At the United States Air Force Museum in Dayton, Ohio, standing with arguably the world’s most beautiful airplane, ever; the 1932 Boeing P-26 “Peashooter,” was the U. S. Army Air Corp’s first low-wing, all-metal pursuit (fighter) plane, an aesthetic jewel of an airplane. 

Unfortunately for my prospects of worldly success, I am a person who can identify, on sight, virtually every military aircraft to have seen service in any air arm in the world, between 1935 and 1955. 

At the Air Force Museum in Dayton, Ohio, I spent an ecstatic day wandering among the beautifully restored wonders of military aviation. They were all there, the P-39 Bell Airacobra with its through-the-nose cannon, the P-51 North American Mustang, considered the ultimate propeller-driven fighter, the Korean War jets, the F-86 Sabre and the F-84 Thunderjet, last of the machine-gun armed, dog-fighters.  While it’s always the fighters that catch my imagination, it was the bombers that got me thinking. The B-17, the B-24, the 36, the 47, the 52 and even the newest Stealth models, all testifying to the strategic reasoning for the existence of a national air force, independent of its antecedent role which until 1947, was as the aviation branch of the U. S. Army.

A friend told me of a conversation with a mid-ranking Marine Corps officer who observed that presently, the Air Force is a service in search of a mission. In the Iraq War, the Air Force is barely mentioned, gnashing its teeth in its role as an air-freight arm to the needs of the Army. And worse in Afghanistan where the civilian casualties resulting from misdirected Air Force ordinance have become a major diplomatic impediment to the effective prosecution of the war. Recently the Secretary of Defense castigated the armed services for foot-dragging in their implementation of new technical warfare applications. While the Air Force was not specifically singled out, note was made of several recent Air Force mishaps in the handling of thermonuclear weapons. 

Reading between the lines, it seems that the Air Force, with its historic commitment to the decisiveness of strategic bombing, and with pilots being pilots, has been less than enthusiastic in its employment of things like pilot-less drone aircraft. While the Army has grabbed the ball, training enlisted ranks to operate drones, the Air Force, at last reading, is requiring that drones be the province of pilot-qualified officers only. 

But service turf and historical ideologies are not restricted to the current dilemmas facing the United States Air Force. The Navy is now into its eighth decade of reliance upon the supremacy of the carrier task group. It’s been almost a quarter-century since a relatively simple and inexpensive Exocet missile took out an Argentine cruiser from a distance of twenty-four miles, and over sixty-years since the Japanese at Okinawa brought the most primitive of guided missiles to bear against a surface fleet. The Navy continues to argue that its fleet protection can handle all existing threats and that the United States Navy is not some third world force. Maybe, maybe not. I would think that during the Korean and Vietnam Wars, Soviet missile and submarine officers argued against allowing our surface fleets their “privileged” off-shore-sanctuaries. 

That leaves the United States Army. If you’ve seen the star-spangled general officers testifying before congress over the past fifty years, you may or may not have noticed that almost without exception, every Army comer wears among the bric-a-brac covering his chest, a small set of silver parachute wings. This ubiquitous badge of belonging may have begun finally to recede as a right of passage for rising army officers but its persistence in the face of a singular reality is instructive – that being the fact that while there may have been minor tactical successes (the Germans at the Belgian Forts and at Gran Sasso), there has never been a strategically successful airborne operation in military history. The German assault on Crete was Pyhrric. The scattered D-Day airborne drops were the stuff of drama, and it can be argued that they contributed somewhat to the success of the landing. But essentially, they were a costly sideshow. Later in 1944, Market Garden was a disaster, and at Dien Bien Phu in 1954, the French capped the argument. 

That leaves the Marine Corps. Despite the valiant fighting capabilities of the Corps, they remain a subsidiary arm of the Navy and would be wise to insure their future by staying that way. The contained island campaigns of the Second World War were made for a Marine Corps. In Korea and in Vietnam, the Marines lacked the size, firepower and support tail to be a decisive player or to make any more of a significant impact on those wars than the Army units on their flanks. 

None of the above argues that the military are anymore incapable of learning from the past than any other institutions in a society. It’s just that when they don’t learn, the results can be stunningly dramatic - the Maginot Line, the Polish Cavalry of 1939, "Impregnable" Singapore, redundant battleship fleets or the debacle on the Yalu River in 1950. The Army with its unit rotation in Iraq and Afghanistan seems to have learned from the disastrous results of its “pipeline” replacement system that drained away unit cohesion in late WW II and nearly destroyed the service itself in Vietnam. The carrier Navy establishment’s initial disdain of the submarine arm is now a memory and the Marine Corp seems to eschew fads, sticking to the basics it does so well.

All of the above still leaves the Air Force facing a present and a future of pilot-less missiles and drones. While the very idea of the Air Force returning to the fold and once again becoming part of the Army will doubtless bring outraged howls from the guys in blue, maybe it’s time. As the United States “Army” Air Force, the USAAf of old certainly managed to find a mission, and also managed to do an incredibly great job of it.       

As you see, my petits touristes, we continue the travel of Le Grand Empire Français. The Sun, he never sets on the French Empire, after all. Well, perhaps he does set from time to time, but he comes up in the morning. Eh? Ho ho.

See we are in the green valleys of Vietnam. Oh! It looks like our soldiers seem to need a little aid, eh? Good thing I am here to lend the benefit of my expertise militaire. The Rhine and the Mekong, they are very much alike to me: wet in the middle, muddy on the sides. Ho ho.

Quite soon we will have the situation well in the hand, then we go about the loyal French colony perhaps to sample the rubber tree or a cashew. Then the little Viet people will greet me. Hear them call to me: "Ho! Ho! Ho!"

 “I don’t speak your filthy language”, said the lanky Israeli traveler in response to a request in Lao that he move his bag so someone could have the last seat on the bus.  He was still frustrated from an incident earlier that morning where his negotiation style (i.e., towering over the locals and shouting at them while shaking fists) didn’t get him the price he wanted for a boatride down river.  Because of him (the locals assumed we were together) we were embarking on yet another day of bus travel in Laos instead of floating gently downstream on the boat of a friendly villager.

At 5:40 AM the day prior, our bus from Dien Bien Phu into Laos left 10 minutes late to the horror of our very angry bus driver.  After a violent tantrum, he stopped for a 40-minute breakfast 5 blocks from the station.  He stopped again at the border for four hours where he apparently took a nap.

Over the border, as the roads got worse the ride grew more entertaining.  Since bus drivers often demand more money from foreigners over the border we planned a mutiny as the driver napped at the crossing.  In the end (no doubt sensing our preparedness for battle) he didn't pull any shenanigans.  

Once in Laos, we repeated the following drill every hour or so: bus gets stuck the mud, bus driver shouts something we can't understand, we scramble out of the listing bus and push it barefoot through the mud occasionally reconstructing the road using large rocks and bamboo.

After a night in Muang Kwah, we tried our luck at negotiating a boat down river to Luang Prabang.  It turns out that Laos is the least negotiable place we've been on this trip and our lanky Israeli's shouting didn't help our cause.  He ended his charm offensive with "I hope there's a fucking famine in this country."  Even our most charming negotiator (an American named Andrew) couldn't recover from that so we were off to the bus station.

The final leg to Luang Prabang was different.  No mud and a laid back driver with the biggest smile I've seen in Southeast Asia..  By the time we got off the bus in Luang Prabang, Mr. Deal Maker had already insulted the only tuc tuc driver at the station so we paid "a fortune" (not really) to get ourselves into town and here we are.  Surrounded by good food and gorgeous scenery, we'll probably spend the next few days debating heading North or South.  In the meantime, expect shorter blog entries - sorry about this one.

To My Younger Generation: Grasp the Past to Pave the Future
By Hoi Ba Tran

Part 1 - Steal The Spotlight

During the nineteen-twenties, thirties and forties, anti-French colonial rule sentiment ran fervently high in Viet Nam (See Note 1 below). Several revolutionary parties sprang up trying to oust French colonists. Most of them failed as a result of tight French  security networks and they were better armed.

Many Viet Nam patriots were caught and received the death sentence while others were transported to Con Dao, a penal island in South China Sea (2), to serve a life sentence in hard labor. On February 10, 1930, an armed revolt was launched against the French around Hanoi by the Viet Quoc Party (3) but they were outgunned by the French and failed. Mr. Nguyen Thai Hoc, Chairman of the Viet Quoc Party and 12 other members of the Viet Quoc were beheaded in Yen Bai, North Viet Nam.

Subsequent to this tragic defeat, most anti-French colonial rule parties retreated to South China waiting for the ripe time to fight again for independence. With some support from the Chinese Kuomintang party, all Vietnamese Nationalist parties united under the name Viet Nam Cach Menh Dong Minh Hoi (4). Dang Cong San Viet Nam (5) headed by Ho Chi Minh was also a member.

Hồ Chí Minh

Fifteen years later, an unexpected event occurred that ousted the French. On March 9, 1945, three months prior to my tenth birthday, Japanese forces in Viet Nam launched a flash coup d’etat and toppled the French government. The following day, Japanese envoy granted Viet Nam her independence within Japan’s Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere. Although it was not exactly what the Vietnamese had hoped for, at least the brutal French colonial regime was ousted.

Unfortunately, the superficial independence the Japanese granted Viet Nam lasted only five months. On August 6, 1945, the U.S. dropped the first atomic bomb on Hiroshima and the second one on Nagasaki on August 9,1945. Japan could not withstand the nuclear devastation and capitulated unconditionally on August 14, 1945. This brought World War II to an end.

The capitulation of Japan and the end of World War II was the prelude to an unfortunate chain of events that destroyed Viet Nam. A few days after Japan’s surrender, the first round of bad luck struck Viet Nam when Japanese military officials in Hanoi turned over the government to the Vietnamese local authority. Exploiting this anarchy period, Ho Chi Minh, used his militia forces and armed propaganda units already embedded in Hanoi to topple local governments and seized power.

On August 28, 1945, Ho formally declared the country to be the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (DRV) (6) an independent nation as he proclaimed himself President while concurrently being Minister of Foreign Affairs. Ho appointed Pham Van Dong Minister of Finance and Vo Nguyen Giap as Minister of Interior. To deceive the hard line nationalist patriots, Ho invited the Emperor Bao Dai to be high counselor of his new government.

Then on September 2, 1945, at Ba Dinh square, Ho recited the Vietnamese Declaration of Independence which he plagiarized from the American Declaration of Independence in front of hundreds of thousands Vietnamese who were overjoyed with the unexpected and sudden independence. I, this writer, was 10 years old and was among the crowd as a member of the Vanguard Youth Group. I held a small red flag with a yellow star in the middle not knowing at the time it was a communist flag. At the instruction of our leader, we waved the flag and sang the song “Who loves Uncle Ho Chi Minh more than us young children” as taught.

By and large, most people in North Viet Nam were probably overly excited with the independence left by the Japanese not realizing that Ho was a wily, evil person and a devoted member of the International Communist Party until too late.

Following Ho’s assumption of power, he gradually showed his fiendish mentality and inhumane behavior to further his egocentric power. To him, the end justifies the means. When the tide of anti-French colonial rule was at its peak, Ho roguishly disguised himself as a nationalist patriot and exhorted the struggling to dislodge the French. But after having successfully hijacked the independence from the Vietnamese nationalists, Ho struck a deal with France on March 6, 1946 allowing French troops to return to Viet Nam north of the 16th parallel to supplant Chiang Kai-shek troops who were in Viet Nam to disarm the Japanese.

Chiang Kai-shek 蔣介石 / 蔣中正  GCB

In return, France would recognize Ho’s government. Chiang Kai-shek agreed to withdraw from North Vietnam and allowed the French to replace them in exchange for French concessions in Shanghai and other Chinese ports. Ho’s plot was to get Chiang’s Army out of Vietnam because Chiang might be sympathetic with Ho’s potential opponents, the nationalist Vietnamese. Through this wily move, nationalist Vietnamese patriots considered Ho a traitor to the cause of revolution.

By June 1946, France proclaimed South Viet Nam to be under French control as Republic of Cochinchina. In the ensuing months, clashes between French and Ho’s forces, the Viet Minh (7), erupted more frequently and in November 1946, a French warship bombarded Hai Phong, a coastal city in North Viet Nam, causing heavy casualty to the Viet Minh. All these events precipitated the war between French forces and the Viet Minh leading to the Dien Bien Phu battle in 1954.

Being a devout communist, Ho followed Maoist policies overzealously. In a three-year period from 1953 to 1956 which Ho executed the Land Reform Campaign, his infamous and barbaric people’s tribunal killed approximately 50,000 so-called wicked landlords and about 50,000 to 100,000 were imprisoned (8) . Ho and his cadres aggressively imprisoned or even liquidated all Vietnamese patriots from non-communist parties in order to monopolize his despotic authority. Petty bourgeoisie elements were also Ho’s targeted enemy. In early 1954, Ho and the Viet Minh received substantial manpower and logistical supports from the People’s Republic of China (PRC) to fight the French. Ho and the Viet Minh engaged in a set piece battle with the French at Dien Bien Phu garrison. Both, French and Viet Minh wanted to attain military superiority to use as leverage for the upcoming peace negotiation in Geneva. Unfortunately, the Viet Minh forces outgunned the French and also numerically outnumbered the French defenders at the garrison by five to one to.

French capitulated and agreed to sign an agreement in Geneva to end the war. The Agreement was signed in Geneva on July 21, 1954 between France, the PRC, the USSR, North Vietnamese communist Viet Minh, the United Kingdom, the State of Vietnam ( Emperor Bao Dai), Laos and Cambodia. This Agreement divided Vietnam into two separate countries at the 17th parallel. North Vietnam remained as the DRV, a communist country under Ho Chi Minh.

South Vietnam became a non-communist, independent country called the Republic of Vietnam (RVN) under Prime Minister Ngo Dinh Diem.

Part 2 - Ho Chi Minh - Patriot or Villain?

After the partitioning of Viet Nam, if Ho Chi Minh had been a true patriot, he should have contented with the independence which the country inherited bloodlessly at the departure of the Japanese. He must have known he was only a self-proclaimed President and not elected by the Vietnamese people. And he should have concentrated his conscientious efforts and committed all resources into rebuilding the war ravaged country as well as the dying economy in North Viet Nam.

He should have fulfilled his slogan he used to appeal millions of Vietnamese patriots who were willing to fight and to die for: Independence – Liberty – Happiness. Why did he not leave people in the South, the RVN, to live peacefully and to pursue their way of life? Why did Ho and the Viet Minh continue to scatter deaths and catastrophe across North and South Viet Nam?

If Ho and the Viet Minh had not been too greedy wanting to gobble up the RVN by force, both countries, the DRV and the RVN would have been peaceful and prosperous. There would have been no war. But it was unfortunate for the Vietnamese people on both sides to have such an evil man like Ho Chi Minh. It was Ho who dragged the DRV of the North and the RVN of the South into a long bloody internecine.

The proxy war between the DRV, the aggressor and, the RVN, in self-defense, ended thirty-three years ago on April 30, 1975. This war had been labeled with various names by U.S. journalists. Some called it the Viet Nam War and others called it the American War, the Civil War and also The Proxy War. I agree with the term “proxy war” because the undisputable fact is: The three superpower nations were principal patrons in this conflict. Two communist giants, the PRC and the Soviet Union (USSR) supplied manpower and military assistance to the DRV to expand communism in Southeast Asia. The U.S. financed, trained and equipped the RVN to contain communist expansion. As the intensity of the war escalated to the apex, the U.S. committed its combat troops to help the RVN. Inherently poor and underdeveloped, the DRV must totally depend on their patrons, the PRC and the USSR for military and economic support to wage war against the RVN. The RVN was no exception either as without logistical aids from the U.S., the defense of the RVN would have been very difficult.

During the war, the DRV had lots of advantages over the RVN. Their despotic regime aligned well with the PRC and the USSR, in this proxy war. All communist regimes were despotic in nature and had no checks and balances in their government. In the DRV, there was no freedom of religion, no freedom of speech or freedom of assembly. There were no sensational-oriented press corps because all news media, from prints to broadcast, were closely censored and strictly controlled by the party. Political opposition in their country would be viewed as reactionary or counter-revolutionary and would bring fatal consequences.

If Jane Fonda and Ramsey Clarke were Vietnamese citizens visiting Washington to praise America while publicly denouncing Ho Chi Minh, they would have been quietly liquidated upon returning to Hanoi.

Jane Fonda in North Vietnam on
a NVA anti-aircraft gun

Of course, there were no anti-war movements to interfere with their war efforts. Their troops were thoroughly and carefully indoctrinated with hatred of America. In their people’s armed forces, the political advisor had more authority than the unit commander did in decision-making and punishing wavering elements. Therefore, superficially, their rear base appeared solid and united. The red bloc ultimate drive was to conquer the RVN and expand communism in the region but tactfully cloaked under the name of “Fighting the Americans To Save Our Country”. The caddish Ho Chi Minh must have been praised for his skill to carry fire in one hand and water in the other!

On the contrary, the RVN, being an ally of the U.S. and the free world, was toddling into a newly adopted Western democracy. After centuries under feudalism, the general public was not ready to deal with the sudden changes and, for the most part, not prepared to exercise their freedom responsibly. During the war, while the public was unprepared and government officials also were not adequately trained to act and serve their constituents in a democratic fashion. Consequently, during the transitional process, there were unavoidable flaws, difficulties and dissatisfactions from the citizenry. Aside from these internal socio-administrative problems, the politburo in Hanoi exploited the situation to intrigue political dissidents, misled students and Buddhists followers to trigger chaos and confusions. Their underground communist cadres shrouded under political and religious dissident cover was the impetus behind anti-war demonstrations in Hue and Saigon leading to the overthrow of the Diem’s regime in November 1963. Following this disastrous event, the RVN encountered a period of political turmoil which to a certain degree, adversely affected the war efforts. It appears the expression “misfortunes never come alone” suited well to an ill-fated country like the RVN. While the situation in the RVN was not so favorable, her major ally, the U.S., was also facing a series of serious domestic political chaos.

Anti-war movements erupted wildly on many America’s streets:

The Kent State University fatal shooting incidence heightened anti-war sentiment.

The Pentagon Papers led to the Watergate scandal and the resignation of President Richard M. Nixon.

President Nixon

Jane Fonda, Ramsey Clarke, and some religious ministers went to Hanoi to praise the communist and denounced U.S. war policy publicly on North Vietnam’s radio.

Public support of the proxy war plummeted dramatically and the U.S. badly needed a strategy to exit Vietnam.

Part 3 - The Beginning of the End

The seriousness of domestic unrest in the U.S. compelled President Nixon to engage in political negotiation with Hanoi. On January 25, 1969, the Paris Peace Talk opened in Paris, France for the U.S. and Hanoi to negotiate an agreement to end the war. Knowing the anti-war sentiment in America had weakened, if not destroyed the U.S.’s will to continue the fight; Hanoi haughtily pushed for a military victory and kept stalling negotiation. After two years of deadlock because of Hanoi’s intransigence, the U.S. sought to talk to Hanoi’s patron, the PRC. Through back channel diplomacy, Dr. Henry Kissinger, Assistant to President Richard Nixon for National Security Affairs met with Chou En-lai, Prime Minister of the PRC in Peking, China to propose a fast solution to the Indochina conflict.

Dr Henry Kissinger

The Memorandum of Conversation between Dr. Henry Kissinger and Prime Minister Chou En-lai clearly shows that the U.S. wanted a quick political fix instead of destroying or defeating the North Vietnamese communist. The meeting was in Peking, China on June 20, 1972. Kissinger and Chou initially talked about world events before embarking on the issues in Indochina, specifically Vietnam. Below are verbatim excerpts from this historical document (9) which determined the fate of the RVN:

- Prime Minister Chou: Yes, that might be one of the historical factors. And an additional one that there are such big competitions in the world. Now let’s go on to the Indochina question – I would like to hear from you.

- Dr. Kissinger: The Prime Minister said he had some observations he would like to make to me. May be we should reverse the places and let him talk first.

- Prime Minister Chou: These are questions on which there are disputes, and we would like to listen to you first to see your solutions of the problem.

- Dr. Kissinger: Is the Prime Minister’s suggestion that after he’s heard me I will be so convincing the disputes will have disappeared, and there will be no further need for him to make observations?

- Prime Minister Chou: I have no such expectations, but do hope the disputes will be lessened.

- Dr. Kissinger: I will make our candid assessment. I know it doesn’t agree with yours, but it is useful for you at any rate to understand how we see the situation. And it will take the situation from the start of the North Vietnamese offensive on March 10.

I believe that I have explained to the Prime Minister what our general objectives in Indochina are. It is obvious that it cannot be the policy of this Administration to maintain permanent bases in Indochina, or to continue in Indochina the policies that were originated by the Secretary of State who refused to shake hands with the Prime Minister. It isn’t… we are in a different historical phase. We believe that the future of our relationship with Peking is infinitely more important for the future of Asia that what happens in Phnom Penh, in Hanoi or in Saigon.

When President Johnson put American troops into Vietnam, you will remember that he justified it in part on the ground that what happened in Indochina was masterminded in Peking and was part of a plot to take over the world. Dean Rusk said this in a statement.

President Johnson

You were then engaged in the Cultural Revolution and not, from my reading it, emphasizing foreign adventures.

So that, the mere fact that we are sitting in this room changes the objective basis of the original intervention in Indochina. For us who inherited the war, our problem has been how to liquidate it in a way that does not affect our entire international position and − this is not your primary concern − the domestic stability in the United States. So we have genuinely attempted to end the war, and as you may or may not know, I personally started negotiations with the North Vietnamese in 1967 when I was only at the periphery of the government, at a time when it was very unpopular, because I believed there had to be a political end to the war.

So from the time we came into office we have attempted to end this war. And we have understood, as I told you before, that the Democratic Republic of Vietnam is a permanent factor on the Indochinese peninsula and probably the strongest entity. And we have had no interest in destroying it or even in defeating it. After the end of the war, we will have withdrawn 12,000 miles. The Democratic Republic of Vietnam will still be 300 miles from Saigon. That is a reality which they don’t seem to understand. (Page 28 - 29)

To reassure Chou En-lai the U.S. would normalize relationship with Hanoi in about 10 years, Dr. Kissinger promised:

- Dr. Kissinger: It is on one level. But on the other, when we make an agreement in Indochina, it will be to make a new relationship. If we can make it with Peking why can we not do it with Hanoi? What has Hanoi done to us that would make it impossible to, say in ten years, establish a new relationship? (Page 31)

And below is Dr. Kissinger’s statement in the last paragraph on page 37:

Dr. Kissinger: So we should find a way to end the war, to stop it from being an international situation, and then permit a situation to develop in which the future on Indochina can be returned to the Indochinese people. And I can assure you that this is the only object we have in Indochina, and I do not believe this can be so different from yours. We want nothing for ourselves there. And while we cannot bring a communist government to power, if, as a result of historical evolution it should happen over a period of time, if we can live with a communist government in China, we ought to be able to accept it in Indochina. (Page 37)

It was unknown if the PRC exerted any pressure on Hanoi after this Kissinger – Chou meeting. Nevertheless, Hanoi mulishly kept stalling negotiations while continuing to attack South Vietnam. Hanoi’s stubbornness infuriated President Nixon and he ordered a massive bombing campaign in North Vietnam to force Hanoi back to the negotiation table. The eleven-day deadly air raid during Xmas 1972 had accomplished what the U.S. wanted. Hanoi was on their knees and obediently returned to Paris for negotiation. From the operational and strategic point of view, the bombing must have continued to achieve a military victory when Hanoi had exhausted their air defense capability. But we, the U.S., unilaterally decided to stop the bombing, willingly declined a military victory, and was content to further negotiation with Hanoi!!!

Sir Robert Thompson, a renowned British counterinsurgency expert commented on the Xmas bombing campaign: "In my view, on December 30, 1972, after 11 days of those B-52 attacks on the Hanoi area, you had won the war, it was all over! They had fired 1242 SAM's, they had none left, and what would have come in over land from China would be a mere trickle. They and their whole rear base at that point would be at your mercy. They would have taken any terms. And that is why of course, you actually got a peace agreement in January, which you had not been able to get in October".

The RVN steadfastly refused to sign the Paris Peace Accord formulated by the U.S. and the DRV because it was dangerously in favor of the DRV. However, under repeated threats juxtaposed with serious promises by President Nixon to severely retaliate against Hanoi in the event of their violation, the RVN had no choice but to sign the agreement on January 27, 1973. A few months following the signing of the Paris Agreement, U.S. Congress passed an Amendment on June 19, 1973, forbidding all U.S. military involvement in Southeast Asia. On August 9, 1974, President Nixon resigned his presidency stemming from the Watergate scandal. On September 1974, U.S. Congress cut military aid to the RVN to the bone causing incalculable destruction to the morale of combat soldiers and the general public. During this time, the PRC and the USSR quadrupled their logistical support to Hanoi paving the way for the April 30, 1975 outcome.

In conclusion, the U.S. had to do what it must do because, as Kissinger explained to Chou in the meeting: “For us who inherited the war, our problem has been how to liquidate it in a way that does not affect our entire international position”, and because of “the domestic stability in the United States”. The fear of communist expansion or the domino theory disappeared with this Sino-U.S. rapprochement. Additionally, this would also open the potentially huge, lucrative market in mainland China for U.S. Corporations and investors. To achieve all these benefits, the U.S. arbitrarily accepted the deal with China in June 1972 at the expense of the RVN.

On the thirty-third anniversary of the close of that embittered chapter, as a former Vietnamese combatant of that war, I earnestly wish to reassure the younger generation of the Vietnamese American:

-In defense of our democracy in South Viet Nam against the communist, your elder generation had given, for the most part, their utmost best under the worst of circumstances. You can shamelessly look at any ignorant or misled bigot straight in the eyes with no inferior complex. These bigots may probably have been dully-influenced by slanted reports, books written by defeatist or liberal writers. You could help direct them to search for recently declassified national security documents and many impartial, honest accounts of the war portrayed by unbiased, honest writers.

To all my Vietnamese brothers-in arms:

-Of course we, the RVN and the ARVN, like most nations on earth, were not perfect. We had our share of inept political leaders as well as incompetent field commanders. We realize there were times our leader’s hands were tied by our major ally. We also understand we sacrificed many best years of our lives fighting despotism to protect liberty and freedom so our citizens could dissent and even undermine our effort. Yet we had fought courageously against overwhelming odds and hundreds of thousands of our friends lost their lives for the just cause. We did not win because the outcome was determined by superpower politics. Obviously it was way beyond the soldier’s responsibility. If we, the RVN, had it our way, unquestionably, the outcome of the war would have been different.

And to my American brothers in arms:

Through negotiation, our politicians settled with major world powers to end the war in Viet Nam politically. Following orders, you must withdraw from Vietnam. The last U.S. military unit left Viet Nam since March 1973. The final collapse of the RVN occurred on April 30, 1975. There is absolutely no doubt in my mind that the U.S. did not lose the war in Vietnam militarily. You have fulfilled the call of duty admirably. We salute you. We thank you for serving and for helping us in Viet Nam. Ironically, politics dictated the outcome. But don’t be bothered; only ignorant or misled individuals would buy the notion that America lost the war in Vietnam militarily.

(1) Correct spelling of Viet Nam must be two separate words.
(2) Also known as Poulo Condore, a penal island for political or high-risk prisoners.
(3) Viet Nam Quoc Dan Đang or Viet Quoc. Vietnamese Nationalist Party.
(4) Viet Nam Cach Menh Dong Minh Hoi aka Vietnamese Revolutionary Allied League.
(5) Vietnamese Communist Party.
(6) Democratic Republic of Viet Nam or Viet Nam Dan Chu Cong Hoa in Vietnamese.
(7) Viet Minh abbreviated for Viet Nam Cach Menh Dong Minh Hoi
(8) From Le livre noir du communisme, by Stéphane Courtois et. al, 1997.
(9) For complete details of Kissinger – Chou meeting, please check the link below: http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB193/HAK%206-20-72.pdf

On any of the many websites celebrating the “Darwin Awards,” my name deserves to appear among the list of contenders. It’s been a little over three years since my grown son presented me with a forty-inch, “Sector Nine” longboard skateboard, and before finally hanging it up just short of my seventieth birthday, I’d logged over eighty hours of riding. Despite forty years of competent skiing and more recently snowboarding, the learning curve on the longboard was gradual in the extreme. I needed dozens of half-hour and one-hour sessions on the nearly flat surface of a movie theater parking lot before taking on the slight to moderate grades of the quiet suburban street in front of our house. Soon, the more challenging topography of an adjacent street began calling me.

The respectable rise in terrain on that nearby street entered my brain and started to dominate my internal landscape. This mountain of my longboard ambitions had on one side, a gently graded, straight descent of about one hundred and fifty yards, and on the far side, it dropped much more sharply, curving and leveling off after a run of about two hundred yards. Months of false starts and nervous reconnoitering went by before I mustered up the nerve to take the plunge. When I did, there was little room for technique. It was all just bombing and holding on until the flat run-out slowed me down. Gradually, I began to gain the riding skills needed to control my speed by carving my board back and forth across the fall line of the hill in what I believed was a series of graceful slalom-like moves. Every run produced an amazing rush, and every run was never less than scary. I was quickly hooked on the thrill of riding, and I suspect, to the utter improbability of the idea that someone at my age would be on a longboard skateboard. Adrenaline and vanity can make for a near lethal combination.

While all of the above was taking place, I routinely drove on a nearby county highway, one I’d driven on for decades. But now, each time the car climbed what I came to think of as the “great township escarpment,” this otherwise innocuous stretch of four-lane highway began to warp and morph its way into my consciousness with a growing and ever more obsessive attraction, gradually and seductively revealing itself as the ultimate in a longboard rider’s ideal of desirability.

Going to the hardware store for an extension cord, or on some other mindless errand, I found myself gauging the angles of this highway’s wonderful long downhill grade, four full lanes wide and newly paved with a perfectly smooth asphalt topping. And I’d think, “this would be a beauty of a ride.” Until then, my longest run on a board had been in the two-hundred-yard range. The downhill slope of the highway clocked out to a wonderful eight-tenths of a mile-long with a steep grade from the crest running downhill for almost a half-mile. A half-mile! That would be like a snowboard or ski run, almost endless. The grade then leveled off before dropping more gently for about one third of a mile down to the next intersection. Over a period of several months, I increasingly indulged the fantasy of what it would be like to ride a longboard down that nearly endless, smooth, four-lane highway, gracefully arcing, carving from side to side, on and on and on. Daydreaming moved steadily toward a plausible, if not entirely reasonable prospect. “Why? Because," as the alpinists put it, "it’s there." I was like an adolescent focused on sex. Whatever powers of intelligent judgment I might have possessed were of nothing in the face of my desire to ride that devil’s highway. The obvious arguments against the patently foolish nature of the enterprise were reduced to whispered and trifling echoes.

The board my son had given me was not the right vehicle for this endeavor. At a local skateboard shop, to the amusement of a couple of incredulous, pierced and tattooed stoners working the counter, I dropped a hundred and sixty bucks on a “Original” longboard skateboard, a board with sprung trucks, a carveboard. It’s very goosey and responsive, designed to maximize a rider’s ability to carve or turn on a hill to control the rate of speed, and it performed exactly that way on the two hundred-yard run on the street next to home. After two weeks of almost daily outings, doing technical work, carving and turning, I decided that the big one, the highway hill was doable. Ostensibly out on an errand, I left my car in the parking lot of an office building fronting the highway. Walking the nearly full mile down to the bottom and then back up the hill on the other side of the road, I made note of manhole covers, searched for potholes; none visible, and checked for any other impediments to a smooth ride. Like an astronaut before liftoff, I had completed my checklist.

The basic premise, all rationality within in a broader context of what some might call madness, was that with the new carveboard I would be able to control my speeds on the long, steep downhill run of the county highway. My planning did reflect the application of a logical, if flawed, methodology. The single variable piece of my equation was the fact that county highways are designed for automobile and truck traffic, and that no allowances had been made for longboard skateboarders. From the very first instant of seeing that highway as a skating surface, the presence of traffic on the road had been the dominant barrier to my proceeding. But from the beginning, my plans had been premised on a simple proposition of probabilities. How many cars would there be on a secondary county road at first light, say five-twenty five a.m., on a summer Sunday morning? In fact, more on my mind than the risks of encountering traffic at such an hour was the possibility of getting locked up if my outing attracted the attentions of a passing police cruiser.

Just before first light on a July Sunday morning, after a restless night of anticipation, I tiptoed out of our bedroom without awakening my wife. She was somewhat aware of what I had in mind, but not the imminence of its application. Within minutes, I was driving up the dark and deserted highway toward the summit of what I knew was going to be, one way or another some sort of a peak experience of my life. In an office complex parking lot, I suited up like a matador, actually puffed out more like a Michelin Man; helmet, knee pads, elbow pads, wrist guards and padded street hockey pants.

The pre-dawn quiet was broken only by a few birds, the buzzing of the parking lot security lights and by the sudden passing of an occasional car. The measure of my delusions was that I was surprised by any cars at all. But there weren’t so many that I was ready to stand down, cop a plea and go back home to my bed.

In the darkness behind a grove of trees by the side of the road, I counted the infrequent cars going by and waited for enough daylight to go. There were some stifled misgivings as each car or truck went by. The traffic pattern at five-fifteen a.m. on a July Sunday morning was utterly random. Long periods of no cars at all, then an unpredictable one or more cars. I tried to calculate my chances of getting a traffic-free window of time long enough to make my run. It was futile. As the light increased I could see that all was clear for almost a visible mile ahead of me, and for about a third of mile behind me.

I pushed off across the road. The new asphalt surface was as wonderful as I had imagined, and things began well. My first turn back across the road was a beauty. The grade was steeper than I had realized, and I was quickly picking up speed. Ahead of me, down the road as far as I could see was an empty expanse of wide, smooth blacktop. The sound of the wind rushing past my ears and around my helmet rose higher and higher. Traversing the four-lane width of the highway, I was doing it, a dream fulfilled beyond all expectations. In fact, it was going so well, I was ecstatic, on top of my game and then... I spotted the headlights of an oncoming car in the distance.

The governing premise of this whole thing was that I would be able to control my speed by traversing and carving across the four-lane width of the steepest parts of the roadway.
Even with the approaching headlights, I calculated that I still had enough room to get in at least another back and forth across the road to keep my speed under control. It was at that instant that everything got complicated beyond my ability to process information, let alone act upon what I was apprehending.

As I was starting a controlled traverse over to the right side, the safer side of the road, a car crested the hill behind me. That forced me back almost directly in the fall line, and back into the lanes with the oncoming car that by now was beginning to close on me. In the twenty to thirty seconds it took for the car coming down the hill behind me to go by, I had not been able to carve back across the road; that is, I had not been able to check my rate of acceleration by turning across the face of the slope. And as a result, I had begun to approach downhill speeds that were now scaring the shit out of me. There was no chance at all of my executing anything resembling a carved, controlled turn. I was into a zone of pure terror. I suppose it must be analogous to a diver’s encounter with a shark or a parachutist realizing his or her canopy had not deployed. The best I could hope to do was just hang on, hunker down and try to survive at skateboard speeds I had never imagined possible. The board was chattering, vibrating and flexing and I wasn’t sure I wouldn’t be pitched violently off and into my head. Dropping into a crouch, keeping my center of gravity as low as I could, I tried to ride out what felt like a free fall from a high-rise building. So much for best-laid plans.

At the half-mile point, the grade leveled off briefly, before resuming its gentler and final three-tenths of a mile downhill. My velocity began to abate and I was able, just barely, to execute a u-turn back up and into the hill that brought me, at last, to a stop. Shaking, shivering and gasping, I stood by now empty road in the silence of a Sunday morning dawn, and said aloud, "that's it, enough."

I now had to trudge back up the half mile hill in the quiet half light, an absurdly costumed figure, a senior citizen carrying a long skateboard, a bit dazed, but grateful not to be lying on the shoulder of the road awaiting the EMTs, or worse. So much for the wisdom that's supposed to come with advanced years. It seemed it might finally be past time for me to put away the things of a child. However, stay tuned.

Otro año sin haber pedido nada ni esperar nada y ni tan mal me fue ^^

Mi novio me regaló los dos primeros tomos de Marmalade Boy Kazenban, el tercero de Georgie y Dien Bien Phu. Que hermosa y cuidada se ve la nueva edición de Marmalade! De Dien Bien Phu solo sé que trata de las vivencias de un fotógrafo en la guerra del Vietnam donde conoce a una niña vietnamita que combate al ejército americano. Hojeandolo vi que el dibujo echa un poco bastante para atrás, pero aún tengo que leerlo a ver qué tal está la historia.

Los dos tomos de Real y Hechiceras son autoregalos míos :3 Quería coger King of Thorn, Ve con Grace y Goth, pero de la primera solo tenían el tercer número, de el segundo no sabían nada y el tercero estaba agotado .__.u Tendré que dejarlos para más adelante.

El libro del cual no se ve el título es "Un mundo sin fin", la última novela de Ken Follett, regalo de mi suegra. Cuando lo lea veré si se merece el apodo de "la segunda parte de Los pilares de la tierra", uno de mis libros favoritos. Me refiero a que aunque la historia esté ambientada en la misma ciudad y algunos personajes sean descendientes de los presentados en "Los pilares" falta ver si las historias de ambos tienen relación entre sí para poder nombrarlo "segunda parte" o simplemente comparten el lugar y parentescos lejanos entre personajes y el término "segunda parte" solo es comercial para aprovechar el tirón que tuvo "Los pilares"

*

Así con los regalos de reyes vuelvo de mi hiatus navideño, estuve fuera una semana, pero he pasado unos días más sin publicar por algun que otro problemilla familiar.

Ahora vuelvo a la carga,

 FELIZ 2008!!!

Unsung heroes.

There is irony here. We are the most powerful nation in the history of the world with less to be afraid of than any nation in the history of the world and yet we are afraid. All the time. In Pakistan we support an anti-democratic military dictator because of our fear. We fear that if General Musharraf is not in office, Pakistan might descend into chaos and someone might steal one or more of Pakistan’s nuclear weapons – weapons we helped them acquire and that were peddled to Iran, North Korea and Libya while four American administrations stood by and watched. But we’ll leave that for another discussion. Too much irony in one day causes cognitive dissonance.

Not for the first time since the end of World War II, we find ourselves at the wrong end of history. Musharraf is a military dictator who thumbs his nose at the Bush/Cheney Administration while accepting billions in military aid. A.Q. Khan peddles nuclear technology and equipment to rogue states and Musharraf refuses to make him available to either the United States or the International Atomic Energy Agency even for questioning. Pakistan has more than 50 nuclear warheads and, though we provided – for free – the technology and equipment to secure them, we don’t even know where they are. This is the result of what we now know is foreign policy about Pakistan which is run out of Vice-president Cheney’s office.

Worse, because of that policy, we have no good alternatives in Pakistan now. Once again we are locked in a policy that requires support of a reactionary dictator whose days in office are numbered, who is unpopular with his own people and hates democracy. Small wonder that the Moslem world distrusts and dislikes us.

But this is just another in a long line of fear-based foreign policy missteps the United States has made since the end of World War II. A few examples will have to suffice; this is a blog, not an academic treatise. Because it is a blog, I can throw out oversimplified hypotheses and theories with half-baked analysis of what were complex foreign policy decisions and do so with impunity.

Let’s begin with 9/11. 9/11/1973 that is. The day we orchestrated a military coup in Chile which ousted its democratically elected President Allende and installed that marvelous, enlightened despot General Augusto Pinochet; who immediately suspended all civil liberties in Chile and started murdering anyone who disagreed with him. Why did the United States assist in overthrowing a democracy and replacing it with a murderous military dictatorship? Fear. We were afraid of the Russians taking over Chile. Why? Because President Allende was a socialist. Never mind that hardly any chance existed that Allende would turn Chile into a vassal of the Soviet Union. There was a one percent chance – to use Vice-president Cheney’s brilliant reductionist formula of foreign policy – of Chile being absorbed into Russia’s “sphere of influence” so we abandoned our Nation’s principals and aligned ourselves firmly on the side of repression and historical backwardness. And gave Chile two decades of misery. [1]

Or we could look at Vietnam. The overriding consideration in American minds from the fall of Dien Bien Phu in 1954 until our ultimate withdrawal two decades later was fear. We were deathly afraid of Vietnam becoming Communist because, you see, that would result in dominoes falling: All of Southeast Asia would become communist. Vietnam did, of course, become a Communist country and no dominoes have fallen – except our great bugbear the Soviet Union.

Or we could talk about Korea. Or Panama. Or Honduras. Or Nicaragua. Or even Cuba which is the only example where the fear really was justified. For a few months. Four decades ago. But our democracy continues to be safe from Cuban cigars, even now. We could even talk about the Carter Administration’s decision to stop effective economic sanctions against a repressive military dictatorship in Pakistan so we could funnel arms and munitions through Pakistan to Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan for a proxy war against the Soviet Union.

But, as I said earlier, too much irony in one day is bad for you.

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[1] I see that conservative columnist Charles Krauthammer attempts to justify this unqualified disaster for American foreign policy by praising our wisdom. Chile, you see, wasn’t a mature country and was unready for Democracy so we actually helped them. He applies the same whitewash to our long time support of Ferdinand Marcos in the Philippines. Balderdash.

However; Mr. Krauthammer’s view of our current options in Pakistan seems about right.

Addition of November 22nd -- In today's Washington Post Robert Kagan has a perceptive piece about our history of supporting dictators. It always causes me cognitive dissonance when I find myself in agreement with a Neo-Con but there it is. Facts are facts. See the article here.

James B. "Earthquake McGoon" McGovern Jr. was a World War II fighter ace with nine enemy aircraft to his credit.  He flew for Gen. Claire L. Chennault and the 14th Air Force: the famous Curtiss P-40 Warhawk squadron with the tiger shark teeth painted on the noses of their aircraft.

“Earthquake McGoon” was a 1940s cartoon character that shook the earth when he walked.  James McGovern earned the nickname "Earthquake" because he always lived his life bigger and bolder than most others.

James McGovern died in Laos plane crash in May 6, 1954, when his C-119 Flying Boxcar cargo plane was hit by ground fire while parachuting a howitzer to the besieged French garrison at Dien Bien Phu, Vietnam. The day after the crash and deaths of McGovern and Buford, the garrison at Dien Bien Phu surrendered.

At the end of World war II, James B. “Earthquake McGoon” McGovern Jr. went to work for Civil Air Transport (CAT), an airline formed by Gen. Claire L. Chennault and owned by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).  The airline allowed the United States to covertly support operations of military allies.  McGovern died while supporting  the French militarty in Vietnam.

The fact that CAT was owned by the CIA and the CIA was used to support the French military in Vietnam was classified until the 1990s.

During the American involvement in Vietnam, Cat becake known as "Air America" but remained a part of the CIA.

James B. “Earthquake McGoon” McGovern's skeletal remains were discovered in an unmarked grave in northern Laos in 2002. They were identified in September 2006 by laboratory experts at the U.S. military's Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command in Hawaii. McGovern is credited as being one of the first two Americans to die in combat in Vietnam, the other being Wallace Buford.

On February 24, 2005, James McGovern was posthumously awarded (along with his co-pilot Wallace Buford, and 6 other surviving pilots) the Legion of Honour with the rank of Knight by the President of France for their actions to supply Dien Bien Phu during the 57 day siege.

Related:
CIA Pilot From French Era In Vietnam Laid To Rest
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Remains of 'Earthquake McGoon' sought after 48 years

Richard Pyle
Associated Press
Published Nov. 24, 2002

He was the classic soldier of fortune -- a World War II fighter ace with nine enemy aircraft to his credit, a hard-living, 260-pound bon vivant, known in Asia's bars and byways as Earthquake McGoon, after a character in a comic strip.

Now, 48 years after his cargo plane was shot down on a desperate, last-ditch supply mission over Dien Bien Phu, Vietnam, a U.S. military team is seeking to recover the bodies of James B. McGovern, alias McGoon, and his copilot, Wallace A. Buford.

"Looks like this is it, son," was McGovern's last radio message before his crippled C-119 Flying Boxcar cartwheeled into a Laos hillside in 1954. The crash killed McGovern, 32, Buford, 28, and a French crewman. Two cargo handlers -- a Frenchman and a Thai -- were thrown clear and survived.

The next day, Ho Chi Minh's Vietminh revolutionary forces overran the last French strong points at Dien Bien Phu, ending a siege that had captured world headlines for nearly three months.

McGovern, Buford and Life magazine photographer Robert Capa -- killed later that month -- were the only Americans known to have died in the conflict that doomed French colonialism in Indochina -- as the area was then widely called -- and set the stage for Vietnam's "American war" a decade later.

The death of swashbuckling Earthquake McGoon was big news in 1954, when his grinning face was splashed across newspapers and magazines. Yet most details remained shrouded for decades in Cold War secrecy -- especially the fact that the pilots' airline, Civil Air Transport (CAT), was owned by the Central Intelligence Agency.

But this month, after numerous delays, a 10-member team from the Hawaii-based Joint Task Force-Full Accounting, assisted by Laotian officials and hired workers, began excavating the site of three suspected graves near the Laotian village of Ban Sot.

No human remains yet

Any remains found will go to the Army's Central Identification Laboratory Hawaii for forensic study and identification -- a process that could take months. The lab directs the task force's search operations, providing experts to its field teams.

The Laos search so far has yielded only bits of wreckage and flight-suit remnants, U.S. officials said.

Pho Sai, a Laotian Foreign Ministry official for U.S. affairs, said the chances of finding human remains appear slim after so many years.

The Americans' supporting role at Dien Bien Phu was "never a security issue," even before the widely publicized crash, said Felix Smith, a retired CAT pilot and friend of McGovern. "The only factor that was secret was that the CIA owned CAT -- lock, stock and barrel."

After a French officer learned from Ban Sot villagers in 1959 about three graves in the area, CIA officials stifled his report. "They indicated in a vague way that they feared a lawsuit if they gave the relatives false information . . . therefore, no one notified McGovern's or Buford's relatives," Smith said.

By the time the French report was discovered by a historian years later, some family members had died or moved.

The U.S. State Department and the Vietnamese government declined to comment. A CIA spokesman said he could not immediately comment.

Decades of secrecy

Diplomatic agreements in 1992 enabled the United States finally to begin searching in earnest for about 2,000 Americans still missing in Indochina. By that time, the CIA had begun declassifying some files from the 1950s.

In a 1999 interview, McGovern's brother John, of Hawley, Pa., called it "ridiculous . . . a joke" that secrecy had been maintained for so many years.

The McGoon case came to light again in October 1997, when a Joint Task Force team investigating an unrelated crash near Ban Sot saw an old C-119 propeller in the village. It was assumed to be French, until William Forsyth, the agency's top researcher, heard about McGoon from a former pilot and dug out old news clippings about the crash.

A year later, Forsyth -- whose specialty is aerial photo analysis -- spotted three "probable graves" in a 1961 photo of the Ban Sot area. But with Vietnam War MIAs taking precedence, officials moved Case 3036 to the back burner with other "Cold War losses."

There it stayed until a group of ex-CAT pilots, led by Felix Smith, launched a letter-writing campaign and lobbied Congress and former intelligence officials to have the case upgraded for immediate action. Retired spy Dudley Foster, who once served in a liaison role with CAT, persuaded CIA Director George Tenet to back the effort.

With Case 3036 given new priority, task force investigators revisited Ban Sot, where last July they interviewed four witnesses to the 1954 crash and three who pointed out burial sites.

Phimpha, a 65-year-old farmer, recalled that he was fishing in a river when the plane came down, and later saw three bodies, among them a "very large Caucasian with a round face, still strapped in the pilot's seat."

Days later he noticed fresh grave mounds near a road, Phimpha said. His wife, Thok, 67, recalled that as a girl she "always ran past that location because of the ghosts thought to be there."

John McGovern, a sportswriter and publicist who died last December, said in the 1999 interview that his older brother had become hooked on aviation as a boy in Elizabeth, N.J.

"I didn't know what I wanted to be, but all he ever talked about was becoming a pilot," he said.

Arriving in China in 1944, James McGovern joined the 14th Air Force's "Tiger Shark" squadron, descended from the famed Flying Tigers volunteer group. He was credited with shooting down four Japanese Zero fighters and destroying five on the ground, Smith said.

At war's end in 1945, Maj. Gen. Claire Chennault, founder of both the Flying Tigers and the 14th Air Force, recruited McGovern and other veteran pilots for his next enterprise, a commercial airline called Civil Air Transport.

Under contract to Chiang Kai-shek's Nationalist regime, CAT flew civilian and military missions during China's civil war and evacuated thousands of refugees to Taiwan before the Communist victory in 1949.

At 260 pounds, the ex-fighter pilot liked the roomy cockpits of CAT's war-surplus C-46 transports but still sometimes used a wicker chair instead of the standard pilot's seat.

A saloon owner in China dubbed him Earthquake McGoon, after a hulking hillbilly character in the then-popular "Li'l Abner" comic strip. "It didn't bother him. He was a character himself, and I think he thrived on it," John McGovern said.

Smith, who once shared a house with McGovern, said he was "a real big-hearted guy," but not the "wild man" some reports implied. "He was a bon vivant, happy-go-lucky. He loved kids, and he was the guy who in a tense situation would come out with some joke."

The McGoon legend was assured by an episode in which he ran out of fuel, made an emergency night landing in a riverbed and was captured by Chinese Communist troops.

When McGovern turned up safe six months later, other pilots joked that his captors "got tired of feeding him." But Smith said McGovern had argued his way out. "He told them, 'You keep saying you're going to release me but you haven't, so I don't believe anything you say. You're liars.' Then they let him go."

Civil Air Transport moved to Taiwan in 1949 and a year later was secretly acquired by the CIA, which continued its commercial service as a cover for clandestine activities.

In 1953, France asked the administration of President Dwight Eisenhower for U.S. help in fighting a Communist rebellion in colonial Indochina. Soon, CAT was there, flying supply missions with French insignia painted over the company logo.

Wally Buford, who had flown B-24 bombers during World War II and C-119s in Korea, was studying for an engineering degree in 1953 when he saw a notice that the government was seeking experienced C-119 pilots, and he signed up.

"He wanted to fly," recalls his brother, Roger Buford, a retired engineer in Kansas City, Kan.

A year later, McGovern and Buford were among two dozen Americans who earned as much as $3,000 a month -- big money in those days -- air-dropping supplies to the besieged French garrison at Dien Bien Phu.

On May 6, 1954, their Flying Boxcar, carrying a parachute-rigged artillery piece, was riddled by antiaircraft fire as it neared the tiny drop zone. "I've got a direct hit," other pilots heard McGoon say.

With one engine afire, McGoon nursed the aircraft another 75 miles southward, into Laos. Approaching 4,000-foot mountains, he radioed fellow C-119 pilot Steve Kusak for help in finding level ground. "Turn right," said Kusak, who then heard McGovern's last transmission, apparently moments before he crashed.

Related:
http://www.talkingproud.us/HistoryEarthquakeMcGoon.html

CIA Pilot From French Era In Vietnam Laid To Rest

US commanders admit: we face a Vietnam-style collapse

Elite officers in Iraq fear low morale, lack of troops and loss of political will

Simon Tisdall
Thursday March 1, 2007
The Guardian

An elite team of officers advising the US commander, General David Petraeus, in Baghdad has concluded that they have six months to win the war in Iraq - or face a Vietnam-style collapse in political and public support that could force the military into a hasty retreat.The officers - combat veterans who are experts in counter-insurgency - are charged with implementing the "new way forward" strategy announced by George Bush on January 10. The plan includes a controversial "surge" of 21,500 additional American troops to establish security in the Iraqi capital and Anbar province.

But the team, known as the "Baghdad brains trust" and ensconced in the heavily fortified Green Zone, is struggling to overcome a range of entrenched problems in what has become a race against time, according to a former senior administration official familiar with their deliberations...

US commanders admit: we face a Vietnam-style collapse The Guardian

Battle of Chosin Reservoir (wikipedia)
Battle of Dien Bien Phu (wikipedia)

Copyright © 2007 Henry Edward Hardy

Bon, j'ai l'air de m'énerver sur cette affaire et je ne devrais pas. Pour les prochains timbres, je suggère de commémorer Waterloo, et aussi juin 40 (dont l'état-major me reste en travers de la gorge) ; comme les généraux qui, pendant la guerre de 14, ont envoyé les poilus au casse pipe au Chemin-des-Dames. L'un s'appelait le général Nivelle je crois. Je vais faire des recherches sur lui pour savoir si ce génial statège ne mérite pas une commémoration philatélique !