As with all major chunks of our history, there are several versions. The conventional wisdom in 1965 was that the commie rats had to be stopped at the 17th parallel before they landed in Los Angeles. By 1970, the mainstream view was that the war was a horrible misadventure, and the United States should get out and leave the fighting to the Vietnamese.

That view held near total sway until rather recently, when we started seeing revisionism in books like Michael Lind's "Vietnam, the Necessary War," and in editorial commentary in right-thinking venues, like the Wall Street Journal.

The revisionist argument, as best as I can understand it, is that the war was worth it because it bought time by delaying Soviet expansionism and it demonstrated that America would honor its word so that various small countries would align themselves properly during the Cold War.

But even if we take the revisionists at their word, that doesn't explain why our leaders had to act in such ignoble and dishonorable ways before and during the war.

In theory, they should have been able to state the facts to the public, make the case for the war and enjoy public support. But the record is instead one of betrayals and lies, going back to the end of World War II.

Before that war, Vietnam was a French colony. The Japanese occupied it in 1940. After the United States entered the war, one of its Vietnamese allies was Ho Chi Minh, who directed guerrillas against the Japanese occupiers.

After the Japanese were defeated in 1945, the Vietnamese communists and nationalists believed that independence was in order, and that the United States - itself a product of a rebellion against a colonial power - would support them.

The United States sided with the French. Perhaps this country made the right choice - that was the time when NATO was being put together to counter Soviet expansion in Europe, and an alliance with the French, at the cost of alienating the Vietnamese, was the preferable of two bad choices.

But if this diplomatic dilemma ever went before the public, it has escaped the memory of anyone I've met. The Vietnamese defeated the French at Dien Bien Phu in 1954; to his credit, President Dwight Eisenhower refused to rescue the French with American soldiers or aircraft.

However, Eisenhower refused to implement the Geneva Accords after the French loss. Vietnam was supposed to have an election in 1956, one that Ho Chi Minh would have won, and so the United States, after betraying its anti-colonial heritage, betrayed its democratic beliefs. Vietnam became North and South.

After Eisenhower, there was John Kennedy, who secretly elevated American involvement in South Vietnam and did everything he could to minimize public knowledge while backing one of Asia's most corrupt leaders, Ngo Dinh Diem.

In 1963, Diem was assassinated on Nov. 1 and Kennedy on Nov. 22. Lyndon Johnson ran for president in 1964 as the "peace candidate" who wouldn't send American boys 8,000 miles to do the fighting for Asian boys. But as he was saying those things, his administration fabricated the Gulf of Tonkin incident, a supposed attack on an American warship in international waters, to get congressional authorization for the president to escalate American military commitment.

Again, if Vietnam was indeed a war worth fighting, why the deceit and manipulation? Vietnam destroyed Johnson's political career and reputation. Because Johnson refused to finance the war honestly with taxes, he launched an inflationary spiral that nearly derailed the U.S. economy in the 1960s.

He was replaced in the White House by Richard Nixon, who said he had a secret plan to end the war within a year.

It stayed a secret - more deception. Nixon expanded the war to Cambodia and Laos and tried to keep that secret from the public. But in 1972, he announced that peace was at hand, except that the war continued.

Note that in every presidential election where Vietnam was an issue - 1964, 1968 and 1972 - Americans voted for a candidate who promised peace, and yet the war went on.

Now, if the revisionists want to make a case that Vietnam was a fine and noble exercise for America, they're welcome to it. But along the way, can they explain why so many lies were told?

Copyright 2000 The Denver Post

Source: If Vietnam Was A Noble Cause, Why Were There So Many Lies?