conec posted:

i want 2 take vietnam history class this semester but schedule is full already plus i`m supposed to get a job/internship
- . -+ neway so i will read stanley karnow`s Vietnam A History.. i reaLIze high schoolers read it in AP classes nd such but ya i did not go to HS nd hav yet to be assigned it in college. it is important det i read this imo. my sister has this booke and she`s left it at our parents so i was like hey can i borrow this for a while, u can have it back.. nd she was like "u can read it while ur here but u cant take it with u."
so i was like "u didn`t even bring it to ur apartment.. come on, i`ll make u a plushie." nd she was like "what would i do with that? i have no use for a stupid plushie. why would i want one?"
nd i was like "bcos i made it w my own two hands "

+ marilyn b young The Vietnam Wars 1945-1990
my vietnaM education thus far has been chapters in a few diff books nd some documentaries

if ne1 wud like to recc a book i woukld appreciate det, i kno there r lots of goodies out there

Makeshift_Swahili posted:

im actually going to start reading a lot on vietnam too if ud like to do some sort of reading group or w/e

here's the two i have that have been highly recommnded (i havent read them yet):

Gabriel Kolko - Anatomy Of A War
Nick Turse - Kill Everything That Moves

heres some i picked up for cheap secondhand and cant vouch for the quality of;

Mary McCarthy - Vietnam
Mary McCarthy - Hanoi
Gerard Chaliand - The Peasants Of North Vietnam
John Lewallen - Ecology Of Devastation: Indochina

was also thinking of buying

Alfred McCoy - The Politics of Heroin: CIA Complicity in the Global Drug Trade (i think this has quite a bit about vietnam but obviously its broader than that) "By mid 1971 Army medical officers were estimating that about 10 to 15 percent of the lower-ranking enlisted men serving in Vietnam were heroin users." o_O

gimme a shout if ya want to do some sort of reading group thread because i can get that Karnow thing from my library and the Marilyn Young book is pretty cheap online....

this 'reading group' will be pretty informal, i've seen too many online reading groups fail to try to stick to any strict regimen. i will post excerpts that particularly interest me, maybe some summaries if i can be bothered, maybe links to other material, etc etc and eventually move to other books. hopefully other people will jump in and do the same, especially if they've already read any particular book we are currently reading thorugh

we;re starting with Stanley Karnow's "Vietnam: A History"

palafox posted:

i'm kind of in the middle of a bunch of real life shit and have an IRL reading group that gets together in a couple weeks, but am tentatively in. if I can find it in storage I'll upload scans from a photobook documenting american atrocities in the war that was put together by the socialist republic of vietnam in the 80s. the english is not great but the photos are super harrowing, which is a confusing mix.

that's kewl. as i said in the op, i want this to be a very low-commitment kind of thread.

i think there's going to be a lot to criticise in this Karnow book, as theres a lot of liberalism... i dont want to be too nitpicky so early but sentences like:

"Besides, as former rebels against oppressive British colonies, Americans were instinctively repelled by the idea of governing other peoples" (pg. 12)

are making me roll my eyes

Edited by Chthonic_Goat_666 (Aug. 29, 2014 09:24:14)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vietnam_Veterans_Against_the_War#Winter_Soldier_Investigation
Winter Soldier Investigation posted:

Main article: Winter Soldier Investigation

In January 1971, VVAW sponsored The Winter Soldier Investigation to gather and present testimony from soldiers about war crimes being committed in Southeast Asia and demonstrate they were committed as a result of American war policies. Intended as a public event, it was boycotted by much of the mainstream media, although the Detroit Free Press covered it daily and immediately began investigating what was being said. No records of fraudulent participants or fraudulent testimony were produced.

Veterans applying for participation in the investigation were asked if they witnessed or participated in a list of transgressions, including search and destroy missions, crop destruction, and POW mistreatment.

This event was estimated to have cost the VVAW $50,000–$75,000. It was financially supported by the fund-raising efforts of several celebrity peace activists, with actress Jane Fonda soliciting over $10,000 in donations at 54 college campuses for the VVAW. Winter Soldier Investigation testimonies were read into the Congressional Record by Senator Mark Hatfield (R-OR). In 1972, VVAW continued antiwar protests, and released Winter Soldier, a 16mm black-and-white documentary film showing participants giving testimony at the 1971 hearing, as well as footage of the Dewey Canyon III week of protest events. This film is currently on limited distribution and is now available on DVD.

I wanted to share this because it encapsulates so many things at once about the Vietnamese-American war that it is a collective treasure to any person trying to learn about it. Watch the whole thing if you have time, skip around if you don't. It's brutal, almost every trigger warning imaginable gets triggered so strap in.

Edited by Barbarossa (Aug. 30, 2014 03:53:39)

"The most comprehensive, up-to-date, and balanced account
we have."—Boston Globe. "Superb, balanced in interpretation...
immensely readable and full of new and interesting detail."—George Herring, Univ. of Kentucky

Written by Stanley Karnow, a former Southeast Asian correspondent for "Time" and "Life" magazines, and "The Washington Post,"

jeffery posted:

"The most comprehensive, up-to-date, and balanced account
we have."—Boston Globe. "Superb, balanced in interpretation...
immensely readable and full of new and interesting detail."—George Herring, Univ. of Kentucky

Written by Stanley Karnow, a former Southeast Asian correspondent for "Time" and "Life" magazines, and "The Washington Post,"

its obvious enough when reading it. I'm away from home atm but I'll write up the first chapter soon. I don't have enough knowledge about the conflict to criticise it in detail but there's a very clear capitalist/imperialist bent

daddyholes posted:

if you are reading on Vietnam in the English language one thing to keep in mind is that the Western consensus on all such topics is built up by academics who are guided by the State Department, the CIA and other agencies, but who take the "reliable sources" those agencies produce and combine them with perceived public sentiment in the U.S. and other received wisdom, so there is no clear transparency into the CIA line proper through the muddily CIA-influenced line of the mass media and pop history.

so if you are a Westerner and you want to have any understanding of what you have been taught about Vietnam or what other people have been taught, or any hope of using history to draw relevant conclusions about the world right now that can change peoples minds or behavior, you will want to learn that CIA line, the parts of it that succeeded and the parts of it that are still waiting to be accepted as the agency wears down a new generation of academics and journalists. a good idea here is to acquire enough knowledge to be truly skeptical, then suck it up and go straight to the alphabet boy source, books like Decent Interval, and figure out how the transfer of knowledge has happened and where all this sh'd is coming from. if Grover can do it you can do it.

if you don't hope to convince anyone or change anything though and you hate Marx and his ideas, i hear swampman has recently opened a hangar full of big fat never ending pointless books about how the U.S. was morally wrong because of the tension of post-(ant(e?)-)Foucauldian power struggles that cyber'd and queered the movements of the savage Vietnamese in meatspace. there are probably more books published in the U.S. that are critical of the U.S. propaganda line on Vietnam than books that support it, but they are mostly tiny-uni-press pamphlets designed to okay the dumb opinions of useless "radicals" who never bothered to learn about the propaganda line they claim to counter.

counter-culturalists, imo

daddyholes posted:

a good idea here is to acquire enough knowledge to be truly skeptical, then suck it up and go straight to the alphabet boy source, books like Decent Interval, and figure out how the transfer of knowledge has happened and where all this sh'd is coming from. if Grover can do it you can do it.

Agreed. Actually, some of the stuff intended for internal CIA use can be useful imo: http://www.foia.cia.gov/collection/vietnam-histories

Fun trivia: Ngo Dinh Diem's brother Thuc, a Catholic Archbishop, was a CIA asset and an important conduit for covert funding in the guise of Catholic aid. He had close ties with New York's Cardinal Spellman, who not coincidentally was Apostolic Vicar for the US Armed Forces. Thuc was in Rome when Diem was assassinated and was unable to return home. He ended up moving to France and becoming an important figure in the sedevacantism, a Catholic splinter movement that believes the last valid Pope was Pius XII. I suddenly realise that the only person who might find all of this interesting is Donald. Anyway, one of the Thuc line of consecrations, unrecognised by the Vatican, was an Australian priest called Geoffrey Mayne. Mayne was ordained as a priest in 1956, and was commissioned into the Royal Australian Navy in 1965. He was consecrated into the Thucite line in 1976 as Father Lucifer Legionnaire. In 1977 he became the Navy's principal chaplain, and after leaving the military in 1984 was promoted to Catholic Military Vicar, just like Spellman. Two years later John Paul II made him the first Bishop of Australia, Military. He only retired a couple of months before his death in 2003, but as late as 2001 he maintained a website as Father Lucifer, defending Thuc's honour:

https://web.archive.org/web/20010306020359/http://www.societyofsaintjohn.org/members_flhs_orders_fr_lucifer.htm posted:

Why was Thuc denied entry to Vietnam after Vatican II. Preposterous some will say.

I answer that his brother, Ngo Dinh Diem (Thuc and Diem are the Christian names) had just been disposed of by the C.I.A. for the perverse ends of the U.S. in that war.

Purely and simply, 'they' wanted him out of the way as well, and that 'they' forced their will upon the Vatican as well.

Sorry to disturb your life at the bottom of the garden!

daddyholes posted:

Petrol posted:

sedevacantism, a Catholic splinter movement that believes the last valid Pope was Pius XII

i am of the personal belief that a great many Western catholic leaders are secret or effective members of this schism. and that to understand the CIA in Vietnam requires an understanding of the way the archbishopric was manipulated.

that's really interesting, anything in particular you'd recommend reading on the hidden sedevacantist strain?