Vietnam: Background to Betrayal
The best book I have ever read on the subject of the Vietnam War is Background to Betrayal by Hilaire du Berrier. It was published by Western Islands in 1965. The author was a friend of the Emperor of Vietnam and his family. In the early 1990s, I was invited to a private meeting with the author but had a prior engagement.
From the foreword by Robert Welch:
At the time this book is being published, the heated words of dispute over what is really happening in Vietnam have soared into a conflagration. Everybody from Suzanne Labin and Senator Dodd to Henry Cabot Lodge and Maxwell Taylor has versions to give you of who is doing what to whom, and why and for what purpose. And in some of these versions, anyway, any resemblance to the truth is purely coincidental.
This book, however, is not concerned primarily with the present tragedy in Vietnam. Its subtitle is “the tragedy of Vietnam,” which indicates a far longer perspective. The carefully stage-managed horror now being acted out in that unhappy country is of great interest because of the undisclosed purposes for which this fraud is being perpetrated and prolonged. But this volume is history, not conjecture. It was the destruction and demoralization of anti-Communist groups and leaders in South Vietnam, already carried out by the end of the Eisenhower Administration through the regime it had imposed on the Vietnamese people, to which the current confusion is but an epilogue. And regardless of whatever whole new tragedy this confusion may be intended to serve in turn as a prologue, the author of this book is simply attempting to make clear the background to the total betrayal.
It is apparent, to anybody who will study all of the antics on this stage with prerequisite knowledge and objective vision, that Communist influences are pulling strings and determining actions on both sides, exactly as we now know to have been the case in the Korean War. And it is entirely possible that a repetition of that sham, on a far more extensive scale and with far more serious aspects and results, might be in the making.
A war between ourselves and the Chinese Communists, in and supposedly over Vietnam, exactly as took place in Korea, would enable leftwing influences in the present Administration, and their Soviet allies, to make even more effective use, than has been achieved so far, of the highly publicized but wholly fictitious feud between Red Russia and Red China. As in World War II, the Soviets would again become our “noble allies.” The rapprochement between our government and the Soviet government could be made visibly far greater, and in detailed practical effect far more extensive, than it is today. And the regimentation that could be imposed on the American people, by an Administration which has already shown itself to be hell-bent for tyranny, with this war against Red China as the excuse, would make the government controls of World War II look like a study in free enterprise and personal liberty.
When Communist-led students and Communist front groups parade and picket against our remaining in Vietnam, right while the actual results of our staying there continue to be so damaging to any residue of real anti-Communist strength in that country, you can be sure that the plotters activating these poor misguided puppets are seeking to support the belief, of the even more misguided American people, that we really are trying to save Vietnam from Communism – and are willing to use force to do so. This psychological buildup of a willingness on the part of the American people to accept a state of war against the Red Chinese is just one of a great many straws in the wind, indicating that such a phonily controlled, play-acting, but horribly cruel, war may be blowing towards us.
Readers who would like a free PDF version of the book, may E-mail me at campconstitution1@gmail.com
