This is about the TRUTH. Each and every American should be aware of what really caused Vietnam to now be one Communist Country. This is at least a start in the explanatory process for those who want the truth of how we abandoned South Vietnam and betrayed a nation’s people.
On Mon, 3 Jan 2005 09:07:19 -0600 "Craig Roberts" <craig@riflewarrior.com> wrote, telling me that he had gotten the email that follows from an Arline Brooks, a female musician
that entertained the troops. He wrote, “I'm sending this to my VN vet friends for further comment” if we wanted to do so. He first quoted Arline Brooks email and then followed it with his reply to Brooks. I will add my comments in red script after her statements and approach Craig’s comments at a later date in Part 25 – Two Vietnams – Continued..
The original message from: Arline Brooks to Craig Roberts was sent on Monday, January 03, 2005 at 12:01 AM. The subject: Vietnam. She wrote: “I was in Vietnam for 16 months, and I haven't talked about it until now. I thought I would share this with you. Vietnam and freedom. Freedom! That's the song we sing and the reason we give ourselves so that we can go marching across this planet, fight wars, and make a profit. Can you tell me how my freedom was threatened by a country called Viet Nam? A small agricultural country most people in the United States couldn't even tell you where it was located. Most people, still can't really say why we were there. How does that threaten my freedom?”
I too served in South Vietnam as a Green Beret Captain and I was proud to do so and to command an independent operation that worked and fought alongside courageous South Vietnamese who happened to be Buddhist Hoa Haos. They were the finest group of people I have had the pleasure to live with for a little over seven months. We Americans went there to help the South Vietnamese people fight off communism and we betrayed that mission and those people as a nation. I am please to state that my area, which encompassed the entire district of An Phu and secured 50 kilometers of border with Cambodia, was the most secure area in South Vietnam when I was forced by our government, in August 1966, to convert the “Civilian Irregular Defense Group” fighters of An Phu to Regional Force soldiers. There were many other Special Forces teams along the borders with Cambodia and Laos who worked and fought alongside those South Vietnamese that they were there to help.
It was our government who aided and abetted the ENEMY – yes AIDED & ABETTED the ENEMY by permitting them safe-havens (sanctuaries) inside Cambodia and directly across from South Vietnam and it was our government who permitted the ENEMY the free and protected use of the Mekong River to move weapons and ammunition and other war goods into the ENEMY SAFE-HAVEN area for them to use to kill South Vietnamese and their American friends. Please read my book “Expendable Elite – One Soldier’s Journey Into Covert Warfare” and you will readily ascertain what I have said to be the truth. General William Westmoreland admits it – and writes it loud in clear in his book “A Soldier Reports.” He actually admits that he was not only aware of the enemy safe havens and their free and protected use of the Mekong River as their main supply route – but also writes how he was prevented from doing anything about it and TOLD not to tell our Congress or the American Press that he knew that they were giving comfort to the enemy. How many of our friends – the South Vietnamese – and how many of our own fighting force were killed or maimed for life because General Westmoreland was not strong enough to demand the enemy not be aided and abetted and that his forces be permitted to attack the enemy anywhere that enemy went after attacking the areas inside South Vietnam? How could he sleep at night? How could Resident Lyndon Johnson, General Harold K. Johnson and Secretary McNamara sleep knowing they intentionally gave the enemy safe havens and a protected supply route?
There are many in our government who would want my book put in the trash bin so our people would not know the truth. My publisher and I are now being sued by the very man who asked me to take the independent operation at An Phu and to be the first to take the war a little ways into Cambodia, who has been joined by five of my own team (read the book and you will know the heroes they were and were told to be) who now sue me for defamation of character!!! Each was surely intimdated as was one whose wife told me in 1995, when I was looking for a publisher, that if her husband were to talk to me they would lose their retirement pay. A lie no doubt: but convince a wife who has to manage the money that “they” couldn’t do that.
She continued, “When I was there, (yes, I was there so I have the right to talk) I remember the soldiers saying, just so much more time and I get to go home. I used to think, the Vietnamese are home. They have no place to go to. They are just trying to live and feed their families, and yet the French can walk on their land and tell them how to live. When the French were done, the United States took over the job. We walked on their land telling them how to live. We flexed our muscles, abused them, and then went home. We did this because hidden factions saw war as a way to make money. They had their own agenda. Troops were sent over and lied to because Americans didn't question. We refused to think for ourselves. We swallowed the lies. We were lied to about why we were going, and we were lied to about what happened there.
I was with a musical group in country for sixteen months, and played from I Corp down to the bottom of the Mekong Delta. One time we played music for a "stand down" outside of Cameron Bay. Troops would be in the field for so many days and come into camp and stand down for three days, and go back out again. A couple of weeks after playing for this one particular "stand down" I was in Danang and one of the troops I played for, called me over. He said, "You don't remember me, but you played for me at Cameron Bay. There were 80 of us in our company, now there are 4. Do you know the most horrific part of this story? The "Stars and Stripes" (which is the government newspaper) reported 6 US deaths and hundreds of dead [enemy]Vietnamese. It was all lies. The figures were deliberately manipulated. I have other stories if anyone is interested. I can tell you about the cocktail party at the Caravelle Hotel in Saigon attended by executives from Bekins, and Shell Gas.”
I can back you on some of what you say inasmuch as General Westmoreland had a US government civilian employee – a GS-14 named Namkin, set up a duo-briefing area in his headquarters. One had maps with information specifically designed to get the “story” to reporters and other guests tht they wanted published. The other area was for Gen W. to brief his officers and men of the truth of what was happening. That is what I was told! We didn’t go there to win the war - though all of us on the ground below the rank of four star general thought we were there to do so and we tried our best to do just that. Men should be sent to fight a war until it is won as we did in WWII. That was a just war. What we were told about North Vietnam’s intent to take the South was true enough – what they didn’t tell us was that we were going to let them in the end.
She continued, “A thought came to me tonight. How sanctimonious we are. We lie to ourselves and others. We have an affliction of being "right". Might is right. How easy it is to fight in another place that cannot touch us at home, and then fly away and come home where it is sterile and safe. Nice little profit making wars that don't touch us seem to be the way to go. The complacency and lack of caring, the misguided ideals, are just rational[e] for our muscle flexing. I am disgusted. I used to be proud to be an American. Now I am sad and angry. The threats to my freedom are not coming from without, but from within. People make decisions from fear, and the fear is being fostered by plan”
Amen, amen, amen. Wim Dankbaar, a courageous native of the Netherlands, is risking his family and his fortune to produce a movie that tells the truth about the JFK assassination. I asked him why he was involved in an “American” problem of such historic proportions. He told me that he wanted to help American become again the “Defender of Freedom” that the world once looked up to us as and rid itself of those who would control the government from outside the White House.
She went on to write “From what I understand next on the agenda is overturning Wade vs. Roe, onto persecuting the gays, and finally a bill to draught men and women. If we take away rights and choices from one, all of us lose them. These are the real threats to freedom! and signed it: Arline Brooks”
Denand the truth from your representatives in Congress – Post what they reply to you and then let’s go from there. This is OUR Nation!
Lieutenant Colonel Daniel Marvin, US Army Special Forces (Retired)
