3,000,000 + 58,000 = 58,000

One of history's great villains died yesterday, and NPR was on-call to provide its special math for the occasion . Robert Strange McNamara died yesterday and Monday's ATC featured three segments on his life and legacy - one by Daniel Schorr, the second by Mary Louise Kelly, and the last being Robert Siegel interviewing Errol Morris, McNamara filmmaker and documentarian.

Here's a challenge: listen to all three reports and see if you can find mention of the millions (2 to 4 is the usual estimate) of civilians killed by the United States in the Vietnam war. At least twice, you'll hear of the 58,000 US service people killed in Vietnam. Siegel safely mentions something that McNamara has already admitted to - 100,000 Japanese civilians burned alive in one night of bombing he helped engineer during WWII - but those millions of Vietnamese dead somehow just vanish.

In addition to disappearing millions of civilian victims - there are other distortions in the reports. Daniel Schorr describes McNamara's killing spree as "his stewardship of the Vietnam War." Also McNamara's presidency of the World Bank - where he lavished money on the torture states of Chile, Uruguay, Argentina, Brazil, the Philippines, Indonesia, and Romania - is described by Mary Louise Kelly as "a successful tenure" and by Schorr as "helping underdeveloped countries." Schorr goes even further and sees it as McNamara's "way of working out a sense of guilt."

Siegel's interview with Morris offers a telling bit of analysis from Siegel himself. Citing critics who have complained that if McNamara had admitted to some of his mistakes sooner it might have made an actual difference, he surmises "but that might have required his exile from the Washington establishment." Well, Mr. Siegel, turn that judgement on yourself and NPR: to investigate and report the news truthfully would put you and NPR on the outs with those who wield economic, military and political power - and might just lead to NPR's "exile from the Washington establishment." And that just wouldn't do...would it?

Phoenix Rising

Steve Inskeep opens this morning's rewriting of the history of the Vietnam War with this gem: "It is of course hard to understand the present without an occasional look at the past." The report claims that 40 years ago a new, successful strategy was launched in Vietnam by Gen. Creighton Abrams, the brand spanking new war criminal American Commander of Forces there.

Tom Bowman says that unlike his predecessor Gen. Westmoreland, "Abrams saw the fight in Vietnam differently. In a counterinsurgency, the important thing isn't enemy body count; it's protecting the population, training local Vietnamese forces, providing money and programs for a better life....For Abrams, the right strategy was not 'search and destroy.' He saw it as 'clear and hold,' words that echo four decades later..."

Now that's funny. I could have sworn I read that Abrams strategy meant something besides "a better life" for the Vietnamese. I went to the library and found Fire in the Lake where Frances Fitzgerald writes on page 405 "Abrams...diverted the American forces...to an all out attempt to destroy enemy base areas...under the Accelerated Pacification Campaign the US Ninth Division almost literally 'cleaned out' the Front-held regions...bombing villages, defoliating crops, and forcing the peasants to leave their lands..."

Clear and hold wasn't pretty, and it definitely wasn't about "protecting the population." Bowman also doesn't mention that one side of the Abram's clear and hold strategy was the bloody Phoenix Program. In Fire in the Lake you can also read how under Abrams in 1969 the United States set a goal for the Phoenix Program to 'neutralize' twenty thousand NLF agents during the year. Of the 19,534 people reported "neutralized" that year torture was systemic and one third were dead (page 412).

But tallying the US atrocities of the Vietnam War are beside the point for NPR. Bowman's story is all about how great Abrams' strategy was - "Abrams was also more successful in his strategy. By the end of 1968 and into 1969, an analysis of Abrams' efforts showed the military situation in Vietnam had significantly improved." And of course this strategy (40 years later) is what has delivered such glorious successes in Iraq: "that clear, hold and build strategy in Iraq came after failed attempts, some akin to Westmoreland's....Iraq was being compared to the quagmire in Vietnam, at a time when Abrams' clear and hold approach was finding its way into a new Army manual created by Gen. David Petraeus."

Finally Bowman wants us to know that Vietnam could have been won with Abrams' strategy: "Creighton Abrams believed the South Vietnamese could have been victorious over the North, if only the U.S. continued to support them." Just like the victory that is at hand in Iraq...see, only the fickle US public's lack of support will deliver defeat from the jaws of victory.

Big Hearted Bomber

In a rather shallow and amusing piece about John McCain, Steve Inskeep gets deep with Jon Meacham of Newsweek. There were some very funny assertions made about singin' John the Bomber (not to be confused with Joe the Plummer!).

According to Meacham, McCain "has a very sophisticated view of the Vietnam War." And that view is...that the military was stabbed in the back and could have won - very sophisticated.

Meacham also notes that "this [the McCains] is a family that understands the price of war, and John McCain is not eager to use force...." Oh yeah, John McCain is soooo reluctant to use force (like in Iraq, Syria, Sudan and Iran). Yep, he was just so patient and careful about suggesting military action after 9/11 that some of us were wondering if he'd become a closet pacifist.

In fact regarding foreign policy Meacham sees McCain as "...ultimately a big hearted man who believes in, he has a far more romantic view of America's role in the world than Senator Obama does...has a more epic sense that America can be the America of 1945..." Gosh, doesn't that just make you feel all warm inside?

Throwing Whitewash on a Bloodbath

Yesterday I posted about the abysmal Sunday morning coverage of Veterans' Day. As a commenter pointed out, the evening was even worse. Allison Keyes joins in the extreme right-wing slander of the Vietnam anti-war movement, citing hearsay from pro-Vietnam War cheerleaders as evidence.

She's attending the "re-dedication" of the Vietnam War Memorial, presided over by serial-liar Colin Powell. First she hunts down Bill Willington, a veteran dog-handler of the Vietnam and Gulf War era. (Maybe she'll interview one from this current Gulf war next - that should give us some patriotic goosebumps -or goosesteps.) Bill tearily recites the old canard of being attacked at the San Francisco airport:

"It was a rough time back then; got off at San Francisco airport; I got red paint thrown on me and called a baby-killer and a murderer and that's hurt for 30 years."

Next Keyes reports that Colin Powell "said this wall has magic and power." This is followed by a sappy soundbite from Powell, and then Keyes goes for the jugular,

"But former army nurse Mary 'Edie' Meeks touched the audience most deeply. When she came home she destroyed her uniform because of the hate directed at the vets."

Keyes doesn't even qualify this bunk about "hate directed at vets" as being the opinion of Nurse Meeks. She states it as accepted fact.

This myth of pervasive abuse of Vietnam veterans by antiwar activists that Keyes is propagating has been debunked and discredited - and is contradicted by the fact that Vietnam veterans were a major pillar of the antiwar movement. But facts won't deter Keyes passing on this prowar lie. The truth is that what most activists hated was the orgy of violence and barbarism that US leaders perpetrated against Vietnam, and which people like Colin Powell (and now Keyes) continue to praise as something honorable.

Of course Keyes must know that you're not going to find a lot of antiwar Vietnam Veterans showing up to hear a windbag like Powell use the "magic and power of the wall" to disappear the 4 million Vietnames civilians killed by the US in Vietnam. But Keyes surely knows there are still many Vietnam Vets who would be glad to talk about the real crimes of Vietnam and the government abuses meted out to those who were drafted and did time in that war. I just wonder when we'll ever hear from them on NPR.

Breakfast with Ted

Ted Koppel goes to the old Vietnam analogy well to talk about how the US failure in Iraq (politely called "withdrawal") will play out. Ted has this to say about withdrawal debates:

"...back to Vietnam. Those who want to say we can't get out precipitously point to the million or more people they say lost their lives in the bloodbath after the American withdrawal from Southeast Asia."

Koppel is being especially disingenuous. He just drops this twisted reasoning out there as if it made all the sense in the world and was a perfectly legitimate. In fact it has a few little problems:

• Yes, there was a bloodbath in Cambodia after the US withdrew from Vietnam, BUT it was the continuation of a bloodbath in Cambodia begun by the US in 1969 with the pathologically named "Operation Breakfast."
• It can be convincingly argued that the US massacre-bombing of Cambodia (1969-73) created conditions for the extremism and success of the Khmer Rouge.
• Further complicating the picture was the US backing of the Khmer Rouge after the communist government of Vietnam overthrew it in 1979, a truly bizarre turn of events (John Pilger covers this in depth here).

Shredding History

In the moral universe of Steve Inskeep it's just a lark that one of the great 20th century American heroes of conscience shows up to challenge the current climate of lies and secrecy in our threatened democracy. "Whatever downsides there may be to living in the nation’s capital, there are moments when you think, ‘ONLY in Washington.’ One of those moments happened yesterday to NPR’s Ari Shapiro," Inskeep informs us.

Shapiro follows this send up by misinforming listeners about the famous Pentagon Papers, and the man who leaked them, Daniel Ellsberg. Shapiro states, "Daniel Ellsberg leaked the Pentagon Papers 35 years ago, 7000 pages containing the military’s top secret account of the Vietnam War." Morally speaking, that tells us nothing - leaking top secret war documents could be good or bad. What made them "top secret" - and what made Ellsberg's action so honorable - was what they revealed about the US Government regarding the war. As the Wikipedia article on Daniel Ellsberg states, "They revealed the knowledge, early on, that the war would not likely be won and that continuing the war would lead to many times more casualties than was admitted publicly. Further, the papers showed a deep cynicism towards the public and a disregard for the loss of life and injury suffered by soldiers and civilians." (Sounds vaguely familiar doesn't it?) Shapiro also fails to mention that Ellsberg released the papers over a year after getting no congressional support for revealing them in the Senate, and with the full knowledge that he was ending his privileged career and could spend the rest of his life in prison for leaking them.

By ignoring the high moral ground (after all 58,000 Americans and over 2 million Vietnamese were slaughtered in the war) of Ellsberg's actions, Shapiro gives equal weight to the anti-democratic and servile position of Ken Wainstein that Ellsberg was in Washington to challenge . Shapiro says, "Wainstein said leaks can cripple the government’s ability to function successfully and they are never justified...."

I don't romanticize that NPR was ever any great bastion of excellent journalism in the past, but it is really sad to compare this morning's condescending tone toward Ellsberg, to this stirring commentary by Ellsberg aired just three years ago on Morning Edition.

Lethal Brilliance

"Robert MacNamara was the brilliant number-cruncher who served for seven years, but got snared in the Vietnam War. Donald Rumsfeld is the brilliant bureaucratic fighter who served almost six years but got snared by a war in Iraq."

Those were the words of Steve Inskeep as he began his interview with David Halberstam today on Morning Edition. I hate to tell Inskeep, but neither of these mass murderers got snared in their brilliant wars - the ones who were snared were the countless civilians and thousands of soldiers who perished under their genius.

We now know that between 426,369 and 793,663 civilians have needlessly died in Rumsfeld's Iraq experiment, but to find the "crunched numbers" of civilians killed in Vietnam took a bit more searching. However, sources seem to agree on a figure between 2 and 4 million people. How one can call such monsters brilliant is outside of my moral universe.

I've come to expect such moral depravity from Inskeep, but he wasn't alone; David Halbertam had some unsavory comments on why Operation Iraqi Freedom is a losing prospect. "Right now, every night on Arab TV, in the Arab world, with Arab spin, in Arab language, there is the taking of the film of what’s going on there and the spin in an anti-American way so that we are profoundly affecting future generations in that area, making them think a) that we are aggressors, Christian aggressors and b) that we are weak Christian and weak and incompetent Christian aggressors. It’s a twofer and they’re both bad."

Halberstam has a thing about Arabs, doesn't he? It's amazing how those Arabs can spin our unprovoked war of agression against Iraq into making us look like the agressors. And to think they spin our crusader President and Christian warrior generals (Boykin and Mattis) into looking like Christian agressors is a real accomplishment? Next thing you know is they'll take the photos and videos shot by our troops and make it look like we torture people!

Halberstam does show his soft side when he talks about considering "the child." He is refering to the US soldiers sent to kill and be killed in Iraq and recalling that each one is someone's child. I would agree with that sentiment, but he doesn't make a peep about the Iraqi children who are shot, burned, blasted, malnourished, etc. by the US Iraq war.

There is something horrible about this kind of exceptionalism that puts a premium on American lives while treating those we kill as unworthy of even mentioning, much less counting.