Introduction

            The United States was involved in the affairs of Vietnam long before its public, or even all of its government, was aware of a thing called the Vietnam War. Before the Tonkin Gulf Incident, Rolling Thunder, and all that came after and has been more extensively chronicled, the United States was involved. The American representation of Vietnam and the war there, both then and since, has consisted of a collection "truths," which the nation believed to be self-evident. These "truths," however, were and are a part of a discourse of American Exceptionalism, one which the United States would use to reinforce the representation that it is a nation of "difference"; that is, that the United States is not a colonial power, not an oppressor, but a "helper," there to save those who cannot save themselves. Since the American Revolution, which established independence from such a traditional colonial power, part of the American discourse has included this mission to "help" others in their struggles for freedom, democracy, and capitalism: things that are held out to be "obvious" epitomes of advanced civilization and thus "apparent" end results of any individual or national aspirations.

            The American rhetoric surrounding the War then, and now, presented the conflict in Vietnam in such altruistic terms. Yet when one penetrates this rhetoric of "self-evident" truths and "obvious" facts, one can see this representation of history and politics as one that is not a self-evident or obvious truth, but rather a created truth, one inscribed upon the people of the United States. These "truths" are not neutral knowledges placed before people to be freely absorbed or ignored as part of a conscious decision, but rather information which is part of a complex, interwoven scheme: a hegemonic discourse of fictionalized truths. The Vietnam War is special precisely because it exposes this hegemonic discourse; what is usually invisible, the apparatuses supporting it hidden, this horrible conflict made conspicuous, temporarily dispelling an illusionary framework and revealing these "truths" to be something not nearly as self-evident as the U.S. government would assert. This visibility is at its apex in observing how the United States approached both the Vietnamese nation and their people during the Vietnam War.
 

 
Part I

            Most of U.S. foreign policy after World War II focused on the threat it perceived from communism. It was from this fear that belief in the "Domino Theory" arose: that if any of the countries of Southeast Asia fell to communism, it would result in the swift collapse of not only the rest of Southeast Asia, but also of India, and in the long term, the Middle East, which in turn would threaten the stability and security of Europe, and ultimately even that of the United States. One can understand a government’s concern and care for itself, as well as for that of its allies and friends; each is a legitimate end. A National Security Council ("NSC") document dated from early 1952 stated that the U.S. objective was: "To prevent the countries of Southeast Asia from passing into the communist orbit, and to assist them to develop will and ability to resist communism from within and without and to contribute to the strengthening of the free world."¹ While this seems to show a certain xenophobic attitude towards communists, it is little different than the reaction of monarchs to nascent democracies centuries earlier. At the very least, defending one's way of life and "strengthening of the free world," seem to be valid aims.

            Legitimate ends, however, are not the same thing as legitimate means; nor do they preclude other illegitimate ends. The United States also indicated that it wanted "U.S.-French cooperation in publicizing progressive developments in the foregoing policies in Indochina." In the same document, the NSC stated that the United States should institute "[a]n aggressive military, political, and psychological program to defeat or seriously reduce the Viet Minh forces."² What the United States was really saying is that it wanted to work on "progressive policies," as long as they were not communist (like those of the Viet Minh): implying that communist policies were inherently bad for the peoples of whatever nation such policies might apply. According to this document, America was also working with France, which, at that time, was openly the type of imperial power that American discourse allegedly opposes. This raises the questions of how far the United States was willing to go to stop communism and at what price? Thus, as soon as one has begun to critically analyze the American position in Vietnam, questions of America's motives surface.

            Despite this and other similar rhetoric, U.S. support for the French turned out to be short-lived. Ultimately, The United States allowed itself to oppose the French in more ways than one. This allowed America to reap the benefit of saying that it would not help a colonial power subjugate a foreign people, and able it to claim distance from the French situation. This distance, this difference, was a "truth" that the United States put forth, despite the fact that at that point in time, it was paying close to eighty percent of France’s military costs in Vietnam.³

            Prior to the French defeat at Dien Bien Phu in May 1954, the Central Intelligence Agency ("CIA") had created the Saigon Military Mission ("SMM"). Colonel Edward G. Lansdale, United States Air Force ("USAF"), detailed their mission profile: "The SMM was to enter into Vietnam quietly and assist the Vietnamese, rather than the French, in unconventional warfare. The French were to be kept as friendly allies in the process."⁴ From a nation so concerned about its allies' welfare, this was certainly a curious strategy. When contacted by France in April 1954, in dire need of direct military assistance, a cable from U.S. Secretary of State, John Foster Dulles, made it clear that: “the United States would not intervene without congressional approval, which in turn depended upon British participation."⁵ This was a politically nice way of telling a friend "no." In this refusal, there is a public hesitance to be involved in any kind of imperial power struggle; but, behind the scenes, the CIA and other operatives were already heavily involved. When France’s conflict with Vietnam was finally over and the Geneva Accords were written and signed in 1954—formalizing the official peace treaty between the two nations—the American rhetoric was typical in its open, benevolent language; yet, this was all part of the U.S. hegemonic discourse. Indeed, what was more important, was what was not said by the Americans.

            The international settlement agreed upon by the conferring nations was clear. Article 6 of the Final Declarations of the Geneva Accords stated that:

Article 7 added:

Thus, the unambiguous intent of the peacemakers was for a temporary split to better govern a nation coming back into its own for the first time in many years. The Accords set in place a timetable and process for re-integration under international supervision in a peaceful, democratic manner. Yet, something in this process did not satisfy the United States. On July 18, 1954, The Undersecretary of State, Walter Bedell Smith, delivered the message stating the U.S. unwillingness to sign this treaty. Using an obfuscating scheme of objectionable numbers and letters, of dates and articles and clauses, Smith detailed points of contention, concluding finally with sweeping rhetoric, rife with American Exceptionalism and optimism:

The U.S. objections, however, were only surface-level arguments, part of a discourse which sounded good, and may even have seemed just, but cannot be supported under further scrutiny.

           First of all, it was obvious when one looked at the later actions of the United States that this was not a sincere statement and, furthermore, that the wording of its objections was chosen intentionally with future strategies in mind. The very posing of the two sections of Vietnam as individual nations indicates a premonition of the language that the United States would use in later years, in direct opposition to U.N. goals. The American objection was largely in opposition to the splitting of Vietnam into two parts, but it was the United States that referred to them as separate nations, when the Geneva Accords specifically stated that the separation “should not in any way be interpreted as constituting a political or territorial boundary.” The U.S. language then betrayed either a misunderstanding of the Geneva Accords or a deliberate twist of its specific wording: either of which fail to constitute a legitimate argument against the Accords’ validity.

           In addition, America’s willingness to accept free elections, as well as to allow the Vietnamese to be self-determinative, would also prove to be empty promises. As the editor to The Pentagon Papers, George C. Herring, wrote, "The United States would violate both the letter and the spirit of the agreements reached at Geneva."¹⁰ The United States did not only refuse to stay out of Southeast Asian affairs, but, to the contrary, would become even more heavily entrenched in the passing years. Acting out the script written by the principals of American Exceptionalism, the United States felt the overwhelming need to safeguard Vietnam: seeing itself as a leader, as the Other’s close friend. In this regard, the United States sought to fulfill its role as "the world’s policeman." In 1961, then-U.S. Vice-President, Lyndon B. Johnson, proclaimed that:

There is no alternative to United States leadership in Southeast Asia. Leadership in individual countries—or the regional leadership and cooperation so appealing to Asians—rests on the knowledge and faith in United States power, will and understanding.¹¹

This is a curious statement for several reasons. It suggests that Southeast Asia inherently needs outside leadership: that without foreign intervention, it will be unable to take care of itself. Yet this position contradicts previous U.S. claims that it was hoping that these nations would be able to determine their own futures.

            One of the most illustrative evidences in analyzing the American discourse in Vietnam was the South Vietnamese government they supported over Ho Chi Minh's Northern regime. In a letter to the U.S. Secretary of State, the U.S. Ambassador to Saigon, Elbridge Burbrow, dated September 1960, wrote:

We believe U.S. should at this time support Diem as best available Vietnamese leader, but should recognize that overriding U.S. objective is strongly anti-Communist Vietnamese government which can command loyal and enthusiastic support of widest possible segments of Vietnamese people, and is able to carry on effective fight against Communist guerrillas. If Diem's position in country continues deteriorate as result failure adopt proper political, psychological, economic and security measures, it may become necessary for U.S. government to begin consideration alternative courses of action and leaders in order achieve our objective.¹²

This language hardly resonates with that which states the United States is trying to help the Vietnamese people find freedom. In fact, Burbrow’s overriding concerns seem more related to American objectives than the actual welfare of the Vietnamese people. Look at the words: a strong-anti-communist base of operations was what the American foreign policy was really after. The United States did not want freedom for these people any more than the French imperialists did. The United States called it by a different name: calling it freedom, calling it a mission to save Vietnamese integrity and democracy; but, in reality, the United States was doing no more than using the Vietnamese people and land in a global chess game, pitting Stalinist Communists against American Democrats through proxy.

           In a memorandum to the President of the United States, U.S. Secretary of Defense, Robert McNamara, noted that most North Vietnamese thought that the U.S. was intent on winning a military victory and maintaining a puppet regime in South Vietnam.¹³ He did not make this claim himself, but neither did he contradict it. Most likely, that was because the South Vietnamese government was a puppet regime. A large section of Herring's The Pentagon Papers deals with the proposed coup of the Diem regime. The United States was well aware of the imminent power switch a year before it happened, but did nothing to stop it. In fact, the United States wanted the coup to succeed, despite the fact that it would overthrow the regime that it had long supported. The bottom line was that Diem’s regime could no longer achieve the goals the United States wanted.¹⁴ In National Security Advisor, McGeorge Bundy's, cable to Vietnam Ambassador, Henry Cabot Lodge (Burbrow’s predecessor), the U.S. emphasis was clear:

In event of indecisive contest, U.S. authorities may in their discretion agree to perform any acts agreeable to both sides, such as removal of key personalities or relay of information. In such actions, however, U.S. authorities will strenuously avoid appearance of pressure on either side. It is not in the interest of USG to be or appear to be either instrument of existing government or instrument of coup.¹⁵

The stress was not so much on action, but appearances; the United States could not be seen as being too involved with South Vietnamese politics. Yet, it was. If America had not been so thoroughly involved in Vietnam's affiars, it would not have had to be concerned about being too apparent in South Vietnam’s “existing government,” or as an “instrument of [the] coup.” In the same cable, two paragraphs later, Bundy made explicit that a successful coup would be in the United States' best interest.¹⁶ The focus on South Vietnam, with the increasingly empty rhetoric of "strengthening the free world," however, left a very loud silence regarding North Vietnam. Almost all mentionings of North Vietnam in The Pentagon Papers refer to the bombing of it. But throughout the succession of governments that rose and fell in South Vietnam, a singular government managed to stay strong in the North: that of Ho Chi Minh.

            Contrary to American claims, it is not simply a matter of saying that Ho Chi Minh was the leader of a communist insurgency force against an imperial power, or as a terrorist determined to wage war against a self-proclaimed democratic-loving, freedom-enforcing power. The character of Ho Chi Minh is much more complex than that. Between 1945 and 1949, Ho Chi Minh issued several appeals to the United States, China, Russia, and Britain, asking support for and recognition of Vietnamese independence from the French. The United States refused to listen to him, both out of respect for its French ally, but also out of a suspicion of his past communist ties.¹⁷ What makes this an even more interesting historical note is that what Ho Chi Minh asked for from the major powers was quite reasonable:

2. Statement of establishment on 2 September 1945 of PENW Democratic Republic of Viet Minh:


3. Summary of French conquest of Cochin China began 23 Sept 1945 and still incomplete:


4. Outline of accomplishments of Annamese Government in Tonkin including popular elections, abolition of undesirable taxes, expansion of education and resumption as far as possible of normal economic activities:


5. Request to 4 powers: (1) to intervene and stop the war in Indochina in order to mediate fair settlement and (2) to bring the Indochinese issue before the United Nations organization.¹⁸

Despite what seemed like a match with stated U.S. goals for Vietnam, the United States would not even work towards finding peace with Ho Chi Minh. Thus, Vietnam and their leader would have to wait another decade until they could win their freedom through combat. And even then, when the United Nations did finally adopt nearly the same policies that were requested years earlier, in the Geneva Accords, the United States determined that the Vietnamese still needed its help.

           If the U.S. government was unsure of what to think Ho Chi Minh, so were its troops. The opinions of the U.S. soldiers in Vietnam indicated a sharp split as to what kind of a man he was. Specialist 4 Robert E. Holcomb thought that:

When Ho Chi Minh asked us for help against the French, we should have told him we can't help him militarily against the French but we can use pressure to get the French out. Once the French were gone, we should have dealt with Ho Chi Minh, instead of letting the country get divided and backing puppet government after puppet government.¹⁹

The public U.S. discourse, however, would never voice that opinion. Part of American Exceptionalism is the assumption that the United States knows best, that its ways are best, and that the United States should bring these ways to others across the world; i.e., to 'enlighten" the Other: in truth no more than a modern version of the colonial "White Man's Burden." The United States could not admit its actions were a mistake, nor, did its leaders believe it could surrender the fight and lose face in front of the world. No, the United States had to stay the course. The American course.

           As such, Americans were inscribed with the representation of Ho Chi Minh as a communist villain. Medic, David Ross, who served in Vietnam, spoke to that discourse when he said: "The Vietnamese mistakenly thought he [Ho Chi Minh] was the George Washington of their country because he had thrown out the French, but they didn't understand that he was a communist and would bring them to a sticky end."²⁰ Ross, like many others, had been taught, educated, inscribed with a fact which had become a truth: that Ho Chi Minh was a communist and only a communist. In the same way that Americans had been inscribed with the "fact" that all communists were bad; the same prejudiced (but again hidden under the terms "obvious" and "truthful") view that would years later allow U.S. President, Ronald Reagan, to pronounce the communist Soviet Union as the "Evil Empire."

           The problem with this discourse is that it ignores history. During the Versailles Peace Conference after World War I, Ho Chi Minh wrote an appeal based largely on then-U.S. President Woodrow Wilson's concepts of self-determinism. In it, he held off asking for immediate independence, focusing instead on natural rights, which he assumed France would support. Ho Chi Minh asked for the release of political prisoners, freedoms of press and speech, freedom of association and assembly, the freedom to travel abroad, the creation of new schools for better education, and a permanent native delegation in French parliament to represent Vietnam's interests.²¹ Unfortunately, this appeal failed. Undaunted, Ho Chi Minh wrote similar appeals well into the forties, writing not only to France, but other Western democracies. During twenty-some years of appeals, the United States could not say that Ho Chi Minh was a communist, because he was not.

           Ironically, it was the West ignoring these pleas that drove Ho Chi Minh to communism. He was always more interested in his country's well-being than any political philosophy. Indeed, he wrote in his memoirs that: "At first, patriotism, not yet Communism, led me to have confidence in Lenin . . . I gradually came upon the fact that only Socialism and Communism can liberate the oppressed nations and the working people throughout the world from slavery."²² Had the U.S. concern for the Other been more sincere, then this entire War might have been prevented. Communism was avoided in Europe because industrialists were more adaptable than Marx presumed and actually made reforms to satisfy the workers. No one was showing that attitude toward Southeast Asia. Rather than treat Southeast Asians as people with desires and rights, the United States saw them merely as pieces on a game board, to be strategized and moved as fit U.S. interests. And so Ho Chi Minh the communist liberator was created.

           The United States would argue that Ho Chi Minh and the communists would not allow fair or free elections; it claimed that the Geneva Accords would unjustly divide a nation. In the same discourse, the United States represented itself as trying to "strengthen the free world": fighting to protect the self-determinism, freedom, and democracy of the South Vietnamese. In doing this, they also posed themselves in binary opposition to the imperial powers that had dominated South Vietnam previously: establishing all of these concepts as "self-evident," "obvious" "truths" through its hegemonic discourse. Yet, it is at this juncture, through Vietnam, and through Ho Chi Minh in particular, that this discourse is exposed. By definition, hegemonic discourse does its best to remain hidden, invisible to the people upon which it acts. However, with the North Vietnamese leader, the evidence penetrates the flowery rhetoric that the United States espoused in talking about Ho Chi Minh, Vietnam, and the communist "threat." In particular, the United States' claims that the communists would not allow a fair election was blatantly false. In a Joint Chiefs of Staff Memorandum from 1954, it was reported that:

While it is obviously impossible to make a dependable forecast as to the outcome of a free election, current intelligence leads the Joint Chiefs of Staff to a belief that a settlement based on free elections would be attended by almost certain loss of the Associated States of Indochina to Communist control.²³

While this statement alone seemed to cast enough doubt on America’s discourse, the words of then then-U.S. President, Dwight D. Eisenhower, were even more damning: writing in his own personal memoirs, perhaps, what the Joint Chiefs were unable to write in official documents:

I have never talked or corresponded with a person knowledgeable in Indochinese affairs who did not agree that had elections been held at the time of the fighting, possibly 80 per cent of the population would have voted for the Communist Ho Chi Minh as their leader rather than Chief of State Bao Dai [of South Vietnam].²⁴

Knowing that Ho Chi Minh would win, the United States did not allow the elections dictated by the Geneva Accords to occur. This was not about freedom; this was not about democracy. The Joint Chiefs’ exact words revealed that they knew Ho Chi Minh would win a free election; they knew that the communists did not have to fix the elections or utilize propaganda to support Ho Chi Minh. He was their George Washington. In time, having fought off two imperial powers, he would perhaps become two George Washingtons.

           The only possible reconciliation of these facts is that the election of Ho Chi Minh and the subsequent freedom of Vietnam as a nation would not have suited U.S. goals and objectives. It is much more likely that the blatant disregard for the democratic and self-determining principles of this nation had more to do with the United States opposing Russo-Chinese aggression directly by having a military base of operations in Southeast Asia. While U.S. representation addressed regard for the Vietnamese people’s well-being and rights, the facts show that the United States used Vietnam as a means to an end in the strategic battle against the forces of communism.

           It is at this exact juncture that one can see through the U.S. hegemonic discourse; it was there where it became visible, exposed. And it was in this way that the Vietnam War differed from all other wars. American hegemonic discourse was evident in the contrast between U.S. rhetoric about the situation and its own internal reports. It was also visible in how the U.S. military inscribed its soldiers, in how it taught them to deal with the enemy. In fact, the way the U.S. military taught its soldiers to regard all Vietnamese exposed the naked aggression, violence, and self-centeredness of the U.S. hegemon.
 

Part II
 
            Of all the things that the Vietnam War was, from beginning to end, in its implementation and representation, it was a war of psychology: a mental war of attrition, fought in earnest by American and Vietnamese forces alike. Any good intentions that U.S. officials might have had in becoming involved in that foreign conflagration were mired in a warping self-hypnosis through which their expectations justified what they thought they saw. How could anyone expect anything other than bias from a government that sent its then-Vice-President, Lyndon B. Johnson, to Southeast Asia in 1961, and who came back saying: "I took to Southeast Asia some basic convictions about the problems faced there. I have come away from the mission there . . . with many of those convictions sharpened and deepened by what I saw and learned.”²⁵ Johnson's subsequent advice and proposals written to the president were littered with assumptions about the natures of Vietnam and America and the resultant role that the United States would need to play. As previously discussed, Johnson argued that "[t]here is no alternative to United States leadership in Southeast Asia,”²⁶ believing in a typically American Exceptionalist way that it was the United States' duty to take care of the Other. Implicit in Johnson's assessment was the assumption that the Vietnamese could not take care of themselves, that they needed U.S. help, without which they would fall under the sway of some viral ideologue. Consequently, through such representational evolution, the U.S. government would pose not only the Vietnamese nation as inferior, but the Vietnamese people as inferior as well. In so doing, the United States quietly began an institutionalized prejudice, one which would ultimately result in the total dehumanization of the Vietnamese—all to achieve political goals. In time, this entire geo-political discourse would be obfuscated by a complex representation of fictionalized truths.

            The racism practiced against the Vietnamese was not just the casual pick-up of the words "slants," "slopes," "gooks," or "dinks:"²⁷ it was not one born from a misunderstanding between or the clashing of two different cultures. Rather, what was employed in the Vietnam War was an institutionalized hatred, a dehumanization of the enemy that began at basic training and continued throughout the soldiers’ service, a practice that relied upon the fundamental racism of the American people. It was fostered in the field and encouraged by the highest levels of command—not encouraged, rather, created and instilled. U.S. society knew little about Vietnamese culture or history, and the military leaders did not teach its soldiers these topics or anything else that would signify the Vietnamese as a people of their own. This vacuum of knowledge left only the soldiers' experiences of war, which with an absence of any other information, taught them only to hate. A former U.S. soldier in Vietnam, Haywood T. Kirkland, recalled that, "As soon as I hit boot camp in Fort Jackson, South Carolina, they tried to change your total personality. Transform you out of that civilian mentality to a military mind. Right away they told us not to call them Vietnamese. Call everybody gooks, dinks.”²⁸ Despite the fact that boot camp—and the military in general—is one of the few places in American Democracy where the hegemonic influence becomes (and is allowed to be) overt, there is still behind this kind of education a miseducation. The "truths" presented to the soldiers instructed that the Vietnamese were unequal to Americans: primitive, stupid, weak, and in need of help—all echoes of American Exceptionalism. This education was not enough, however; that is, racism was not enough. The American military had to present a discourse of "truth" so powerful that it would not only be derogatory toward the Vietnamese, but one that would give the soldiers "obvious" reasons to hate them enough to be eager to kill them.

           Another Veteran, Reginald Edwards, said, "The only thing they told us about the Viet Cong was they were gooks. They were to be killed.”²⁹ As if that was not sufficient, those that did actively kill VC were looked up to, lauded, regardless of the reasons for doing so. "Wherever he would see a gook, he would go after 'em. He was good.”³⁰ This was what the U.S. Command wanted: emotionless killers. While perhaps war requires as much, it is the means of how the U.S. accomplished this end that was problematic: especially in how it was not a perversion of U.S. hegemony, but rather a fulfillment of it. Thus, by instilling in soldiers that this racism wasnatural and good, it brought them to the inevitable conclusion that killing Vietnamese was a moral act. Certainly, the military did not want men to have opinions of the Viet Cong such as Captain Joseph B. Anderson, Jr. who said: " I had a great deal of respect for the Viet Cong.”³¹ The U.S. leadership did not want that; there would be no honor in this War. The strategy was to prevent the men from seeing the enemy as human beings. Nor did the U.S. Military leadership need to resort to any kind of coercive instruction or indoctrination, instead relying upon the normative method of American Democratic representation, which simply presented "facts" about the North Vietnamese and the Viet Cong, letting such "obvious" and "apparent" truths be accepted by the individual soldiers on their own. In this, the U.S. command in Vietnam succeeded; but, like many of the physical battles won in Vietnam, it was a temporary achievement, which succumbed to eventual retreat, defeat, and repetition. In time, U.S. soldiers began to grasp that something was not quite right with the U.S. representation of the war in Vietnam.

            The American discourse in Southease Asia did more than just strive for victory in not teaching its soldiers to respect or value the lives of the enemy. Lieutenant Philip J. Caputo recalls hearing things like, “one marine’s worth ten of those VC.”³² Considered, perhaps, an innocuous endorsement of fellow soldiers, this type of language handed down by soldiers in the field was consistent with the language of other reports. In a NSC report from McGeorge Bundy, a more callous view is exposed, that of a government that did not even think of its own men as men—as human lives—but as numbers, as computational variables in some analytical fiscal chart: an apathetically simple manner of economic strategizing, sweeping all Americans subject to their "representative democracy" under the inclusive euphemisms of "we" and "us":

We believe that the best available way of increasing our chance of success in Vietnam is the development and execution of a policy of sustained reprisal against North Vietnam . . . While we believe that the risks of such a policy are acceptable, we emphasize that its costs are real . . . and it seems likely that it would eventually require an extensive and costly effort against the whole air defense system of North Vietnam.

Yet measured against the costs of defeat in Vietnam, this program seems cheap. And even if it fails to turn the tide—as it may—the value of the effort seems to us to exceed its cost.³³

Consider the language of the above document: "costly," "costs," "cheap." It is no wonder that this same government produced such disregard for human lives. When this language is compounded upon the biases that American soldiers brought to the field, on top of the "education" that they underwent in their military training, it is no surprise that the Americans were unable or unwilling to comprehend the Vietnamese way of life and how they wanted no more "civilization" than their own independence.

            Men like Philip Caputo, no matter the revelations they came to in proceeding years, could not shake their own biases then, just as Vice-President Johnson could not: seeing only something unfamiliar, different, and deeming it unfit. Caputo wrote in his memoir, A Rumor of War: "I was not completely convinced these thatch and bamboo shacks were homes; a home had brick or frame walls, windows, a lawn, a TV antenna on the roof.”³⁴ What were these soldiers supposed to think when faced with instructions to call the enemy only "gooks," taught only to kill them, and already burdened with such biases that were simply a part of being American? What choices were they supposed to be able to make as individuals given the data they had? The agency of American soldiers in deciding for themselves what to think about the Vietnamese and the war there has been vastly overstated.

            These American men and women soon came to think not only that the Vietnamese were worth killing, but that they were not even the same species as them. A nurse in Vietnam, Gayle Smith, recalled: "I did not consider the Vietnamese to be people. They were human, but they weren't people. They weren't like us, so it was okay to kill them. It was okay to hate them.”³⁵ Those were the words of a nurse—not even one who fought on the front lines; she saw the damage done by the Vietnamese, but she did not live with the daily terror induced by their psychological warfare or suffer the mental attrition of watching comrades die at their hands. Unsurprisingly, those that were thought little different. Field medic, David Ross, said, "Most of us were never able to see the Vietnamese as real people . . . they didn't have feelings.”³⁶ Predictably, the hate that the U.S. government led its people to feel for the Vietnamese did not reserve itself just for the Northern enemy, but spilled over to all Vietnamese.

            At first, this hatred was applied to tangible acts: the perceived cowardice of the South Vietnamese Army ("ARVN"). While this was a hatred linked to their supposed-allies' actions, it was finalized by U.S. prejudice against the North. As one veteran, Robert Rawls, said, "They weren't worth a cent. In a fire fight those ARVNs would drop everything and run to the rear. That's why I hate them, those Vietnamese.”³⁷ Note how the U.S. soldier was talking about the ARVN soldiers, but in the same conversation states that he hates all Vietnamese. This conflation of enemy and ally, and the dissolution of individuality, was subsumed by the U.S. discourse into one Asian glut of bigotry.

           It was through this trickle-down economics of prejudice that the U.S. strategy was exposed, and, which, at its worst, let to the degradation of South Vietnamese civilians by U.S. soldiers. This American hatred, fueled by domestic racism and transferred from the enemy, to those viewed as not living up to their duty, to complete innocents: bystanders in a war not of their choosing, fought in their homeland through no particular desire of their own, and certainly not out of the love of democracy, when all they really wanted was rice.³⁸ As one soldier, Radarman Second Class, Dwyte A. Brown, noted:

So many Americans would degrade them. At Cam Ranh Bay even. In paradise, man. That would be ridiculous. Havin' it so good, yet still treat 'em like trash. Especially these white guys, actin' like 'I am the conqueror. I am supreme.' Dirt, that's how they treat the Vietnamese, like dirt.³⁹

More than just rudeness or disrespect, these attitudes could manifest in rape, violence, or even death. Soldier-views of the Vietnamese devolved from being not-people humans to animals: "I had to guard this sergeant, a white guy, on our way to Cambodia. I don't even know how they picked him up. He was busted for raping a Vietnamese woman. His thing was that he just felt that they were animals and didn't deserve to be treated like people.”⁴⁰ This mind-numbing abnegation of any sense of common humanity was a residual effect of a planned, institutionalized prejudice, one created to make effective soldiers, but which was also integral to a U.S. hegemonic discourse which created "obvious truths" to further its cause. This prejudice became accepted as a logical concept by a society that had been subject to a controlled reality by that discourse, which was but a small part of a larger ideology of American Exceptionalism, one meant to help America build its "City On A Hill," no matter the cost: unable to see any path, any people, but its own, yet equally blind to the self-centeredness of that path in the tunnel-vision righteousness that was integral to its discourse.

            These failings were epitomized in A Rumor of War, when Caputo spoke of being "The Officer of the Dead." While the economic language of U.S. officials has been discussed earlier in the context of the dehumanizing discourse of the Vietnam War, it is another thing to see such cavalier attitudes carried out by the men who were actually in-country and saw these "numbers" face-to-face. In rotating in and out of the field during his tour of duty, Lieutenant Philip Caputo was able to see the ludicrousness of the U.S. military command's strategy. One of his jobs out of the field was to keep track of Colonel Wheeler’s "scoreboard," which was:

Divided into vertical and horizontal columns, the board hung behind the executive officer’s desk, in the wood-framed tent where he and the colonel made their headquarters. The vertical columns were headed, from left to right, KIA, WIA, DOW (died of wounds), NONHOST, VC-KIA, VC-WIA, and VC-POW . . . the measures of a unit’s performance in Vietnam were not the distances it had advanced or the number of victories it had won, but the number of enemy soldiers it had killed (the body count) and the proportion between that number and the number of its own dead (the kill ratio).⁴¹

By this point in the War, the U.S. military command had reduced the enemy to less than faceless, nameless men, women, and children, but to mere mathematical equations to be computed like the Pythagorean theorem: as if the killing of human beings could be equated to numbers in a column on a chart to prove victory. It is hard to fathom how, with that kind of mentality, the United States could have been claiming to have been acting in the best interests of South Vietnam. For the U.S. hegemon, the only objective was the accumulation of dead bodies: artificially creating the decisive mathematical battles that they so desperately wanted to win, but were unable to achieve in the War itself. The American discourse inscribed upon the American people, the soldiers, and the command itself, teetered on the brink of ridiculousness in such scenarios, and as with the U.S. relationship with Ho Chi Minh, this mindset exposed the fictional nature of the American Democratic discourse. This was even more obvious in the way that this hatred, this dehumanization, was not just inscribed as pertaining to the Vietnamese as "gooks," but to all communists.

            As Specialist 4, Robert L. Mountain, recalled: “[I w]ant to go to Vietnam now, because I want to shoot just one Communist to see how he looks when he falls. That’s stupid as hell, but this is the way they had me programmed.”⁴² Of course, words like "programmed" are ones that the United States discourse intentionally avoids. That word is disavowed along with "brainwashing" and "indoctrination," which are tools of totalitarian societies that are by definition binary opposites of American Democracy, which, instead, "merely" educates. Nonetheless, this kind of quote is poignant, because though it was perhaps a careless choice of words by the serviceman, it also underscores the fact that these two discourses are not binary opposites in practice, but rather inverses; both instill the people of a culture with a certain ideology, only one does so overtly, while the other does not. American Democracy portrays the information it presents as obvious, self-evident truths, which are left for the individual to choose willingly—the opposite of brainwashing—yet, when that piece of information is the only one left for such an individual, there is little choice to be made.

            A victim of its own discourse, the U.S. hegemon could not deal with an Other that was capable of taking care of itself, especially when confronted by the "dire communist threat." In waging war with a people who wanted no part in such large-scale death and destruction, but only to be left alone to govern themselves, the United States in effect waged war on its own citizens, scarring the thousands that came back alive from the War: dooming them to a permanent, bitter bias, which they could not easily extricate themselves from; yet, one which their government would escape culpability for, as the hegemonic discourse would again evade notice by becoming invisible and disappearing under the abnegating shadow of the Vietnam War—which, for a short time exposed it, but then, obfuscated by a loser's pride, was forgotten. Nonetheless, though the War has ended, its representation has not, and therein, a new war is being fought: one to expose how the American hegemonic discourse operates—which is exactly why the U.S. government wants to bury the war in the past and forget it, as if it had never existed. This is also why with each successive war the United States has sought to overcome the "Vietnam Syndrome," as if that War had only been about winning and losing, and not how it was fought.

 
Conclusion

            The exercise of American hegemonic discourse in the politics surrounding the Vietnam War and the practices employed in that country, were rare instances where that discourse became visible. By intervening in Vietnam, the United States exposed certain hypocrisies and made clear for a brief moment the constructed nature of such discourse. The apex of this deconstruction is the story of Ho Chi Minh. Not only did the United States ignore his pleas to create an independent, democratic Vietnam since the end of World War I, but it prevented fair and free elections because it did not approve of the anticipated outcome that would have elected him as a communist hero. America then turned the racism so indigenous to its own culture against the Vietnamese, using it as a tool of its discourse, representing the enemy as something less than human. This dehumanizing of the Vietnamese was pivotal in achieving U.S. political goals. Yet, this racism distanced the Vietnamese from their own cause. To maintain the "truth" of being a friend of Vietnam, of being there to help support its freedom and democracy, Vietnam had to need that aid. To do that, America had to invert the representation Ho Chi Minh. If the United States admitted that he was human, if it admitted that the Viet Cong were human, they would have had to admit that he was the George Washington of his people; it would have had to admit that the North Vietnamese were fighting for their freedom. If the United States admitted that, it would have had to admit that its reasons for being in Southeast Asia were not so different than those of the French before them. Yet, American discourse does not allow such an admission. American Exceptionalism mandates a separation from such colonial interests, a betterment therefrom. Thus, American discourse had to find a way around this truth; to do so, it created its own: that the Vietnamese were not human. Yet the "truths" which the United States supplied to its troops, effective to a point, ultimately rung hollow. This is why over time so many of the soldiers developed such a sense of aimlessness, of not knowing why they were there or for what they were fighting.

           After critical analysis, there can be little doubt that the violent, devastating failure known as the Vietnam War was a result of the political aims of the United States of America, no matter how well intentioned. While the methods of hegemonic dominance may differ from that of totalitarian and colonial powers, many of the aims and goals do not. This is no more true than when hegemonic dominance leads to such prevaricated affairs as the Vietnam War. The exposure of the hegemonic apparatus, though, was brief; American discourse disappears with amazing celerity when its principals recognize its transparaency. But as Raymond Williams has noted, significant breaks can be found in the process, through which one can find the truths that the dominant classes would keep from the masses: that which would create a counter-hegemony and will always have the power to threaten such dominance.⁴³ One can only hope that in exposing the nature of American hegemony that Americans will see their government and its policies in a more honest light and begin to work against such means, and, also, to begin to question its ends.

Bibliography

1.  Herring, George C. (ed.). The Pentagon Papers: Abridged Edition. USA: McGraw-Hill, Inc., 1993. Page 5.

2.  Herring, George C. (ed.). The Pentagon Papers: Abridged Edition. USA: McGraw-Hill, Inc., 1993. Page 9.

3.  Herring, George C. (ed.). The Pentagon Papers: Abridged Edition. USA: McGraw-Hill, Inc., 1993. Page 2.

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5.  Herring, George C. (ed.). The Pentagon Papers: Abridged Edition. USA: McGraw-Hill, Inc., 1993. Page 13.

6.  Ibid, page 21.

7.  Ibid, page 21.

8.  Ibid, page 21.

9.  Ibid, page 22.

10.  Ibid, page 21-22.

11.  Ibid, page 52.

12.  Ibid, page 41.

13.  Ibid, page 166.

14.  Ibid, page 61-82.

15.  Ibid, page 81.

16.  Ibid, page 81.

17.  Ibid, page 4.

18.  Ibid, page 4.

19.  Terry, Wallace. Bloods: An Oral History Of The Vietnam War By Black Veterans. New York: Ballantine, 1984. Page 214.

20.  Santoli, Al. Everything We Had: An Oral History Of The Vietnam War By Thirty-Three American Soldiers Who Fought It. New York: Ballantine, 1981. Page 38.

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27.  Terry, Wallace. Bloods: An Oral History Of The Vietnam War By Black Veterans. New York: Ballantine, 1984. Page 40.

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29.  Terry, Wallace. Bloods: An Oral History Of The Vietnam War By Black Veterans. New York: Ballantine, 1984. Page 5.

30.  Terry, Wallace. Bloods: An Oral History Of The Vietnam War By Black Veterans. New York: Ballantine, 1984. Page 44 (emphasis added).

31.  Terry, Wallace. Bloods: An Oral History Of The Vietnam War By Black Veterans. New York: Ballantine, 1984. Page 226.

32.  Caputo, Philip. A Rumor Of War. New York: Owl Books, 1993. Page 137.

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34.  Caputo, Philip. A Rumor Of War. New York: Owl Books, 1993. Page 88.

35.  Santoli, Al. Everything We Had: An Oral History Of The Vietnam War By Thirty-Three American Soldiers Who Fought It. New York: Ballantine, 1981. Page 126.

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37.  Santoli, Al. Everything We Had: An Oral History Of The Vietnam War By Thirty-Three American Soldiers Who Fought It. New York: Ballantine, 1981. Page 139.

38.  Terry, Wallace. Bloods: An Oral History Of The Vietnam War By Black Veterans. New York: Ballantine, 1984. Page 67.

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40.  Terry, Wallace. Bloods: An Oral History Of The Vietnam War By Black Veterans. New York: Ballantine, 1984. Page 206.

41.  Caputo, Philip. A Rumor Of War. New York: Owl Books, 1993. Page 168.

42.  Terry, Wallace. Bloods: An Oral History Of The Vietnam War By Black Veterans. New York: Ballantine, 1984. Page 175.

43.  Williams, Raymond. Marxism and Literature. London: Oxford University Press, 1977. Page 112-3.

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