Vietnam and Kokoda. (Letters).

SIR: Two articles in the November Quadrant may tend to reinforce dangerously ahistorical mythologies.

Trudi Tate's "Stop Whispering" claims of Vietnam:

   Why were we fighting for a
   South Viemamese government
   which was neither democratic
   nor popular, some soldiers
   began to wonder, and why were
   we opposing the communists,
   who had considerable local
   support? Should not Vietnam be
   allowed to choose its own
   government and settle its own
   disputes, like other nations?

To leave this as if it were the last word on the matter would be very wrong, comforting as it may be to those who played a part in selling South Vietnam into slavery. North Vietnam conquered South Vietnam, after the South Vietnamese communists--who were never able to hold a population centre--had been comprehensively defeated, with a full-scale invasion by about twenty Soviet-equipped regular divisions. The South Vietnamese fled in hundreds of thousands by putting to sea in leaky boats, something not one had tried to do under the allegedly "neither democratic nor popular" South Vietnamese regime. With Hanoi's victory there was no shadow of "choosing its own government". It was a case of one state conquering and subsequently plundering and enslaving another by naked aggression.

Vietnam under Hanoi's rule remains a totalitarian one-party state and it is only the inefficiency of communism, the unpopularity of the regime and the indomitable spirit of the South Vietnamese which now allows at least a degree of de facto private enterprise and other fairly small-scale economic, if not political, pluralism in the south. The Western defence of South Vietnam was absolutely morally correct, and events after the withdrawal of Western troops proved this to the hilt. We could do worse for the Australian veterans of the war than remind them--and the present generation--that they fought in a good and indefeasibly right cause. There was not the slightest reason for the Vietnam veterans to feel "guilt and remorse", rather the opposite.

It was also, very arguably, a winning cause: the war in Vietnam bought time for the rest of South-East Asia that was used well--and just what did supporting North Vietnam do to the Soviet economy? I refer readers to the first-person article by Vietnam veteran Dr John J. Coe published in Amity, September 2002.

In his article on Kokoda, Neil McDonald claims:

   But the real Kokoda raises disturbing questions about the American
   alliance, then and now. It is also the story of a prime minister who
   preferred to take advice from a foreign general who had just lost the
   Philippines and a Commander in Chief he knew was corrupt, instead of an
   honest, dedicated reporter.

I have been far more critical of John Curtin than many writers and have achieved some local notoriety for suggesting his stature was less than god-like. However, this criticism is ridiculous. The fact that MacArthur lost the Philippines does not of itself prove he was incompetent or that Curtin should not have listened to him. MacArthur in the Philippines faced all manner of handicaps, such as lack of modern aircraft. Even General Slim, universally acknowledged as one of the best allied field commanders of the war, had to make a long retreat after the initial Japanese attack in Burma, and was fortunate to be able to fall back overland to India before preparing a counter-attack. And is it entirely irrelevant that MacArthur's record after the Philippines was of more-or-less unbroken victory?

More ridiculous, however, is the suggestion that a journalist's advice on military matters, however honest and dedicated, should be taken over that of generals and their highly-trained staffs, or that it is culpable for a prime minister not to give it such precedence. It is true that generals can get things wrong. It is even true that journalists sometimes get things right, and that the Second World War was one war when most of them were actually on our side. They may, apart from the reporting they are paid to do, at times play a valuable wartime role in pointing out particular failings or problems if this is done with due regard for security and morale.

Wars are full of blunders. But to suggest Curtin--who was well aware of his own inexperience in military matters--should have fought the war on the advice of a journalist rather than on that of MacArthur and Blarney, for all their faults, is bizarre. It could only be made seriously in an age when image and reality have become confused and the self-importance of the media has been inflated out of all proportion or common sense. As for Mr McDonald's apparently preferred scenario where prime ministers dismiss generals on the advice of the ABC, words fail.

Hal G.P. Colebatch,
Nedlands, WA.