In this episode, Mark and Mark discuss the impact of the Vietnam War on American politics and culture, and why it is so important to understand the roots of the conflict. They discuss the reasons for the conflict, and the legacy it left in the minds of Americans.
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00:01:20.320One of the central controversies of the war, just was it something that could have been won or not?
00:01:25.160And a lot of historians, especially on the left, will say, no, this was, you could never have won it.
00:01:30.640Yes, I mean, the Americans have air power, artillery, the North Vietnamese don't have these things.
00:02:36.200We're going to talk about the Vietnam War.
00:02:38.280And as we discussed before we started, both the two of us and quite a lot of people watching this might not know very much about that war.
00:02:44.820But we feel like, you know, some of the conversations that have been happening in American society lately sort of seem to there seems to be some connection with the things that happened, the conclusions that were made at that time, the impact on the collective psyche of this country.
00:03:00.840So tell us what happened. What was the Vietnam War? How did it happen? When did it happen? Why did it happen?
00:03:06.140Well, that's a great question. And I think if you want to understand the roots of this war, you have to go back at least to 1949. And that's when the Chinese communists won the Chinese Civil War, which is an aspect of our history that most people really don't know very well.
00:03:22.120But it's, you know, one of the most important events of the 20th century.
00:03:25.880And up until that time, you had the Truman administration, a lot of other people claiming that communism isn't really a big deal in Asia.
00:03:34.640We shouldn't be too worried about it. And, you know, for a while, a lot of people thought Mao was just this nice sort of nationalist who said he was going to be democratic.
00:03:42.500But finally, when he takes over, suddenly reality sets in that these communists are actually pretty bad folks who are going to kill lots of people and try to take over the world.
00:03:52.820And so you see then in 1950, the U.S. starts aiding the French in Indochina, Vietnam.
00:04:00.520And then the U.S. also goes into Korea to fight the Korean War.
00:04:05.140And so a lot of people second guess and kind of forget about these underlying sources.
00:04:10.400But I think it's you've got to fundamentally understand that there's a war against communism.
00:04:15.180And this is an ideology that killed 100 million people in the 20th century, which, again, relevant today because you now have young people who don't really know the history saying, oh, socialism, communism are really not that big a deal.
00:04:29.000But Vietnam clearly is aimed at preventing the spread of communism and particularly Chinese led communism in Southeast Asia.
00:04:39.340And so when the French War ends in 1954 and the French just decide they're sick of this, the United States decides it's going to help a new government in South Vietnam as part of the effort to contain communism.
00:04:53.180Because what almost all the Americans at this time thought was that this so-called domino theory meant that if you lose a place like South Vietnam, the other countries in the region are going to fall.
00:05:05.160And that will be actually the guiding principle for most of the war.
00:05:09.340And so we've we've got the domino theory. But what people probably don't know as well, Mark, is that America was financing and helping to support the French financially.
00:05:21.920I mean, they were they were paying billions of dollars even back then, which was a lot of money. It's a lot of money now. But back then it was even more money.
00:05:28.560Yes. And, you know, initially, the United States was not very keen on this French effort because it was in Roosevelt and Truman kind of thought European colonialism is kind of passe and we're not going to support it.
00:05:41.940But then when they saw this communist threat, they agreed to help the French.
00:05:45.960And the French also made promises to the Vietnamese that they could have a greater degree of independence.
00:05:52.080It's also interesting when you get to 1954 and the French are surrounded at Jan Bien Phu, they come to the Americans and say, can you bomb the communists who have surrounded us?
00:06:03.140And Eisenhower actually goes to the British and says, we'd like you to join us in an anti-communist coalition.
00:06:10.740And the British say, well, you know, you didn't help us out in India, so we're not really that keen on helping save the French in Indochina.
00:06:18.380And so for that reason, the United States holds its hand.
00:06:21.680And now it creates an interesting what if.
00:06:25.280I do think had we bombed, actually, we could have perhaps saved the French.0.56
00:06:28.760But we didn't really know that at the time.
00:06:30.700We didn't realize the Viet Minh, the communists, as they call themselves, had committed almost their entire army to Dien Bien Phu.
00:06:51.140So how do we get from this situation, the communists have the north, the American-backed, non-anticommunists have the south.0.53
00:06:59.960How do you get from that to American boots on the ground?0.73
00:07:04.320So at the beginning, the new president of South Vietnam is Ngo Dinh Diem, a very religious Catholic Vietnamese.
00:07:13.540And a lot of people don't think he's going to succeed because there's a lot of chaos in the south.
00:07:18.040But he is able to consolidate power, and the communists initially think they can beat him with just political agitation, but that turns out not to be the case.
00:07:28.320And so as his regime gets stronger, the communists decide in 1960 to launch an armed insurrection, basically using the techniques of Mao for mobilizing the peasants.
00:07:39.600And so you have that begins in 1960. Diem regime struggles at first. They start to get their act together in 1962. President Kennedy helps puts a lot of aid there. Things are going pretty well in 1963.
00:07:54.840And then all of a sudden you have what we call the Buddhist crisis, which is a hugely complicated and convoluted story where supposedly some Buddhists in the population were dissatisfied with the government.
00:08:10.000And we know, in fact, the communists were helping give the propaganda behind this.
00:08:14.140But they duped some of the American press into believing them.
00:08:17.540And so ultimately, the U.S. government supports a coup to overthrow President Xi Jinping in 1963.
00:08:22.8401963. To me, that is a watershed moment in the war because the war effort suddenly goes off a
00:08:31.320cliff. Now, a lot of historians have overlooked some of this, but I think it's quite clear. We
00:08:36.080now know from North Vietnamese sources, this is a huge moment. So the South Vietnamese government
00:08:40.200goes into a tailspin. And then we have Lyndon Johnson come in. Kennedy's assassinated just a
00:08:47.020few weeks after President Xi'em. And Lyndon Johnson in 1964 is focusing on getting re-elected
00:08:54.440in the 64 election. So everything to him has to be looked at that lens. And so you get to the
00:09:00.580Tonkin Gulf incidents of August in 1964. What happens is that a couple of American destroyers
00:09:07.680are out on the high seas and the North Vietnamese attack them. And President Johnson then is
00:09:14.260confronted with the decision what to do. You know, Johnson doesn't want this in the newspaper.
00:09:18.820This is not something he was hoping for. But now he's confronted with this fact. And so
00:09:22.840decides he needs to do something. And here we hear him listening to Secretary of Defense Robert
00:09:28.020McNamara, who is really the architect of the war for both Kennedy and Johnson.
00:09:34.060What McNamara says is we need to convey a signal of our intent to the North Vietnamese. And here
00:09:42.820He's drawn on academic theories about conflict, which are not based in history, which is really kind of remarkable to how influential these especially economists are.
00:09:55.140But he buys into this theory that we'll use force to communicate.
00:09:59.720And so they undertake a very limited raid on the North Vietnamese naval base nearby.
00:10:06.840Now, the North Vietnamese see this and they take away the very opposite message that the Americans are trying to send.
00:10:12.120they see Americans just did a little pinprick strike. That means mean they actually are not
00:10:16.780serious because if you were serious, you'd hit them really hard. So this leads them to believe
00:10:22.560that Johnson is going to throw in the towel on Vietnam or not make a big fuss. And then in the
00:10:28.760election, Lyndon Johnson portrays himself as the peace candidate and says, I'm not going to send
00:10:33.840American boys to fight wars that Asian boys can fight. And so the North Vietnamese see this and
00:10:39.180they say, yeah, you know, South Vietnam is now ripe for the taking. It's in big trouble since
00:10:43.720this coup. And now Lyndon Johnson's saying he's not going to send American troops. So
00:10:48.580soon as Johnson wins the election in November of 64, North Vietnamese launch an invasion with,
00:10:55.960for the first time, sending entire North Vietnamese army divisions. Up until this time,
00:11:01.000they've sent smaller forces recruited in the South. So their plan is...
00:11:04.300I'm so sorry to interrupt. Can I pause you for one second and just come back to the Gulf of
00:11:08.240Tonkin incident because our friend Joe Rogan, he brings this up as like, I think when I
00:11:15.400asked him what his favorite conspiracy is, he said, well, the Gulf of Tonkin is one of
00:11:20.540them because it was a pretext for war that was false.
00:11:23.900What's your reading of some of the narratives around that situation?
00:11:28.360Yes, well, it is a complicated situation.
00:11:31.740So there are two reported attacks. And one of those attacks clearly took place because there were bullet fragments found on the American ships.
00:11:42.540The second one is still kind of a mystery. The Americans at the time, though, did think there was a second attack based on communications intercepts.
00:11:50.660Now, some of those intercepts may be referred to the first one.
00:11:53.500Now, what is misleading, and I think maybe what feeds into conspiracy theories, is McNamara deliberately deceives Congress about what's going on.
00:12:04.960He says this was an unprovoked attack.
00:12:08.440Now, we know, and this was not known at the time, but the time U.S. is actually conducting covert operations against North Vietnam
00:12:15.200and probably has something to do with the fact that they attack the American ships.
00:12:22.560And so McNamara, he comes out as one of the most disreputable people out of all of this, I think.
00:12:31.600And this is a case where he misled the American people.
00:12:37.420I think he just felt that it might get a little too messy if people knew that there was some gray areas in here,
00:12:45.380that maybe this was not purely unprovoked aggression.
00:12:48.780And again, that also wouldn't probably look great with the election coming up.
00:12:53.040But we do know Lyndon Johnson and McNamara, they are already talking about bombing North Vietnam in 1965, even when publicly they're trying to claim that they're not going to send American boys.
00:13:08.580In fact, Johnson's advisers come to him several times in 1964 and say, you know, we've actually got a pretty bad rap, Democrats, because we had Woodrow Wilson and Franklin Roosevelt promise they were going to keep us out of war and then they get us into war and we could be heading down that road this way.
00:13:25.700So we may be fighting a war. So you might not want to talk about being the peace guy, but he ignores them and keeps going on this.
00:13:32.300So it is a rather sorry aspect of the conflict.
00:13:40.200Do you think there's any truth to the idea that actually there were some forces
00:13:44.600that really did want this war to escalate within the American administration at the time?
00:13:49.520There are some who see that it's probably going to happen,
00:13:53.740and there's a big debate between the ones who are in the McNamara camp
00:16:51.940And this is one of the problems that actually begins before 1965.
00:16:57.440There's a big debate in the U.S. over the country of Laos,
00:17:01.200which is where the Ho Chi Minh Trail will come in existence.
00:17:03.960And Kennedy, when he's president, he thinks about sending American troops into Laos0.57
00:17:10.040Because in between North and South Vietnam, you have this narrow demilitarized zone and the North Vietnamese can't easily sneak things across.0.91
00:17:17.840They tried it and they were stopped. So they decide they're going to go through Laos and build this Ho Chi Minh Trail.0.90
00:17:23.560And in some of the U.S. military says, let's go into Laos, cut that Ho Chi Minh Trail.0.52
00:17:28.440But Kennedy listens to his civilian state department and they decide to negotiate neutralization, which means North Vietnamese are supposed to leave and the Americans.0.97
00:17:37.300But the North Vietnamese, being good communists, violate the agreement and they keep going in.0.91
00:17:41.380And so you have an unending supply of equipment and manpower.0.97
00:17:46.480So the North Vietnamese will take very heavy losses, but they can keep sending stuff down through the Ho Chi Minh Trail and keep things up indefinitely.0.99
00:17:55.620We know our audience and every so often something comes along that we think you genuinely want to see.1.00
00:18:02.020Hillsdale College made a film about the American founding.
00:18:57.880One more time, that's hillsdale.edu slash revolution.
00:19:02.500I read, Mark, and correct me if I'm wrong,
00:19:04.680that part of the problem for the American forces is that they were very good when it came to offensive maneuvers.
00:19:11.520Defensive maneuvers, they weren't so good at and they really didn't know, you know,
00:19:16.500they weren't very good strategically at that particular point.
00:19:20.860Well, and this is also a point of a lot of debate.
00:19:24.660General Westmoreland, who's the commander at the time, argues that the American forces should concentrate on what he calls search and destroy.
00:19:32.660So go look for big enemy units, no matter where they are, even if they're in the furthest reaches of the country, in the mountains and jungles.0.61
00:19:41.380And the South Vietnamese, our partners, they will focus on securing the villages and towns where the people, most of the people live.0.88
00:19:50.400And this does have the advantage of keeping Americans, for the most part, away from the population, because Americans don't speak Vietnamese.
00:19:59.900One of the problems is the Vietnamese government this time is in disarray, so they're not very good at this kind of stuff.0.94
00:20:05.680But the Americans, the search and destroy is also a very interesting topic because most of these operations, they don't find the enemy.
00:20:13.000So a lot of people say, well, this was kind of wasteful.0.76
00:20:15.600But we now know, especially from looking at the North Vietnamese side, that for one thing, they still inflict very heavy losses on the North Vietnamese because sometimes they do catch them.0.93
00:20:25.740And that this really keeps the North Vietnamese off balance.0.96
00:20:28.780And if you were just to let the North Vietnamese run free, they would be able to mount massive attacks,0.96
00:20:34.940you know, concentrate in overwhelming numbers at a city or a base.1.00
00:20:38.760And when they are able to do that, the only way you stop them is destroy the city, essentially,
00:20:42.640which occasionally happens, but for the most part doesn't.
00:20:45.000One thing we haven't talked about yet is, and I think it's quite an important part of this,
00:21:15.200We do know they were quite close, especially Mao and Ho Chi Minh themselves.
00:21:20.280And there will be a falling out later.
00:21:21.600But initially, the two of them are quite close to one another and goes back to Djem Bien Phu.0.83
00:21:29.320We know the Chinese had sent a thousand trucks to help the Viet Minh win there.0.74
00:21:33.540And so the Chinese do see this as a major front in dominating Asia, pushing the United States out as a as a major power.0.69
00:21:45.140But the Soviets are also there and the Americans know the Soviets and the Chinese aren't on board.
00:21:50.740But this American intervention actually sort of widens the Soviet Sino-Soviet split because what happens when the Americans come in, the Vietnamese turn to the Soviets for anti-aircraft weapons because there's so much American air power.
00:22:06.740And so when they start getting more from the Soviets, the Chinese start getting jealous and you start to see a falling out.
00:22:13.940And then you have the Cultural Revolution in China. And so eventually the Soviets will become the principal benefactor of the North Vietnamese.0.70
00:22:22.800So 1965, boots on the ground. At the beginning, the Americans were making inroads, high fives all around, kicking commie ass.0.99
00:22:34.000Well, for the troops themselves, they're still pretty motivated for several years now.
00:22:40.580Robert McNamara himself starts to become disillusioned at the end of 65.
00:22:45.880And this is one of the reasons why he's so unpopular is that he's actually now having doubts, but he's not talking too much about them.
00:22:54.420So a lot of people say, well, you should have maybe resigned or maybe told people that we ought to do something different.
00:23:00.380The reason he gets discouraged is that when he when the troops go in the middle of 65, he is still believing that we have these limited war theories that tell us that one side restrains itself and the other side will restrain itself.
00:23:15.120Well, the Americans limit themselves. But late 65, they find out North Vietnamese are sending in a whole bunch more people. And so this theory has been essentially destroyed.0.87
00:23:25.260And so now McNamara realizes that it's not going to work and the war is getting bigger and bigger and he can't really figure out a way out of it.
00:23:35.420Now, you have the military in this point continuing to say we need to either invade Laos, invade North Vietnam, bomb in a much more powerful fashion.
00:23:47.440But the war will continue to go pretty well for the Americans for the next several years.
00:23:53.320And there's still, I think, a pretty strong feeling among the troops that this is something worth fighting for.
00:24:00.740But there is also this growing realization that the politicians are tying our hands behind our back and not letting us win this conflict.
00:24:08.920And that will increasingly become the sentiment of American troops.
00:24:12.240What was the stated war goal? What was the objective for the U.S.?
00:24:17.760The well, officially, it was to protect South Vietnam against North Vietnamese aggression.
00:24:25.300The you had the model of the Korean War where you had North Korea invading South Korea.0.61
00:24:32.340And so the hope was that we could maintain independent South Vietnam.
00:24:38.000Now, once once the American troops go in, you know, again, there is pressure from the military.0.70
00:24:44.400Lin and John said, well, we tried that in Korea and the Chinese came in.0.96
00:24:48.060Now, it turns out to have been a huge miscalculation because we now know the Chinese,0.99
00:24:52.120they had taken a terrific beating in Korea and they said, we're not doing that again.
00:24:56.920But the United States, again, decides to limit itself to the southern half of the country.0.61
00:25:02.520And so you're playing defense all the time and you have an enemy that can keep infiltrating through the Ho Chi Minh Trail.1.00
00:25:10.880Ultimately, the hope is we can build up the South Vietnamese to the point that they can deal with most of this on their own,0.97
00:25:18.340which will bear some fruit later in the war, ultimately runs into trouble.0.99
00:25:24.000Well, it sounds for younger generations, it feels kind of like Afghanistan.
00:25:28.920You know, you stabilize it, you train the local people, everything's great.
00:25:32.400But the moment the American forces aren't there, it reverts to the mean.
00:25:37.900Yes. Well, I will say that the South Vietnamese government was quite a bit better than what we saw in Afghanistan and Iraq. But on the other hand, the enemy was also much stronger. And the U.S. shot itself in the foot several times in Vietnam in terms of promoting, especially this coup in 1963.
00:25:58.480three um you know i do think in the case of vietnam we had viable partners um a case of
00:26:06.740afghanistan i think clearly that was uh you know kind of doomed um because we never really found
00:26:13.020anybody of course as yeah as soon as we withdraw our air support the head of the country flees the
00:26:17.680country i mean the south vietnamese will continue to fight as the u.s uh in the congress pull pull
00:26:23.700out aid and so you mentioned that it's going pretty well for the first couple of years first
00:26:30.040few years uh and the the first demoralization for the american forces there is the realization
00:26:36.660that they're not being allowed to to go in and do the job that they need to do to win the war
00:26:43.500and they're basically sitting ducks just waiting for the the vietcong to attack rather than going0.79
00:26:49.160out and cleaning them out basically yeah that's right you know the initial period is you know0.51
00:26:53.800kind of a uh emergency rescue operation you got to push all the north vietnamese back and so1.00
00:27:00.680that's all quite effective but yeah after a while when uh things just start to drag on0.99
00:27:07.320then you do increasingly have people wondering um you know are we just going to sit here forever and
00:27:13.080And this is similar to Afghanistan in that you have, you know, Afghanistan, when the Americans were there, we, you know, kill Taliban day after day after day, but they kept coming in from Pakistan.
00:27:24.480And so the American people generally don't have unlimited patience for that sort of thing.
00:27:32.040And, you know, I think a big part of the problem, too, was Lyndon Johnson never really made an effort to solve a war.
00:27:39.860He will admit that he was so focused on becoming a domestic policy president, he was going to have the great society and civil rights, that if he talked too much about the war, that was going to distract from this.
00:27:51.260But again, that that that will lead to some of the ultimate disillusionment when if the president's not there explaining to you why you're fighting, it's hard to understand.
00:28:00.740But not only did he not explain why they were fighting, didn't he also downplay the way that the war was going and the casualties that were being incurred as a result of war?
00:28:11.440Yeah, and he was certainly trying to put a positive spin. And, you know, he'll initially is going to be a candidate in 1968 for the presidency. And so he will bring General Westmoreland back to kind of give pep talks and say how things are going well, you know, rather than saying himself. But this is partly to assure people that, you know, in fact, things are going OK.
00:28:34.580then you get to the ted offensive which in 1968 which seems to contradict that now again
00:28:41.220tell us about the ted offensive before before we talk about this what what happened so in early
00:28:46.4201967 the north vietnamese and they they keep losing battle after battle and so they at first
00:28:54.020think things are going well in early 1967 they finally figure out that they're taking crippling
00:29:00.340losses and that their own commanders in the south were kind of deceiving them about how things were
00:29:05.460going because they didn't want to lose face so they were always claiming they killed all these
00:29:09.240american south vietnamese somebody finally did the map and said well wait you the americans and
00:29:13.880south vietnamese are getting stronger even though you claim you did so they finally kind of figured
00:29:17.840out we got to find we got to come up with a new game plan so uh since fighting in the remote areas
00:29:24.640of South Vietnam's not working, what they're going to do is target the cities of South Vietnam,
00:29:30.580which they've largely left alone, and these are controlled by the government.
00:29:34.560Their thinking is that if we go in there, the people there are going to rise up because
00:29:40.220they hate the South Vietnamese and American capitalists, and they think it's going to be
00:29:46.600kind of like in 1945 when they go into Hanoi. So they attack, they decide to attack during
00:29:51.440the Tet holiday, which is the biggest holiday of the year, violating a ceasefire. So they
00:29:55.640have the element of surprise, but turns out the people are not ready to rise up. In fact,
00:30:01.420almost none of them do. And so now they're stuck in the cities and it's not easy for,
00:30:07.040they don't, you know, they're not familiar with the cities, so they don't know where to go.
00:30:09.540They can't just run away easily. So they take crippling losses at the hands of American and
00:30:16.380South Vietnamese forces. But you have an American media that focuses on just the magnitude of this,
00:30:22.500suggesting that this showed that they were stronger than they were, which isn't really the
00:30:27.180case. But again, Lyndon Johnson has mismanaged the war of ideas. And, you know, some of the
00:30:34.180American hawks say, OK, this is like a Pearl Harbor moment. We can tell the people there was
00:30:38.260this dastardly surprise attack. Time to really, you know, take the shackles off, send even more
00:30:44.800troops but johnson doesn't want to do that and so there again you know people that you have an
00:30:51.600opportunity to capitalize on this you know let's win the war sentiment but instead he uh decides
00:30:57.180he doesn't want to do that and you know he ends up dropping out of the presidential race partly
00:31:02.120because of vietnam uh partly for other reasons so reading between the lines of everything you're
00:31:07.180saying my sense and correct me if i'm wrong is your perspective is you either don't fight
00:31:13.780Or if you do fight, you fight to win. And the reason that the Vietnam War ended up not being a success is Lyndon Johnson, McNamara, they tried to sit on two stools and end up falling in between them. Is that fair assessment?
00:31:28.340Yes, there's certainly, I think, a lot of truth to that.
00:31:31.340Now, there is there were other opportunities, too, I think, because one of the central controversies of the war just was it something that could have been won or not.
00:31:40.000And a lot of historians, especially on the left, will say, no, this was you could never have won it.
00:31:45.780Again, I think. The Americans could have gone North Vietnam and maybe there were still been some resistance, but it would have been a much more manageable problem or that we could have cut the Ho Chi Minh trail.
00:31:57.700But you also do have towards the end of the war, the U.S. decides to cut off aid to South
00:32:05.760Vietnam, which South Vietnam is actually getting better over time.
00:32:08.900And so that was another missed opportunity.
00:32:11.560And then the one other huge missed opportunity was this coup in 1963.
00:32:14.680I think had we not done that and sort of torn the government apart, it never would have
00:32:20.960gotten to the to the level that it gets to.
00:32:23.160And why does America cut off aid to South Vietnam?
00:32:25.060Yeah. Because Congress is getting fed up with the war. It's also happens coincides with Watergate. And so Congress is getting angry at Nixon. Nixon has promised that he'll go help the South Vietnamese.
00:32:40.240But because of Watergate, his hands are tied and you have, you know, increasingly large anti-war sentiment within Congress who thinks and has a very benign view of Vietnamese communism and unduly harsh, I think, view of of our Vietnamese allies.
00:33:00.320Is that really fair, Mark? Is it possible also that, you know, because of the draft and because the people who are going to fight and die and be maimed in Vietnam are just normal people who didn't volunteer for this, who didn't want to be professional soldiers, that the sentiment among the American public at this point has already turned? Or is that not true?
00:33:20.240Oh, the Nixon actually has been very mindful of this. And he actually will end the draft for that reason. And so he does take that issue away. I do think a lot of the hesitation and reluctance is because of this draft issue.
00:33:35.080In fact, when you look at how the war is written, a lot of the people who dodged the draft end up becoming very harsh critics of the war.
00:33:42.520But towards the end, you know, it's not a big, you know, the draft is no longer an issue, but it's part of it's just, you know, some people are saying, you know, we're tired of this.
00:37:39.800Yeah. And that's where why it was so problematic that Lyndon Johnson is not out there explaining to people.
00:37:46.180And, you know, a lot of his own aides are saying, you look what Franklin Roosevelt did in World War Two.
00:37:50.440He was out there telling people why it's important for our our sons to be going over there and risking their lives.
00:37:59.300And, you know, that did a lot to help sustain morale because, yeah, I mean, it's an enormous risk.
00:38:06.280any family takes or any young man to go, you know, put your life at risk.
00:38:10.560So it should be something that the people understand and understand its importance.
00:38:17.140Now, when Richard Nixon comes in, he does address this problem and he gives his famous silent majority speech
00:38:23.340where he does make a real effort to explain the war to the people, which should have been done long ago.
00:38:30.980But as I said, I do think actually a pretty strong case to be made of why this war was important.
00:38:37.500But unfortunately, Lyndon Johnson doesn't really make that case.
00:38:40.400But it's also as well, there were huge figures at the time like Muhammad Ali, who's, you know, no, no, no Viet Cong has ever called me the N word.
00:38:48.220You know, this huge cultural and sporting figure who refuses to draft on principle.
00:38:52.960I mean, that's got to have a huge impact, not only on the zeitgeist, but also on the black population as well.
00:39:00.980Yeah, so the black population is interesting because in the early years of the war, it's not a big issue for the most part.
00:39:09.020You do have Martin Luther King coming out, but, you know, the American forces in Vietnam are seen as sort of a model of racial integration because you don't have much in the terms of racial friction from 65 to 68.
00:39:22.220Now, after 68, you increasingly see the influence of the black power movement, and that causes a lot of problems in Vietnam as well as in the U.S., and increasingly you have this notion that this is a white man's war.
00:39:38.480And you also have some prominent media actresses, Jane Fonda being the most well-known example, who come out basically in support of the enemy.0.88
00:39:51.320And so that was also very distressing for the American troops.
00:39:55.620A lot of them still will never forgive Jane Fonda.
00:39:58.420I mean, she goes to North Vietnam and poses with the North Vietnamese anti-aircraft weapons.
00:40:03.480Basically, it looks like she's helping the guys we're trying to shoot at our pilots.
00:40:07.520So you really have a sense of betrayal that you don't see really in earlier conflicts.
00:40:13.440And you mentioned that the perception was eventually that this was a white man's war.
00:40:19.800Is the implication it's a white man's war being fought disproportionately by black people?
00:40:27.060Well, there will be allegations made like that in around 1967.
00:40:32.260And at that point, I mean, it's interesting, too, because previously, until the Korean
00:40:36.360war blacks were generally kept out of the combat units and so um at least the combat use that that
00:40:42.740were doing doing um you know in the most difficult parts of the fighting and so um through integration
00:40:49.840you know some senses it was an advance for now they're integrated in these combat units uh but
00:40:56.840uh and i don't know the exact number something like maybe 15 to 20 percent in those first few
00:41:01.960years of the casualties were blacks at a time when they were about 12 percent of the population.
00:41:06.460So they are overrepresented. Now, after that becomes an issue, the U.S. actually changes the
00:41:13.140policy so that there is not this disparity. And so for the war as a whole, the blacks are right1.00
00:41:20.960around there. It's right around 12 percent of the population overall. And they're also 12 percent of
00:41:26.700the casualties. Because there was a lot of talk and it'd be good to actually delve into this.
00:41:31.660that there was a real problem with racialization, racism within the armed forces in Vietnam.
00:41:39.040Yes. And now the having spent a great deal of time looking at that, I think just about anyone,
00:41:45.220any veteran will tell you that this problem was not that big of a deal once you were in the field
00:41:51.180because your life depended on cooperation. And so the real friction all took place in the rear areas.
00:41:58.720you have people with too much time to do
00:42:27.900starting around, I would assume that the racial antagonism is simply the legacy of the history of
00:42:34.260slavery and Jim Crow and all the rest of it in this country. Is that what's driving this or is
00:42:39.620there a new dimension? You mentioned the black power movement. Yeah, I do think the black power0.94
00:42:46.280movement is sort of starting to change people's attitudes. For one thing, a lot of the blacks who0.67
00:42:52.540fight early in the war had volunteered for service you know a lot of them i think believed
00:42:58.300in sort of the vision of martin luther king that we want sort of a colorblind society and you know
00:43:03.340of course a lot of people you know decided you know after you have the civil rights act thing
00:43:09.340there's not progress as rapidly as some people might want so then you start to see i mean it's
00:43:13.660a little bit like what we saw too with the um george floyd movement more recently where people
00:43:18.620say, well, the colorblind society isn't doing enough for us, so we need to take a more radical
00:43:26.080approach and one that is more confrontational towards whites.0.83
00:43:33.400Because you had the problems within the army. There was also problems with drug taking,
00:43:38.980wasn't there? Yes. And that also is more prevalent in the rear areas because, again,
00:43:45.920and people kind of know that this could get you killed.
00:43:49.700Now, the combat truth is they may use drugs.
00:43:51.400They probably won't be doing it when they're out in the field.
00:43:55.300Probably, too, because their other soldiers would get really angry at them for doing that
00:43:59.220because you're putting everyone's lives in jeopardy.
00:44:01.120But, yeah, the drug problem is also getting worse about the same time,
00:44:04.280and it's very easy to get marijuana, and heroin then also becomes a problem.
00:44:09.520That, of course, is a much more serious matter,
00:44:12.880And and so there are real problems. You know, it's not the case, I would say, that the U.S. forces are becoming less effective.
00:44:23.900I mean, there is one thing that's happening in this period that probably does more than either race or drugs to undermine performance.
00:44:32.140And that is when the Americans start withdrawing under Nixon, you start to have people saying, you know, I don't want to be the last guy to die in Vietnam.
00:44:40.380And here Nixon does not probably do a good enough job. Although you also will see this in World War II or in Korea, you also have this, you know, near the end of the war, nobody wants to be like the last guy to die. So you do have morale problems as a result of that in the latter stages.
00:44:57.060And you also have scandals going on. So that had a very real impact, particularly on Americans' view of their boys. I mean, there was a scandal with rape, mass rape happening. So let's talk about that. What were these scandals that really damaged Americans' viewpoint of their army?
00:45:17.860Well, the one big war crime was the My Lai Massacre, which took place in 1968.
00:45:23.140And you had a part of a company of American forces went into a village and killed and or raped over 400 people.
00:45:37.180And now he actually was stopped when an American pilot saw this was going on and came in and intervened and then told higher headquarters.
00:45:45.040but it was a horrific war crime and now the this was done by low-level officers but officers at a
00:45:53.540higher higher level thought that if this word gets out that this is gonna you know be catastrophic
00:46:00.680PR nightmare so let's try to hide it so they're able to hide it at first but about a year later
00:46:06.260the story comes out. And so that is hugely controversial. You know, there's Lieutenant
00:46:14.500Callie, who's the leading perpetrators put on trial, will get convicted. Americans actually
00:46:20.580have divided on this. I mean, some people think that Callie was just being made a scapegoat.
00:46:26.240Other people thought, you know, Callie fully deserves this. He was doing this. Now there's
00:46:31.600then speculation. Maybe there's this was happening all the time. I think clearly we know
00:46:35.700So it wasn't this was an aberration, but it does become sort of a rallying call for anti-war movement and others who are saying, look, we're committing war crimes.0.61
00:46:45.780I would add to, you know, Americans have committed war crimes.
00:46:48.940I mean, most wars have some crimes and oftentimes they don't get as much publicity.
00:46:52.840But this one, you know, they have pictures that are circulated.
00:46:55.580And so it is very harmful for the American cause.
00:47:00.220And then you have the Pentagon Papers where Daniel Ellsberg releases this study that had been put together actually under the Johnson administration.
00:47:09.820Now, it doesn't come out till Nixon's president, but it does reveal some of the deceit and mistakes that were committed by people like McNamara and Johnson and all the disastrous errors that came from that.
00:47:26.280So that will certainly provoke a lot of controversy.
00:47:28.980You know, Nixon himself is not covered in the Pentagon Papers. And at first he's kind of thinks, I'll just let this go. But then Henry Kissinger, who is his leading, his national security advisor, tells him that we have to figure out who did this and punish them ruthlessly and that there's actually probably a conspiracy involved.
00:47:50.340Can I just pause you there, Mark? Because we skipped over. We didn't skip over, but we kind of didn't really delve into what the Pentagon Papers actually said. What were the accusations? What were the mistakes made? What were the crimes that were committed? And then we can come back to this bit, which is Kissinger and saying we need to punish our enemies and the people who did this.
00:48:13.280Yeah. So the Pentagon Papers expose the American role in the coup of 1963.
00:48:19.720And at the time, up until this time, it wasn't clear what role the Americans had actually played.
00:48:24.640But now these make clear that, in fact, the U.S. embassy is supporting this coup.
00:48:29.160The CIA is involved. And so that that was quite disconcerting for a lot of people, both the right and the left, who are wondering why and why are we actually overthrowing this allied government of ours?
00:48:41.780You have information about the Tonkin Gulf suggesting that maybe it was not quite what we were told, that in fact there was some provocation involved.
00:48:52.620You have documents indicating that they're actually planning to go to war when Lyndon Johnson is saying that he's the peace candidate.
00:49:02.340And you have talk of the war strategy.
00:49:05.720And one thing we haven't talked about yet is Robert McNamara had what he called the strategy of gradual escalation.
00:49:12.060And his skin goes back to these game theories that he's pulled from academia.
00:49:16.760But he argues that when we start bombing North Vietnam in early 1965, we should start off at a low level and build up gradually.
00:49:25.800And that's part of our plan to communicate our intent and also to limit our risk.
00:49:30.520Now, the Joint Chiefs of Staff at the same time, this also comes up in the pending papers.
00:49:34.120The Joint Chiefs of Staff is saying, that's crazy.
00:49:35.720hit him hard right away. And so, and clearly the strategy of gradual escalation doesn't work. And
00:49:41.960in fact, what happens is it gives the North Vietnamese time to build up their anti-aircraft
00:49:46.940defenses. So you have a lot of strategic incompetence being exposed here in the Pentagon
00:49:53.140papers. Right. I'm going to level with you. I'm not a gamer, even though I look like one. I'm not
00:49:58.980going to pretend I've been grinding through RPGs between recordings, although I have strong
00:50:03.380opinions about which Final Fantasy was the best one. I think it's Japanese and I think there's a
00:50:08.240sword. That's genuinely everything I know. But our social media guys showed me this app and I
00:50:13.180genuinely thought that's quite clever. It's called Snacksy. Basically, game publishers need new
00:50:18.280players and they're willing to pay to get them. Snacksy just passes that money onto you. You play
00:50:23.800games you were probably going to play anyway. You earn coins and you cash them out for real rewards.
00:50:29.260PayPal, Amazon, Netflix, gift cards. If you prefer gaming credit, you can redeem for PlayStation,
00:50:35.260Xbox, Steam and Nintendo, or cash out your Aniba wallet. I've got no idea what that means.
00:50:40.460Actual money, not just points that expire. It takes a few minutes to set up. You open the app,
00:50:45.260swipe through the game offers, pick something that looks decent, play it, earn, redeem. That's
00:50:50.700the whole thing. There's a sign up bonus worth up to $10 if you use our link, which is in the
00:50:56.140description of this episode that's s n a k z y snacksy click the link in the description to get
00:51:04.620started and when you sign up use the code trigger pod that's t-r-i-g-g-e-r-p-o-d to claim your ten
00:51:15.120dollar bonus and the app is mobile only so click the link from your phone not your laptop and uh
00:51:23.040Mark, this takes us into the realm of Hollywood, which actually is a big part of this, but
00:51:51.320I think a lot of it's been exaggerated. Probably some truth to it. I mean, a lot of the drugs taking place are just taking place within that theater. They're not going back and forth necessarily with the United States.
00:52:06.620I mean, it does get a little murky when the U.S. is supporting various groups in Laos and Cambodia that are also involved in the drug trade.
00:52:18.700And so it sometimes looks like the U.S. is supporting them.
00:52:23.040A lot of that's the CIA side of it still.
00:52:26.140Actually, we don't know that much about it.
00:52:27.560They they don't release records on those things.
00:52:30.220But, yeah, I don't think it's probably as serious as people might imagine.
00:53:27.660But Henry Kissinger and others tell Nixon that there may be a broader conspiracy here.
00:53:32.660It might involve some State Department people, some think tanks.
00:53:36.600And so Nixon decides to set up a group that will become known as the Plumbers to go find out and dig dirt on these people.
00:53:44.680And so one of the people they target initially is a psychiatrist of Daniel Ellsberg.
00:53:49.660and they go and raid his apartment without really proper legal clearance.
00:53:59.260They end up not finding anything, but this will become important
00:54:01.840because it basically sets the stage for the actual Watergate break-in,
00:54:05.900which is what's going to take Nixon down ultimately.
00:54:10.520And so Nixon, so he gives a silent majority speech in November of 69,
00:54:17.580In 1970, there's a coup in Cambodia, throws out the pro-communist leader, and the U.S. then decides to go into Cambodia to help the Cambodian government, which is useful in reducing sanctuary.
00:54:33.940And one of the things we find out is that the Cambodian port of Sihanoukville was a massive hub for North Vietnamese supplies coming in.0.81
01:01:21.540What you see in 65 is that, in fact, there are lots of countries under threat from communism.
01:01:28.820The most important one, which doesn't often get its due attention, is Indonesia.
01:01:33.500At this time, there's a civil war brewing between Sukarno, who is a communist, essentially, and his military.
01:01:42.180And that will actually come to a head in September of 65.
01:01:47.420And the military will end up overthrowing Sukarno.
01:01:50.480But they will actually say later that the reason they took the stand was because they realized the Americans were not bailing out.
01:01:58.120Had we given up on South Vietnam, I mean, no country in Asia is going to want to be your ally if they see you send 50,000 troops to a country and then leave when the going gets rough.
01:02:09.340So it was actually, I think, very important in the case of Indonesia, also Thailand, Singapore, Singapore's Lee Kuan Yew.
01:02:17.040It's very explicitly come out and said that Vietnam bought time for Southeast Asia to solidify and build up its strength against communism.
01:02:25.780And another thing that happens is American intervention will drive North Vietnam and China apart for a few reasons.0.58
01:02:37.220One, as I mentioned, there's now all the Soviet aides coming in.
01:02:41.740American intervention also, I think, plays a role in the Cultural Revolution in China in 1966,
01:02:46.760which Mao had thought he had this big period of expansion in Vietnam and Indonesia.
01:02:54.440Both those get crushed, and he now turns inward for enemies, and he loses interest in international affairs.
01:03:01.680And so by the time you get to 75, Chinese and North Vietnamese have turned against each other,
01:03:07.320and in fact they'll fight a war in 1979.
01:03:10.200So most of the dominoes don't fall, but Cambodia and Laos fall, so those are significant.0.65
01:03:16.180And it's also worth noting, this leads then to the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia, who killed some two million people in this genocidal conflict, which, again, I think is worth keeping in mind that this is a fanatical ideology.0.92
01:03:32.900Vietnamese also kill a lot of their own people. Most of it goes under the radar.0.93
01:03:37.940But, you know, I think ultimately the U.S., while it ultimately loses South Vietnam, it holds on to a lot of other Asian countries, which today are actually the main U.S. allies in this ongoing competition with China.
01:03:53.100And again, reading between the lines of what you're saying, it sounds to me like your view, and of course there'll be historians who disagree on this, but your view, I guess, is it was the right war to fight.
01:04:06.660And that is, yeah, and those are, I mean, really the central issues of the war and, you know, unfortunately, so politicized in this country that to make that argument is sort of radioactive in American academia.
01:04:23.860It's called, the show is called Trigonometry for a reason.
01:04:26.860By the way, I honestly didn't know that was going to be your perspective.
01:04:30.480You know, you were just, you were recommended to us by a friend and really interested in your thoughts on it.
01:04:36.200So it's an interesting perspective. It's one I have heard from other people. And as you say, it is very toxic. And I imagine that is partly because, well, look, it might not be true. There will be people who say it's not true. But also, I think, because of just how powerful the Hollywood narrative that was created after the war was. And I'm not saying that narrative is false. I'm not qualified to assess whether it's true or false.
01:05:02.200What I'm saying is even as someone who's not American, who wasn't brought up in America, if I had to tell you what the story of the Vietnam War was, it would be, you know, Platoon.
01:05:14.860It would be, what's the one with Tom Cruise?
01:05:25.140And I mean, the country very much split along political lines.
01:05:28.140You know, Ronald Reagan, you know, described this as a noble cause.
01:05:32.200But most of the left has taken the view that it was unnecessary, unwinnable.
01:05:38.200And, you know, part of a big part, in my view, of why the left pushed that so hard is that what's interesting, look what's going on in college campuses in the middle of 60s.
01:05:49.280When the U.S. goes into Vietnam, there's actually very little protest.
01:05:53.100You know, again, this is one of those areas where it's worth keeping in mind the chronology.
01:05:56.760um the protests don't start till 1967 and it coincides exactly with the reduction of draft
01:06:04.780deferments for students for college students and so suddenly um and i'm not the first person today
01:06:11.340but i think it's true that a lot of this opposition is driven by the fact that when you tell some
01:06:17.440you know students these college students didn't care that much about the war until they said well
01:06:21.860we're going to send you there and now some of them don't want to go and if you look at you know
01:06:26.500nation's history it's almost always the case that the manly thing the you know civic thing to do is
01:06:33.780to go when your country calls you so if you're going to not go and not answer the country's call
01:06:39.300you have to come up with a reason and so the reason is this was a terrible war and we never
01:06:44.500should have fought it uh again i think much of this is for self-serving reasons and if you actually
01:06:48.900look into the facts of the war uh they don't bear those things out a little bit of bush back to that
01:06:54.020So I have American friends and I know some people who've actually, Vietnam veterans, one whose father committed suicide, came back completely damaged because of what he saw.
01:07:06.840Young man ended up killing himself before the age of 30.
01:07:12.500I think as well, we need to acknowledge, Mark, that there was a very real psychological scar that was imprinted amongst a generation of young men, particularly blue collar working class young men.
01:07:24.700Well, I think there's certainly cases of that. Now, it is interesting.
01:07:29.460The polls that have been done, Vietnam veterans, there was a survey done a few years after the war.
01:07:34.560About 90 percent of them said they were actually proud of their service.
01:07:37.800Now, most of those people also said the problem was that we tied our hands behind our back.
01:07:43.840So, again, they didn't have gripes, but it was about how it was fought.
01:07:49.080Now, the question of psychological damage is an interesting one, too,
01:07:53.960because you have the rise of certain psychiatrists who are arguing that there is some unique mental illness,
01:08:04.460and we're going to call PTSD, that's coming out of Vietnam.
01:08:07.800I think that's mostly been debunked in just in that if you look at any war, there are people with these same problems coming back.
01:08:16.580Probably a little bit worse, given that when people came home, they weren't greeted as heroes.
01:08:20.780I would say that. But, you know, any war, I mean, if you talk with veterans of World War Two or Korea or, you know, Afghanistan,
01:08:30.300I mean, there's a lot of veterans come back from Afghanistan, Iraq, who have committed suicide as well, tragically.
01:08:37.800But, yeah, I think it's worth keeping in mind that, you know, in many senses, it's really not any worse of a war than most of the wars we've fought.
01:08:50.460Because, you know, all the wars we've fought have been pretty awful.
01:08:53.140But again, when you compare the Hollywood, you know, the Hollywood version of World War II movies don't look quite like Platoon or, you know, Apocalypse Now.
01:09:02.260Look, I'll be honest with you. I was skeptical.
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01:10:25.760of this episode. Give it a go. And do you think the Vietnam War has made a profound impact on how
01:10:33.040America sees wars moving forward? I do. And I think, you know, the left and the right took
01:10:39.880different lessons. I mean, the left lesson was basically we want to stay out of wars and left
01:10:45.880pretty much stuck with that, you know, for decades. And, you know, every time a war came,
01:10:50.140they said, this is another Vietnam. It's been interesting with Ukraine. Suddenly they've
01:10:54.100now become the party of war, which they were actually for, they got us into several wars in
01:11:00.620the 20th century. You know, the political right, you know, came out with the message that if you're
01:11:05.720going to fight, you fight to win. And so we saw in the first Gulf War, the Bush administration
01:11:11.840was very intent on saying, you know, we're going to use maximum force and work there. Now, then you
01:11:18.500get to Afghanistan, Iraq. You know, in both of those cases, I think the U.S. didn't really know
01:11:23.880what was coming we weren't expecting a war we thought we are a protracted war and um so and
01:11:32.660neither of those went quite as as expected yeah you can say that yes so i think that's what's um
01:11:39.660you know i was going to ask you about that because do you think the the vietnam war and the portrayal
01:11:46.580of it rightly or wrongly in the media in hollywood among you know a lot of people in the country as
01:11:52.980well it's the template onto which the failure of afghanistan and the failure of iraq fit very
01:11:58.980nicely because you know i hinted at this when we right at the beginning of our conversation
01:12:03.920i i kind of it's strange for us because we're not immersed in american culture nearly as much
01:12:10.240when we look at conflicts that are happening now ukraine israel uh and you know the left and right
01:12:16.800split in different ways on those issues both within and against each other etc but you hear
01:12:22.200a lot of people say this thing like i'm not dying for ukraine or we're not sending american boys
01:12:27.460which is kind of like weird in the current context because that really isn't remotely what's
01:12:33.240happening in either of those conflicts nor is it the direction of travel nor does the united
01:12:38.720states have a draft so even if america did put boots on the ground which it has no intention
01:12:44.360of doing they would be people who volunteered for that but the the cultural dominance of this thing
01:12:51.300of like, we're not going to, we're not dying for a foreign country. Does that come from Vietnam?
01:12:58.060I think on the left, but it's been interesting on the right, you know, that was not, as I said,
01:13:03.880that was not the main message that the right took. The right took away the message that you fight to
01:13:09.380win. It's not that you just don't fight. Whereas I think in recent times, mainly I think because
01:13:16.420of Iraq and Afghanistan, you increasingly hear people on the right who are questioning whether
01:13:21.180we should get involved in these interventions.
01:13:25.120But again, I think the right now is thinking more in terms of, you know, Iraq, Afghanistan,
01:16:00.560I do think we also see today what we saw before is that American politicians have not done a good job
01:16:06.340explaining to the american people why ukraine or israel or whatever other causes why this is
01:16:15.220actually so important to us um and you know i spend a lot of time teaching college students
01:16:19.380and that's one thing they say they don't really understand you know why are we spending all this
01:16:23.860money here but it hasn't really been explained to us and how do you explain it to your students um
01:16:28.820Well, you know, I take I think both of them are tricky issues. They're not as compelling as the case you have for Vietnam. I mean, I think in the case of Ukraine, we're obviously still have great interests in Europe.
01:16:46.500You know, it's not a, you know, if Eastern Europe gets unsettled, we have, you know, problems of migration, which, of course, that's a big issue here.
01:16:59.480Potentially, you know, Russia could keep pushing Western, you know, I'm not convinced that Russia is going to ever go attack Poland.
01:17:07.000But, you know, there is also the sort of human element that you have, you know, mass killings of civilians.0.57
01:17:13.340And at some point, you know, as the world's greatest power, that's something we may not want to be willing to tolerate.
01:17:19.960I'm not hearing much strategic interest for the United States in that explanation, though.
01:17:23.720Right. Well, that's the thing, too, is I think it's harder to make the case for strategic interest,
01:17:29.780which is perhaps part of why, you know, you don't hear a lot of people in Washington make that case.
01:17:35.180I mean, the other reality you have is, you know, we now have a situation where Russia seems to be just using attrition and they've sort of calculating on their larger population that they're eventually going to grind Ukraine down, which I think would just, you know, be terrible for all concerned.
01:17:51.560And so, you know, my own view is ultimately need to find some kind of solution to stop this, which probably means, you know, the Ukrainians may have to give some things up, which is not great either.0.54
01:18:02.280I mean, you don't want to set the precedent for countries taking territory and then keeping it.0.83
01:18:07.420But it's really, to me, just a nasty problem without a lot of very good solutions at this point.
01:18:15.660And, you know, I think, you know, the Biden administration, I remember a couple of years ago, they were they thought that the Ukrainians were going to, you know, prevail militarily.
01:18:28.100And, you know, the Russians did very poorly at the beginning.
01:18:31.100And so I think they thought that was going to continue while it's not.
01:18:37.720Well, the weird position of the Biden administration was is like Ukraine is going to win, but we're not going to give them the weapons to do it.
01:18:44.540So it's like, well, they could have won, maybe.
01:20:41.860Well, a lot of it, I think, you know, has to do with history.0.77
01:20:45.260I mean, we have, there's a sense in this country still, although, again, this is sort of fading,
01:20:50.760that in the aftermath of World War II, after all that was inflicted on the Jewish people,
01:20:58.780that they deserve to have a homeland and a place, you know, where they could live in safety.
01:21:04.620You know, we've always also had this competing view.
01:21:06.400Well, we also want to be friends with the Arab countries and the Islamic countries around them.
01:21:13.420You know, I think this was an easier case to make when the U.S. was more concerned about the Middle East.
01:21:18.400We had these fears of terrorism, that, you know, Israel's an ally in terms of dealing with the terrorist threat.
01:21:24.540But I think that's partly why it's harder to get support now, because, you know, most Americans, I don't think, now think about terrorism in the same way.
01:21:35.200You know, I think also there is, you know, in terms of we consider Iran to be one of our top enemies, which makes sense.0.61
01:21:44.840Clearly, Israel is critical in terms of keeping those guys in check.0.75
01:21:50.360Mark, doesn't it also represent what we're talking about, the scars of Vietnam and that there's a lot of people in this country who simply don't trust government because they go, you've lied to me repeatedly.
01:22:01.980you lied to me over Vietnam and it's just gone right the way weapons of mass destruction why
01:22:08.320should I believe you why should I believe a single word you say about Israel Ukraine or anything else0.77
01:22:13.540yeah I think that's a valid point I mean certainly you hear a lot of that coming out and not just0.88
01:22:19.300Vietnam but also you know Watergate reinforces this and I said the Pentagon papers are part of
01:22:24.240this because clearly people are being lied to now I do think uh it's exaggerating some people say
01:22:29.960well, up until Vietnam, America trusts its leaders. Well, if you actually go back and look
01:22:34.720at your history, Americans have always had a certain suspicion of our leaders, you know,
01:22:38.740going back to, you know, George III. So I don't think it's quite the case that we just,
01:22:44.240you know, never thought that our leaders would lie. I mean, if you look in the early Republic,
01:22:49.100too, they're flinging all sorts of mud and saying how the other sides are all a bunch of scoundrels.0.88
01:22:54.380So I think it goes in cycles, too. I mean, yes, in the 90s, and that's partly what, you know, when you get to the first Gulf War, there is, you know, a lot of people think, OK, well, yes, there are weapons of mass destruction and they seem to know what they're doing.
01:23:09.560again obviously that turned out to be huge and so now we're back in one of those periods of deep
01:23:15.320distrust um and yeah i'm not sure what gets you out i mean i think it could be a president who
01:23:23.240you know i think that's one of ronald reagan's big accomplishments is that he was the kind of
01:23:27.400person who could help restore a certain degree of trust in the government um and i don't think
01:23:33.240we've really had a figure since then in this country who's been able to do that the thing is
01:23:39.320Because the media environment is now so, so different.
01:23:42.760Social media, podcasting, the plurality of voices as such.
01:23:49.080And also, as I said, this episode will go out some time ago, but we just had a story