I recently read an article on Rocky Bleier’s return to Vietnam, the subject of a documentary on ESPN.
Rocky Bleier played on the Pittsburgh Steelers football team in the 1970s, when the Steelers were at their finest. Before that, he was drafted into the Army and was wounded in combat in Vietnam. Doctors thought he’d never play football again, but Bleier proved them wrong, helping the Steelers to win four Super Bowls.
Bleier’s return to Vietnam was emotional and revealing, but in a way that is one-sided, privileging the American experience of that war. Franco Harris, another famous football player, puts it succinctly: “It’s a tragedy, I wish the war [Vietnam] had never happened.” But was America’s war in Vietnam simply a tragedy? Or was it more of a crime? What was America after in Vietnam? And at what cost to the peoples of Southeast Asia?
As Bleier puts it, “All of a sudden I had an overwhelming feeling of loss and sadness. Why did we fight this war? Why did we lose 58,000 soldiers and in all honesty for what? Maybe for first time I can understand on a slight basis the impact that our soldiers go through and maybe just a little what post-traumatic stress might be and how the body reacts to all the emotions.”
Those are important words. But what about the millions of Vietnamese, Cambodians, and Laotians killed in that war? What about their war burdens? What about the suffering that is still ongoing in Southeast Asia today due to chemical defoliants, unexploded ordnance, land mines, and the like?
In this article on Rocky Bleier, the Vietnamese people make an appearance, but nothing is said of their suffering. Instead, they are presented as entirely pro-American:
“Everyone we met [in Vietnam] was pro American. There is a whole generation that the war is for the history books and not an experience they were a part of. The viewpoint has changed,” Bleier said.
The “viewpoint” that’s changed isn’t specified, but I assume Bleier is saying the Vietnamese used to be anti-American (I wonder why?), but are now pro-American in spite of the enormous devastation America inflicted on Vietnam.
Again, it’s good to see a prominent American sports figure talk about the tragedy of Vietnam and the pointlessness of that war. But, as with many other documentaries about Vietnam, including the Ken Burns series in 2017, it’s always all about us, and the tragedy is almost exclusively presented as an American one.
That bias may be predictable, but it’s no less pernicious for being so.
Update: Here’s the short version of the ESPN documentary. It features one Vietnamese soldier who fought for the Americans; he is allowed a statement about the general waste and horror of war. No other Vietnamese are shown, and no other opinions are solicited.
William J. Astore is a retired lieutenant colonel (USAF). He taught history for fifteen years at military and civilian schools and blogs at Bracing Views. He can be reached at wastore@pct.edu. Reprinted from Bracing Views with the author’s permission.
The Vietnamese were pro-American when the Americans supported them during World War II. Then the USA stabbed them in the back by supporting in invading French, and later attempted to form a new nation called South Vietnam.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0B9BM8OTSB0s
OSS actually parachuted an operative into Vietnam and met with Ho, who agreed to aid the US with the proviso that independence from France was to be granted at the end of the war!
Tacitus pretending that the communist mass murderers were fighting the U.S. for “independence”, and that the U.S. opposed “independence”. Cute! 70 IQ or just a liar? Vietnam was already independent. Except for the industrialized north, which was enslaved by the Soviet-backed communists. While you pretend to support independence, it was the communists who invaded South Vietnam to take away its independence, and then proceeded to kill at least half a million people, and steal all the wealth and all the farmland, while forbidding the slaves to leave the country. Oops, forgot that part, did you?
Also conveniently forgetting China attacking Vietnam a few years after the Soviet-supported invasion of the independent South Vietnam. After Vietnam’s rulers had invaded the pro-Chinese Cambodia. But let’s not mention these communist invasions of South Vietnam, Cambodia and Vietnam, the communist enslavement of the Laotian people, or their attempts to enslave the Indonesians. History must be hidden. Instead, pretend “the U.S. tried to prevent Vietnam’s independence!”
I guess the Korean war was also about the U.S. trying to prevent Korean “independence”?
And you conveniently forget about the US vetoing the promised post-independence national elections and setting up its own puppet regime in the south.
Thomas L. Knapp –The Geneva Accords’ call for free elections in Vietnam was a vague, non-binding feature of an un-signed document. It represented the imposition of wills by foreign nations, and wasn’t supported by the North or South Vietnamese governments themselves. As for the U.S., it neither objected nor assented to the call for elections, declaring only that it wouldn’t stand in the way of them. In practical terms, none of the participants at Geneva expected elections to ever take place, and so in that respect the Accords were a show pony, and everyone knew it at the time. Experts understood that only combat would settle the internecine conflict between the two Vietnams, and history shows that’s exactly what happened.
You “forget” a little detail about the communists murdering or betraying the Buddhist and nationalist leaders opposing France, and then occupying northern Vietnam, where all the industries were – and then invading South Vietnam to start their usual mass murder, take all the farm land from the peasants and enslave the people. Oops, “forgetting” an entire invasion, how clumsy of you! SURELY you will never “forget” that again, the next time you present Vietnam as a war by the U.S. against “Vietnam”, right?
The communist party is a Mafia that indoctrinates the conscripted sons of the families in the occupied zone, turning them aggressive and mocking their parents when they come home. When the communist mafia wants a building they simply arrest the businessman who owns the building, who uses it as the center for his business that his entire extended family has invested their savings in. He is arrested for “drug crimes,” and the communists plant the drugs while they do the arrest. This is just one small example of how they steal from and tyrannize the people. But you will “forget” this right away.
Chant it loudly: “The U.S. INVADED VIETNAM!” Right? Good boy. The communist flags carried by your parents in pro-invasion “peace” demonstrations are easily forgotten, as are their “Ho Chi Minh is gonna win” chants, as the pro-communist media made sure to never show them. And a liar will never mention them.
At least Indonesia escaped the fate you cheer when it happened to the South Vietnamese. When the communists you “forget” tried to take over Indonesia Suharto dared fight them, knowing that the U.S. would back him as they had backed the South Vietnamese. Communist lovers like to blare “The dominoes didn’t fall, ha ha, you were wrong about Vietnam!” But that is because Suharto stopped the communist plans to mass murder his people. Thanks to the U.S. showing it would fight. Sorry socialist, millions of Indonesians escaped mass murder. I know it must upset you.
USers! Fess up! The US war in Vietnam. Call it by its proper name. When are you going to stop bombing Asia?
I believe Rocky was one of 7 pro athletes that served in Vietnam out of 2.5 million veterans. 1 KIA, Bob Kelso, 101st Airborne, killed at LZ Ripcord, July 1970.
Bullshit. It was never a bad idea to fight the communists. Take your revisionist lies and shove them. ’68–’69 northern I corps.