The Lenses of Empire: Nothing is beyond official correction

I was rapidly scanning the "Discounted" section of a small local store selling school textbooks, while waiting for a bus.

There was a book with the title Conflict in Indochina: 1954-1979 (a.k.a close to the whole timeframe of war in Viet Nam after WWII, and including the carpet bombing of Viet Nam, Laos and Cambodia).

It provides the "official outlook" on the wars in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia, which is the one exactly taught to me when I was in high school in year 10, through textbooks and classes.

The very title of the textbook is misleading – as if this were just a conflict amongst local peoples rather than carpet-bombing by imperial powers. As author Viet Thanh Nguyen said, in an article that was surprisingly allowed in establishment media:

The U.S. would drop more explosives on Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia than it did on all of Europe during World War II, and the news brought vivid images depicting the carnage inflicted on Southeast Asian civilians, hundreds of thousands of whom would die. It was in this context that [Dr. Martin Luther] King called the U.S. “the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today.”

[Source: Viet Thanh Nguyen on TIME Magazine]

Let us compare how this textbook and Dr. King provide accounts of the same events — of the U.S. supporting France in trying to recapture Viet Nam as a colony, of the Geneva Conference in 1954 dealing with how Viet Nam would be split up and ruled:

In Chapter 1, we saw that since 1950 Indochina had become an increasingly important part of US foreign policy. The United States provided nearly three-quarters of the funds required for France's war effort against the Vietminh and placed its support firmly behind anti-communists in Vietnam at the Geneva Conference in 1954. Under the Eisenhower administration (1953-61), the United States continued to expand its support for non-communists in the Asia Pacific by establishing the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO) in September 1954. This aimed to bring anti-communist powers in the region, such as Australia, New Zealand, Thailand and the Philippines, intocloser alliance. The administration also began to increase its involvement in Indochina by implementing a variety of new policies.

[Image caption under portrait of Eisenhower] Dwight Eisenhower was the 34th President of the United States. He took over from Harry Truman, who had already committed the United States to Indochina by providing financial support to France during its war against the Vietminh beginning in 1950.

[Source: Conflict in Indochina: 1954-1979]

And now, let's see what a difference in perspective there is, when reading Dr. Martin Luther King's speech denouncing the American-led war on the peoples of Viet Nam, Laos and Cambodia. He delivered this speech at Riverside Church exactly one year before he was assassinated.

Regard, for example, the difference in how they tonalise the same fact that the U.S. financially supported 75-80% the cost of France's efforts to recolonise Viet Nam.

From Dr. King:

And as I ponder the madness of Vietnam and search within myself for ways to understand and respond in compassion, my mind goes constantly to the people of that peninsula. I speak now not of the soldiers of each side, not of the ideologies of the Liberation Front, not of the junta in Saigon, but simply of the people who have been living under the curse of war for almost three continuous decades now. I think of them, too, because it is clear to me that there will be no meaningful solution there until some attempt is made to know them and hear their broken cries.

They must see Americans as strange liberators. The Vietnamese people proclaimed their own independence in 1954 – in 1945 rather – after a combined French and Japanese occupation and before the communist revolution in China. They were led by Ho Chi Minh. Even though they quoted the American Declaration of Independence in their own document of freedom, we refused to recognize them. Instead, we decided to support France in its reconquest of her former colony. Our government felt then that the Vietnamese people were not ready for independence, and we again fell victim to the deadly Western arrogance that has poisoned the international atmosphere for so long. With that tragic decision we rejected a revolutionary government seeking self-determination and a government that had been established not by China – for whom the Vietnamese have no great love – but by clearly indigenous forces that included some communists. For the peasants this new government meant real land reform, one of the most important needs in their lives.

For nine years following 1945 we denied the people of Vietnam the right of independence. For nine years we vigorously supported the French in their abortive effort to recolonize Vietnam. Before the end of the war we were meeting eighty percent of the French war costs. Even before the French were defeated at Dien Bien Phu, they began to despair of their reckless action, but we did not. We encouraged them with our huge financial and military supplies to continue the war even after they had lost the will. Soon we would be paying almost the full costs of this tragic attempt at recolonization.

After the French were defeated, it looked as if independence and land reform would come again through the Geneva Agreement. But instead there came the United States, determined that Ho should not unify the temporarily divided nation, and the peasants watched again as we supported one of the most vicious modern dictators, our chosen man, Premier Diem. The peasants watched and cringed as Diem ruthlessly rooted out all opposition, supported their extortionist landlords, and refused even to discuss reunification with the North. The peasants watched as all this was presided over by United States' influence and then by increasing numbers of United States troops who came to help quell the insurgency that Diem's methods had aroused.

[Source of transcript: American Rhetoric]

Imagine this but now repeated for absolutely everything — everything that happens now, everything that happened in the past, everything that enemy nations might do to empire in the future.

Repeated all the time, for yesterday's history textbooks, today's headlines, and tomorrow's threats.

From supporting the Mujahideen as valiant fighters against the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, to fighting the same group as the "evil Taliban". From listing the Azov Battalion as Nazis to the Anti-Defamation League defending them. It goes on and on. No fact is free from being reframed or disposed of. Nothing is beyond official correction.