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Peter Davis received an Oscar for “Hearts and Minds”, his film about the Vietnam War. He lives in Castine.
As Congress investigation attempt to overturn the 2020 election, it is clear that January 6 casts a haunting shadow. The assault on the Capitol and the brief takeover by an insurgent mob powerfully recalled the events of January 1968. Tet offensive in Vietnam when, among attacks on more than 100 cities and government buildings, the Viet Cong broke into the grounds of the United States Embassy in Saigon.
Like the thugs who smash the windows to enter the Capitol, the Vietnamese fighters have made a hole in the wall surrounding the embassy. They resisted for nearly six hours before the embassy compound was taken over by paratroopers just as Capitol Police courageously routed the insurgents on January 6.
The Tet offensive was a failure for the Communists because their fighters were beaten, as were the invaders of our Capitol, and because the attacks did not spark the uprisings the Viet Cong had hoped for. The brief invasion of the Capitol likewise did not stimulate the violent protests in state capitals on inauguration day that QAnon and the alt-right foreseen.
By the afternoon of the day the United States Embassy was stormed, General William Westmoreland, who commanded American forces in 1968, arrived at the Embassy and, like the Capitol, where Consolidated congress to verify the results of the 2020 elections, the embassy had reopened.
“The enemy was on the ropes after the Tet offensive,” Westmoreland told me as I did. “Hearts and minds», A film about the Vietnam War. “It’s like two boxers in the ring. One boxer has the other on the ropes, but the man who is about to be the winner has his second sponge throw.
Westmoreland was right, and he was wrong. He was right to say that the Vietnamese Communists were defeated during Tet, just as the insurgents attempting a coup in Washington were driven out. He was wrong, however, that the Americans were on the verge of winning the war. The Communists did not intend to surrender, nor do the national terrorists intend to give up their fight against democracy and our Constitution.
Clark Clifford, who was President Lyndon Johnson’s secretary of defense in 1968, said he asked the Joint Chiefs of Staff if Westmoreland’s latest request for more troops would be sufficient. “Nobody knew that,†he told me. He kept asking questions of the Joint Chiefs. “How long do you think we’ll be at war for?” Neither of them knew. He continued his interrogation. “‘Do you see a decrease in the will of the enemy to fight? “Well,” they said, “no, we guess we don’t. Finally, Clifford concluded, “my way of thinking had undergone a very substantial revolution. “
the Pentagon papers revealed that neither the CIA nor the Pentagon ever thought the war was won despite optimistic assurances leaders continued to issue. From the Oval Office tapes, we know that Presidents John Kennedy, Johnson, and Richard Nixon all believed the war was impossible to win, but could only say after the next election.
Shortly after the Tet offensive, Senators Eugene McCarthy and Robert Kennedy decided to run against their Democratic colleague, President Johnson. Soon after, it was Johnson who threw in the towel and said he would not be running again. Nixon, who won the fall election, continued and amplified his predecessors’ lies about Vietnam.
The lie during the Vietnam War – the lies that bind – began the long march that leads the American public to disbelieve our government. Tet himself triggered a lack of confidence.
Obviously, no straight line can be drawn from Tet to Trump, but Donald Trump came to power largely because a sufficient number of the electorate – a significant minority but enough to win the Electoral College in 2016 – had lost confidence in Washington. We flew into the Vietnam War on the wings of lies that were eventually exposed, becoming the basis of a lingering distrust of the Washington establishment.
As President Trump reluctantly left the scene, he left several million followers who believe his unsubstantiated claims that he was cheated in the 2020 election victory. his predecessors together.
The attempted coup Trump incited failed this time, but the Trumpians live to fight another day. Many of them act as if they believe in a monarchy. They seem to yearn for an autocrat, a man (definitely a male and certainly white) who provokes their racial and cultural hatred, who inspires nostalgia for the Slavery Confederacy, a willingness to be hypnotized by an image of their leader as an avatar of greatness.
They do not believe in democracy any more than the Vietnamese Communists in 1968. They will seek another season in the sun with their hero or a designated successor.
When the musical version of Donald Trump’s life premieres, it will surely be called “The Lyin ‘King”.
