietnam owe their strength to Chinese and Soviet weapons. South Vietnam could only repel these attacks by accepting American aid that the Halberstam, Sheehan and Karnow narrative as I like to call it, grossly misrepresented Ngo Dinh Diem, who was South Vietnams president from the division of Vietnam in 1954 to his assassination in 1963, - nationalist Diem overcame chaos, disunity and the disapproval of the United states to form a strong South Vietnamese state. Between 1954 and 1959, he stamped out all of the armed opposition to his government including that from the Vietnamese communists, so as a consequence of this success, the North Vietnamese launched a major Maoist insurgency against South Vietnam in 1960, and at that time, many of the Diem government's provincial commanders were corrupt hoboes from the era of French colonialism and there fore the governments initial response was weak, but in 1962 and 1963, Diem brought in a new generation of leaders who fundamentally turned the war around, now when Halberstam, Sheehan and Karnow were covering the war, young reporters in 1963, they decided that Diem had to be replaced because of his heavy handedness in dealing with Buddhist oppositionists and they were wrong in this primarily because they relied on dishonest sources which included two communist spies and several of the leading Buddhist oppositionists and because they viewed Vietnamese politics as if it were American politics. Intrude the Buddhist protestors were riddled with communist agents and other in a furious characters who intended to keep demonstrating a hurling false acquisitions against the Diem regime until it fell and given the culture of Vietnam, Diem's government would have suffered a crippling loss of phase - had it not broken up the most unruly of his demonstrations. The American the American press through their reporting did a great deal to convince the American ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge and a group of South Vietnamese generals to stage a cue against Diem on November 1st 1963. Lodge was taken in by media's claims and he actually valued them more than more accurate assessments from the CIA and the US military and highly negative articles on Diem also greatly undermine his prestige with the south Vietnamese generals, because the Vietnamese allies generally misinterpreted American press stories as official US government statements, now following Diem's overthrow and assassination, the South Vietnams leaders did very little except for purge many excellent officers and as a result the government's counterinsurgency initiatives quickly collapsed. At this point the generals had to deal with acquisitions that they had actually fathered a monumental catastrophe and they were they were able to dodge this for many years by writing sensational books "The Best And The Brightest" by Halberstam, "Vietnamese A History" by Karnow and "A Bright Shining Lie" by Neil Sheehan and they alleged the South Vietnamese war effort had actually fallen a part before the cue rather than after it but only in the past year has it really come to light that this claim is contradicted by many many sources including not only US sources but in fact the communist themselves and the Journalist Zone articles from 1963. Talk and golf incidence of August of 1964, constitute the next key turning point in the war. And there two alleged North Vietnamese naval attacks that quickly acquire fame because president Johnson use them in a some what duplicitous way to obtain congressional authorization for military action but even more important consequence which has longer made hidden was their impact on north Vietnam strategy. Then after the second of these incidents, president Johnson ordered a single small air attack on North Vietnam. His top advisors chose this minimalist retaliation in inherence to academic deterrence theories which said that it was a low risk way of signaling American resolve to the enemy, but the fact that North Vietnamese we now know concluded that the puniness of this action actually indicated a lack of result on the part of the United States. So that that impression of reinforce by Johnson's campaign statement that he wasn't going to sent American boys to Vietnam dissipated north Vietnam long standing fears of American intervention and so in November of 1964 Hanoi sends entire north Vietnamese army division into south Vietnam hoping to win the war quickly. They go on the offensive in early 1965 and they bring the debilitated South Vietnamese armed forces to the brink of defeat and this is what compels Lyndon Johnson to intervene in the ground war. The the Halberstam, Sheehan, Karnow narrative and its off shoots some early dismissed the principle American rational for the war, the so called domino theory which held at the fall of south Vietnam to communism would also cause other Asian countries to fall to communism. Scarcity of falling dominos in 1975 when the war ends according to them shows that the dominos were in fact not in danger falling in 1965 when America ended the war. That argument assumes that Asian politics did not change dramatically between 1965 and 1975 which is a very mistaken assumption. Because of the US intervention in Vietnam in 1965, China in north Vietnam posed a far smaller risk to their neighbors in 1975 because of this intervention, the Indonesian government in 1975 was totally anti communist and sharp contrast to the pro communist - pro Chinese government of 1965 and during 1965 as recently been learned, South Vietnam's neighbors put great stock in the domino theory, they besieged the Americans to save south Vietnam with many of them offering to provide troops for their purpose. According to the historical orthodoxy the the United States could not have prevailed in Vietnam had it implement it some aggressive measures that top American generals advocated fruitlessly and repeatedly during the war. Foremost among these measures was the insertion of US ground forces in to loss to block the Ho Chi Man trial which was these ply artery from north Vietnam into south Vietnam. First objection raised against this measures that the communist war effort did not require much assistance from the North or at least not until late in the war. The communist sources tell us that in fact man power or material from the north were vital from the war as very beginning in 1960, the other objection is that cutting the Ho Chi Man trial was not feasible but we have now inform sources from the Soviet, North Vietnamese and American sides that all concluded that the united States could have shut down the infiltration riots with - between three and five divisions which was far fewer than what the United States ultimately sent to Vietnam. Now because of the limitation set by president Johnson, the US combat units would spent the years 1965 to 1968 destroying the communist forces inside South Vietnam. The communist sustain huge losses but they can keep setting troops in and they cause enough American causalities that US public support for the war begins to erode seriously by 1967. The Tet offensive in January 1968 is frequently an incorrectly scene as the mortal blow to American public support for the war. President Johnson and the liberal elites it is true were thoroughly and permanently demoralized by this offensive, thanks impart to the media- American media's depiction of this communists defeat as a communist victory, but the united states as a whole I think did not give up at this point in time. Richard Nixon wins the 1968 election with the promise to bring peace with honor in Vietnam because he has correctly sensed that the Americans wanted not merely in anti-American casualties, they also wanted success. As a president Nixon proved unable to win the war quickly but he did implement a sound strategy for removing America's forces without surrendering south Vietnam, known as Vietnamisation, Nixon's strategy upgraded and expanded south Vietnam's forces while gradually transferring new duties to them as American forces departed and Halberstam, Sheehan, Karnow story tells us that Vietnamisation was a failure because south Vietnam ultimately lost the war in 1975. This view can only be upheld by ignoring most of the events between the Tet offensive and the fall of Saigon in 1975 which is what most of the histories do after Tet the Tet offense of 68, new commander general Creighton Abrams along with William Colby who is the head of the inter agency pacification effort helped the south Vietnamese president Nguyen Van Thieu improve South Vietnam's leadership across the board and as a result the effectiveness of South Vietnam's forces sky rocketed in from 1969 and then 1971 south Vietnamese government gained control over most of the countryside and wiped out the remaining Vietnam insurgence and that left the north Vietnamese army as the only force fighting for communism in south Vietnam. Most histories provide either inaccurate treatment or no treatment at all of the communists 1972 Easter offensive, an event that clearly proved South Vietnam could survive without American ground forces at a time when only American advisors, air crews and support personal remained in Vietnam, the South Vietnamese forces foiled the three prong offensive by 14 heavily armed north Vietnamese divisions. US air craft did inflict heavy causalities on the attackers but the South Vietnam forces could not have blended new merged North Vietnamese at this also counter attacked so effectively as they did had they been at the incompetence of anti war legend. That the communist victory 1975 was born not of South Vietnamese incompetence but of American unreliability to secure South Vietnam's concurrence in the 1973 Paris peace accords which with two other manning US troupes, President Nixon promised South Vietnamese president Thieu that America would come to its aid should North Vietnam strike again. Thieu then spread out his forces across the country to maintain control of the population accounting upon American air power to help so do the north Vietnamese should they try to exploit this dispersion of forces with large concentrated attacks, but then there came the US congress. 1973 congressional democrats who oppose and opposed Nixon even more than they oppose the war denied the president funding for US combat operations in Indochina; they cut back sharply on aid to South Vietnam. By the time Nixon resigned in august of 1974 the executive branch had been fully decaled and South Vietnam's armed forces realign from shortages of fuel, spare parts, ammunition, heavy weapons and everything else that's needed for conventional war fair. So at the beginning of 1975 the north Vietnamese launch a massive offensive with 550,000 troupes, 600 tanks of state of the art artillery and an abundance of supplies, all things to the continued generosity of their allies, the Soviet Union and China. Thieu at this point called on the United States to live up to Nixon's 1973 promise of of assistance with the most president Ford now could do was to ask congress for emergency aid which congress refused to do, why they dispersed showed on transportation. South Vietnam's forces were outnumbered in every major battle because of ammunition shortages their artillery pieces were often restricted to one around per day and their in- infantry meant to one grenade per day, then defending a country the size of Vietnam with 550,000 monstrously armed regulars would be challenging even with massive air forces and rigidly supplied ground forces, without them it was impossible and there fore on April 30th 1975, North Vietnamese army captured Saigon, then last years of the war had seen the American left arguing in it self Vietnam would be better of, if it felt to the communists the communists swiftly disabused every one of that notion, in the wars immediate aftermath, the North Vietnamese tortured and killed tens of thousands of Americas South Vietnamese allies and they put hundreds of thousands more into so called reeducation camps, were starvation and maltreatment killed inmates on a vast scale. A few years later governmental prosecution drove huge numbers of ethnic Chinese to flee Vietnam by sea and many who said sail would never make it back to land alive, American withdraw from Indo China also enabled the communist rules to slaughter 1.7 million Cambodians, therefore those South Vietnamese who had not perished have been forced to live out their days undergoing reeducation, communist rule make collectivization and corruption and mass poverty. In the 1980s, the Vietnamese communists recognized the bankruptcy of Marxist Leninist economics and began moving in the direction of Capitalism, in sense then the economy has solely improved, now, so well known Americans have taken this fact to argue that communist Vietnam was predestined to become capitalist and therefore the United States fought an unnecessary war in the 1960s, but this argument ignores that the war in fact made communist Vietnam a more fertile ground for capitalism. It saved Vietnam's neighbors from Communism and it transformed relations between China and Vietnam, it over looks the scholar, the injustice and the hundreds and thousands of civilian deaths produced by Vietnamese communism and it reflects Americans inordinate obsession with themselves which makes them forget that it takes two to fight, the the North Vietnamese as the aggressors could have avoided war, and it was they I believe who waged war unnecessarily, it was they who fought war to destroy capitalism, and to impose communism, the United States in South Vietnam fought to protect free enterprise from communism which, by that time had already killed tens of millions of people at the time when most of the allies were forecasting an earth shattering disasters of South Vietnam fell, then from the start of the Iraq war up to today the opponents of that war have drawn up on the old Halberstam, Sheehan, Karnow narrative in criticizing the war, they missed that the Vietnamese should know strategic sense, the South Vietnamese government was hopeless and that the war was un winnable, have tirelessly been trotted out of his evidence that George Bush is wicked and that the United States must withdraw from Iraq, conspicuously absence has been other aspects of Vietnam that it resemble Iraq such as the congressional democrat, slashing of war funding for parties in purpose, the ideological extremism of the enemy combatants and the human cause of American of withdrawal and as a reactions to President Bush's VFW speech attest, those comparisons remained taboo in the mainstream media, and in academia. Now aside from some misguided political science and economic professors those grappling with the present rely to large degree on historical analogies either explicitly or implicitly, with Vietnam, our closest historical President to the Iraq war is essential that we set the historical record on Vietnam straight and thanks to the scholars who have come here this week, some Americans including President Bush, have received the straightened record, and I hope you can spread the work to others particularly those you think they can get all the news they need from the New York Times and NPR, Thank you very much.
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