Propaganda that Killed Millions

Lies, Propaganda and Facts

One of the processes that led the Democrat dominated US Congress in 1978 to break the treaty the US had signed in Geneva I 1973 was a public opinion poisoned by propaganda lies.

It was a shameful thing for the US Congress to break a treaty obligation. It was all the more shameful when it left South Vietnam at the mercy of the 130,00 strong North Vietnamese invading army backed by hundreds of tanks as well as artillery pieces and aircraft.

As a result we know about a million Vietnamese fled as refugees with about half perishing in the attempt. We don't know the numbers murdered or”re-educated” by the Communists. WE also know that subsequently Cambodia and Laos fell, with two million of innocent civilians being brutally murdered.

Three Communist propaganda coups spread far and wide and repeated over and over by gullible or culpable media featured highly in this swing in public opinion. All three were powerful, emotive, but painted a false picture.

The Tet offensive was a simultaneous sneak attack on about 100 targets by the Viet Cong and NVA during a cease fire for the Tet holiday in 1968. The highly influential broadcaster Walter Cronkite witnessed part of it in Saigon. He assumed the violence of the attacks was an indication of Viet Cong strength, when in fact it was their last ditch “do or die” effort, and on returning to the States said that the war was “unwinnable”. Actually the battle was an overwhelming victory for the South and US forces. The Viet Cong suffered so many casualties that thereafter the war was carried on almost exclusively by the North Vietnamese army.

However the truth never caught up with Cronkite's false report.

Second: The photo by Eddie Adams of General Loan executing a Viet Cong operative. The photo captures the moment that Loan shoots the handcuffed Viet Cong captain Lem in the head during the '68 Tet Offensive. It had a profound impact, galvanising the anti-war movement in the US.

Previous to the Third Geneva Convention, guerillas were held to be Francs-Tireurs and not under the protections of the rules of war. At the Nuremberg trials, no criminal responsibility was attached to the summary execution of partisans by German officers. The Third Convention extended the protection of POW status on four conditions. 1. They are responsible to a chain of command. The Viet Cong captain Lem probably fulfilled this condition. 2. They have a fixed distinctive sign which is recognisable at a distance – that is to say, they wear a uniform of some sort and are not dressed to make them indistinguishable to the civilian population. The Viet Cong deliberately violated this condition precisely to pass unnoticed among the civilian population. 3. They carry arms openly, which is debatable in this case. But 4. They conduct their operations in accordance with the “laws and customs of laws”, which captain Lem most certainly failed.

‘Lem was arrested during the Tet Offensive after having captured a South Vietnamese officer, Lieutenant Colonel Tran. Lem and his men then held Colonel Tran and his family hostage and demanded that Tran show them how to drive the South Vietnamese tanks they had just captured. When Colonel Tran refused, they slit the throats of his wife, his six children, and his 80 year old mother.

Captain Lem was a very nasty piece of work. When he was captured, standing at the mass grave of another 34 victims, he announced he was proud to carry out his orders and murder these people. So there was not a shadow of a doubt he was guilty of multiple murders. General Loan, as chief of police, subjected him to summary execution, entirely within even the stricter terms of the Third Geneva Convention.’

As an interesting post-script, General Loan fled the fall of Saigon and arrived in the US. He was initially refused immigrant status because of that photo, but the photographer Adams testified on General Loan’s behalf. General Loan owned a pizza shop in Washington DC for many years, and died of cancer in Virginia in 1998. Another photo.

Third: The picture of “Napalm Girl” Phan Thi Kim Phuc, the young girl who ran down the road naked after tearing off her burning clothes.

That was in June 1972 – just six months before the signing of the peace accords and after most US troops had been withdrawn, no US forces were in eny way involved in the event, and yet it is still cited as an illustration of the US war in Vietnam.

Here is the real story:

Kim Phuc was from the village of Trang Bang in South Vietnam. The village had just been overrun by NVA forces. Kim Phuc and the other villagers were fleeing along with the surviving South Vietnamese soldiers towards safety. The South Vietnamese – not American – South Vietnamese pilot of the plane was trying to protect the civilians by cutting off the North Vietnamese pursuit. But he mistook the fleeing South Vietnamese soldiers for the pursuing NVA. His napalm killed four civilians, and Kim Phuc and several others received third degrees burns.

In an interesting post-script to that photo, Kim Phuc was flown to Germany for surgery, then returned to South Vietnam. She was captured in the fall of South Vietnam and became a propaganda tool for the communist government. She was allowed to go to Cuba to study medicine, where she met her future husband Bui Hue Toan. They were married, and allowed to go the Moscow for their honeymoon. When their plane landed to refuel in New Foundland, the two of them stepped off the plane and asked for political asylum. Kim Phuc became a Christian, founded the Kim Phuc foundation to provide medical and psychological assistance to child victims of war, and still lives in Canada.

So we were taken in by propaganda, lies, misinformation, and mistaken information. The people believed the lies. The politicians bowed to the people – and at least two and a half million innocent men, women, and children died as a result!

We must remember to fight back against lies with the truth, no matter how much we are the minority of voices.