Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. And welcome. Were gathered on the 50th anniversary sorry, on the eve of the 50th anniversary of the august 7th, 1964, passage by both houses of congress of an authorization for the use of military force. We didnt call it that, but thats exactly what it was. It was implementing our obligations under the 1955 cito treaty pursuant to the United States constitution. Vietnam veterans for factual history is a Diverse Group of mostly Vietnam Veterans including retired fourstar generals medal of honor recipient, prisoners of war, special operations personnel, and a variety of others. Our common bond is that we believe the americans had been misled about the realities of vietnam and too many of the, quote, facts that they have been led to believe are true are not true. And because of this, when other conflicts arise, theyre drawing the wrong lessons. After the war, polls showed that Vietnam Veterans supported the war by more than twice the average of the american population. We were proud of our service, and most combat veterans said they would go back again even if they knew what the outcome was going to be, even if they knew it was a losing effort, they still would go back to protect the people of South Vietnam. We had an advantage over the American People because we did not get our information filtered by dan rather and other journalists. We saw firsthand what was going on. We talked to other people who were over there who were seeing it first hand, and my own sense is we came back with a much better picture of what the war was all about. I can spend probably the next hour talking about what was wrong with the american journalism profession in vietnam. Just to give you one example, the most cherished vietnamese journalist by most of the American Media was a man who worked for time for a while, worked for reuters but he was the goto guy for all sorts of journalists in vietnam. It was not until after the war was over that we learned he was a North Vietnamese colonel the entire time. The journalists tended to hang around the Caravel Hotel and the Continental Hotel and lo and behold, there were always vietnamese nationals there to chat them up in english and provide insights, so many of those people were working for the communist movement. When he passed away in 2006, they published a book called perfect spy, the incredible double life of hahn. You have been invited to hear a debate, and i regret to report that none, no one of the more than two dozen prominent antivietnam leaders from the 1960s was willing to join us and try to defend the core arguments that turned so Many Americans against the war in the 1960s. This may be a bigger news story because the American People were misled by the critics and they accepted it as fact and because of that, they pressured congress to, as i like to put it, snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. And the fact that now that new information has come out of North Vietnam, information came out during the pentagon papers that almost nobody read, looking back, none of their major arguments holds true. Not even the argument that stopping the war would end the killing and promote human rights. Indeed, experts say that more people died in the first three years following the liberation of South Vietnam, laos and cambodia that were killed in the previous 14 years of war. Im going to probably save for d questions a discussion of that, but if you want to look at the consequences of that congressional decision, its one of the darkest pages in American History involving the loss of life of millions of people who entrusted us and the loss of freedom of tens of millions of others. My name is bob turner. Robert f. Turner. And i have for the last 27 years been a professor at the university of virginia where ive taught both in the law school and for many years in whats now the politics department. I used to teach u. S. Foreign policy. I taught an undergraduate seminar on vietnam. And i continue. I will start later this month teaching a postgraduate seminar at the law school that is open as well to politics and history students. This week marks the 50th anniversary of the first thing i published about vietnam, which was in fact the letter to the editor in the paris edition of New York Times which ceased to exist many years ago talking about in fact, it was published on 7 august the day congress acted talking about the importance of standing up to communism there. When i returned back to america and continued my college education, i quickly became involved in the teachings and debates and so forth indeed between returning to vietnam at the end of 1964 and going in the military four years later i was involved in more than a hundred debates, teaching, panels, other programs. And one of the interesting things is at almost every one of those programs i heard the same litany of arguments. The United States first got involved to reimpose French Colonialism, which is not close to being true. We violated the geneva dr sorry, the geneva agreements of 1954. We blocked elections in vietnam allegedly required by the geneva accord. Sorry, my current job involves National Security law so i deal with Geneva Conventions a lot. I also shifted my major from economics to government so that i could spend more time studying vietnam. And i wrote a 450page honor thesis that i standby today. It really captured a lot of this including ha hanoi had made a decision in 19590 liberate South Vietnam by force. When i graduated from college i was commissioned through rotc. My first day of active duty i volunteered for vietnam. In reward for that they sent me to hawaii for a year. And there when ho chi min died i wrote a letter on the leadership struggle. Im told dia and cia were predicting chongqing would come out. And when eastern diplomats confirmed my interpretation, all of a sudden the government decided my knowledge of the enemy was more value blg than my value as an expert infantryman. So my jobs in vietnam both tours i was assigned to work in the North VietnamAffairs Commission of the embassy in what was called special projects office. In that capacity i traveled throughout the country in my five times in vietnam i was in 42 out of 44 provinces plus laos and cambodia. I was in and out of vietnam from 1968 until the final evacuation in 1975 when i was involved in trying to help get orphans out and also trying without success to get into cambodia to bring orphans out of cambodia. After my second vietnam tour i left the army and became a fellow at the Hoover Institution on war revolution and peace at stanford where i wrote the first major english language history of vietnamese communism. Again, i think i went back and reread it a few years ago and there may be a few paragraphs i would change, but i think i got it right pretty accurately. I returned in 1974. I took a job as part of a fellowship which turned out to be the position of National Security advisor to senator robert p. Griffin of michigan on the Foreign Relations committee. And in that position i returned to vietnam at every opportunity finally coming out again during the final evacuation. Theres not going to be a debate today other than sparring with people in the audience, which would be fun, but the offer to debate anyone any time anywhere is still open. Because its important that we do this. Now, my assignment this morning is to provide some background on how and why we went to war in vietnam. And why doing so was both a rational decision and fully consistent with international law. Academic doctorates from university of virginia law school. I cofounded the center and housed at the war college. I mention that only because law is not a passing interest. Its my fulltime occupation now. Also chaired at the American Bar AssociationStanding Committee on law and National Security for three terms. Im not going to focus much on legal issues because i dont think anybody argues them anymore who knows anything about what happened. There are a awful lot of people out there who still think that, you know, wonderful thing to pull out of vietnam. So im sure there are a lot of i hate to use the word but ignorant people or uninformed people who would think its illegal. But among the senior scholars i dont know if any in 2000 our senator put out a big vietnam conference in the 25th anniversary in the fall of saigon and we decided wouldnt it be fun to redo the old vietnam legal debate sns so we picked the six most prominent scholars and invited them one after another after another and none of them were willing to come forward and argue. Of course the reason is their case was premised on things like North Vietnam wasnt really involved. And after the war vietnam came out and said, oh, yes, we made a decision on ho chi minh birthday in 1959 to start pouring troops and so forth. At that point you sort of lose the claim that this was just a civil war in South Vietnam. One of the this i already mentioned is we tried to reimpose French Colonial rule after the second world war. In reality the opposite is true. Franklin roosevelt during the war said the french should not be allowed to havin doe china. Theyve exploited it for a hundred years and the people deserve Something Better than that. After the war ho chi minh met with the french in paris on march 6th, 1946, signed an agreement that welcomed the french back into indo china. And when they got back there the head french officer wrote his superiors saying the americans are a bigger impediment to our return than to viet min. Trying Everything Possible to keep them from coming back. We wouldnt let them land on our airfields. We prohibited u. S. Flagships from carrying troops or equipment or supplies to the french in vietnam. And it was not until we finally realized that, look, its french for right now. If the french failed, the communists will take over. And we felt that was a greater threat. But until the very end we pressured france to grant real independence to vietnamese nationalists. Indeed one of our conditions when we considered using bombing to stop the defeat was if we do this youre going to have to recognize the vietnamese nationalists as an independent country with the right to withdraw from the french union at any time. The best Single Source probably is this book right here, the pentagon papers. Which if anybody had bothered to read it, it shot down almost all of the arguments being used by the left. Its fascinating. It pointed out ho chi minh was an old stalinnist trained in russia. And so forth. Yeah, there were mistakes. There were mistakes in every war. There was corruption. Theres corruption in virtually every war. There were war crimes, but no worse than in most wars and better in some wars indeed in 1966 general westmoreland announced the United States was going to give full permission to viet kong soldiers who were captured unless they were captured while engaged in acts of terrorism. In which case we turn them over to the South Vietnamese as common criminals. The International Committee of the red cross wrote generalmoreland that never has a country gone to such lengths to make sure the rules are complied with. Theres a this is one of my favorites. Ive got a long chapter in my vietnamese communism about his background. And 19 out of every 20 footnotes is to North Vietnamese material. They published a wealth of stuff in english. And i got on their mailing list. And they sent me all four volumes. I did these care packages this thick stacked with publications. And i would read them. And its amazing how much they publish that is contrary to their interests. They noted that when ho chi minh was in macaw of hong kong on february 3, 1930, where they established the communist party, he was there as a representative of communist national. He left vietnam in 1911 and did not return for 30 years until may of 1941. During that time in december of 1920, ho was a member of the french socialist party. And he spoke out and actively supported shifting from the second to the third international, which is to say joining the communist international. And after that decision was made he traveled to the soviet union where he was educated, trained. When i was a fellow at the Hoover Institution as a man named bertram wolf, a colleague and good friend, burt had been the mexican representative to the common term. Very radical leftist back in the 1920s. And he told of traveling around the soviet union with ho chi minh and addressing various groups at communes and so forth. Said this guy was an absolute militant internationalist. Now, this is not the time to let me get a little bit of why we went and why it was necessary to go to war in vietnam. Im not going to spend a whole lot of time on this. But just a couple things. June 25th, 1950, north korea invaded south korea and the u. N. Security council authorized the United States to lead a u. N. Force in response. For those who said, oh, no, vietnam was really just one country temporarily partitioned unless it was all right to, well, if it was legal for North Vietnam to use force to reunite, how do you explain the u. N. Using force against north korea when they tried the same thing . How many troops did we have in west germany ready to go to war . Yes, they were in theory temporarily divided but they were de facto International Persons of states. And for either to aggress against the other, it was a violation of the United Nations charter. After the korea invaded, harry truman a containment doctrine that basically said, look, we thought after world war ii that soviet union was going to work with us, with the u. N. And would be able to stop threats to the peace working collectively. Theyre not going to do that. Theyre trying to promote revolution in various parts of the world. We have to stop them from doing that and the answer is containment. Eisenhower came to power and he had several interests. One, he knew the American People would not tolerate high defense budgets. So he wanted to cut the defense budget. So he cut our manpower considerably in the army. And he decided instead to go with something called the new look strategy. And he said that if theres another korean invasion were not going to send american troops to fight chinese troops or north korean troops. Were going to respond asymmetrically at a time and place of our own choosing. Massive retaliation. If you did not understand that, calculate the halflife of u 235 and look around moscow and see if you want to see it glowing for that time. It was a real bold threat to resort to Nuclear Weapons if the communists tried to use force conventionally. And it worked. Did not want to risk getting moscow bombed or anywhere in the soviet union bombed. So he came up in response with peaceful coexistence. He told various communist movements around the world, hey, we havent given up on taking over the world, but were not going to do it now. Right now the correlation is not on our side. A lot of things to undermine your government, but dont start shooting anybody because we dont want to get nuked. And a number of grievances with stalin going back to where he didnt think stalin supported him enough in the revolution. But there were other issues. But he was especially angry at destalinazition. But more than important than that he wanted to be the leader of the communist movement. So he challenged the soviet union on several grounds. And one of them was on arms struggle. And he quite cleverly said when you look at the imperialists they look very fierce indeed, but theyre in fact a paper tiger. Why . Because we will use peoples warfare. We will send in guerillas with money and arms and equipment and train people. And guerillas live, work, sleep, eat, among the people for every they kill with a nuclear weapon, theyd kill hundreds of soldiers. Theyre not going to do that. And vietnam became the test case as to whether that would succeed. Did the United States have an answer to wars of National Liberation . Heres a quote. We were going to use slides, but we cannot afford the charge here at the press club. So we made some cheap prints of some of them. I hope you can read it. This is a quote from the vice chair of the Central Committee of the Chinese Party and their leader for fraternal obligation for other countries to help liberate them. And he wrote a fascinating pamphlet called long live the victory of peoples wars. I think thats what it is. Yeah. And in it he said he talked about vietnams being a test case. He said the americans are trying to find an answer to peoples warfare or Unconventional Warfare. A communist victory will lead to a chain reaction. The people of other parts of the world will see that u. S. Imperialism can be defeated and what the vietnamese people can do, they can do too. And it was not just the chinese. As far away as cuba, castros top military guy, wrote in 1963 the vietnam battle front is most important for the future of all amer