As I sang in a song recorded in 1984, but written in 1978, "Everything 'bout Vietnam is little more than a blur/You understand it like you understood Aaron Burr." Ken Burns' documentary didn't help, and I have said it is far better to watch the 1995 PBS documentary on Vietnam, based upon former Washington Post Vietnam era military reporter, Stanley Karnow's book. I say this because Vietnam remains a blur to almost every living American, and, when we review what Trump's administration has agreed to in Afghanistan with the formerly hated Taliban, we see the clear echoes of Nixon's duplicity, surrender, or whatever negative term one wishes to use.
Let's first go over the 1973 Paris Peace Accords regarding the land we now call again Vietnam, without the "North" or "South" portions. Here are the Accords for review. In Chapter I, Article I, we see the following:
Chapter I
The Vietnamese People’s Fundamental National Rights
Article 1
The United States and all other countries respect the independence, sovereignty, unity, and territorial integrity of Vietnam as recognized by the 1954 Geneva Agreements on Vietnam.
Note there is no reference to North or South Vietnam, just Vietnam. And we will get to the 1954 Geneva Agreements below. However, there's more to the 1973 Accords that deal with this point. In Chapter V, Article 15, the 1973 Accords state:
The reunification of Viet-Nam shall be carried out step by step through peaceful means on the basis of discussions and agreements between North and South Viet-Nam, without coercion or annexation by either party, and without foreign interference. The time for reunification will be agreed upon by North and South Viet-Nam.
Pending reunification:
(a) The military demarcation line between the two zones at the 17th parallel is only provisional and not a political or territorial boundary, as provided for in paragraph 6 of the Final Declaration of the 1954 Geneva Conference.
(b) North and South Viet-Nam shall respect the Demilitarized Zone on either side of the Provisional Military Demarcation Line.
(c) North and South Viet-Nam shall promptly start negotiations with a view to reestablishing-normal relations in various fields. Among the questions to be negotiated are the modalities of civilian movement across the Provisional Military Demarcation Line.
(d) North and South Viet-Nam shall not join any military alliance or military bloc and shall not allow foreign powers to maintain military bases, troops; military advisers, and military personnel on their respective territories, as stipulated in the 1954 Geneva Agreements on Viet-Nam.
The significance is stunning when we consider the 1954 Geneva Agreements on Vietnam always admitted there is only one political entity known as Vietnam--not a North Vietnam or South Vietnam, and that even the second portion cited above is about pulling back into one nation called Vietnam, as if the US war against Vietnam, which began in 1955, and continued through 1973 and beyond, never occurred.
What must be understood about the 1954 Geneva Agreements is it expressed there was going to be a mere military separation along the 17th Parallel in Vietnam between French colonial troops (the French had been in their own quagmire before we took over their quagmire) and the relatively few Vietnamese soldiers loyal to the French colonialists. The 1954 Accords expressly stated, in the Final Declaration, paragraph 6, regrading this military, but not political separation:
What must be understood about the 1954 Geneva Agreements is it expressed there was going to be a mere military separation along the 17th Parallel in Vietnam between French colonial troops (the French had been in their own quagmire before we took over their quagmire) and the relatively few Vietnamese soldiers loyal to the French colonialists. The 1954 Accords expressly stated, in the Final Declaration, paragraph 6, regrading this military, but not political separation:
The Conference recognizes that the essential purpose of the agreement relating to Viet- Nam is to settle military questions with a view to ending hostilities and that the military demarcation line is provisional and should not in any way be interpreted as constituting a political or territorial boundary. The Conference expresses its conviction that the execution of the provisions set out in the present declaration and in the agreement on the cessation of hostilities creates the necessary basis for the achievement in the near future of a political settlement in Viet- Nam. (Bolding added)
It remains deeply frustrating for me to read historians' and writers' accounts of the 1954 Geneva Conference where they state the 1954 Accords divided Vietnam into two nations called North Vietnam and South Vietnam. The document mentions "unification" once, in Chapter II, Article 14, but only in the context of political and administrative administration anchored in the eventual orderly removal of French colonial troops before the general elections to be held no later than July 1956.* In his memoirs, President Eisenhower admitted he was told by government analysts Ho Chi Minh, the Communist, would have won those elections (see here). The memoir is, however, a sanitized version, as Eisenhower was even more specific in private. He said:
I have never talked or corresponded with a person knowledgeable in Indochinese affairs who did not agree that had elections been held as of the time of the fighting (in the period of 1954-1956), a possible 80 per cent of the population would have voted for the communist Ho Chi Minh as their leader.
80%. Just sit and think about that for a moment. What the US then did, in 1955, was to create, out of whole cloth, a new political government called South Vietnam, and brought in from exile in upstate New York, a man named Diem, who we installed as president. Karnow's book and the PBS documentary, based upon his book, are excellent on this; Ken Burns' documentary, not so much.
We need not go into the details of the lies and distortions of successive US presidents from Eisenhower to Nixon and beyond regarding our war against Vietnam and the fact that we still don't know if our war against the Vietnamese people cost two or three million Vietnamese lives. Unlike the German Nazis, we knew better than to keep count of what even former Nuremberg War Crimes Trial prosecutor, Telford Taylor, admitted was reasonably called one big war crime--even though Taylor, who had earlier endorsed the war against Vietnam, was still not sure he could bring himself to agree the entire enterprise, as opposed to various bombings and massacres of entire villages, was a war crime. See here for a back and forth between two writers at the NY Review of Books over Taylor's book shortly after it appeared in 1971. And check page 431 of Stanley Karnow's book on Vietnam, where he described North Vietnam as approximately the size of Texas, and then said, by January 1973, "the United States had dropped...triple the bomb tonnage dropped on Europe, Asia and Africa during World War II." And many Americans believe we only pursued a "limited" war. Also, Noam Chomsky used to point out quite often how much of the bombing LBJ ordered in the period 1964-1968 fell on South Vietnam territory, and was at least as much bomb tonnage the US dropped in Europe in World War II. And let's just think a moment about napalm and Agent Orange, and what it did to the people and land in Vietnam, and not merely what those chemicals did to our nation's soldiers.
Anyway, back to the 1973 Paris Accords. Admittedly, there are lots of statements regarding the US created entity, South Vietnam, which one may argue undermines the power of Chapter I, Article 1 and Chapter V, Article 15 of the Accords. However, even admitting that does not negate the power of the admissions in the Accord how there is only one nation of Vietnam. For, in the 1973 Accords, the US had agreed to let the North-Communist Vietnam government supported Viet Cong, known as the National Liberation Front (NLF), directly negotiate with the US backed political/military leadership under South Vietnam President Thieu. The Accords repeatedly treat the NLF as if it was an equal competing political entity with the government, the same government our nation had propped up with American blood, starting in 1955. See, among other examples in the Accords, Chapter III, Article 8(c). The 1973 Accords were a strategic surrender of the highest order because, anytime anyone in American politics previously called for such a negotiation, such as, ahem, Robert F. Kennedy in 1967, that person was seen as a naive dove or worse, a person surrendering to the Communists. Yet, that is precisely what Nixon and Kissinger agreed to in the Accords. The Accords set a 60 day pullout, and then a "decent interval" thereafter, which led to some of the most heart wrenching scenes for those of us paying attention in that era of 1973-1975.
As Stanley Karnow stated in his book, there were other aspects of the Accords which showed this was more a US surrender to the Communists under the rhetoric the US politicians and corporate media had pushed for so long before, such as the 1973 Accords allowing the North Vietnamese and NLF to retain their troops inside what was still called South Vietnam. This was perhaps the most stunning aspect of the US agreement, and it is what undoubtedly led President Thieu to refuse to sign the Accords, instead signing a separate accord which, frankly, had no meaning in terms of international law or international force. I.F. Stone, writing in March 1973 in the New York Review of Books, after the US finally released the January 1973 Paris Accords, recognized Nixon was stalling for time, and was planning to use what he expected to be violations by Thieu and the Communist forces, to start bombing Vietnam again. However, the so-called "Watergate" scandals began in earnest, after most newspapers and television stations (outside of the Washington Post and CBS television) refused to cover the story with any serious during the 1972 presidential elections. Even conservatives later recognized the duplicity Nixon and Kissinger were up to with the final negotiations and how they behaved thereafter.
Trump's deal in Afghanistan:
The Los Angeles Times has outdone itself in masterfully reporting on Trump's deal with the Taliban in Afghanistan. They inadvertently highlight the very same type of surrender points which we described above with respect to Nixon's deal with the Communist forces in Vietnam in 1973. Let's go through them, though I urge everyone to read the Times' article.
As with Nixon, who upped the bombing in North Vietnam to monstrous heights in the hope of securing significant leverage against the Communists, which strategy failed, the Times' writers note, near the bottom of their article, how Trump had increased war efforts in Afghanistan, evidently hoping for leverage against the Taliban. The Times' writers state, after previously describing a 14 month process of withdrawal from Afghanistan (Just imagine telling someone's family in America, six months from now, why their son or daughter died in Afghanistan fighting that will continue):
The initial American withdrawals would only return troop numbers to about the same level achieved by President Obama, who oversaw a steep pullout from Afghanistan that Trump reversed a few months after he took office.
The article shows, however, there are trapdoors and loopholes that would allow the US to go back, and Trump, true to form in admitting what Nixon never wanted to admit, is quoted as saying, "If bad things happen, we'll go back." No need for I.F. Stone to sift through the Accords to find out how Nixon was intending to go back. So anyone who thinks this will definitely end the US war against Afghanistan is going to be surprised if Trump wins re-election and the Republicans continue to hold the Senate.
On the other hand, once withdrawal starts, it is awfully hard to get back in, which is what Tom Hayden snarkily had written in the NY Review of Books in response to an earlier I.F. Stone article about Nixon's intentions in Vietnam. Hayden's view was the Nixon-Kissinger concessions were fatal, and the Communists would prevail. At that time, Hayden was hiding out in Norway, as he was essentially exiled from his home nation, the United States. Hayden proved correct, as the South Vietnamese were in no position to withstand their feeble but consistent attempts to win what Nixon was walking away from. Yes, the North Vietnamese and NLF violated the Accords, too, but the cynicism behind the Accords was always going to lead to massive violations. As Stone recognized, the Accords were written for the purpose of finding a way back in. Now, let's look at what the LA Times article says about the Trump accord with the Taliban:
The article earlier quotes from a former envoy in Afghanistan, who served under Obama and Trump, who sees the withdrawal for what it is:
“The withdrawals provisions seem far more comprehensive than advertised,” said Brett McGurk, a former Obama and Trump administration envoy. “It’s a total withdrawal ... that would likely produce a gradual collapse of the state, civil war and the Taliban back in Kabul.”
McGurk knows what happened in Vietnam, and sees the same for the Afghan government we have been propping up for so many years. The Times' writers are almost merciless in their analysis about how the current Afghan government's leader was reluctant to support the negotiations that led to this agreement, and is planning to fight to the death of his government, and himself, against the Taliban, who have been our supposed enemy since just after the events of 9/11/2001. The article states:
The Kabul government only grudgingly agreed to begin power-sharing talks with the Taliban after U.S. envoy Zalmay Khalilzad opened direct talks with the Taliban for the first time last year. That raised concern from President Ashraf Ghani and other officials in Kabul that the U.S. was willing to reach a separate peace with their longtime foes.
....
The two sides appear far apart, with Ghani and his advisors seemingly intent on a deal that allows the Taliban to join the government, while Taliban negotiators appear to have in mind a more far-reaching overhaul that would give them a major voice in running the country.
Without continuing U.S. pressure on the Taliban, its leaders could quickly back away from the agreement, or the Afghan government could become mired its own internal divisions, analysts said.
There are also growing fears especially among Afghanistan’s urban population that the Taliban militants could reclaim power in some areas of the country and take away women’s rights and other hard-won freedoms as they seek to reimpose their harsh form of Islamic law.
The US and the Soviet Union did so much to destroy Afghanistan, when one considers how the last King of Afghanistan abdicated his power to the legislature in 1973, and attempted to bring Afghanistan into a more secular, progressive oriented world. The mullahs objected to women being educated at the University of Kabul, and eventually the Communists in Afghanistan organized a coup that led the Soviet Union to prop up that coup resulting government. We then started supporting the mullahs, not thinking about the long-term considerations of such religious fanatics, and the nation was essentially destroyed, with warring groups, mostly religious fanatics with 20th Century weaponry from both the US and the Soviet Union, fighting each other. And it has been the same through now. Trump is right to get out, but I say we are right to get out only to stop doing harm. The risk is what the LA Times writers state, which is further repression of women. However, at this point, we are simply in an endless war with the Taliban, and the people of Afghanistan are now going to have to pick up their pieces powerful nations such as us and Russia helped to destroy.
Trump's peace accord is mired in the same type of cynicism Nixon and Kissinger engaged in with the Vietnamese. Trump, however, did something worse than Nixon and Kissinger: He has agreed to release 5,000 Taliban prisoners who will return to terrorist activities in Afghanistan and potentially elsewhere. The article explains:
In the four-page pact, the U.S. pledged to remove all forces from Afghanistan within 14 months and to begin “immediate” work on freeing some 5,000 Taliban prisoners. It stated that the Taliban “will send a clear message” that Al Qaeda and “those who pose a threat to the security of the United States and its allies have no place in Afghanistan.”
Even the prisoner release plan was criticized by lawmakers such as Rep. Tom Malinowski (D-N.J.), a former State Department human rights official, who said in a tweet that Pompeo “made a commitment to me and other members of Congress” that the Afghan peace deal would not require prisoner releases.
John Bolton, a Afghan war hawk, sees the surrender to reality--well, he doesn't ever want to see the reality. Bolton is quoted in the early part of the article, saying “Signing this agreement with Taliban is an unacceptable risk to America’s civilian population...This is an Obama-style deal [that] sends the wrong signal.” This is itself a cynical (but typical Bolton style of misleading) hit on Obama, but it must burn Trump for Bolton to compared Trump to Obama.
Overall, this is no triumph for Trump. This is no peace with honor. There will be no peace in Afghanistan for some time in the future. There is no honor in how this was negotiated and what was agreed to by Trump. Any victory lap from Trump is just more lying. We are hopefully and finally leaving Afghanistan after nearly 20 years, with as little to show for it as the British, twice defeated in the 19th Century in Afghanistan, and the Soviet Union/Russians in the late 20th Century in Afghanistan. This was a mistake from the start, but one done with cynical intentions even in 2001, and one that only became more and more cynical from then through now.
Footnote:
* When one reads of the fact the US, after overseeing the Geneva Conference that led to the Accords, refused to sign the Agreement, one is tempted to agree with those who say the US never violated the Agreement because it did not sign. However, anyone reviewing newspapers from the time would see how President Eisenhower and Secretary of State John Foster Dulles publicly promised to abide by the Accords. I am unable to find sourcing on the Internet, but it's there. I read them in college and there were public statements Dulles and Ike made to a compliant press that forgot about them within a year or so when Diem was being installed.
