Last Podcast On The Left - Episode 677: My Lai Massacre Part II - Ain’t No Daylight in Vietnam

Episode Date: August 14, 2026

This week, the march toward My Lai continues as America sinks deeper into Vietnam, from JFK and the Gulf of Tonkin to LBJ’s escalation of the war, the rise of body counts, and the growing brutality that helped create the conditions for a massacre... As LBJ himself put it, "there ain’t no daylight in Vietnam". For Live Shows, Merch, and More Visit: www.LastPodcastOnTheLeft.comKevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 Licensehttp://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Subscribe to SiriusXM Podcasts+ to listen to new episodes of Last Podcast on the Left ad-free, plus get Friday episodes a whole week early. Start a free trial now on Apple Podcasts or by visiting siriusxm.com/podcastsplus.  Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

There's no place to escape to. This is the last talk. On the left. That's when the cannibalism started. So working with Danny Elfman, worse or equal to working with LBJ? I would say better. Better. Yeah, I mean.

No, no, I would rather work with LBJ. Yeah. Yeah. I feel like I can handle seeing a president's penis often. Yeah. Like, because he. He'd be like the boss of the room. And I feel like I can handle that more.

Like, LBJ with his casual penis use, would be kind of fine to me. But there's just something about Jack Skellington being nude. That's the only thing I just don't want to see it. Or it just warn me. You know, he's probably got a long penis, Jack Scowington. I imagine that Danny Elfman has a... It's a... He's got thin penis energy.

It's like a long, thin penis. Yeah. Not like LBJ. Because LBJ had a bit of a beluble slugger on. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Prinkles can. But also, I'm proud of him for that. You know what I mean?

It's hard to keep it in and out. It's also like, you've got to keep it working. The hardest part about having a big penis from what I've heard when I read about magazines is getting it completely hard. And it's keeping it there. And it's keeping it hard. It's a lot of blood. You got to be fat.

That's people have more blood. Do you think more blood makes the penis harder? I would imagine. Yeah, of course. Wow. Because that's blood goes to the penis and it makes it engorge. It kills the sack. But what about a hungry vampire?

Imagine a penis would be a great place for a vampire to bite. Yeah, I would imagine so. Except we also learned you can't bleed to death from the penis because the body naturally cuts off a natural sort of sphincter closing. So it's more of a snack. Yeah. That's not bad. Also, I was thinking LBJ,

LBJ would be a great name for a gay luchador. What a way to start. Welcome to last podcast and what, ladies gentlemen. That's what I was waiting for. My name is. Marcus Parks. I'm here with Henry Zabrowski, deep in the shit. I am up to my eyeballs in dukey covered sticks. You've got to be careful in Vietnam, man. You've got to be careful. They say that just a walk to the bathroom requires a bravery not seen since the Revolutionary War.

And that makes me nervous. It's rough out there, huh? It is, and we have the men who never left the shit. It's Ed Larson. I just took a big one. I know. In honor, in honor of the show. You would have been so. And I put a bunch of sticks in the toilet and you guys might have to call someone to fix it. That's fine.

I'll call Ho Chi Men. It seems like he's got the most experience. I imagine your fecal matter could fuel the Viet Cong's booby-trap bank account for like a month. I'd love to work for that. If you were just the shudder, like if you work for the Viet Cong. And you supplied the shit. What a job. Just eat wonderful Vietnamese food.

Delicious fun. Oh, man. Summer noodles and vermicelli noodles. We need more shit. We're going to have to get a little bit more pork then. Go ahead and slaughter another oinker. You mean this guy from Texas? Oh, God.

Here we are at Milai, part two. So when we last left the march of history that led to the Milai Mass. the year was 1960. The North Vietnamese had officially established a guerrilla fighting force called the National Liberation Front, whose ultimate goal

was to reunify the country after it had been split in two following the French's humiliating loss at Diem Bienfu. Lazy French. The NLF, however, would come to be known

by the South Vietnamese and American forces as the Viet Cong. And since years of Vietnam movies have drilled this name into the American psyche, we'll refer to the North Vietnamese guerrilla forces as the Viet Cong from here on out. Now, concerning how deep America was involved in Vietnam by 1960, the United States had become allies of South Vietnam's government after the creation

of the Republic of Vietnam in the mid-1950s. This was all, of course, as a part of a larger effort to win the Cold War against the Soviet Union. At the time, Dwight D. Eisenhower was president and the Eisenhower administration have been full of men committed to winning the Cold War at any cost. Remember the Dulles brothers were a part of that, the guys who did the coups in Iran and Guatemala. They were just itching for a new worldwide war. Yeah, and don't forget, lurking in the background as Eisenhower's vice president throughout the administration was none other than Richard Middlehouse Nixon. It's not the heat that gets not. It's not the heat that gets in Vietnam, it's their humidity.

In fact, when Eisenhower had to sell the domino theory to the American public, you know, the theory that if one country in Southeast Asia fell, then all the rest would follow, he put Vice President Nixon on television to patiently explain the whole thing using charts and maps.

Send out fucking millhouse. I don't care. I don't care. What else do I have to do to a Nazi today? Send out fucking millhouse. Nixon, of course, had won every election he'd entered up till this point by telling blatant lies about his opponents being communist. None of Nixon's opponents had actually been communist. They were, in fact, good people who were all but destroyed by Nixon's accusations.

But Nixon had learned that he could win elections by pretending that the communist threat was far larger than it really was. And he would not be the last American politician to learn this lesson before the cold. World War was over. How about before 2026 is over? They're still bringing up communists is this fucking day.

As if there wasn't one half socialist that filled fucking potholes once. Once. Did you call Kennedy a communist?

No, no, no, no. Kennedy was... He lost. Yeah. Well, Kennedy was fucking blue blood as fucking as far. He could not.

He was fully tied into the American system. No one would have believed that JFK was a communist. It wouldn't stick. No. Kennedy had been talking about South Vietnam as the bastion of freedom in Southeast Asia since 1957. So by the time 1960 came around, Kennedy was also already a committed cold warrior, along with Nixon. Nixon had nowhere to go with Kennedy.

Now, Eisenhower had been sending financial and military aid to South Vietnam in addition to putting American military advisors on the ground to train the South Vietnamese Army on how best to fight and defeat the Viet Cong. So that means our involvement in Vietnam started in like 195. Yes. The South Vietnamese Army's official name was the Army of the Republic of Vietnam. So America would come to know them as the Arvin.

From here on out, if you hear me refer to the Arvin, I'm talking about South Vietnam's military. Yeah, because sometimes the Arvin refers to the super, super skinny guy that's like making the fried fish. But we're not talking to that Arvin. Arvin. Arvin, wait. Irvin, where's it called in?

I won't get as hard as I can. Arvin, do you talk up more catfish and frown? I wish I could. I lost my pinky ring in the oil. The training of the Arvin seemed to be going well, and Richard Nixon was hoping that in 1960, he could graduate from vice president to president by continuing his fervently anti-communist agenda.

But Nixon was ultimately deemed to be yucky by the American people when compared to his opponent that year. He was. Nixon would therefore lose the presidency to a young, charismatic senator who'd been making a lot of noise about South Vietnam being the cornerstone of freedom in Southeast Asia. That senator was none other than John F. Kennedy. And JFK would barely squeak past Nixon

to win the presidential election in 1960, having already made Vietnam an issue. Yeah. Because of television. Yeah. No, that's the infamous thing is that when Kennedy... It was the first debate, right? That was televised?

It was the first debate that was televised when Kennedy and Nixon debated. People who listened on the radio said that Nixon won. People who watched on TV said that Kennedy won because Nixon was obviously quite shifty. Yeah. And sweaty as fuck. Yeah. He looked like shit. And ugly.

Yeah. No, by that point, he had already had the nickname Tricy Dick for like six years. Yeah. Like, that was in his second election. Yeah. And if you're not a pimp from South Chicago, it's not a great name. Because Kennedy was shot in the head in Dallas in 1963.

What? Oh, wow. It's a whole different series. I'll send it to you. Oh, my God. I'm so behind. And Eddie? Let me just tell you, everyone did it.

What? Yeah, I'm talking about everybody did it. You know, the CIA investigated it. Yeah, you know, they made sure they got to the very, very bottom bit. Well, because of Kennedy's untimely end, people like to look at his presidency using the utmost optimism that things would have gone differently for America if Kennedy had survived. Because his optics were pristine. Mm-hmm. But while that's certainly true in some respects, you know, we go through all of the, you know, the consequences of Kennedy's assassination during our series on that, we really have no idea.

if things would have gone differently in Vietnam had Kennedy not been killed. And there is reason to believe that Kennedy might have continued along the exact same course as his successor had he remained in office. See, by the time JFK became president, the Viet Cong had already expanded guerrilla warfare throughout their entire nation. And while journalists, members of Congress, and American allies were calling for less involvement in Vietnam, Kennedy's advisors were calling for more action. And that's an important thing to know about Vietnam is that all of our allies, none of them came with us.

Absolutely none. It wasn't like we had more support for the fucking Iraq war than we did for Vietnam. Yeah, it seemed like it was a really bad idea. Well, that's, that was what Robert McNamara himself said. He said, if you're making a decision and other nations of comparable values are telling you to not do it, it's time to reexamine your decision. Of course, he said that in hindsight after he made it. the decision. Because he made the decision back then when it was awesome to make the decision.

And he loved that Robert McNamara. But afterwards, he was like, oh, Robert, you did bad again. Oh, Robert. Oh, Robert. What did you do bad? Why'd you do bad in Vietnam? Oh, man, I'm rewatching the fog of war right now. And how much he doesn't care about what he did is astounding to me.

It really is. No, far, and we're about to get into Robert McNamara right now. Bad Robert. It's... Ben, Robin, I should be ashamed. But if you haven't seen it, it's an Errol Morris documentary, so it's absolutely brilliant. I watched it, like, the funny thing is, I forgot me and Carolina watched it, like, two years ago. Yeah.

And watched it again last night. And it's incredible when, by the time you get to the... Like, it's not until the end that you realize, like, oh, he's not taking responsibility for anything. Yeah. Well, JFK had promised during his campaign to fight the Cold War even more vigorously than Eisenhower. And the cabinet that JFK chose was full of men who were absolutely dedicated to battling communism wherever it reared its head. And this is where we get into the subject of the documentary, The Fog of War. Particularly JFK's Secretary of Defense, who had previously been president of the Ford Motor Company,

firmly believed that spreading America's influence throughout countries like Vietnam, the so-called third world, was essential to beating the Soviet Union in the Cold War. That man was Robert McNamara. Now, McNamara had taken the Secretary of State Post in Kennedy's cabinet reluctantly because he was, in his own words, unqualified for the job. I bet at it. You don't want me. You don't want dirty old Robbie. I'd be bad at it. I'd only know cause. Why would I go in there? I mean, he worked for Ford and they were, you know, they did such a good job with the Nazis. We're not bringing him in now. I was only there. I've only ever worked for one Nazi and I'd tell you what. He was hilarious. Why would you do this? Don't make me do this.

At one point did you decide that McNamara was going to be snaggleposts? I don't know. I can't really consider it in this moment. I mean, I love it. I love it. I'm down for it. He kind of looks like it.

I wouldn't even do that. Oh, why would I do that? Well, McNamara's only military experience was three years in the Air Force during World War II, where he'd help plan the fire bombing of Japan. You're going to want him hit him here, where all the food is.

He's going to hit him over here. That's a chopstick factory. He famously said in the documentary that he agreed with Curtis LeMay, who was the man who planned a firebombing at Japan. He's like, if we would have lost that war, we would have been prosecuted as war criminals. In other words, he was already very comfortable with killing Asians by the hundreds of thousands. It's what I'm good at. That's what you want me to do, right? Don't blame me.

It's a barbecue even. What do you want from me? This is my job. I kill Asians. It's fun for me. Don't take that from me. In fact, even though Magnamara Routon, routinely try putting the blame on other people.

Steve did it. When Morris asked him, like, who has the responsibility in Vietnam? He's like, the president, you would be hard pressed to find a person in the United States government who would bear more responsibility for the chaos, the death, and the cruelty committed by the soldiers of the United States military during Vietnam than Robert McNamara. Now, every man in Kennedy's cabinet agreed that the United States needed to interpret. intervene in Vietnam, and not just because they believed it was important to the Cold War. See, again and again, America's involvement in Vietnam tended to revolve around elections,

and Kennedy was a Democrat. The last time a Democrat was in office, that's Harry S. Truman in the 40s, China had gone communist. The Democrats had therefore been blamed by Republicans, like the infamous communist witch hunter, Joseph McCarthy, for losing China to communism. As a result of the hangover from McCarthy, Kennedy's cabinet feared that if another Asian country went communist, the Republicans could use that issue to win the 1964 presidential election. Remember, Nixon is lurking in the corner waiting for that rematch. Vietnam, therefore, became a source of anxiety for Kennedy due to how it might affect his electability. Okay, I'm just going to be completely ignorant and just put out the question, why didn't we just carpet bomb Moscow?

out. Like, if we wanted to fight, right, like, just, I know that's because they had nuclear, they didn't, if, if we did it first, right? Like, let's say we, that's what Patton wanted to do, but right after World War II. I'm just saying, like, if we really wanted, if we really were so worried about the communist threat from coming inside of Soviet Union, why didn't we attempt to just fucking flatten that one? There were a lot of people who wanted to, but a lot of the people in the American government decided it's not a good idea. It's because they didn't want to pick up, they didn't want to pick a fight with somebody their own size. They didn't want to pick a fight with Soviet, I mean, they had already seen how the Germans had been absolutely fucking decimated by going into Russia.

It's true, but we'd also do it from here. But at that point, we also didn't really have a reason for it. Of course, yeah, but except for the fact that we're fighting them by proxy and all these other places to stop the flow of communism, but we don't want to. We're also fucking tired, man. I get it. We're just died. We're fucking barely eating bread. We're just getting our money back.

I don't know what to go back. But they're already revving up the next war. They're already doing it. The Cold War was already going. And we did just go into Korea right after that. Yeah, it was already going. We went to Korea in 50 or 50-51. So six years after.

This is like side stories L-POTL at gmail.com. This is like one of those. I can answer for you. Yeah. We just, we didn't have a good enough reason at that point. And by the time there was a quote-unquote good enough reason, they had nukes.

And by the time they had nukes, It's an absolute stalemate. It's mutually assured destruction. Nobody wants to fuck with nuclear war at all. Yeah. I guess, yeah. Yeah. You're right.

That's it. You're right. But soon after Kennedy took office, the Soviet Union would make moves that would put Kennedy an even more of a bind when it came to the communist issue, although Kennedy would, admittedly, make the first move. In April of 1961, the CIA attempted to overthrow the Soviet-backed Cuban communist leader, Fidel Castro, during the Bay of Pigs invasion. This attempt at regime.

change in Cuba had utterly failed and it had been a massive worldwide embarrassment for Kennedy. My grandfather was there. Really? My grandfather was right for Pepsi. Yeah. My grandfather was there. You talked about it. Pepsi in Cuba? Pepsi helped fund

the Bay of Pigs invasion. Yeah, they were part of the private corporations John F. Kennedy wouldn't allow to have it be official. So they got money from all these private corporations which set a standard. And they then invaded Bay of Pigs in their own and got their asses handed to them. And it went extremely poorly.

And yeah, my grandfather said it was a mistake. Yeah. But he also worked for the Soda. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, and it wasn't necessarily like American troops that had tried invading. We were backing Cubans that were trying to, you know, go on regime change and all that. Yeah, we're doing an whole thing.

And then you had the Cuban Missile Crisis in October of 1962 in which the USSR snuck nuclear warheads into Cuba just 90 miles off the coast of Florida. This was seen as another failure on JFK's part in the fight against the communists. But concerning the Cuban missile crisis, you really can't overstate how badly this entire thing frightened America. Imagine this. 13 days straight, everyone in America living under the threat that the Russians might launch nuclear missiles into America at any moment. On the upside, at best, 90 million Americans, estimated to be killed in just the initial attack if the Russians decided to fire missiles from Cuba. And the entire world would probably end up in nuclear winner in the following nuclear exchange.

Now, Kennedy managed a peaceful resolution after 13 days because he thankfully listened to the people who were arguing against overt military action. There were plenty of people who were saying, like, send the missiles and let's take our fucking chances. But that fear towards communists that had been building since 1945 had settled into the bones of the American people. For many, this brought home the reality that the Cold War against communism could easily become existential at any moment. And that fear spread to include any battle anywhere on the globe where communism might prevail. Vietnam was, of course, on the top of the list as far as where this battle was already happening. And we know that there was an entire Cold War pop culture movement.

that came out of this paranoia. Like, you know, all of 1950s horror was, like, based on this. And, like, the big spiders and all that shit. All this kind of show. Atomic monsters. We were afraid of this and created paranoia. So it was great for movies.

It was. It was bad for everything else. It always is, you know. I love the purge. Yeah. I love the perch. Live from Northland. Now, events kept unfolding in Southeast Asia that continued to make

Kennedy nervous. A smaller conflict broke out within the borders of Vietnam's neighbor, Laos, and Laotian communists, supported by North Vietnamese communists, were coming close to taking Laos over. So after Cuba and Laos, Kennedy told his staff that there were only so many concessions that his administration could make to the communists in one year and survive politically. Kennedy could not, therefore, have another defeat in Vietnam. Is it true that JFK sort of invented that the had that like they were the ones that put in the phone that goes directly to the Kremlin

and that he was talking with the red line yes he was like talking with them directly it was like a whole thing where they sat and had personal conversations it was the first time anybody ever spoke to them about the like directly is like that like that was kind of I'm just asking that may have been after the Cuban missile crisis because I know during the Cuban missile crisis it was

all telegrams that's what it was telegrams yeah it was telegrams but yeah the the hotline may have been installed afterwards So, all right, hypothetical. We do nothing. North Vietnam, take South Vietnam, they become communist. What really happens? Nothing? Nothing, right?

They just do their thing over there and we just do our thing over here. And to be frank, they probably wouldn't have been necessarily communists either. They would have probably had a Vietnamese forward state, like nation state, that might have had communism involved in it, but very much so it could have not have been.

It could have just been any form of socialist government. There's so many ways to do. what happens with various political ideologies. It doesn't always have to turn to the Soviet Union or China. Like, it could have been in whatever. Yeah, I mean, there's plenty of shit that had, like, after Vietnam, after we had our Vietnam, Vietnam, then had what's called Vietnam's Vietnam, where they tried going into, I think, Cambodia and fucked up as well.

And they got very, they got fucked up very badly. And I think there was a small war with China. It's just, you know, it's more, it's the 20th century march. on. It's impossible to really know what would have happened, but the domino theory was never going to happen. It just wasn't, it just wasn't reasonable. Now, JFK quickly found a nice, clean term for increasing America's involvement in Vietnam. This first of many euphemisms concerning Vietnam was called Limited War. And in the spring of 1961, Kennedy widened America's involvement in Vietnam using this term.

He sent more financial support, more weapons, and more advisors, all while giving the operation a hilariously homoerotic title. They called it Operation Beef Up. Project Beef Up! Oh, get me my beef up?

Project Beef Up, coming soon. That's me. Oh, give me my Project Beef Up? That's what I like. Project Beef Up. I'm just seeing him saying, be like, that's right. Get this. We're going into Vietnam.

Beef it up, beef it up, beef it up. And so by the end of 1962, over 9,000 American military advisors were present on the ground of Vietnam. A lot of these guys were CIA. And the only job tasked to these advisors was the training of the South Vietnamese Army, the Arvin, on how best to fight and kill the Viet Cong.

JFK also approved the use of chemical weapons, which began America's application of the infamous defoliant known as Agent Orange. See, the jungles of Vietnam presented a challenge because the Viet Cong could easily disappear into the foliage. So, the bright idea America had was this. What if we used science to make the jungle disappear? He can't even see in there. We've got to get rid of the leaves.

You know, he's got to go. Make the leaves clear even. Look how good we did in the desert in Morocco. Oh, it's so easy to see there. Everything's brown. It's nice. You wear white. You stick out.

That's nice. It's easy to do. American planes began spreading this highly costic chemical, known as Agent Orange, and it was called Agent Orange because the barrels it came in have these big orange stripes on them. They started spreading this across all of Vietnam by air. Side effects to Agent Orange included, but were not limited to, a wide array of cancers, Parkinson's disease, massive birth defects that lasted generations, and, of course, mass death. It's estimated that hundreds of thousands died from Agent Orange exposure alone. My uncle got hit with Agent Orange, and it's why all of my cousins are mentally handicapped. Yep. Yep, my uncle got it, and he currently has Parkinson's. Yep, that Parkinson's is that that's one of the main side effects of Agent Orange.

Just kind of flips the switch. But he was too proud to take the benefits. That's smart of him. And Agent Orange was, of course, in addition to the introduction of Nepal in 1963. We were dropping napalm on Vietnam before we had any ground troops there. Over the next 10 years, napalm dropped from American planes would kill thousands upon thousands of Vietnamese, both civilians and combatants, and fires that were said to have burned hotter than the flames of hell itself. So obviously.

And they know that for a fact, because they've all been to hell. They've all been to hell and back. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But it obviously didn't work, right? Like if it's Agent Orn's job was to eliminate the forest, we fought in the forest the entire fucking time. So it didn't destroy anything. Why not just use bleach? It destroyed some, but not anywhere near enough for it to actually make a difference.

See, it's also was so toxic. I think that's a part of it. I think what we're seeing is they're like, this is great. We'll do this. This is all going to be a lickety split. I still feel like there's this like prevailing idea that's going to come up, which is this is going to be easy. In a war. They're not going to be.

So I think when they started with the Agent Orange, they had to do it in limited sections because of how extremely toxic they knew it was to their own people. So they had to put it in places where their people can have access to it afterwards, that they were farther enough away. So it had to be very carefully, quote unquote, carefully spread, but it still spreads. Yes. So it's very hard to make it direct. So you can see why they did it in little. They tried to do it in chunks being like, they're going to be so scared by us doing this. They're all just going to give up.

And as I remember, like, Vietnam is relatively large. Yeah. When you think, like, it's twice the size of Florida. And that's a lot of fucking land. Like, I'm sure you've driven from the bottom of Florida to the top. 10 hours. Yeah. Also, it's kind of crazy.

Now what we know is that most of their warfare since the French days was underground. And they have all these underground tunnels and shit. So when they see the planes come, everybody's high. They just, they knew where to go. Yeah. Just immediately going underground. It's chemical warfare. Yes.

And was that not? This is limited war. Oh, okay. So it's not illegal by the Geneva. It's limited. It was Geneva before? No, no. The Geneva Convention was in effect, but...

Yeah, it's limited. Whatever. It's limited. You don't understand, Eddie. It's limited. It's also, it's like a sale. It's like a diet war. So we could call John F. Kennedy a war criminal.

Oh, yeah. Definitely. I did. I did it in Dallas. I do to each one. Well, I mean, yeah, I think with Agent Orange, they got around. it by saying like, well, it's not technically a chemical weapon. It's a defolian.

It's not, we're not trying to kill people using this. We're just trying to kill the jungle so we can find the people and shoot them as by the, you know, and that will be fine with the Geneva Convention. But again, I think, I believe that's how we got around it.

Still think they should have used bleach. And that makes you a fucking monster. And you and Robert McNamara would have been best friends. The JFK was confident that his limited war approach was going to give South Vietnam and the Arvin everything they needed to defeat the Viet Cong. He even told Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara to begin preparation for total American withdrawal from Vietnam by the end of 1963. But as it would go again and again, the reality on the ground in Vietnam did not match the optimism of the White House.

The Ho Chi Minh Trail was operating at full capacity by 1962, and North Vietnam had managed to send 10,000 vehicles. Kong, along with plenty of heavy artillery provided by the Soviets and the Chinese, and all this was inch by inch through the jungle. America had also been betting that the massive amount of helicopters given to the South Vietnamese were going to make a big difference, because Vietnam was the first war where helicopters were widely used. But while the helicopters had been effective at first, the Vietnam discovered how to take helicopters down by 1963, using a tactic that involved firing machine guns from fortified foxholes in the tree line. Oh, you to shoot them.

Yeah. You're fragile. You got to figure out how to shoot them. And it took them like two years to really get it down. But finally they just discovered like... But they got it down before the war started. Yeah, yeah, they got it down. But yeah, in fact, like one of the first big losses of American life were when the

Vietnam figured out how to take down helicopters. Yeah. They didn't even have an Air Force, right? No. No. It's fucking crazy. None at all. How do you lose?

They had a lot of Soviet and Chinese made anti-artillery craft. But with the helicopters, they didn't need that shit. They used machine guns and automatic rifles because they figured out that if you fire ahead of the helicopters, they're going to fly right into the fucking bullets and they're going to go down. Yeah, Dan Marino knew that. You throw it a little bit ahead, the guy will get there. Oh, so the Viet Cong is the Dan Marino Revolutionary Forces. And we're finally here.

So, you know, even though we have this, including. incredible new military technology, that advantage is already lost. It didn't mean jack, dick. Well, what it meant is that we could get, we could get people out of firefights really quickly. And we could get people to medical facilities really fast. But that's defensively. You know, offensively, you know, helicopters were not great for anything except killing civilians. We'll get to that here to bet.

And furthermore, American military advisors simply couldn't turn the Arv Enforces. into a competent military capable of fighting an enemy as dedicated as the Viet Cong, because if you'll remember, South Vietnam was essentially a corrupt dictatorship. The Viet Cong, therefore, began winning major victories in the South. And to make matters worse, the South Vietnamese government was edging closer to collapse because of the actions of its highly incompetent leader, No Den Ziam, who had changed his title from Prime Minister to President Ziam. Now, I assure you that all of this is very important.

Very important because all of it leads to America eventually saying, fuck it, we'll just do it ourselves. See, as I said last episode, President Ziam was Catholic, but Vietnam was only 10% Catholic. Because being Catholic meant that you were automatically linked to the old days of the French occupation. Yeah, it sounds like it's something he could have kept to his fucking self. Well, it's a very, it was a status thing. I know. You know, like if you're Catholic. He's connected to whites.

Yeah, if you're Catholic, then you're at the top of the heap. He's still thinking like the French are still around. Yeah, I'm sure Kennedy loved it. Mm-hmm. The other 90% of the country was Buddhist. And Ziam began cracking down on Buddhists in May of 1963. For reasons that are still kind of, like, I can't even really understand why he chose to pick this fight. I think it's just because he wanted to.

He's a dictator. He's a dictator. He's just another piece of shit in a long line and long chain of pieces of shit. Mm-hmm. Well, that month, President Ziam ordered South Vietnamese troops to stop a Buddhist celebration in the South Vietnamese city of Wei. And after the situation escalated, Arvin troops opened fire and threw grenades at their fellow Vietnamese. By the end of it, South Vietnamese forces had killed nine civilians, including two children who had been crushed under the wheels of armored vehicles provided by the Americans. In protest of this slaughter, a Vietnamese monk named Tikkongduk descended from the mountains of Vietnam after three years in isolation.

He made his way to the South Vietnamese capital of Saigon and sat down in the middle. of a busy intersection on June 11, 1963. After covering himself in gasoline from the five-gallon tank he'd brought with him, he chanted a prayer to Buddha, and after his last words were said, the monk lit a match, dropped it on his robes, and engulfed himself in flames. Oh, fuck. This is the famous one. Yeah, yeah. Duke sat there unmoving as he quickly burned to death,

all while his fellow Buddhist monks yelled two sentences into a Michael, in both Vietnamese and English. They wanted everybody to know what this was about. They said over and over again, a Buddhist priest burns himself to death. A Buddhist priest becomes a martyr. The burning monk, as he's come to be known, was photographed by an American journalist. And that picture, which our generation knows best as the cover, Rage Against the Machine's debut album, introduced the world to what was happening in Vietnam by the early 1960s. Allegedly, when the picture reached the desk of John F.F. Kennedy, he reacted by yelling, quote, Jesus Christ! Oh, God, did we do this? Was this some kind of horrible accident? Who did this? Is this here? Is he outside?

Oh, he's not Catholic? Okay. Oh, that's fine. Oh, well, did somebody go would give him his last rights? Oh, no. Oh, no, he's going to help. Yeah, and a few years later, an American Quaker would do this same thing outside the offices of Robert McNamary. He walked outside the Pentagon.

He said, what are you doing, burning yourself good clothes? That was a nice clothes. Why would you burn those clothes? Would you go to Target? That's nice. Hey, why are you doing this? Well, it's happening now still. Yeah.

Now, President Ziam was unmoved by the priest's protest, as was his family. See, Zem's family still had quite a bit of French in them, and they saw themselves as living above the rest of Vietnam. That's not a good idea. No. President Ziam's sister-in-law was a particular piece of work who had a special talent for making bad situations worse. she could not keep her fucking mouth shut

and she thought she was very funny. The sister-in-law, who had the villainous name of Madam New, gave an interview soon after the Burning Monk incident in which she said she wanted more monks to set themselves on fire, joking that she would, quote, clap hands at seeing another barbecue show.

That's a direct quote. And honestly, it's technically cold a Hobocchi. And you might need to go over, I believe it's centered in Japan. Her statements would only make the South Vietnamese even angrier than they already were at President Ziam's administration. It's the let them eat cake. Yeah. More monks set themselves on fire throughout the summer of 1963, but Ziam refused to work with the Buddhists.

So the JFK administration made a fatal mistake, and it's thought by some that this mistake was what led America to wider involvement in Vietnam. America ended up supporting a military coup involving an Arvin general. There's a lot of confusion and a lot of ins and outs that lead to that point, but in the end, we supported it. And this general would become merely the first in a long line of military leaders who would try and fail to control South Vietnam over the next 12 years. While, you know, of course, they also had to defeat the North Vietnamese at the same time. I really feel like they're doing too much. Yeah. They got a lot on their plates here.

In the middle of a war, you don't want to overthrow your own government. It's just so hard to do. It's so hard to be overthrowing your own government while trying to set up your own fucking war base within the place in which you're trying to get rid of the local government. And then also fight the other half of the country. Yeah, it happens a lot. With the assistance of the CIA, General Duong von Min launched a coup that caught President Diem and his brother as they tried escaping Saigon via an underground tunnel. both men were executed and while President Ziam was a son of a bitch

there was at the very least a consistency in having him in charge and so with the death of President Ziam and the first of many military coups to come the Republic of South Vietnam lost any chance it had for stable leadership during its short tragic life and the Americans came to believe more and more

that it was going to fall on them to write the ship or just leave the ship alone Maybe just go back home and say, this guys, this guys, this sucks. Yeah. This really fucking sucks. Why don't we go home?

Didn't that exact thing happen like over and over again? Like just right, like within a year? Many, many times. Yeah, it's just one general kept replacing another, kept replacing another. And every general that came in charge, the one thing they all shared is that they knew

they had America by the Short and Curlies. We didn't tell them what to do. They told us what to do. Oh, yeah, they were gangsters. Yeah. Now the chaos in South Vietnam along with the crackdown on Buddhists throughout 1963 was nothing but good news for Ho Chi men and the North Vietnamese. They recruited even more people in the South to their side.

And the increased support caused the Viet Cong to become even more aggressive. Ironically, considering America's fears, the Soviet Union was actually advising North Vietnam to slow things down, pull back on the attacks. You're getting too aggressive. But the leadership in the North became more and more convinced that they could handle anything the Americans through their way. And this is one of those things that points me towards the idea that they would not have been so easily just a communist outpost. You know, like, it would not at all. Everybody thought that they were just going to take over this area and control it. And I think that they were all like,

no. No. No, the Vietnamese always did whatever they wanted to do. Yeah. Yeah. And the Chinese were also well aware, it's like, you don't fuck with the Vietnam. Like, that's, you don't need to get involved in that. Yeah, you guys keep showing up. They keep kicking your asses. Yeah. But it's at this point that things really started fucking up in more ways than we can count. Because on November 22nd, 19663, John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas. Now, some believe that JFK had some grand plan when it came to Vietnam, that he was keeping to himself. But the fact that he thought that this whole thing was going to be wrapped up by the end of 1963, that shows that he was just as arrogant and ignorant as everyone else when it came to Vietnam. It is entirely possible that

Kennedy would have made the exact same decisions that his successor made. Because when President Lyndon Baines Johnson took his oath of office on Air Force One with Kennedy's body rotting in the cargo hold, LBJ kept Kennedy's cabinet and LBJ's foreign policy was built by Kennedy's men. I now understand that JFK might have been a bit of an Obama. Yes. He was an ineffective man. Were you saying that running on vibes? running on vibes.

He's a vibe president. And that I think that he was in way over his head. And it sounded like, yeah, I just think, I think to be honest, whatever happened in Vietnam was going to happen under a John F. Kennedy second term. Unless he, I guess, I don't know what he'd have to, what would have to happen. I mean, he got shot in the head of November 22nd. He thought the whole war was going to be over by the end of the year. That's five weeks. That's very stupid.

But they also knew. They were saying it, knowing full. well, they were not getting out of there. Well, he had also, he had said that before President ZM was, uh, that was executed. Oh, like, because that's it. They were kind of looking at the, the ZM administration, like, okay, I think that maybe they can get this going. But then after, after the coup, like that changed everything. And Kennedy was kind of in the middle of dealing with the coup and dealing with the consequences of that and trying to figure out what to do next when he was shot in the fucking head.

Yeah. And if he had some grand plan, he would have told his cabinet. Probably. And they would have tried to enact it. Most likely. Maybe. Yeah. Yeah, I don't think he had a plan. I think they were just trying to see how far they could go. Yeah. But now we come to Lyndon Baines Johnson. Oh, Lyndon Vaines Johnson. Now, my hot take in this series is that while Ho Chi Men might be one of the most misunderstood characters of the 20th century,

LBJ might have been even more misunderstood, and he was certainly a more tragic figure. See, Lyndon Baines Johnson was an incredibly complicated individual, as many Texans or want to be, were a highly complicated people. He's an interesting man. Very interesting man. LBJ, as he's often called, was a lifelong Democrat who'd been an acolyte of Franklin Roosevelt. LBJ greatly believed in the New Deal that Roosevelt had created to pull America out of the Great Depression. And Roosevelt had counted on LBJ when Johnson was a representative to whip votes for New Deal policies. LBJ actually believed that the New Deal hadn't gone far enough, and his main goals throughout his political life were to eliminate poverty in America completely while introducing education, health care, and civil rights for all.

And he truly believed that it could be done. He actually get kind of chills thinking about it. He legitimately believed in the idea that America was supposed to stand for, we are the most educated, there is no hungry person here. Yep. Everybody, they are, you are taken care of. The idea that you come to America to be safe enough to live your dreams and to give it all the American economy. That's what we were supposed to do. And he understood that.

He understood that implicitly is that we are only as strong as our weakest link. Yep. He called his plan the Great Society. And his goals were the type of things that even today's mainstream Democrats, it's shit that they now call like some that Bill Maher would call dangerously socialist. Oh, yeah. They're all, they're everybody's just, yeah, whatever. Yeah. But all of it, however, came from a surprisingly Christian person.

As opposed to the social Darwinism that informs so many of our political decisions today, Johnson subscribed to a theory put forth by activist William Jennings Bryan, who equated obscenely wealthy Americans to weeds in a garden. LBJ believed that you do not let weeds triumph over roses in your garden simply because the weeds are stronger. You protect the roses from the weeds. And if you want a society made up of good people, kindness, and equality, you got to do some fucking weeding in the garden every now and then. This was LBJ's dream to weed America and create a society where everyone, no matter their race, creed or social standing, had a chance to live a

happy and fruitful life. And make no mistake, LBJ made some great fucking strides in office. Civil Rights Act in 1964 was LBJ. Great. He didn't compromise on it at all. He pulled every favor he had earned throughout his entire political career to pass the Civil Rights Act intact. The Voting Rights Act, Fair Housing, Medicare, Medicaid, Head Start, the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act. All of this was LBJ, all of it. And he did it all in one term with a bonus year from finishing Kennedy's term. But while LBJ could have been remembered as a progressive hero and a progressive hero from fucking Texas, no less, his entire presidency would come to be defined by the absolutely horrendous decisions he made in Vietnam. Because those decisions,

were wrong every single fucking time. They were all two. There were decisions were too hard and he didn't want to make them. No. His only concern was making America better. That's all he wanted to do. That's all he cared about. I saw really, his last interview,

did you watch? Do you ever see that? The one where he's got kind of long hair on his ranch down in Texas? Yes. And it's fascinating. Because he's talking about the civil... Because that was like his, the thing he was most proud of. He'd been working on it for years. It was his whole thing of the Civil Rights Act.

And you see him amongst all of these, like, there's a lot of people. Because he did the, he famously said the thing, if you make any white man feel higher than any black man, you'll get their vote in the South. Yeah, but he was talking about it in a cynical way. He was pointing it out. He wasn't saying like, this is a strategy. That's what's hard. I think that quotes also been taken way out of context for a long time. Oh, yes.

Because people are saying, no, he was saying that. as a warning. Yeah. Yeah. He was an asshole. You know, it's like sometimes assholes could do good things. Well, he used to me, he was good at the job. There's a distinct difference between half of the job.

Yeah. Well, he was good at. Domestic side of it, he was good at the job of president. He just was a very, very bad world leader. He was incredible American politician. Incredible. One of the best of the entire century. But by my reading, LBJ's attitude towards.

Vietnam came down to three emotions. Anger, boredom, and fear. See, even though LBJ had said while he was vice president that it was in America's interest to assist South Vietnam, and while he did subscribe to the domino theory, he was still incredibly angry throughout his presidency that the war in Vietnam was constantly distracting from his ultimate goal of building his great society. He didn't decide to get us in Vietnam. He showed, when LBJ showed up, Kennedy had already buried America in Vietnam shit up to our waste. Yeah. He just had to deal with it.

And if he would have just left, they would have been called a coward. Yes. They would have raked him over the fucking colds. He actually said that. He was like, if I leave, they're going to crucify me. Yeah. But another reason why LBJ was angry about Vietnam was because he found foreign policy extremely boring and difficult to grasp.

When I watched that documentary, I forget his whole thing, like, well, you got, but Gerville, you're out. You know how there's two chipmunk. get into a bag of dice. You know what I mean? Like, all of his shit is all like, just homespun halligar. He's like,

well, you can't get a Cardinal and a Blue Jay into a car together. You know, like it's all like, you're saying stuff, man. You shouldn't be dealing with Vietnam. No, not at all. But he also, at times, was incredibly insightful with that home-spun wisdom

where he would just, my favorite quote from him where he'd say, ain't no daylight in Vietnam. And that was, that was 100% true. But every time you see a picture, of LBJ having a meeting about Vietnam with his cabinet.

He is slumped down in his chair with his head leaning on the heel of his palm. He looks like a kid who's sitting through his least favorite class. Like, God, when is this going to be other? LBJ didn't understand foreign cultures. He said that he was, quote, uncomfortable with the strangeness of foreign leaders. Say different things. They do different things. I don't like what they eat.

I don't like the sticks. He's a dick. He is just, oh man, what a what a fucking goof. Yeah. As far as President Johnson was concerned, the happiness and comfort of the American people, that should have been his only focus.

Yeah, he's a regular W. Mm-hmm. But even though, well, okay. No. No, not at a, not even, W is a pale fucking imitation. I understand, of course. I'm just mostly just saying like,

no world should we have chosen. Dick Cheney should not have chosen George W. to be the man who got 9-11. You know what I mean? Like, that's not how that should have went. Yeah. No, I actually did kind of think about that last night when I was writing this, like the comparison of LBJ to W.

But the thing is that W didn't do anything good. He didn't do anything good at all. No, he said he was a Patriot Act. It was great. Oh, yeah. Well, that was Biden. Oh, God, I love it. God, I miss him.

He's going to outlive Trump. He can better. Well, even though, LBJ was bored and angry about having the deal with the mess that Eisenhower started in Vietnam and Kennedy had made worse. He was also absolutely fucking terrified of making the wrong decision at every turn. In his mind, he was damned if he involved America deeper in the conflict, but also damned if he did nothing. But in his words, he would rather do something than do nothing. And a lot of people died as a result of that decision.

Now, there were plenty of people in the government and in the press who were already saying in 1963 and 1964 that America should not be in Vietnam in any capacity. And LBJ had every chance to listen to those voices. But in the interest of a smooth transition of power and in the interest of giving a sense of consistency to the public after JFK's death, LBJ kept most of Kittany's cabinet when he took over as president. See, LBJ knew what he didn't know. And he believed these men, and they claimed erroneously that the only way to stop communism was to beat the communists in Vietnam. In fact, he thought Robert McNamara was the smartest man he had ever met. And he started every day with a conversation between the two of them.

And he also said that he thought that Robert McNamara could have been any member of any member of the cabinet. Yeah. Yeah. Well, that's the thing. Secretary of Defense was the second position Kennedy offered him. He originally offered him Secretary of Treasury. And McNamara is like, I don't really know much about final. I don't know. I hate you. I'm allergic to gold.

I only run a giant corporation. No, wait. Why would I have to do with money? That's not something I understand. Give me the bombs. But when you listen to recorded conversations about Vietnam between LBJ and Secretary of Defense, Robert McNamara, it's hard to tell who was leading who. In some conversations, it sounds like McNamara was urging caution, while LBJ was the one who was marching America to war. In other conversations, it feels like the exact opposite is happening, that LBJ wants nothing to do with the conflict, but McNamara is giving a hundred reasons why America has to be in Vietnam. But what this tells me is that ultimately, these were just dudes in a room, as it always is, and they didn't have a single fucking clue what they were doing

throughout this entire war. Now, don't get me wrong, McNamara was an objectively brilliant man. But McNamara and LBJ were just making this shit up as they went along. See, men like McNamara could make good decisions concerning the Soviets during events like the Cuban missile crisis because they could empathize with the Soviets. They could imagine what the Russians were thinking. And they could imagine what decisions the Russians might make because we'd fought World War II together. And we're kind of the same level. We're in, we're peers in this global hegemony. Exactly. We're the two most powerful countries in the world. Yeah. We care about money. Both of us do. Exactly. But neither Johnson nor the men left over from Kennedy's cabinet

knew anything useful about the Vietnamese as a people. This was 1963. They couldn't just fucking Google what do Vietnamese people believe. But then they'd get Google I'd saying they talk to a bird each morning that gives them the truth. Every day they have one kernel of cord to pass through their systems. If it passes whole, they know it will be a good day for the fishermen. They like to shit on sticks. They like to do it.

No, I also, but you know, it's free. Just feed them these people around. Gotta grab somebody. Yeah. Pretty like, go. You go. Bring me. Bring me five of them.

Bring you five these to me's men right here. That's what they needed to do. But we'd barely been over there. We'd barely talk to any of them. They were a ghost of a country to us at this point. And we're also incredibly arrogant. We think it's the whole white man's burden thing. You know, where we think we're going to go.

Civilization. And we're going to show the savages how it's done. No, no, no. I don't need to hear about what you have to say about your civilization and how You've been living here for thousands of years. We're here. Yeah, America's here. America's here.

Get used to it. But it wasn't until the 1990s that Secretary of State McNamara actually went to Vietnam and asked him, hey, what was all that really about? God, you should have just shut the fuck up. Got out, just stayed shut up forever. I want to know. Why will put the B in your bonnet? Well, they told him.

And McNamara finally realized, like, holy shit. Vietnam was never a Cold War conference. conflict. Vietnam had always been a civil war, and we had no business ever involving ourselves in this. I'll remember that for next time. But in the end, whether they knew what they were doing or not, these were the men who made the decisions that led directly to the massacre at Milai. And that's not even counting all the other countless atrocities they were committed by the United States military in Vietnam. There's lots of mini, yeah, many mini-mi-lis. Now, I want to make it clear that while I do admire LBJ for his intentions to make America into a more equitable society, that does not remove his culpability when it comes to Vietnam. No, good guys.

That is actually just more of an understanding that we, as a country, we used to actually have a spectrum of political beliefs. Yes. Yeah, we used to be, yeah, far different. A man from Texas could be a progressive, you know, and could be president. But, like, when Viet Cong forces killed American advisors, of... LBJ immediately authorized retaliatory strikes, and in the end, it was this tit for tat that sunk LBJ deeper into the conflict at every level. What really muddied the waters here is that as the years went by, the military routinely exaggerated its descriptions of American and South Vietnamese successes while also downplaying North Vietnam's victories. LBJ was therefore constantly misinformed on the reality of the war, and the worst the situation got on the ground,

The moral lies the military told. I was my last question. How's the war going this morning? It's fine. Why is your voice going up when you say fine? Why is your voice going up? How's the civil arts are going? Aren't you busy writing that?

I was actually going really well. That's great. It's actually really trucking along. Don't tell me about it. No, well, it's actually one of the most incredible moments of my presidency. I am so proud of you, sir. I think you're lying to me. I think you're blowing smoke up my bunghole.

He did love the word bunghole. He loves the word bunghole. But even though the picture painted for LBJ was rosier than it really was, it was still bad. And LBJ would have to paint an even rosier picture to the American public. And LBJ, therefore, constantly lied to Americans about how all of this was going from beginning to end. The boys will be home by Christmas. Yep. Every fucking year.

Yep. They do come home for Christmas, though. in body bags Yeah and various wheelchairs Sometimes they come back Just to sort of rest from the killing And then they have to

Then they get to go back Yeah they got to come home And beat their families And harass their trailer parks And then they go home They go back to Vietnam They gotta go home And prove that they've been absolutely broken

And can't live in actual society And they have to go back to the horrors of Vietnam Yeah Now while the military was given a thumbs up to everyone About the effectiveness of their advisors in Vietnam By the end of 1916 It's going really good. The head American diplomat in Saigon, David Ness,

was desperately trying to tell LBJ that any American victory was already impossible. I'm going to shoot you straight here, LBJ, shit's not good, shit's not fine, okay? You need a fucking get me, dude. You need a fucking gum, fucking gum get me, bro. Give me a fucking come here, bro. I'm fucking shitting out of my dick. Well, I'll tell you what, what, something I'd like to see. Well, Ness gave the reality.

which is that the South Vietnamese population was exhausted after 20 years of civil conflict. The Viet Cong, meanwhile, were disciplined, ideologically dedicated, connected to the desires of the peasantry in the countryside, and absolutely

fucking ruthless in their desire to win. In other words, we knew in 1963, before we even had ground troops in Vietnam, that the South Vietnamese were going to lose and there was nothing we could do to stop it.

But LBJ's cabinet was still convinced that victory was possible in Vietnam. It's possible. We could try it. Oh, don't even worry about it. We got this in the ball. You know what I'm saying? Valentine's Day. We're going to nail it by Valentine's Day.

St. Patrick's Day? Everybody's out. This is when, like, the optimism of America, the can-do attitude of America really works against us sometimes. It's toxic positivity. Yeah. Because, I mean, by 1964, even Robert McNamara was seeing that any victory had a slim chance at best. But by then, the Johnson administration was in too deep. And events were about to unfold that would give America the chance to commit even deeper.

That's right, ladies and gentlemen, it's time to talk about the event that introduced the term false flag into the American lexicon and forever destroyed America's trust in its government. It's time to talk about the Gulf of Tonkin. Gulf of Tonkin. What I love about the Gulf of Tonkin is that it's the only natural water formation that has ever created Alex Jones. You know, like, it is a,

this is the one. This is like, this is before we got into, yeah, FDR can fucking walk. Yes, we allowed, we allowed them to attack Pearl Harbor. No, we didn't. But this is the first real one. This is like such a great conspiracy theory.

Yeah, yeah. Well, it's a, it's not a, conspiracy theory, it is a conspiracy fact. Okay. Now, the Gulf of Tonkin incident has a lot of ends and outs, but for the purposes of this series, what you really need to know is that this was the pretext America used to finally put ground troops in Vietnam as opposed to just sending advisors, weapons, and aid. By this point, America, we'd already been involved in Vietnam for a fucking decade. Jesus Christ. So in early August, 1964, an American destroyer named the USS Maddox was patrolling the Gulf of Tonkin off the

North Vietnamese coast when it came under attack from North Vietnamese torpedoes. This American ship attacked by North Vietnamese. Yes. This attack did actually happen. And it was said to be in retaliation to South Vietnamese Arvin Commando raids on the northern coast. We're in a war. Yeah.

But while the Maddox was unharmed, the attack put the American military on edge. Two days later, the USS Maddox and another destroyer called the USS Turner-Juart. reported being targeted by North Vietnamese torpedoes again in the Gulf of Tonkin, but patrolling American pilots saw no signs of enemy craft. This second incident was determined a day later to be either a mechanical or electrical malfunction with the USS Turner Joy's radar, or it was the result of jumpy sonar operators seeing ghosts on their screens. Buggers. Yeah, little boogers.

Yeah, little boogers. Yeah, little boogers. But even though some military officials in Vietnam, knew that no second attack had occurred. Other officials reported to President Johnson that up to nine North Vietnamese torpedoes have been fired on American destroyers. And this made shit real simple for LBJ.

Yeah. Like, you know what I mean? It made this issue then like, okay. They've attacked. Yeah, the first attack, you know, that you don't really know what's going on. Who knows what's happening. But now there's two attacks.

How many torpedoes? Nine. Nine. Nine. Nine. Yeah, nine. He said your voice went up again. All right, I like that number better.

You know I like it better. It's a good two numbers. I like two numbers next to each other. A little fat and a little skinny one. Well, LBJ, therefore, went on television to announce that North Vietnam had taken hostile actions against the United States. And hours later, a massive airstrike was launched over North Vietnamese soil. But even though, by this point, it was known to,

everyone in power, including LBJ, that there had been no second strike, LBJ still asked the House and Senate to authorize the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution based on the story that there had been two strikes. The Gulf of Tonkin Resolution gave President Johnson the ability to use all necessary measures to resist aggression in Vietnam. But we still never declared war. Well, that's the thing. Privately, Johnson joked that the resolution was, quote,

Like grandma's night shirt It covers everything. Yep, but joking aside, the resolution had given President Johnson the ability to wage war in Vietnam without having to actually declare war. And thus, the Vietnam War, as we know it, officially began.

Yeah, she sometimes, though, grandpa, his grandma with the hose. And then, well, you can see him down here or anything. Even though it was known that the second attack had never occurred and was reported by mistake, Johnson felt that he was justified in continuing to sell this story,

because had we not sent in ground troops, South Vietnam would have no doubt fallen to communist forces from the North within a year, maybe less. But there's one other factor we haven't mentioned here. 1964 was an election year. Fuck! And Vietnam...

Every fucking time, man! Yeah, and Vietnam had become a wedge issue for the Cold Warriors. But after the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, in August, LBJ, he was behind. He won the election by a fucking landslide in November. God, we love blowing shit up, man. And he had a 70% approval rating throughout

1965 as a nice little bonus. We just like feeling we're doing something. We really love it. I mean, that's what LBJ did. He said, I can either do nothing and do something, and I'd rather do something. Yeah. And plus, Hubert Humphrey's a horrible name.

Terrible name. I think it was Goldwater. one. Oh, was it? Oh, okay. Yeah, Humphrey, yeah, that's Nixon. Oh, Humphrey was his guy. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that was his guy. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But before long, it would become common knowledge that the Gulf of Tonkin incident had ultimately been a false flag to justify ground troops in Vietnam and help LBJ win the election. And that decision haunts America to this very day. As it should. If you want to know why people are so quick to claim that 9-11 was a false flag and why they continue to argue that point to this day, The Gulf of Tonkin is the reason why, because they can always point and say, we did it once before and look what happened. Oh, yeah, because we really did it. And then, you know, we're looking at it now. We're looking at even like a little mini one with what's going on with Fauci and shit like that. Where they're literally just trying to kind of remake the rules.

Now, shortly after the Gulf of Tonkin resolution was passed, Congress put the military draft back into action. Between 1964 and 1973, two million young men would be drafted into the war in Vietnam, and 58,200 American soldiers would die in the process. Initially, President Johnson sent in 40,000 troops with the first 3,500 Marines arriving in March of 1965. By the end of the year, Johnson had sent 100,000 more. The North Vietnamese, however, were unimpressed. They were confident that their superior morale, patience, and tactics. innovation would prevail no matter how many troops the Americans sent because they'd already gone through all of this with the French. And in this, they were absolutely correct.

It's really hard to fight somebody that's in their backyard. Hell, you could argue that the French actually had an advantage because they'd already been there for fucking 70 years. Yes. And they're just showing up. Yeah, they still lost. I love it. I don't love, but when I'm listening to all the interviews on the Ken Burns documentary, they talk about how the Americans were so easy to. shoot because of how tall they were.

Yeah. Yeah, it's like, yeah, America's so big. Yeah, you just fucking shoot them in the head. Yeah, because when you see the pictures of American soldiers next to Arvin soldiers, they're a foot taller. No, and it's why the Arvin soldiers work.

It's why it works. No, no, Arvin. Not Viet Cong. The Arvin soldiers did not work. No, they did not. I'm just saying like they're because it's like, you know, it just works. It's fucking, they are built to fight there. Yeah, we're just too big. Way too big.

Now, by March of 1965, LBJ authorized Operation Rolling Thunder, which was a bombing campaign against Northern Soil that was supposed to take out the Ho Chi Minh Trail and destroy the morale of the North Vietnamese. Done. But as we're currently discovering, once more in Iran, bombing a population tends to raise the morale of the people who are being bombed. Yeah, they don't like it.

No, it unifies the population while pushing more people towards the fight. It creates more enemies who are resolved to get revenge. And Operation Rolling Thunder did exactly that. Furthermore, Operation Rolling Thunder did little to stop the Ho Chi Men Trail, which was only growing more and more tendrils throughout the Vietnamese jungles and its neighboring countries as the years went by. It's really hard to bomb something. We don't know exactly where it is.

Yeah, they knew choke points. Like they knew specific points where they knew, like, okay, the Ho Chi Men Chils here, it's here, it's here. But for the most part, no fucking clue. It's underground. Well, not the Ho Chi Minh Trail. That was an underground. Yes, but it's all like, you can't see that shit. Under trees, it's a brush.

There were points where they had no choice but to go out in the open, but for the most part, yeah, they were very good at hiding it. The rate of North Vietnamese infiltration into the South actually increased after Operation Rolling Thunder. And between 1965 and 1967, the number of Viet Cong soldiers crossing the 17th parallel rose from 1,500 a month to 6,000. thousand a month. This was in the face of constant bombing, disease, and injury as a fully gender neutral Viet Cong force moved everything

from weapons to food to artillery to wounded veterans sending them back up north. They moved all of us through the jungle inch by inch, just as they'd done to defeat the French at D.M. B.M. Fu, a decade prior. Now, why are they doing that again?

Shouldn't they be bored to do that? Let's try something else. Why have they do it? that. I'm sick of the cleverness. I hate the strangeness of the cleverness. I do love hearing that recording of LBJ where he's talking about like a sir, I think it's like K-on or something like that and he keeps

saying like, I don't want another goddamn DM being food. Yes. I don't want another. D.N. B.m. There's something about a Texas man yelling Vietnamese words loudly. Oh yeah, because they just turn into Spanish.

Yeah. I mean, I'm like, will you tell whole shy man that I'm gonna will you tell him? Live from your grade. The President Johnson had a hard time accepting the fact that, in his

words, a damn little pissant country like Vietnam could continue to hold out against the obviously superior military might of the United States. It became a matter of pride for Johnson. NFLBJ had a fatal failing, it was pride. He took it personal.

Yeah. So you remember what I said last episode about America swinging its big military, industrial complex dick. Well, LBJ had a legendarily large penis all of his own, allegedly seven inches soft and about as girthy as you could get without it turning into a freak show. He even had a nickname for it. He called it Jumbo. Everyone called it Jumbo. He'd be like, you ever seen a set on like this? You've ever seen a set like this? It's been so long. I've never had anybody do that to me. Seven inches soft is only good when you're talking. talking about yogurt. But let's just say, Mrs. Jansen, she didn't complain.

She was hollow, I believe. She was a Patricia doll. Old lady bird. Old lady bird. A vagina like an ostrich. Yeah. Yeah, I did. I have, my vagina has the wingspan of the American condor.

He's the only president to actually have sex with the Oval Office. That looks like that out of my old lady. They called her lady bird because her vagina was so holed out that, you know, goes, who whistled like bird. See, I thought it was like a cloaca, and her pussy and her asshole were just one big hole. But, you know, that's just talking about the first lady. His dick was so big that when they would have cabinet meetings, his dick would show up and he'd still be sleeping. Yeah, you got it.

That's old school. That's old school. He used to pick up spares for him in the White House bowling alley. Oh, wow. Johnson was incredibly proud of Jumbo, and he had been in the habit of literally swinging his own dick in governmental business to get what he wanted for decades by the time he became president.

If LBJ was urinating in a bathroom and a colleague came in, LBJ would sometimes turn to talk to his colleague with his penis still in his hand. LBJ would then begin a conversation holding and shaking Jumbo to intimidate his colleague, to make points. I meant a hurt, right? It's like a leash for a dog. Yeah, that sucks.

It's like, God, I've got a hurt shaking it back and forth. Once LBJ became, and that was when LBJ was a representative. Yeah, that was when he was just walking around. Yeah. Once he became president, he'd invite male aides to go skinny dipping at the White House pool, then spend the whole time making fun of the size of his AIDS penises in comparison to his own. just to intimidate and humiliate him. I don't think I've ever heard of a president going in the pool.

Nope. I think it's the only one I know that he directly went in the pool. Skinny dipping in the White House pool. That's disgusting. You've got to be careful when you say the words AIDS and penises next to each other. That's my AIDS and penis age. Understandable. Well, Johnson was also notorious for urinating in front of people,

male and female, just so they could see how big his dick was. One time, LBJ was taken a piss, and a Secret Service agent remarked that LBJ strong stream was splashing on the Secret Service agent's pants. Oh, that's what filled the pool. Yes. OBJ then turned to face the agent, still pissing, now fully pissing on his pants, and said, quote, I know I am. That's my prerogative.

Yeah. That was very common with LBJ. It's very Texas. Yeah, the other trick was when he taught it out of shining his shoes for him. Oh, man. Look at his winking. He must like you. On the most famous incident, during a private conversation with reporters and

off-the-record conversation about the Vietnam War, one reporter kept asking LBJ to fully explain why the U.S. was in Vietnam. LBJ got so frustrated that he stood up, unzipped his pants, pulled out his massive cock, and said, quote, this is why. Too big to fail. Yeah. That's fascinating, though. Like, that is literally the entire thing in one symbolic movement.

Yeah. You know, like, that is. why we are doing this. My dick is so big that I can do anything. Yes. Yeah. And it's so, it's not sexual. No.

No. Not in any way whatsoever. It's devoid of sex. Yes. It's very old school man stuff. Yeah. It's power. Yeah.

That's what it is. It's, it's dominance. Like he's very, he's acting very animalistic. He's very power. He's very, he knew how to do that because it's like a name. Like Putin does the thing where he like brings in the dogs. Sure. Right.

Right. You know, like that kind of thing where he's like, was he. are nervous around his dogs, so he brings us like four huge dogs in the room. Well, he did that to Angela Merkel because he knew that she was terrified of dogs. Yeah, she was slapping around. So before Nixon, he was the White House plumber. Maybe. Now, LBJ kept sending more and more troops into Vietnam.

And by the end of 1965, it was obvious the American military's superior firepower would win against the Viet Cong in any conventional battle. Like, say, if you put the American military on one side at the end of one rice pack, and, you know, the Viet Cong on the other, you put them together, American military is going to win. Yeah, we'll take them out in a second. Yeah. But, and so...

Just tell us where you are. Yeah. Tell us where to be. We'll bring our drums. We'll bring our flags. Just know where you gotta go. I will be right there. And you better be, mark your words.

5 p.m. I got your ass in a sling. Now, do you have Fife stores in Vietnam or should we bring our own? Because I've been thinking about getting a new fife, but like some with a little bit of flare to it. How about we not pack everything? We can get our pipes in Vietnam. Well, in December, Ho Chi men ordered a change to the way the war was fought. From then on, the Viet Cong would avoid battles with the Americans

unless the odds were clearly in favor of the North Vietnamese. This is right out of Chairman Miles Hat, guerrilla warfare handbook. The North began the terrifying guerrilla warfare that would lead to Milai, focusing on hit-and-run attacks and ambushes every time the Americans left the cities, just as the Vietnam had done with the French. This, however, was not the only tactical. the viet con used. Once American soldiers were out in the shit, so to speak,

they were faced with an endless barrage of the infamous booby traps and minefields that the viet Cong were such experts at laying and making. Every part of the countryside, from trails to rice paddies, to abandoned buildings, to village paths, were all mined and booby-trapped in increasingly dangerous and inventive ways.

The aim of the mines and the booby traps were to wound, delay, and demoralize American troops. They also served to channel the troops into vulnerable positions that were perfect for ambushes and hit-and-run attacks. The North Vietnamese knew the territory. The Americans didn't. So hurting Americans into kill zones was very easy. And they were also the same kill zones they had hurted the French into. Yeah, and the traps, I mean, you're so tired.

You're so beat up. Your fucking feet are bleeding. you're not paying attention every step you take no matter if you've seen someone get killed recently you're just so beaten down that you're going to fall for it and this is technically at the beginning of the ground troop invasion very beginning so when it

begins it's almost a novelty when you're like oh whoa everything's bugged everything's fucking booby trapped and it starts as an almost an interesting this one Tim O'Brien he was talking about the the term was the pressure of the mystery

of violence was the thing he said. That's incredible. Which is just this idea of everywhere you go as it went, that's why it was bad because then you'd be sent on

on a purposeless look and find mission. You'd hit three booby traps. You'd watch your guy fucking lose his eyeballs. They're making shit out of fucking like just artillery shells all gigged up and shit

and there's blowing like homemade stuff like really complemented stuff and then you come back thinking that all that shit you hit it already. They replaced it all. Yeah.

Yeah. And then you get it, they get you again. It almost didn't matter if you were a good soldier or not. It was just half of it was luck getting out of there. Yes. So much of it was luck. That's why they were real good at it. Yeah.

Now, the most infamous of the Viet Cong's homemade traps was the punji steak. These were sharpened bamboo or wooden spikes hidden in pits and covered with brush. And these spikes were often smeared with feces to increase the likelihood in speed of infection. Provided by Ed Larson from Tom's Rivers, New Jersey. And we just want to say thank you so much, Ed. This has really helped the cause. I'm sponsored by Midway Steaks. It's on Seaside Heights Boardwalk.

Yeah, you can check it out there. It's halfway through right in the middle. They're amazing. Great sausage of peppers. All the Vietnam bets that go there new. They, oh, wow. But the goal here was not necessarily to kill the soldier, as I said. Instead, after a soldier fell into the pit set up by the Viet Cong,

and he impaled himself on one of the sharpened punji steaks, the entire unit was slowed down while the victim was evacuated. You got to wait for a helicopter to come in, pick the guy up, and take him out. Additionally, these traps were specifically designed to maim the victim. While slowing down the unit was a huge plus, the traps were mostly psychological weapons designed to both increase fear in the field and increase opposition to the war at home. Because once a guy lost a leg to a mine,

he was sent back to America for everyone to see. Every vet I followed. It's really that. It's not death. They all talk about the haunting thing of seeing a buddy hold one of his limbs in his hands.

They all say like it's loss of limbs that seems to be the psychological pressure. Because guess what it does? It means, yeah, you get out of Vietnam. Now you don't have any legs. And you're in fucking, you got shipped off to America on a shitty jester.

GI Bill and now you're fucked. So now like it's all, you're, you are kind of thinking of back home. And not only that, but when, when you get back home, nobody is talking to you. No. Nobody is acknowledging you. Like, everyone is pretending. Everyone is pretending like the war in Vietnam isn't happening all while at the same time, everything in America that's happening is revolving around Vietnam.

Well, at the time, too, every annoying person you hate is protesting the war and you went and fought the war and now everybody hates you. And you are just sitting here like, well, I didn't even. What a go! Yeah. And the government's not helping you. Half your buddies are homeless. Yep.

Yeah. Now, to the American infantry on the ground, Vietnam was an unnerving experience to say the least. That's like the best way you could put it, unnerving. There were no battle lines, and the enemy was nearly ghost-like. The Viet Cong didn't wear uniforms, so they could hide amongst the populace if they didn't simply disappear into a labyrinth of jungle trails

and underground tunnels after a battle. But because the Viet Congolns, Kong could blend into the population, the American military solution was to drop leaflets into trouble spots that warned the people who inhabited South Vietnam's many villages that the Americans were coming. These leaflets told the villagers in the South Vietnamese countryside that they could either leave and live in refugee camps or they could stay in their homes and die as supporters of the Viet Cong. Problem was, a lot of the peasants couldn't read, so they had no idea what these pieces of paper even meant.

The military brass, however, told the soldiers on the ground that once the leaflets were dropped, their responsibility had ended. The areas where the residents were supposedly warned, they turned into so-called free fire zones, where, by definition, any Vietnamese who remained had to be Viet Cong or a Viet Cong sympathizer. This is before pacification, correct? No, pacification. See, that was last. They were already doing this. Pacification was the French, the Pacification. But then we tried to do something like it, too.

We had the Hamlet programs. Was that during this time period? That was before. Yeah, Hamlet, we'd already tried the Hamlet programs. I think Hamlets were under Kennedy. That was when we had tried, we had gone in to South Vietnamese villages and turned them into literal fortresses. We covered that, like, they were like Old West forts, covered, you know, surrounded in moats

and, you know, spiked fucking walls. And we'd semi-force people to live within them in order to protect them. Not semi, we force them. Yeah. And so, just to be clear, this is all happening in South Vietnam. All of it's happening. Everything happens in South Vietnam. Yeah.

We never, troops, American troops, never once. So these people that were just slaughtering in their own homes are on our side. Technically. Okay. But like I said in the last episode, you know, when Vietnam's split in two, it's not like every communist just ran to the north and every capitalist ran to the south. No, we were trying to clear the south of the communist. problem. Yeah, and because of the Ho Chi Men Trail, the north were just constantly popping up in the

South. They were a constant, constant presence, and there was just more and more and more every week, and we could do nothing to stop it. America's tactics resulted in the routine destruction of Vietnamese villages throughout South Vietnam. But contrary to what you might think, this destruction began happening with incredible speed and regularity following the arrival of American ground troops. This was not a slow buildup. This shit started happening almost immediately. For example, in July of 1965, about five months after our first ground troops arrived, American Marines entered a village where they were followed by CBS correspondent, morally safer, and a cameraman.

Now, it's important to realize that in Vietnam, journalists had access to missions on a level that had never been allowed before and has not been allowed since. I think in all, I think, 200 journalists died in Vietnam. As we'll soon see with Milai, soldiers rarely modified their behavior when journalists were around because those soldiers, they were just doing what they had been ordered to do. So they didn't think they were doing anything wrong. So with one of the most famous journalists in America watching and filming, Marines entered this village in July of 1965, again, five months after Ground Troop showed up, with orders that if a, if a, if a single,

single shot was fired by any Vietnamese, the Marines were not only authorized, but were required to level the entire village. As far as I know, there were no shots fired, but the Marines nonetheless began systematically torching every house in the village with zippos and flamethrowers. By the end of it, 150 homes were burned along with all the villagers' food. No weapons, nor any Viet Cong were found, but one child and four women had been killed in the mayhem. Later, it was discovered that while the Marines were told this village was full of Viet Cong sympathizers, the village had actually been targeted by the province's South Vietnamese governor for not paying enough taxes.

This once again showed how the corruption in South Vietnam would further muddy the waters throughout this conflict and make victory fucking impossible. Nobody's in charge. Nobody knows what's going on. It's just immediate total confusion and corruption. Yeah, immediately. And this fucking and morally safer, have you ever seen this report?

Yes. Where he's just like, I don't know what's going on here. He's trying to do it in like the CBS void. Like, I don't know what's happening here in Vietnam. But it seems like all we're doing is burning down villages. Back to you. I'm Leslie safer. The relations between American soldiers and South Vietnamese villagers

continue to deteriorate along these lines, with more and more civilians dying as a result. This, again, is all important because it shows two things. One, Milai was not an isolated incident. And two, conditions on the ground were being set up for a large-scale massacre from the very beginning of the ground war. In August of 1965, for example, Marines entered a village after artillery had already blown it all to hell.

These Marines had orders to kill everyone and leave nothing moving. So by the end of that operation, those Marines had murdered 25 villagers. Because again, they're told everybody that would be here would be quote-unquote Vietnam. Yeah, or a Viet Cong sympathizer. Before long, so many Vietnamese villagers were dying during combat operations that the military had to come up with yet another euphemism. They referred to the growing number of dead and wounded villagers as collateral damage, which indicated that as far as the military were concerned, these dead bodies were acceptable losses.

But the growing number of dead villagers meant that more South Vietnamese were moving towards supporting the North. And it wasn't long before American soldiers came to see any Vietnamese as the enemy, at least if they're out in the country. And that's if they were an old man, a woman, or a child. Well, that's because their army did not have those rules that we had. They didn't have an age gap. Everybody could be. And that was the main function. And Viet Cong used it for fear-based psychological warfare.

Like the idea of they used that. And then we just started killing everybody, which then they slyly knew was just going to make people support them even more. Like it all kind of works together. Yeah. And they didn't really have uniforms, right? They didn't. Like, they, most of them, I mean, that's like the officers did and shit, but. They call them, like, the man in the black pajamas.

I mean, there were, I mean, that's the. Yeah, there was a uniform. Technically, there were four armies fighting in Vietnam during the Vietnam War. Yeah. There was the Viet Cong, the Arvin, that's, you know, that's the guerrilla forces and the South Vietnamese forces. It was also the NVA, the North Vietnamese Army, who were, like, kind of the rank and file that would sometimes join the Viet Cong during operations.

And, of course, you had the entire American military. But the NVA were not the primary force. The Viet Cong were the primary force, and they did not wear uniforms. And did the Cambodians and the Laosians fight or no? Not to my knowledge. I don't think, like we definitely bombed Cambodian Laos quite a bit, but I don't think they came over. They may have been involved in operations, but actually I don't, I couldn't tell you one way or another, but I do know a lot of them died in bombings. Now, it wasn't just the confusion on the ground that informed the attitude that soldiers had,

towards the Vietnamese people. These soldiers have been trained by design to see all Vietnamese as the enemy, at least Vietnamese who weren't in the Arvin or who didn't live in cities. There were a lot of guys who became extremely close to the Vietnamese soldiers that they fought with. But once you got out in the countryside,

for most of them, all bets were off. If you didn't walk out here with me, you're my enemy. Exactly. Or a potential. Now, seeing the Vietnamese as the enemy wasn't a hard sell, because by this point in history, the American military had been working hard to dehumanize Asians since the 19th century. Long before we fought the Japanese in World War II, it didn't start there. The main slur used against the Vietnamese, the G word, as it were, that had been used by the military as far back as 1890.

Soldiers had first used it to refer to Filipinos after the United States occupied the Philippines. The G-word continued to be used throughout World War II and the Korean War to refer to basically any Asian person an American soldier might come across. But in Vietnam, the G-word became a slur to refer specifically to the Vietnamese, and it was used more than any other word to dehumanize the entire population. But it was not even close to the only word or term used. I'm actually, I'm not, the word's not proud, but of the spectrum of racist terms, all of the days. different slurs. There's so many colors of the wind of slurs that we used against

the Vietnamese, so much so that I because I'm reading Mili 4. Yeah. We had to have our researchers like make a glossary for us. Yeah, yeah. And so the thing is now after reading Mele 4, now that I keep seeing commercials for that ever-loving that torture,

whatever that torture experience that one guy from New Girl in that's called the Dink, that is being forced on me by Apple TV. It's some horrific show called the Dink. It's seriously a show called The Dink?

Yes, that is... It's about pickleball. It's the sound that quote-unquote pickleball makes or whatever source of it. But all I see is... No, I'm sorry, guys. That's a racial slur. Yeah, it's just like, I'm watching it.

He just keeps going on me like, that's my dink. You know, you're like, open it over again. And they're like, no, that is a racial slur from Vietnam that comes from the phrase Buku dinky dow. But now it is... He is very crazy.

No, now that's a Jake Johnson vehicle. Oh, good. It just keeps you. And I'm like, oh, fuck. I was watching The Good Place. I'm a huge fan of that show. I love it. But there's one character that uses Dink as an insult throughout.

And every time they do, I'm like, I don't think they know the history. I don't think his people know history. That's one of those weird words. You don't understand. It has like a whole bunch of fucking bad shit attached. A lot of really bad shit. Yeah.

If you want to hear all these slurs, of course, you can go to early episodes of Roundtable a Gentleman that my mother is. I owe, your mother was so good. And also, if we could, maybe ask Jackie on her stream over on that Jackie and the Holdenaders since she remembers some of her old ways. Now, the slurs were just a part of the dehumanization process. Really, everything started at boot camp.

See, the purpose of military boot camp is to reduce recruits to a psychological state that's something like childhood. They used shock, separation, and physical and psychological stress. This was even more important during the Vietnam War because the majority of the soldiers on the front lines were drafted against their own wishes to fight for reasons that many of them simply did not understand. Oh, yeah. They did technically have a quote-a-quote jungle school as well to also help them distance. Their fucking jungle school was, it was a national forest in Kentucky. That's it. That was the best they could do.

There's jungle school. It's hot out here. It's hot. It's like the jungle, right? The swamps of Louisiana. But that's not where we sent them. We sent them to a fucking national park in Kentucky. Also, the swamp in Louisiana is not like Vietnam. It is very different.

It's worse. Now, once a soldier is broken down into a clean slate, they're re-programmed using the same tactics that cults, and to be fair, communist re-education camps used, to gain total mastery over a human mind. The recruit is subjected to depersonalization, a lack of privacy, for social relationships, sleep deprivation, disorientation, arbitrary rules, and strict punishment. I just described the first, you know, 45 minutes of full metal jacket. Yeah, yeah, yeah, minus the soap party.

Yes, my ass. That was because he was bad at being a soldier. Yeah. Man, I'll tell you what, looking at all of that, the thing that gets me the most is the arbitrary rules. Yeah, I fucking hate arbitrary rules. And you and I would not do well. in the military. I am not an arbitrary rule follower.

They would just beat us till we following mine. I would just, no, I would just, you got to put me in jail. You just got to put me in jail. I'm not going to Vietnam. I'm not going to Vietnam. Oh, yeah, dude. I'm not going to Vietnam.

Okay? I'm not going. You could still draft me at 42. I'm not going to Iran. I'm just going to lay down. I'm going to lay down until you pick me up and put me in a jail cell. That's it.

That's what I'm going to do. You could all group beat me for a while. I'm just going to lay there. If I were being truly, truly honest with myself, I would have gone to Vietnam, but I would have been able to game the system in a way that I did not have to fight

in combat. Of course. I'd be behind the again. Radio. Hey, this is going on all this. This is the Chanel's. I would have fucked up and done combat and quickly fucking regretted my decision. Yeah. Or you would have loved it.

From what I've heard, Vietnam was a blast. Literally. Well, these guys were indoctrinated in boot camp into a culture of violence and brutality, which, above everything else, emphasizes a readiness to kill other humans without hesitation or guilt. Now, all this is absolutely necessary when fighting another military. I'm not naive about human nature here. War is not going away.

War is not going anywhere. But when you apply those principles to a civilian population, as the American military did in Vietnam, It creates nothing but abject horror for everyone involved. And isn't it against, like, all the rules? Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I mean, that's debatable now because the rules are constantly broken and no one's ever held accountable.

And then August, but those are the rules in war. So this isn't a war. Yeah. Yeah. This is a operation. It's a conflict. That's what they constantly refer to as a conflict police action was another. War has rules.

Yes. This doesn't. No, this is a conflict. Now, in preparation for sending soldiers to Vietnam, drill sergeants would tell recruits that the Viet Cong were more animal than man, and they should therefore be treated as if they were not human. But as the war went on and on and more Americans were killed, Army GIs were told in boot camp that every Vietnamese person was a potential Viet Cong. Therefore, it was drilled into the heads of every grunt that the Vietnamese at large were not human. they were told that children could be expected to toss grenades or blow themselves up in suicide bombings, while the elderly were experts at building the booby traps that might take one of your legs.

So shoot whoever the fuck you want. And they also, didn't they have a whole thing too about like they don't care for their children? Yeah. Yeah, they don't feel they don't look at children the way that we look at children. They're animals. They did everything they could to paint them as a completely alien race, a truly alien. Yeah. Now, I have to ask.

Aren't some of those things slightly true? Slightly. But it's just in terms of how their military works, but it's more along the idea of it's getting you in the zone to kill somebody who doesn't look like they're a soldier. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. And some of that stuff might be slightly true.

I mean, they were also told that all women were potential soldiers. That was actually true. That is true. But the point is, we shouldn't have been there in the first fucking place. Absolutely. There was no reason for us to fucking be there. And they don't like you. being there and they're going to try to get you out of there.

Every single, at every single level, everybody in this conflict was felt stuck. Like, LBJ felt stuck. I don't know what to do. I don't know what to do. I don't know what to do. I don't know what to do. And then down to the lowest grunt who gets out there is like, I don't know what to do. I don't know what I'm supposed to kill these people, but I don't want to, but I have to.

Everyone's constantly confused. And as it goes, it only gets more fucking confusing. Yeah. Yeah. It gets worse and worse and worse. But that's the thing. All of us only added to the terror that these boys were feeling, as many of them were leaving not just the country for the first time. A lot of these guys were leaving their fucking hometowns for the first time.

Some of these guys were leaving their fucking neighborhoods for the first time. What is the old term? I want to join the military because I love traveling the world and killing the people I meet. I want to travel the world and kill interesting people. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Full metal jacket. Now, these recruits were told that every Vietnamese outside of the city was either a VC

or they were at least helping the Viet Cong. And if you couldn't convert them, your only choice was to kill them. This was drilled into the head of each and every recruit before they even arrived in Vietnam. And while not every soldier took that chance, a lot of them did. Now, this attitude towards the Vietnamese people at large was not just really. rooted in racism. It was also directly related to how the war itself was fought. See, like the French, the Americans could not take and hold territory in Vietnam against the enemy. Aside from POWs like John McCain, who were shot down during bombing raids in North Vietnam, American

troops did not once set foot across the 17th parallel into North Vietnam. And of course, 17th parallel came to be known as the demilitarized zone, the DMZ. Oh, I thought the 17th parallel I was LBJ's cock. No. No, that's what they called it in Vietnam. That was his nickname for it there. That is my mistake. Yeah, and the demilitarized zone is what they called as pubic hair.

Yeah, yeah. That's where all the deals are made. Well, instead, American ground troops stayed in the south to fight the Viet Cong soldiers who came down the Ho Chi Men Trail. But because the military couldn't take and hold territory, the administration needed some way to measure. progress, and it was Robert McNamara who came up with our metric for victory. See, McNamara had been a corporate executive at Ford for years before he became Secretary

of State, and he saw everything in terms of numbers. He's kind of the definition of too smart for your own good. Well, it's also definitely deep because he was so smart he thought it was a simple way to figure this out. Yeah. Well, McNamara declared that our metric for victory would be body counts. And this metric was accepted by the military. How many, all we got to do to win is kill as many Vietnam as possible.

You tried to money bullet. Yeah, exactly. We got it's number breaking. It's number crunching. It's so much of it. It really is. It's number crunching. And it's stats.

It's all coming down to stats. They said that they, they produce so much paperwork and reports on Vietnam every month that it would be impossible for anybody to not only, like, read all of it. it would be impossible for anyone to draw any conclusions from it. Yeah, because it's just facts about dead people. Yeah. Well, bodycouts soon morphed into kill ratios,

and eventually that was all that mattered in Vietnam. If a battalion killed 50 Viet Cong and only lost one man, that was a kill ratio of 50 to one. And a good kill ratio could be rewarded with anything from a promotion to extra beer for the men back at camp. But because the rules of engagement were so lax, officers on the ground began counting every Vietnamese body as a Viet Cong soldier killed. See, if a commander wanted to pad the numbers to make it look like his part of the war was going in the right direction,

there were always plenty of villagers who could be killed and called Viet Cong after they were too dead to say otherwise. The officer could then report good news to their commander. That commander could then report good news to his superior, and that superior could then put all of that into a report that was delivered to President Johnson as nothing but good news all around. Nothing but sunshine ahead for America and Vietnam. It just, this is what happens when we put a person that runs a business in charge of a government that's supposed to take care of human beings. It doesn't work. Because it's a fucking stupid idea, because it's not a direct fucking. It doesn't work.

It's not a correlation. Is that how it works? It's not the same. The same skills do not fucking apply. No, because he's killing more and more and more of them is just making more and more of them. Yeah. It's what they said, what the axiom we talked about last time, where you kill one, you kill one Viet Cong, you kill one Viet Cong, you kill one civilian, you made 10 Viet Cong. Yeah.

You can, it's not, you're counting windshield wipers, you know? It's like, that's what he's good at. Yeah. Unless, of course, you know, windshield wiper becomes a racial term. And it actually You dirty windshield wiper With your skinny waist and your rat tail And the Viet Cong were always hard to find

But American troops could always find Vietnamese villagers And once body counts became the metric of success The Vietnamese people were, to put it simply, utterly fucked This of course was all while the administration went on and on about winning over the so-called hearts and minds of the Vietnamese people. That was ostensibly our other goal in the war, besides seeing how many bodies we could pile up. You got to blow up all the hearts and minds.

That's the idea. The commander of the military in South Vietnam from 1964 until 1968 was General William Westmoreland, Westy. And he believed that superior American military power would lead to an inevitable crossover point where the North could no longer recruit enough Viet Cong to fight the Americans any longer. He bought into the body count saying

just as much as everybody else. Essentially, they're going to give up. Yeah, they're going to give up. There's going to be a... And he always said, the crossover point's coming. And he even sometimes said, we've hit the crossover point. They never did. No.

Because bodies didn't matter to the North Vietnamese. The North Vietnamese were prepared to spend every life they had in the pursuit of independence. So in the end, the American military was playing an entirely different game than the Viet Cong. Theirs was a game of patience, while ours was a game of numbers. But to get those body counts that were so important to the administration, American commanders began ordering the infamous search-and-destroy missions

throughout Vietnam's vast countryside. This, of course, had also already been attempted by the French with little to no success. During these search-and-destroy missions, American troops would be sent out to take a meaningless hill with the goal of killing as many Viet Cong as possible. That's where Hamburger Hill comes from. The joke in Big Lobowski, you know, the boy, Hill 364, you know, like that's, the hills were all named by their elevation. So, you know, you have Hilt 432, Hill 967, you know, and they would just send them. There's Viet Cong, go get them.

And once the hill was taken, sometimes at the cost of dozens or even hundreds of American lives, the troops would sometimes hold it for hours before abandoning the site altogether. The Viet Cong would then move back in and retake the hill, and this constant taking and losing of territory only served to further demoralize American troops who were becoming more and more frustrated with how this war was being fought. There were some guys that would say, like, they would start to recognize places and like, we already took this. I lost my best friend taking this place.

Why are we here again? Yeah. Yeah, they're doing war in the style of like, Chocobo farming from Final Fantasy 7 It's this idea of like You're just trying to like ring up stats And these aren't

Fucking broccoli-haired Call of Duty boys yet Right? We're not there yet I feel like we'll be able to get What do you mean? The new broccoli boys With their Call of Duty brains

I have no idea what you're talking about Broccoli boys Like a little younger The guys are going to fight in Iran Oh I think they're going to have an easier time Killing from afar Right

because they're going to be able They've been more like desensitized almost in a way, you know, because they're used to harvesting stats in video games. Yeah. Yeah, it's not going to work in Iran either. No. Didn't work in Vietnam. No.

What do you mean? Actually, I think Iran is far larger than Vietnam. I think this is a big one. No, we're going to get them. Yeah. Iran's so scared of us. Yeah. We're not scared.

We got them. We got them on the back heels. Oh, yeah, we do. Yeah. Both straits are closed down. Yeah. Do you know that there was two? Oh.

Maybe we should open the gaze. We already have, and they dig over San Francisco. Now, by the body count metrics, Americans were winning the game by 1967, or at least the game that they were playing. Since committing ground troops in 1965, the American military estimated that they had killed 179,000 communist troops, while the Viet Cong had only killed 19,000 Americans. Fantastic kill ratio, boys.

We're crushing this shit. It's amazing. Wow! Yeah, only 10,000. 19,000 of us are dead. For no reason. It's only 19,000 are dead and an old man don't even talk about the wounded.

Yeah. That's only six, nine-elevens. You should start measuring it by that. But by 1967, there were 1.3 million communists in the South, and their numbers were increasing every year. The South Vietnamese, meanwhile, were increasingly viewing

all Americans with the same distrust the Americans were showing them. In other words, hearts and minds were not being won. And many Vietnamese began to believe that America had simply arrived to replace the French as colonizers. These people didn't know what the fuck the Cold War was. We were. They just knew that they were more white people showing up with guns. Yeah.

Killing them and telling them what to do. If we, quote, quote, won Vietnam, we wouldn't have left either. No. We would have been there still. No, that's why in, you know, the Watchman universe, Vietnam becomes the 51st state. Yes. Because it would have been. So it was in this place of mutual distrust that the indiscriminate slaughter of Vietnamese women and children became commonplace,

contrary to how the military likes to paint this situation in hindsight. If a soldier was killed or injured, their buddies would often, but not always, retaliate by killing civilians by the dozens. One GI said that after you killed your first innocent civilian, you told yourself you were doing the right thing, because everyone else was doing it. Now, not every soldier murdered innocent civilians, but when you watch these guys tell their stories, so many of them have stories where they saw others do it. Almost nobody says they never saw anybody do it. Sometimes these guys even catch themselves right before they admit to killing civilians. And some of them will fully admit, we'll talk about it in detail, in depth, because you can tell, I think their therapist had told them, like,

you have to be honest with the world about what you did. Yeah, there are guys that are legitimately, or when they're still confessing. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, there's a reason it's in every one of the movies. Well, it's just the truth. We didn't do good over there, man. No.

No, we didn't. No, and- You should have not been in there, man. Yeah, yeah, Ken Burns really does try really hard to make this, like, an honorable thing. But there's actually, there's very little honor. I don't see much. Vietnam. I don't see much. Now, as the war dragged on, the cruelty of American troops became more pronounced. In one incident in June of 1967, 52 villagers were murdered, including one woman

who was tied to an armored vehicle and was dragged around until she was dead. At that same village, a pregnant woman had her belly split open, and both she and the baby were left out in the open to slowly die. By October of 1967, there were some army companies who had come to specialize, in cruelty towards the Vietnamese, like Company B of the 35th Infantry. That month, in October of 67, Company B came upon an armed boy, and the lieutenant asked, who wants to kill him? Two men volunteered, and after they kicked the boy in the stomach, they unloaded a full magazine into the boy's body,

and then reported him as enemy KIA. The next day, that same company beat an old man until he collapsed, and then they threw him off a cliff. But this was just the opening act for Company B. Those same men crushed people under the wheels of their armored vehicles and made regular practice of throwing grenades into bunkers full of villagers. Once a gang of them cut off a mother's ear while their fellow soldiers grabbed the woman's baby, threw it to the ground,

and stomped it to death. Multiple witnesses for all of us. Why did they let us there now? Vietnam? Yeah, like why they, why they, not like kill us when we arrive now? We said, I'm sorry. Interesting question. I mean, it is a very interesting question, actually.

Yeah, because they, Vietnamese do welcome Americans with open arms nowadays. Because they know that the, I do think that they have the wisdom of being forced into a shitty situation many times. And I think that they understand that it was extremely complex. and there were many crimes that were committed across the board. And some of these do, and I really do feel bad for a lot of the servicemen, U.S. people and stuff that were over there

that didn't want to be involved in stuff like this. You didn't have a choice. We were fucked. Everybody was fucked. So I feel like that they understand implicitly that this was fucked. Yeah. For everybody. And that was also not the experience of every Vietnamese person.

We were talking about Mili. We're leading up to Mili. So we're also talking about all the atrocities. that led to this. We're talking about the worst, the worst shit that, that happens. You know, like, there were plenty, there were a lot of people who worked with the Americans, you know, throughout and then, you know, were eventually brought to America. Yeah.

And there were also people that came to see the Americans with a sort, like came to see American soldiers with a certain respect, like other Viet Cong soldiers. But there were also others that also just, most people didn't live. Like, the people that really saw, this shit, they just didn't fucking live very long. Yeah, we killed a lot of them. Yeah, we killed a lot of them. We killed a lot of them, but they were also living very, they were living very difficult

lives. They were peasants, you know, those people don't live a long time. Yeah, we don't know, like, how many people die after you burn down a village and leave, even if you leave everyone alive. Because I got nothing to do, they got nowhere to go, they got no more supplies, they got no more tools, you know, like, how do you fucking start over from scratch when no one's there to help you?

But they also have more community there, so I imagine they also then can go to places and people take care of them unlike the United States of America. were pretty prickly to helping people outside of our home. Yeah, yeah. But it was also, it was really rough in Vietnam. You know, like by 67, like there were hundreds of thousands of people, South Vietnamese and refugee camps and these crowded, horrible places.

And it's not like the South Vietnamese treated their prisoners of war any better than the North Vietnamese treated their prisoners of war. Like there was horror all, like I think what it comes down to is that there was so much horror all around that it sort of comes out in the wash. You know, like, there's, because for most Vietnamese, at the end of the day, when you listen to the interviews, a lot of Vietnamese say that the greatest tragedy of the war is that it was Vietnamese killing Vietnamese. Because for them, even with America involved, it was still a civil war. Yeah, it was. That was the heart of it.

That was the heart of it. That was the whole thing. And so, again, the people caught in the middle, people caught in the middle of every conflict. And the Viet Cong weren't no bunch of Wilton Lillies either. You know what I mean? They did a lot of fucked up shit, too. We're going to talk about the massacre of way next episode. They did their fair share.

I'm sure that everyone was just kind of happy it was over. Yeah. Oh, yeah. You know, you just get fucking tired of watching death. I don't. But that's me. Yeah, well, that's our jobs. Speaking of which, eventually, American soldiers and officers began celebrating

and making games at a killing of Vietnamese civilians. Some would see who could kill the most people. people in the shortest amount of time, while others tested who could burn down the most houses. Sometimes, however, the torture would be practical. It was common practice to kidnap a woman and tie a rope around her neck, then force her to walk ahead of the unit as a human booby-trap detector. This happened over and over, and that's not even to mention the tens of thousands of civilians who were killed by helicopter crews. You know, that joke in full metal jacket, you know, you don't got to lead him as much. That guy existed in spades across Vietnam. Like, they

They hunted people. The most egregious unit when it came to the torture of civilians, however, was part of the 101st airborne. These guys were made up of the baddest of the bad. These men frightened even the Viet Cong. They were called Tiger Force, and they were responsible for the murder of hundreds of villagers between May and November, 1967. This group of 45 men had been sent out into the deepest Viet Cong territory to hunt the Viet Cong. Kong itself, but they soon turned their guns on the villagers. These are the guys who made necklaces out of human ears. That 100% happened. They also collected the scalps of Vietnamese

civilians. Once, they even decapitated a fucking baby. But while there were investigations into the ears in particular, people didn't like the ears. No man from Tiger Force ever faced serious repercussions for his actions during this campaign. And that's Robert Duval's crew from Apocalypse Now, right? 1001st. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. But Tiger Force was just a part of 101st Airborne. But yeah, 101st was Robert Duval's crew. Yeah. Nice reference. Thanks. Really good. Yeah.

Well, I mean, you know, you always, I spent my whole life looking at him as a hero. Yeah. Yeah. You know, right? It's one of those weird things. Now, there were soldiers who tried speaking up about all the horror that particularly the army was creating. There was.

The Marines did their fair share of horrors as well. See, this is the problem is that it really did. This is where things will read that all of the seams start falling apart. Yeah. Because there really, there was some pushback. It was just small and quiet and they fucked you up. Well, there was some pushback, but the pushback against the pushback was even larger. Yes.

It was common practice for units to attack and punish any GI who spoke out or reported a war crime. Some of these guys were imprisoned, court-martialed, and busted down in rank all before they were sent back out into the jungle where they were ordered to kill civilians all over again. Others who reported war crimes had to transfer units after it dawned on them that their fellow soldiers just might murder them for standing up against these atrocities. And it's more complex than we hate the Vietnamese for trying to kill the Vietnamese. There's a complex, fucked up thing in here where it's, if you have... tell me what I've done as a crime, than what I've done as a crime. Yeah. And I'm a criminal. Yeah, and I

have to have to then think about that. I am, I'm hanging by a thread. Killing people I know I should not be killing. And I am forcing down my throat. I'm doing this for a purpose, a bigger purpose. So you doing your nimbib-pimby little

violence and war, like shit, it makes me crazy. So I can, that is, it's not correct way to think. But that's what we're with this. There's an intervalidation thing here that's Nazi like where it is this concept of it can't be wrong because we're doing it under the guise of the military. Yeah. And we know that Americans killed Americans over there, but there's no way to know exactly how many.

And if the higher ups start accepting the pushback to the violence and the ultraviolence, they are then going to have to also start thinking about what we're doing here. And they're going to have to acknowledge it that we're doing it. Well, not just that, but they have to rethink how they're fighting the war, you know, the body count thing. Are we actually fighting a war? Are we just massacring a bunch of people and losing? Yes, exactly. And that's the thing. It wasn't just the fellow grunts that these guys had to worry about.

Soldiers also learned to not report war crimes for fear that it could be seen as disobedience towards a commanding officer. Because this shit was being done on orders from above. When we get to Milai, you're going to see that it was the commanders who said, go in and kill everyone. I said last episode, the murder of civilians was not encouraged outright. There was plenty of training about how they were supposed to treat the Vietnamese. But that training was ultimately lip service. A lot of guys said that they laughed. It's the equivalent of, what do you call it, sexual harassment training today.

As the war dragged on, body counts became more important, not less, and especially as the war became more unpopular. The killing was ultimately incentivized more and more. Because as long as the body counts were high and the kill ratios were going in the right direction, the American people could be told that the war was going well. They are so bought and sold. And this idea that they're just going to give up. Yeah, they're just going to give up. And you have to tell, and that's how you can take down dissent and protest.

So, like, you're giving comfort to the enemy. You're giving aid to the enemy by opposing this war. It's going in the right direction. Look, look at the kill ratio. Look at how well we're doing. You're fucking me up, man. You hate how many people are dying, right? Look how many we're killing!

But look how many we're killing! The faster we kill, the most of them, we can stop this. By the end of 1967, even Secretary of State Robert McNamara was realizing that we had made a massive fucking mistake in ever poking our nose into Vietnam's business. That's on me. Let's just say, I was the one that kicked this little shindig off. So let's just maybe call it an end, you know. Into 67, McNamara's send an LBJ memos recommending that we begin pulling out troops as soon as possible because it is not going to happen.

Victory is never going to happen. This would ultimately lead to McNamara's exit from the Johnson administration in February of 1968, just a month before Mili. But the damage had already been done. the machine that McNamara had built was already in a state of forward motion towards a large-scale massacre. I like how him and Eisenhower, they always just, it's another example of a guy just, just so you know this thing might be not going well, all right?

Peace. See you later. All right, just want to let you know, Vietnam might have been my mistake. I'm going to go, okay? I'm going to go run the World Bank for 13 years. All right, I'm just going to go get a great job. Yeah. All right, see you.

Now, when it came to fighting actual Viet Cong soldiers, the North had, up until this point, been focusing solely on hit-and-run attacks to defeat the Americans little by little. But in 1968, which is perhaps the most insane year in American history, the Viet Cong would attempt an offensive that would both surprise the military and make it impossible for the administration to lie about how well things were going for any longer. it would also directly lead to the Mili Massacre. It was called the Tet Offensive, and that is where we will pick back up next week for part three,

where we'll finally start talking about the specific soldiers who actually committed the massacre at Mili. It's when we get introduced to Mad Dog Medina, Lieutenant William Calley, and all the rest. All those fucking pieces of shit that are now thankfully dead. But this has really been great, Mark. Thank you. Very entertaining, not depressing.

Oh. I think that this is a positive message to see that I think that now that we're learning the lessons of Vietnam. Definitely not about to commit the exact same mistake. No. No. Definitely not doing that. No, because you said Robert McNamara was specifically brilliant and we don't have one of those. So it can't happen.

God knows. I don't think it can. So. Doge you'll fix it. Oh, don't! Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Oh, you should go to you, Ron. Go to Patreon.com slash last podcast in the left. You can't pay to listen to this show ad free. We also have our show. Movie stories over there. You're going to see last stream on the left live.

5 p.m. PST. every Tuesday. Vietnam is in my fucking head. Yeah. That's right. Also, J.K. Ultra is over. The stream is gone. But we're unloading all the merch. I'm wearing the shirt right now.

Go on over to. to our website. We got a discount on all our JK Ultra merch. Fucking go pick it up especially if you weren't able to come.

Just know that we're, if we don't sell all of them, we are going to drop them over South Vietnam. Our goal is to get it out. So they were going to, the goal is to sort of pay for South Vietnam. It'll be fine.

It'll be great. It'll be great. And they'll get it. Follows on the socials at L.P. On the left. And don't forget to go check us out on Netflix. If you like to watch your podcast,

we're over there. Go watch it. This Sunday, come on out to Dynasty Typewriter to see Henry and I. I got my Dead Men Tell Some Tales, a dark dive into Disney history. Are you curious who was dead at the parks ever? Come on down. We'll tell you, we got a bunch of bad helicopters in our show, too. Oh, that's great.

I love helicopters. And you got to get out there and enjoy yourself. And hey, don't get drafted. No. Hail Satan. Oh, how game. Shoot yourself in the first. foot.

Yeah. Be gay. That's the best part. That's the best part. That's once nice about Hegstaff. You're right. Gay makes you safe again. Actually, that's how Iggy Pop got out of the draft.

He went to the draft office, and he kept holding on to his dick and yawn, they're trying to touch my dick. They're trying to touch my dick. And they said, go home. That's awesome. That's fucking great. A lot of those guys did that. Hell, Iggy Pop.

Ha.