BOOK REVIEW.

VIETNAM: The Australian War

by Paul Ham

(Sydney: HarperCollins, 2007)

Hardback: 700 pages

Rec. price: $55.00

Paul Ham has not written a revisionist history of the Vietnam War. For the most part, he goes along with the majority consensus. The war was unjustifiable, badly conducted, and failed in its alleged aim to replace colonial authoritarianism with liberal political institutions. It was unwinnable from the beginning, because of the free world's self-imposed constraints of limiting conflict to Indochina, and fighting with non-nuclear weapons.

Ham is contemptuous of the arguments that the war won time for the consolidation of democracy in the rest of South-East Asia, or that it was merely a lost battle in the ultimately victorious conflict against communism, rather like Dunkirk and Singapore in the struggle against fascism.

Whether this consensus will stand the test of time remains to be seen. There are too many influential former anti-war activists--academics, journalists, politicians--for whom the Vietnam era was the most meaningful period of their lives. It is therefore still too early for any sort of disinterested historical analysis to emerge.

I lived through the Vietnam era myself. For me, it was like the rest of the 'Sixties. That is, it was all going on somewhere "out there" where I wasn't. Only one or two of its aspects impinged directly on my life.

While still at school in the mid-Sixties, I expressed admiration for draft-resister Bill White: "If he wasn't sincere, he wouldn't behave like that!" My father was a Labor Party voter, but had learned at first hand the imperative to confront totalitarianism, as a result of his experience as a World War II POW in Germany. He responded inelegantly but irrefutably that "there are ratbags out there who'll do anything to get attention".

Later at Melbourne University I allowed myself to be pressured by the ambient excitement into participating in various demonstrations, including the famous 1970 Moratorium. Nearly everyone at Melbourne either vociferously opposed the war, or kept their heads down and their mouths shut. Only a few very brave mavericks openly supported it. One was the late Frank Knopfelmacher, a brilliant if volatile product of Middle European Jewish culture. He had suffered under both Nazism and communism, and had fought in World War II. In 1970, the centenary of Lenin's birth, the student canteen was wall-papered with icons of the sainted Vladimir Ilyich. Frank was the only academic at a public Lenin seminar to take on colleagues such as Lloyd Churchward who were adulating Stalin's totalitarian predecessor.

As one of the spoilt, half-educated, suburban baby-boomer kids who made up much of the anti-war brigade, I was pulled up short by figures such as Frank, and forced to actually think about the issues for the first time. By the time I left university and commenced my inglorious stint of National Service, the last of the troops were being brought home. I was thus saved from having to exhibit my military incompetence in Vietnam as well as Australia.

There is a lot to be said for the case that the Vietnam War was hopelessly conducted. As Ham demonstrates, the Americans' heavy-handed cultural insensitivity, not to mention massive, indiscriminate shelling, bombing, defoliation, and destruction of houses and crops, resulted in their almost complete alienation from the South Vietnamese masses. At the same time, it transpired that these same peasants bore no corresponding love for the communists.

This raises the question of whether the war could have been won had it been fought differently, which in turn raises other issues. Not only is it impossible to know in advance whether a war is winnable, but it is also impossible to forecast the best way of fighting it, and whether victory is going to involve more good than harm--one of Aquinas's criteria for a just war.

Take the case of Britain, Australia and World War II. By June 1940 the rampant Nazis controlled nearly all of Europe. At that stage, the USSR was allied with Hitler, and the USA was neutral. Common sense (personified in figures such as Joseph Kennedy, American ambassador to Britain) dictated a surrender, or a negotiated modus vivendi, as a means of saving countless lives. Instead, Britain and the Commonwealth went on fighting against all the odds, and ultimately and unpredictably won. The point is that Nazism would have been worth fighting, at almost any cost, even if they had lost.

The West's long and many-faceted war against communism, like that against fascism, was worth fighting even if it too went pear-shaped at times. South Vietnam might have been led by a succession of unpleasant and corrupt politicians (Diem, Ky, Thieu); but almost any form of government is preferable to a totalitarian and entrenched communist regime. This is because without communism there is always the possibility of progress and reform. In 1948 Syngman Rhee and his cronies, like the exiled Kuomintang leaders in 1949, were certainly unacceptable by strict (or even slack!) liberal criteria. Today, however, South Korea and Taiwan are vibrant, economically dynamic democ racies which stand in brilliant contrast to both the hell-hole of North Korea, and the repressive and very patchily prosperous China.

It is worth noting, too, that Australia's roles in wars against Nazi Germany, fascist Italy and communist North Korea were, like its participation in the war against communist North Vietnam, played out in other global hemispheres, against distant foes who had no intention of invading us. All the Australian interventions were justified, however, by the inherent repulsiveness of the dictatorships which those foes represented, regardless of whether or not they had the slightest intention of ever landing on our shores.

If Paul Ham's macro-position on the Vietnam War toes the current correct line, at the micro-level he is an honest and assiduous myth-buster. Here are a few entrenched misrepresentations of the war which he corrects.

Myth Number One: The communist forces were united, decent, patriotic, homogeneously Southern, and a product of the ordinary people who loved and trusted them.

Despite historic Vietnamese suspicion of its northern neighbour, the Hanoi regime was dependent on China as well as the Soviet Union for weaponry, and was to that extent their Cold War proxy. China also sent over 300,000 labourers to North Vietnam to release workers for the army. Ham writes that, "China was prepared to fight to the last Vietnamese". He also shows that the North was prepared to fight to the last Southerner. The National Liberation Front, or Viet Cong, in the South was neither autochthonous nor autonomous. It was established, controlled and exploited by apparatchiks from the North, and fought alongside regular units from the North (such as the regiment mauled by the Australians at Long Tan), to which it was subordinate. After 1975, Hanoi disbanded it.

The degree of voluntary support for the communists was small (one estimate quoted by Ham put it at 12 per cent of the population), and was often a local or personal reaction to offensive "bull in a china shop" tactics by the Americans. Human nature being what it is, the volunteers included numbers of idealistic, impressionable adolescents who were highly susceptible to indoctrination by absolutist ideologies like Marxist-Leninism. They possessed a similar mentality to the Nazi Hitler Youth and the Maoist Red Guards, and could be relied upon to lay down their lives without question upon orders from the NLF hierarchy.

Most support for the communists, however, was coerced. It was a result of efficient infiltration of the population, reinforced by the clinical and deterrent removal of "disloyal" elements. These public executions often involved torture and mutilation, and were directed against women and children as well as men. The Viet Cong's combination of embedding itself in communities, along with ruthless, exemplary elimination of dissent, was reminiscent of the Mafia.

"The Viet Cong's most effective weapon was terror," writes Ham, and goes on to show that it was directed primarily at hamlet chiefs, teachers, policemen and health workers. (In the same passage, he points out that Hanoi's tame journalist, Wilfred Burchett, was happy to publicise mistreatment of the civilian population by agents of the Diem government, but sedulously avoided ever mentioning NLF atrocities).

The NLF's methods were derived from their leader, the gentle and ascetic Ho Chi Minh. Like those other masters of spin, the avuncular, imperturbable Jo Stalin and the beaming, cherubic Helmsman Mao, Uncle Ho had cemented his and his party's unassailable position by comprehensively imprisoning, torturing or liquidating all opponents, such as democratic nationalists. "The tragedy for Vietnam," writes Ham, "lay in this: the communists presented themselves as the party of freedom and democratic nationalism. In fact, the end of true democratic nationalism was a depressing byproduct of the communist ascendancy."

The most spectacular display of the South's lack of support for the communists was the Tet Offensive, which took place 40 years ago this year. The people obdurately ignored appeals for a popular uprising to coincide with the communists' massive assaults against free world forces and the Saigon government. The offensive was consequently abortive. A large proportion of the South's population had fled from Northern neo-Stalinism in 1954. The last thing they wanted was its extension to the whole country, whether by force, or by being outvoted by the more populous North. (Ham notes that, contrary to legend, the South had never agreed to participate in the 1956 re-unification referendum).

Myth Number Two: Atrocities were exclusively, and frequently, committed by the American and Australian armed forces.

The Australians bent over backwards to help and protect the civilian population of "their" province, Phuoc Tuy. Unlike the Americans, with their tactical reliance on saturation firepower, the Australians employed tactics based on local intelligence, stealth, patience, jungle craft and targeted objectives. Their willingness to endanger themselves to avoid incurring "collateral damage" amused the Viet Cong. The NLF used non-combatants as shields, and regarded the civilian population as so much ideology fodder. Australian troops were involved in various civil relief and development programs such as school-building, and the inoculation of babies. Unfortunately, many villagers were wary of accepting Australian help, for fear of incurring Viet Cong retaliation. Ham concludes a description of families murdered for accepting Australian health assistance with these words: "This was the regime to which Western peace groups donated money, medical aid and moral support."

The Australians were only ever charged with one atrocity, the so-called "water torture" incident of 1966. It was alleged that they had used a method which induced the sensation of drowning when interrogating a suspect. As Ham writes, the episode was taken up by what he elsewhere calls "atrocity junkies", and "became part of the popular mythology that Australian troops were routinely committing atrocities", but the "facts lead to different conclusions". When subjected to rigorous examination, the case against the Australians unravelled into hearsay.

The March, 1968 slaughter by American troops of 107 civilians at My Lai was perpetrated under no de jure or de facto authorisation by American political or military authorities. What is more, it was punished (albeit inadequately) when it came to light, as it inevitably did eventually in a liberal democracy with free media.

In contrast to the Western media's treatment of these last two events, coverage of regular, systematic and officially sanctioned communist atrocities has been muted to non-existent. Incidents include the punitive mutilation, even evisceration, of women and children in order to terrorise rural communities; the December 1967 massacre by grenades and flame-throwers of 252 villagers at the hamlet of Dak Son; and the murder of 3,000-6,000 victims named on prepared lists (hundreds of whom were buried alive) during the February 1968 North Vietnamese occupation of Hue.

The iconic photographs of a naked girl covered in napalm, and a police chief shooting a Viet Cong suspect, are both reproduced here. They are testimony to the relative liberty which prevailed under the Saigon government and the free world forces. Truth was the first casualty on only one side in this war. There were no nosey, independent journalists or photographers at large in the killing field of communist-controlled Hue.

Myth Number Three: The antiwar movement was ethical, idealistic and rational.

Ham catalogues numerous incidents in which Australian soldiers, some on crutches or in wheelchairs, were spat on by protesters and vilified as rapists and baby-murderers. Anti-Vietnam activists phoned the parents of a recently killed serviceman to tell them, "He got what he deserved." The veterans' attackers are now mysteriously impossible to find. Anti-war activists who abused members of the armed forces are as rare as Germans who voted for Hitler. "Not a single anti-war protester has admitted that he or she attacked the soldiers." Perhaps the spitters and screamers were ASIO operatives acting as agents provocateurs.

A small and honourable section of the anti-war movement held no illusions about the abhorrent nature of the Hanoi regime, but believed that the victory of the NLF and its puppeteers in the North was the lesser of two evils, when set against the continuation of the war with all its destruction and horror.

Another minority of the movement also knew exactly what Vietnamese communism entailed, but fanatically supported it, and drooled in anticipation of a totalitarian dictatorship controlling the whole population of Vietnam, South as well as North.

The majority of the war's opponents held a variety of confused positions between these two extremes. Like today's critics of the Iraq War, they combined a hazy faux-pacifism with virulent anti-American bigotry and a culpable naivety about the nature of antiliberal and anti-Western ideologies. The "grossly ignorant" Jim Cairns deliberately misrepresented military actions against the Viet Cong as war crimes. Meredith Burgmann explained that she was a "combination of pacifist and desperately wanting the VC to win". Old Stalinist front organisations for middle-class stooges, such as the World Peace Council's local arm, the Congress for International Co-operation and Disarmament, took on a new lease of life.

Myth Number Four: Conscription for service overseas was an un-Australian innovation which was evaded by the wealthy and influential, and which forced national servicemen to fight in Vietnam.

All wrong. During World War II, Australian men had been drafted to fight outside Australia by the ALP government of John Curtin. National Service 1965-72 swept in everyone whose number came up, rich and poor, famous (such as pop star Normie Rowe, and AFL sportstar Bernie Quinlan, who was part of my intake) and unknown. Finally, soldiers could choose to opt out and complete their National Service at home in Australia if their unit was assigned to Vietnam.

Myth Number Five: It was alleged, in Ham's words, that "Saigon had neither invited nor requested Australian ground troops".

However, "the truth, as always, was elusive, subtle, and as many-layered as an onion". Ham unpacks the complex story of the negotiations preceding the embarkation of Australia's first military contingent, and concludes that "it is misleading to claim that Saigon had no need of, or wish for, Australian troops".

Whatever the wince-inducing sycophancy of Harold Holt ("all the way with LBJ") and John Gorton ("we will go Waltzing Matilda with you"), Australia's co-operation with the United States to protect South Vietnam's existence and independence was legitimate as well as moral. The real question is whether or not it was wise.

Myth Number Six: There was no bloodbath following the communist victory of 1975.

It is true that there was no immediate attempt to slaughter all former supporters of the Saigon government. On the other hand, by the end of 1976 300,000 South Vietnamese were being held in "re-education camps" (Ham calls them "concentration camps") under appalling conditions which included hard labour, scarce food and harsh punishments. A total of 250,000 prisoners died in the camps, on top of the 65,000 who had been summarily executed. More than a million Vietnamese asylum-seekers tried to escape by sea, of whom between 10 and 20 per cent died from pirates, starvation or drowning. Those who reached the West were vilified by the protesters who had supported the authorities which forced them to flee.

Decades after the end of the war, there has still been no apology issued by the anti-war movement to the people of Vietnam, to the refugees who made it to the West, or to the soldiers of the free world forces, both Western and South Vietnamese. Perhaps the expectation of an apology after a mere 33 years is symptomatic of that same Western impatience which required a quick and easy victory in Vietnam, and failed to comprehend the communist determination to fight for as long as it took to impose their ideology on a subject populace. After all, Maoist Chou En-lai famously replied to a Western journalist's question about the significance of the French Revolution that, "It is too early to say".

The still unlearned lesson from the Vietnam War for the West is that "discretion is the better part of valour". In other words, don't get sucked into wars on untenable terrain--geographical, social or cultural. Choose issues and battlefields where the friends, and not the enemies, of freedom hold the advantages. Of course, this is far easier done with hindsight than without it, as I have pointed out above.

Ham's book will satisfy no-one entirely. Every critic and supporter of the war will want to stretch or mutilate it to fit the Procrustean bed of their own particular position. At this chronological juncture, however, it is probably as good as we will get. Lest that sound like damning with faint praise, I should add that it is massively and meticulously researched, very well written and, once started, impossible to put down. One of its greatest moral strengths lies in its sympathy for ordinary Australian soldiers, who suffered everything from Australian trade unions blocking their supplies, to incompetent senior officers laying a gigantic mine field which became an ordnance supply for the Viet Cong, to long-term family health problems from defoliant chemicals.

Australians are currently fighting the "history wars", of which school syllabuses in general, and the presentation of the Vietnam War in particular, are strategic theatres of operation. Vietnam: The Australian War represents an essential resource for teaching students about this turbulent period in comparatively recent Australian experience.

Reviewed by Bill James