Serious lessons still to be learnt from horror of the Vietnam War

Australia continues to make the same mistakes with the US, says Greg Barns

A MAN can fight if he can see daylight down the road somewhere, but there ain’t no daylight in Vietnam,” said US President Lyndon Johnson on March 6, 1965.

Among the dross passing for TV entertainment these days ( My Kitchen Rules, The Block etc) there are occasional gems that remind us of the power of this medium.

Ken Burns and Lynn Novick’s 10-part series The Vietnam War, currently broadcast on SBS, is perhaps the most powerful television since Kenneth Clark’s magisterial Civilisation series 50 years ago. The Vietnam War is a lesson in history that is sadly not learnt by the Washington war machine and its sycophantic allies like Australia as the folly of Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria in recent years demonstrates.

Burns and Novick spent years making this series. For the first time, one hears from the victors in this quagmire that lasted two decades until the liberation of Saigon on April 30, 1975. The way Johnson was manipulated by the war machine and defence secretary Robert McNamara into sending more troops to Vietnam is horrifying. But most telling is that Ho Chi Minh and his cadres in the north of Vietnam outwitted not just American military might but the corrupt south Vietnamese puppet regimes.

It makes one cringe when in one episode the narrator reminds us that US allies such as France, Great Britain and other leading powers refused to commit military resources to the war.

Who did? Australia. Along with New Zealand, Thailand and South Korea.

Australia, blindly loyal to Washington, sent about 60,000 military personnel. Over 500 died, 3000 were wounded. For what? Nothing. Absolutely nothing.

From the start this war was doomed to failure. As Burns and Novick show, the flaw was the belief in the domino theory. This myth, peddled by conservatives, held that if Vietnam was taken over by the communists, other countries around it would fall. Australia was at risk according to this simplistic theory.

Instead, the north Vietnamese were an indigenous force. They hated the French who had been in the place for a century before leaving in the 1950s, and the Vietnamese wanted nothing more than a united Vietnam. The south was run by gangsters and fools, propped up by Washington. The Vietnam War makes it clear the north Vietnamese were welcomed by many in the

south who hated their corrupt government.

The most compelling and poignant moments in this epic series are those spent with the foot soldiers. Young men and women suckered in, and used by their military masters. The anguish of loss of family members is as sharp today as it was 50 years ago.

This was, from the US perspective, a working-class war. If you had money and connections, you did not need to be sent to hell on earth.

George W. Bush, Bill Clinton and Donald Trump all found ways to avoid Vietnam’s jungles. But if you were poor or middle class, the draft collared you. At 18 years of age you are thrown in a conflict where the enemy emerged at night wearing black. You went mad in that environment.

The Vietnam War is important, not because it is the most comprehensive visual history of the conflict, but because the lessons of history are so obvious. Afghanistan and Iraq are testament to this. They are the new Vietnams. The US and its captive states like Australia set off to change regimes in both. The result. Dismal failures. Iraq is a corrupt collection of warring fiefdoms. In Afghanistan the Taliban are back in business and, just as happened in Vietnam, the drug trade is flourishing.

There are still conservatives who think Vietnam was a good idea brought down by a Leftist media and layabout university types. It is important to watch The Vietnam War and reflect on the arrogance of the US and the West.

The real heroes of the series are the anti-war players who stood against US and Australian participation in that conflict. It is easy to go to war and rally around the flag. It is harder to say no. Greg Barns is a human rights lawyer. He has advised state and federal Liberal governments.