In case you don't understand the lingo, that's marijuana."

Continuing on with the theme of two sides to a coin.....

A colleague of David Culbert wrote this to him in July 1978, regarding an essay he wrote on the Adam's photo as well as a proposal for a grant he and Peter Rollins were submitting for the film they were working on.

You seem to be deliberately ignoring the ways in which government press releases, especially the releases from the  Saigon  government, but from  Washington as well, were propagandistic in their insistence upon the corner being imminently turned, the tunnel-end being imminently reached, the democracy of southeast Asia being imminently saved  (as though it had ever existed in the first place).

In short, the government was doing what you and Peter [Rollins]  seem to be doing: acting as though the military truth were the determining context, and, Dave, I swear that readers  and  viewers will remember that the context was one in which the traumatic divisions that tore the country apart was not one in which there was a division between those who thought we were winning and could win on the one hand and  those who thought we weren' t winning and couldn't win on the other, but between those who said that we could win and must and those who said that even if we could win we should not and that the military considerations were a complete obfuscation of the basic issues.  

What I like about this paragraph is the author's contention that the division in the country over the Vietnam war was between "those who said that we could win and must and those who said that even if we could win we should not."

What happens, as far as I can see, is that this Highlander - there can be only one - reality pits one against the other.  How do we handle a situation like that?  How about democratically, you know, put it to a vote?  We don't vote on war.  Our elected officials - who we did voted for - decide, and they decided that blood and treasure should be spent trying to meet our objectives in Vietnam. And, as was pointed out:

"[i]f we stick to it long enough - and this is not a short term proposition - [we were] confident that we shall have reasonable success in achieving our objectives."

See that word "reasonable" in that sentence?  Lets look at how that's defined:

"Having modest or moderate expectations; not making unfair demands"

In other words, based on what we set out to do, and what we knew about the enemy (see post), sticking with it should bring about the success of those objectives.

And then came Tet, the Eddie Adam's photo, and a reevaluation of the cost associated with achieving that reasonable success.  You know that saying "freedom isn't free?"  Well that's a tacit way of telling you it is going to cost blood and treasure.

Did "Uncle Walt" and the use of the Eddie Adam's change the hearts and minds of Americans to go against the war, or was it simply more a realization by more and more people that "even if we could win we should not?"

Here is what George Bailey told Rollins in an interview for the film (Lichty also talks about Walter Cronkite's impact) :

Rollins interview with Prof Lawrence Lichty and George Bailey

This assessment on the cost - and to whom it is applied to - had been going on way before Tet.  Case in point was a confrontation between the actress Eartha Kitt and Lady Bird Johnson (from: Lady Bird: A Biography of Mrs. Johnson By Jan Jarboe Russell):

Before Tet we weren't quite ready to hear about what the cost of the war was doing to those who were the "blood" part of the blood and treasure commitment to achieve our objectives, and Eartha Kitt paid the price - a la the Dixie Chicks - for being "ill-mannered negro."

I guess what I am struggling with in all of this is how should I feel about it now, compared with how I felt about it before I started doing my research on this?  It's not as easy as it should be because I am also troubled by my ignorance as a teenager heading into draft age who really was clueless about what it was all about.  That's where this is heading for me now.  I was, back in 1973, while the war was still going on, sixteen.  Had it continued I would have been that "blood" my fellow Americans were willing to spend to meet our objectives.

It hits close to home now, and that makes my objectivity towards the war, Tet, General Loan, and the absolutists tainted.

Should my near-miss play into how I see the war? Should it dictate how I feel about our effort, my government, my military, and General Loan?

It can't help but not affect my view of the war, which is exactly the same situation General Loan was put in on February 1st, 1968 when Nguyen Van Lem was brought to him with hands tied behind his back and wearing civilian clothes.

How one sees a situation is uniquely their own.  How dare we punish Eartha Kitt for voicing how she saw the conflict in Vietnam.  How dare we criticize Walter Cronkite and Robert Kennedy for speaking what they saw as the truth. How dare we degrade the men and woman who willingly and unwillingly offered their blood to give us "reasonable success in achieving our objectives."  And how dare we condemn General Loan for this one particular act - committed during a war, during an invasion - elevating ii up to a classification of "moral turpitude."

Condemnation is deserved for those who ignore the cost and reality that comes in to play when you go to war.

As Charles Heston said in Plant of the Apes: Damn them!  Damn them to hell!

Next Post: There but for the grace of God go I....
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Carl von Clausewitz, the CIA, and General Loan

Like I said in the beginning of this series of posts; there is a lot I don't know about the Vietnam war, a lot I should have known at the time, a lot the public should have known, and especially my parents who, for them, I would have done my duty as asked of me by my country, should have known as a means of helping me decide what I might have gotten myself into.  I turned 18 in 1975, so I missed all the fun by just a couple years.

Carl von Clausewitz, the guy who wrote the book "On War," talks about the concept of "Absolute War" explained as follows:

"[A]bsolute war is a philosophical abstraction--a "logical fantasy"--that is impossible in practice because it is not directed or constrained by political motives or concerns, nor limited by the practical constraints of time or space. He called warfare constrained by these moderating real-world influences real war."

When you read all the comments regarding the Eddie Adams photo (example), you start to understand that most people see a situation in the most abstract, and fail to connect all the different parts in play.  What they cannot grasp is how things that run the gambit from ego, to pride, to faith, to superstition, to history, to culture, to logistics - all the way down the basic laws of physics - mold, shape, and confine a war.  All of these things, plus more, interconnect and places constraints on our ability to perform, as it did with Vietnam.

Such is the truth about what took place during the Vietnam war as well as what General Loan did that day on February 1st, 1968.  The outcome - the reality - was the result of all sorts of things in play before and during.  Anything else brought into the conversation about the how and why that is not factual or interconnected is a logical fantasy perpetuated by those that cannot accept the truth as it really is.

"He was one of us," Eddie Adams said.  We were there for for him and he for us. Simple!  And that's why it's a logical fantasy to think of it in such an absolute way.  We must have been there for a reason, if General Loan was one of us.  That assumes that there must have been a "them" in order for there to be an "us."  The "them" was the communist north.  If  you can remember the time before the Berlin wall fell, the Soviet Union disintegrated, and China became capitalists, communism was a big scary boogieman for the US.  You cannot look at it with 21st century eyes, you need to see it with eyes that viewed the world in the 50's and 60's.

Fighting communism was the main political motive that directed our involvement over there.  That's what gave us an enemy...a "them."  Now let's look at that enemy from a grounding in truth (assuming that declassified CIA documents are truthful).  What did we know about our enemy eight months before Tet?

From: The Vietnam Situation: The Vietnam Situation: An Analysis and Estimate - May 23, 1967, Central Intelligence Agency Collection.

"The situation thereafter will largely depend, as it has in the past, on the question of the will to persist of  either side rather than on the attainment of an overwhelming military victory."

That was the conclusion, derived from this:

"Although the enemy hopes to overrun a number of allied field positions, his principal aim is to inflict maximum attrition on our forces at whatever cost to his own, and to check the momentum of the pacification effort."

Here is what Walter Cronkite would say on February 27, 1968, for which he took a lot of flak and was accused of losing the war for us by turning public opinion away from one of support.

"To say that we are closer to victory today is to believe, in the face of the evidence, the optimists who have been wrong in the past. To suggest we are on the edge of defeat is to yield to unreasonable pessimism. To say that we are mired in stalemate seems the only realistic, yet unsatisfactory, conclusion."

What does Carl von Clausewitz had to say about war:

"Therefore, war in its most natural manner would involve each state continually reciprocating each other's use of force (plus some) to maintain a superiority, until both were using violence to its utmost extent." [first reciprocal action]

And in 1967, what did the US understand the situation in Vietnam to be?

The Vietnam Situation: An Analysis and Estimate

And what does Carl von Clausewitz have to say about this type of knowledge that was known to the CIA?:

[T]he use of power involves two factors. The first is the strength of available means, which may be measured somewhat by numbers (although not entirely). The second factor is the strength of the will which can not be specifically measured (only estimated) as it is intangible.  Once a state has gained an approximation of the enemy's strength of resistance it can review its own means and adjust them upwards accordingly in an effort to gain the advantage. As the enemy will also be doing this, it too becomes reciprocal. [third reciprocal action]

Why all this lecture on the theory of war?  How does this relate to General Loan?  Lets look at this particular sentence from the Wikipedia page on "Absolute War."

Absolute war can be seen to be an act of violence without compromise, in which states fight to war's natural extremes; it is a war without the 'grafted' political and moral moderations.

What does an act of violence without compromise entail?  Is it collateral damage?  Is it torture?  Is it killing woman and children in  My Lai?  Raping women in Nanking? Or was it executing a bound man who was part of an invasion force into your city?  In other words, what does an act of violence without compromise allow?  Surely it cannot allow for everything, or do we allow it to because it is war?

War brings forward certain truths, like it or not.  War will always move towards more and more extreme actions.  War will always require two factors; strength of available means and the strength of the will behind the effort.  If we can assume this premise to be true, what General Loan did that day on February 1st 1968 was simply an absolute.  Without any other considerations taken into account, what he did was no more or less extreme than any other act committed that day, if the premise is true that war is an act of violence without compromise. 

Then why is he singled out?  Quite simply, it is because we cannot accept the Carl von Clausewitz premise and call ourselves human, compassionate, or Christian.  What we saw in the photo and the film was the reality in play when one group wants to make another group comply with its will.  That's what war is all about.  What the US, General Loan, and Nguyen Van Lem were doing that day was fulfilling war's ultimate purpose: trying to force the other into a position from which it cannot resist the other's will.

This does not justify - nor condemn - General Loan's actions that day.  It only helps explain it.  And for those who believe that the photo and Walter Cronkite lost the war because it changed public opinion, that places blame for our lack of a "victory" on those who did not accept the cost in blood and treasure for the purpose of forcing the opposing group to accept our will.

And if Carl von Clausewitz and the CIA in May of 1967 were correct, the extreme that this conflict was going to let lose was going to be bloody, long, and severe, a point Walter Cronkite made succinctly in 1968 after Tet:

For it seems now more certain than ever that the bloody experience of Vietnam is to end in a stalemate. This summer's almost certain standoff will either end in real give-and-take negotiations or terrible escalation; and for every means we have to escalate, the enemy can match us, and that applies to invasion of the North, the use of nuclear weapons, or the mere commitment of one hundred, or two hundred, or three hundred thousand more American troops to the battle. And with each escalation, the world comes closer to the brink of cosmic disaster.

It would take five more years and 58.209 US deaths for our strength of will to stop reciprocating and put an end to the war's natural extremes. Had we continued, had we deemed this effort to continue whatever the costs, what might those extremes be?  Anything and everything, including nuclear weapons and countless more deaths, hence Cronkite's logical conclusion - which is sound based on Carl von Clausewitz's first reciprocal action: "...each state continually reciprocating each other's use of force (plus some) to maintain a superiority, until both were using violence to its utmost extent."

What General Loan showed us February 1st, 1968 was the ugly face of what war is really all about.

Next post: Why the lies, misstatements, half-truths, and downright disgust....


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Why General Loan is not a "good guy"

Okay, so maybe I should have titled this: "Why General Loan should not be described as a "good guy""

Who am I to decide who is good and bad?  I mean that's been the point of these posts, hasn't it?  How should we look at someone, how should we classify an act, what factors are important in making a decision on how we should feel about something?

What started me down the Eddie Adams path was a completely baseless assertion from a General Brady and my response to it.  In the process of researching the Tet Offensive, I came across the Eddie Adams photograph and a whole bunch of "facts" regarding what took place and how the photo helped/hurt the Vietnam war effort.

If you read my blog (Woot! I have three readers now!) you will notice I have a problem with half-truths, lies, propaganda, and ignorance.  Opinion is one thing, misstating something because you failed to fully research it is another.  I hold a lot of contempt for people who should know (General Brady) and use their power/title (the "General") to further an ideology or perpetuate a false history using innuendo, bogus information, and outright lies.  Tet can be looked at objectively for what it was, it does not need to be rewritten using a made-up event and conversation with General Vo Nguyan Giap, the supreme communist commander during Tet.

The same goes for the Eddie Adams photo, Adams himself, General Loan, and Nguyen Van Lem.  The truth is the truth, regardless of where it leads or what it tells you about us, them, or humanity in general.

We have on record that Eddie Adams called General Loan a "good guy."  Now he may have been figuratively speaking, as in - good guy because he was on our side, but that's not what I hear when I listen to him say "good guy."

In my last post, I discussed what makes some one good or bad, and how which side of the fence you are on helps form your response.  I contend that it should not matter.  Bad is bad and good is good.  Which brings us back to General Loan and Adams' assertion that he was a good guy.

Hopefully I have been able to support why I believe Eddie Adams used that term to describe the man.  I don't think Adams was naive, I do think he was mislead by both General Loan and those that needed the incident to be downplayed.  That, and his guilt over the harm the photo caused General Loan (see post) lead to the designation of "good guy" he used.

So, looking at it objectively, was General Loan a "good guy?"

I contend that he was not.  I base this on a lot of background information, CIA reports, and observations from other journalists.  I'll show you what I mean, but first I want to print the one account that sealed it for me, an incident that takes General Loan from a "good guy" to not a very nice human being.

From Tom Buckley's: "Portrait of an Aging Despot", Harper's, April 1972 Page 72:

This was after the Tet incident in 1968.  Does that sound like someone worthy of the title "good guy?"

Oh, but wait...there is more.


Next Post: And it's one, two, three WHO are we fighting for?

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The "he was a good guy" perspective.

I think, of all the things I have read, heard, and seen regarding February 1st, 1968 when General Nguyen Ngoc Loan's shot Nguyen Van Lem point blank at An Quang Pagoda in Saigon during the Tet Offensive, the one that perplexes me the most is the statement by Eddie Adams about General Loan:

"He was a good guy.  He was fighting for America with Americans.  I think he was a goddamn hero."

I am not perplexed that he said it, for I think I understand Eddie Adams pretty well and I can accept the various issues in play that formulated it.  I don't even think it was inappropriate for him to say, however, the only man that could be accorded the appropriateness to make such a statement was Eddie Adams.

What perplexes me is how Eddie Adams allowed himself to make it.  It is not an objective statement borne out by facts, facts which he should have known or at least had questions about regarding General Loan.  It is easy to understand Eddie Adam's guilt over what happened to General Loan after the photo was taken.  One need only read these quotes to see why the aftermath the photo wrought weighed so heavy on his mind.

"Photographs, you know, they're half-truths ... that's only one side...." Adams said. "He was fighting our war, not their war, our war, and ... all the blame is on this guy." (NPR)

"He was very sick, you know, he had cancer for a while," Adams said. "And I talked to him on the phone and I wanted to try to do something, explaining everything and how the photograph destroyed his life and he just wanted to try to forget it. He said, 'Let it go.' And I just didn't want him to go out this way." (NPR)

"He never blamed me for the picture. he used a cleche that we here all the time.  Eddie, you were doing your job, and I was doing mine.  I guess the picture...I'm told it did good things...but I don't want to hurt people either...I really dont..  It really bothers me.  thats not my intention in other words, being a photographer, thats not what I want to do." (Newseum) 

Nevertheless, Eddie Adams was amiss in stating that General Loan was a "good guy."  He wasn't wrong to say it, per say, because that's how he saw it.  He was wrong to hang the title of "good guy" on General Loan, because he was not a good guy, and not simply because of what he did in that photo.

First of all, is one a "good guy" because he is on our side?  If so, that would make those involved in the My Lai Massacre good guys. Were the Japanese good guys for what they did in Nanking China?  Or because they were are enemy at the time, they must be seen as "bad guys."  Or, are they only bad guys to the Chinese and neutral to us? Assuming "goodness" is a result of what side of the fence you are on, nothing can be viewed as fundamentally bad.

Does one's side play anything of importance in determining what acts are morally bad or debased; corrupt; perverted?  Two members of the House of Representatives, Harold Sawyer of Michigan and Elizabeth Holtzman of Brooklyn worked feverishly to have General Loan deported for what they called his "moral turpitude."

What they contended was that General Loan's actions that day was "conduct that shocks the public conscience." Now we can split hairs on how the law views moral turpitude, but that places a definition as what is important and not the actions of General Loan on February 1st, 1968.  In this case, can my conscious be shocked without having to claim moral turpitude?  Or, does that fact that I find this shocking make moral turpitude the only logical conclusion for General Loan's actions?

Regardless of my conclusion, what side of the fence I am on should play no part in how I derive the outcome leading to that conclusion.  If it does, then "shocking" is in the eye of the beholder.  It is subjective.  It's based on external and environmental factors....well. come to think of it, it is!

There was a documentary on TV a while back (I can't recall the name or station) which showed identical twins watching the same movie but not together.  It looked at how each twin reacted to different disturbing scenes.  As expected, they both showed similar reactions.  Except when one of the twins was a nurse and the other was not.  Scenes of an operation elicited no reaction from the nurse, but uneasiness for her sister.

What does that have to do with General Loan?  Does perception play a part in how an act should be perceived?  Was the film of the operation in and of itself something that should be seen as distasteful and bring about a feeling of revulsion.  Or was it simply another act that should be viewed as nothing more sickening than any other acts that came before it?  In this case, can we condemn one twin's non-reaction as depraved or a perversion? Should the other twin be more deserving of the title caring and sensitive...more humane?

"But an operation performed by a doctor and nurse is not the same thing as firing a bullet into the head of a bound man at point-blank range" you might be thinking.  Or is it?  In both cases the need to perform an act in a way that many of us would find distasteful at having to watch is present for both.  I can't bear the thought of slicing into a man's stomach no more than I can see myself pointing a revolver and releasing a bullet into another man's brain.  Should I condemn the doctor and nurse for doing that thing I would never allow myself to do?

Well, that's a no-brainier (no pun intended) because the doctor is just doing his job.  He desires the stomach no harm and the means should justify the end.  But what about General Loan?  Wasn't he just doing his job that day?  Didn't the means justify the end he hoped to bring about as well?

"I respect the Vietcong in uniform.  They are fighting men like me.  People know when they are wonded I take care of them.  I see they get to to the hospital.  But when they are not in uniform, they are criminals and the rule of war is death." (1)

"What do you want us to do?  Put him in jail for two or three years and let him go back to the enemy?" (2)

So maybe perception does play into it.  Maybe which side of the fence you are on will allow you to see the same thing differently than how the person on the other side views it.  But that brings was right back to square one.  If perception dictates "goodness" then there is no fundamental idea of what is "bad." And more to the point, what is bad enough to be classified as "morally bad or debased; corrupt; perverted."

When Eddie Adams called General Loan a "good guy" he obviously based that classification on a lot of factors other than one lone event captured on film.  Those factors, however, significantly biased his opinion of General Loan, making the statement of "good guy" inappropriate.  Without his connection to the man, the photograph, and the aftermath, would Adams have made that same statement?  I think not.  If Adams looked at General Loan under a "veil of ignorance" he would have seen him for what he was.

So maybe it's not that I am perplexed that he made this statement.  What perplexes me is the many dynamics in play that formed the words Adams said to describe General Loan.  It's not as simple as folks think it is.  It's not about good and evil, black and white, patriot or enemy.  Of all the things said by Eddie Adams, this was the most untenable statement of them all, all things considered.

Without his guilt over what the photo unleashed, and with full knowledge of the kind of man General Loan was, I am pretty sure Adams would not have called him a "good guy."  He would have seen General Loan as no different than any other person in a war situation; neither a hero nor a villain; simply just another victim of the circumstances they found themselves in.

Of course I am speculating here.  But from my side of the fence, that's how I see it.

(1) As reported in Harper's April  1972 article "Portrait of an Aging Despot" page 72:
(2) As reported in Harper's April  1972 article "Portrait of an Aging Despot" page 72


Next Post" Why General Loan is not a "good guy"


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But a photograph is absolute.

Note: I have been neglecting my blog.  I noticed that this was never posted.

My head hurts.  We had a snow day today and work was canceled.  So I spent the whole day looking up anything I could find on Eddie Adams, General Loan, Vo Suu, Howard Tuckner, and Nguyễn Văn Lém.

Believe it or not, there is a not a lot of information out there.  There's a lot of crap too, especially crap that does nothing but reprint what somebody else has said - word for word.  Can't understand that one, I mean, why bother?

There is also a lot of crap designed to present information as factual but in no way shape or form is it real.  For example, the Wikipedia page on Nguyễn Văn Lém, the guy General Loan shot has the following blurb

Though military lawyers have yet to definitively decide whether Loan's action violated the Geneva Conventions for treatment of prisoners of war (Lém had not been wearing a uniform; nor was he, it is alleged, fighting enemy soldiers at the time), where POW status was granted independently of the laws of war; it was limited to Viet Cong seized during military operations.

This one sentence - in a very professional sounding paragraph - is attributed to Major General George S. Prugh (1975). "Prisoners of War and War Crimes". Law at War: Vietnam 1964-1973. Vietnam Studies. United States Army Center of Military History. Retrieved 2006-10-24.

Well I went to the link listed.  This statement was not there.  I even went to the actual document referenced...nothing.  So where did the Wikipedia author(s) get that bit of information?  Do a search for it and you will find it used a lot, but no where will you find it referenced in any academic or governmental websites.  I even searched the Texas Tech University's Vietnam database.  Nothing of the sort was said by General Prugh that I can find.

Which begs the question: why go to all the trouble to write a very scholarly sounding paragraph, attach a real person's name to it, and then link not one, but two different documents, from the guy, as where this information came from?

It's a hoax.  And yet again a hoax that uses someone's real name to perpetuate a myth needed for approval.  I think I know why it is used in this case, and it goes back to Eddie Adams statement:

Words and pictures have a continuing struggle for primacy. In my mind, a person can write the best story in the world; but a photograph is absolute.

His photo showing General Loan shooting Nguyễn Văn Lém (aka: Captain Bảy Lốp) was absolute.  I wrote about this a few posts back.  There is a difficulty rectifying what you see with what you feel; with what you believe; and with what you hold sacrosanct. If he is a good guy then he can't be doing a bad thing.  So either you make him a bad guy or you make the thing he did a good thing.  Those that can't accept that he was wrong to do shoot him in that manner, work to find ways to justify General Loan's behavior.

One of those ways is to argue over the "right" to carry out the assassination because Lém and Loan were not under the Geneva convention.  Hence the argument over Lem's POW status.  They also bring up the fact that Saigon was under Marshall Law and shoot to kill was warranted.  It goes on and on.

Even the simple "well he got what he deserves" justification falls short because we are a nation of laws, and what Loan did was against any law.  Period.  It cannot be justified if you believe that our behavior is either morally based or we are a "nation of laws, not of men.”  Nothing, short of a belief in anarchy or misanthropic leanings, would allow for behavior such as this.

What is needed, in my opinion, is to stop trying to justify it and start trying to understand it.  It is not about good and bad, saints and devils, or heroes and villains.  It is about how easily humanity can be pushed aside and the constant vigilance need to ensure that it does not.

As another humanitarian put it: Beware the thief in the night.


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Nguyen Van Lem; He's just a plain vanilla V.C.

Note:  I have been neglecting my blog while I worked on other things.  I just noticed that I never posted this.

My last post focused on how the deeds of Nguyen Van Lem (aka: Bay Lop) - the man shot by General Loan on February 1st, 1968 during the Tet  offensive - have been exaggerated to the point of being ridiculous.  Yet they persist and are spread from one book to another and from one website to another.

So lets look at "former Judge BAI AN TRAN, Ph. D. Professor of the National Police Office Academy, Vietnam." full accounting of what Nguyen Van Lem had done right before General Loan shot him:

Now I suppose one could argue that Nguyen Van Lem may have been the one who killed the Lt. Col, and his six kids.  But that happened in Go Vap according to President Nguyen Van Thieu.  The execution took place at the An Quang Pagoda which was on the other side of town from Go Vap:

That's a long way to go from start of the attack at Go Vap to the An Quang Pagoda where he was caught.  And if my time line is correct, Nguyen Van Lem was shot by General Loan about 32 hours after the start of the Tet Offensive.

And what about the reason for killing Lieutenant Colonel Nguyen Tuan attributed to Nguyen Van Lem?

After communist troops took control of the base, Bay Lop arrested Lieutenant Colonel Nguyen Tuan with his family and forced him to show them how to drive tanks. When Lieutenant Colonel Tuan refused to cooperate, Bay Lop killed all members of his family including his 80-year-old other. There was only one survivor, a seriously injured 10-year-old boy.

Here is what the Combat Operations After Action Report (RCS: MACJ3-32)(K-1) has to say about what took place in Go Vap.

So now we know that Nguyen Van Lem could not have forced anyone to drive a tank since there were no tanks there.  Unless you don't want to believe the AAR - then you should probably stop reading because all I will be doing is supporting my thesis with data I believe has not been manipulated in order to better tell the Adams/Loan/Lem story.


The story of Nguyen Van Lem is just that, a story.  Propaganda designed to take the sting out of what was shown to the world in that photo and news footage of General Loan shooting him. 


Even Eddie Adams was was taken in by it:

Well, we found out later, it wasn't 'til about a couple days later, that we found out that the guy was a Viet Cong lieutenant, and he had  killed the policemen from the second  story of the building [i]n the area where we were, and they had grabbed him  immediately.  And he supposedly had  papers saying that he was a lieutenant in the Viet Cong. (1)

And 

And I didn't find this out much later, but the prisoner who was killed had himself killed a police major who was one of Loan's best friends, and knifed his entire family.  The wife, six kids...  the whole family.  When they captured this guy, I didn't know that.  I just happened to be there and took the picture. (2)

And with Adams unknowingly, or unwittingly, or reluctantly on board with it, the remaking of General Loan from a "villain" to a "godamn hero" was now on its way.


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Nguyen Van Lem; Could he be made more despicable?

Do a Google search using the terms; General Loan, Eddie Adams, Nguyen Van Lem and you will get a boat load of websites and blogs that seem to repeat the same three themes:

1. The media showed the photo and film without context.
2. General Loan had the right to execute the man under the Geneva Convention because he was "not in uniform."
3. Nguyen Van Lem (Bay Lop) was responsible for killing scores of people before he was shot by General Loan.

Each site parrots the same basic wording and contention of the next.  So bad info, incorrect info, misleading info, biased info, and just plain ridicules info is passed on as fact.

The purpose of these posts on Eddie Adams, General Loan, and Nguyen Van Lemon is to put factual - supported - information out there, cite it correctly, and then as objectively as I can, paint a picture of the as-true-as-possible context.  We owe it to the future to get this past described correctly - unless you think its okay to believe something that is false at best, propaganda at worst.

I wrote in a previous post about all the different ways Nguyen Van Lem (aka: Bay Lop) has been described - including how General Loan misidentified the man he shot even up till 1979 (Buckley, Esquire, June 5, 1979):

So what I want to look at this time, is how Nguyen Van Lem (aka: Bay Lop) was made out to be so gosh-darn evil whereby a bullet to his brain was not just justified, but warranted.

Now if you read my post on why I believe he was shot, you would conclude that if I am correct in my analysis, who he was or what he did played not a part in the pulling of the trigger by General Loan.  So why this need to emphasize just how downright nasty Nguyen Van Lem's deeds that day were?

It all comes back to context.  Not the real context in play that day, but the need to have what transpired that day fit into a neat little box whereby we can say General Loan - who was on our side - did not do anything wrong that day, therefore we can support him.  He can't be a "villian," he needs to be a "goddamn hero."

But he did do something unequivocally wrong that day.  He summarily executed a bound man.  That fact is undeniable.  Why he did it or who he did it to does not negate that fact.  And instead of understanding it for what it is, understanding the dynamics in play that day, understanding the situation at hand, understanding General Loan's background and motivations, we instead try to justify them simply as right/wrong so we can choose a side - hawk/dove, good guys/bad guys, won the war/lost the war.

And because you can't justify what General Loan did with any factual mandate (Bible allows it, war allows it, Geneva convention allows it), it has to become justified using the fine art of storytelling.  So the truth has been intermixed with a false series of explanations and dialog.  All brought forth as a way to say "he ain't a bad guy, he's one of us...and we ain't bad guys!"

Now the purpose of my posts on this topic is not to condemn, vilify, elevate, absolve, or trivialize General Loan.  It is what it is, and as much as I hate that statement, well, it is what it is.  What's important to me is that factual information be presented in an effort to understand what took place that first day in February, 1968.  And by understanding, one can decide if General Loan should be condemned, vilified, elevated, absolved, trivialized, and, if possible, unequivocally forgiven.

The context that many of these hawkish/right leaning sites expound on is what has become diluted and tainted over these last forty years, and its genesis seems to have begun right after the photo and the film were shown to the world the next day.

So lets look at this oft quoted statement by "former Judge BAI AN TRAN, Ph. D. Professor of the National Police Office Academy, Vietnam."

Minutes before he was captured, Bay Lop had killed a RVN policeman's wife and all of his family members including his children. Around 4:30 A.M., Nguyen Van Lem led a sabotage unit along with Viet Cong tanks to attack the Armor Camp in Go Vap. After communist troops took control of the base, Bay Lop arrested Lieutenant Colonel Nguyen Tuan with his family and forced him to show them how to drive tanks. When Lieutenant Colonel Tuan refused to cooperate, Bay Lop killed all members of his family including his 80-year-old mother. There was only one survivor, a seriously injured 10-year-old boy. (1)

Now look at the speech given by President Nguyen Van Thieu before the Joint Session of the National Assembly (Senate & House) February 9, 1968 (Page 61 & 62)



Does that sound kind of familiar?

Now, compare that with what the New York Times quotes Eddie Adams as stating:

[M]r. Adams, who accepted Brig. Gen. Loan's contention that the man he shot had just murdered a friend of his, a South Vietnamese army colonel, as well as the colonel's wife and six children.

Doesn't that just seem a bit too coincidental?  Its such a fitting response to take the sting out of what everyone had just witnessed the good guys doing.  "Oh yeah...well he killed six kids!"

Now my point in all of this is not to exonerate or condemn the man on the left or the man on the right in that famous picture. It is simply to have that photo judged truthfully.  It's impact cannot be denied but the stories of the how and why has lead people to a false dichotomy.  In other words, if you are going to call General Loan a "hero" or a "despot" or a "villain" or judge his actions as acceptable or him personally as "morally unfit" you should do so based on as accurate a description of the persons involved - as well as what took place and the possible motivation/thinking/actions of the participants - as can reasonably be supported.  

That's the only context that is necessary.  Anything else is just propaganda.

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What was said after General Loan killed Nguyen Van Lem?

In my Feb 4, 2011 post titled "What did General Nguyen Ngoc Loan really say on February 1, 1968?" I listed a number of iterations on what has been reported by reputable sources regarding General Loan's comments to the reporters who watch the execution.

It boils down to one of these two:

"They killed many Americans and many of our people"

"Many Americans have been killed these last few days and many of my best Vietnamese friends.  Now do you understand?  Buddha will understand."

I am going to contend that it is the first one, based on the following:

It appears in the New York Times on Feb 2,  1968:

It appears in the Washing Post on Feb 2, 1968:

It is quoted in Editor & Publisher on Feb 10, 1968:

It then changes to the "Buddha will understand" version on Feb 23, 1968:

And a similar version appears in Life on March 1, 1968:

Which is then quoted in Bailey and Lichty's oft quoted Journal Article:

Bailey and Lichty contend that Howard Tuckner, the NBC newsman there with Eddie Adams, provided a "stand-upper" that had Loan's statement but it was rejected as anticlimactic:

Because there is no record of the original stand-upper, it appears that when Tuckner (see footnote 5) recounted what was said several months later, the revised "Buddha will understand" version was what he remembered as said.

I contend that the "Buddha" version was used by General Loan sometime between February 10th and the 23rd.

The original version; "They killed many Americans and many of our people," sounds more matter of fact, while the second version; "Many Americans have been killed these last few days and many of my best Vietnamese friends.  Now do you understand?  Buddha will understand." sounds almost like he is asking for forgiveness.

Additionally, the use of the phrase "these last few days" does not work with the time line of events:

1st lunar month 1968 starts on Jan 30th, a Tuesday.(1)

General Ky invites Loan over "on the night it happens" and is chided by Ky; "You carry a revolver in my house on the first day of the new year."  You know it's bad luck." (*)

Loan "only stays a few minutes" and spends the time riding around the city until about 2:00 a.m. which would be the 31st, a Wednesday. (*)

 Shortly before 3AM the radio station is attacked.  Loan responds.  "We take it back and the man right next to me is shot dead and falls on top of me." (*)  The attack lasted 6 hours. (2)

The time would be about 9:00 a.m. on Wednesday.  The rest of the time is not accounted for.

By Thursday morning the fighting was fierce all over the city. (**)

Loan finds himself that morning in Cholon, the Chinese quarter of Saigon, where the Viet Cong had set up a headquarters in the Buddhist An Quang Pagoda. (**)

Loan shoots Lem on Thursday, February 1st, at the Pagoda.

The photo is wired to New York and is received at 8:16 a.m on Thursday.  This would be about 8:16 or 9:16  p.m. on Thursday in Saigon. (**)

"It was sent out to newspapers around the country--about 11 hours after the shooting." (**)

That would put the shooting at around 9 or 10 in the morning on February 1st.

Total time from start of the Tet offense and Loan's involvement to the shooting, about 30 to 32 hours.

 So that's how I support that on February 1st, 1968 when General Loan shot Nguyen Van Lem, he told Eddie Adams, Howard Tuckner, and the cameraman:

"They killed many Americans and many of our people"

The "Buddha" version is too contrite for Loan to have said at that moment.  It was most likely offered a few days later as a way to defuse the wrath that had been unleashed from the viewing of the photo.

In a way the Buddha remark reminds me of what Jesus said to the crowd that wanted to stone the woman for adultery (John 7:53-8:11):

They say unto him, Master, this woman was taken in adultery, in the very act.  Now Moses in the law commanded us, that such should be stoned: but what sayest thou?  Jesus said unto them, He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her.  He said unto her, Woman, where are those thine accusers? Hath no man condemned thee?  She said, No man, Lord. And Jesus said unto her, Neither do I condemn thee: go, and sin no more.  

* = as reported in Harper's April  1972 article "Portrait of an Aging Despot." 

** = as reported in Journalism Quarterly, 1972, Bailey & Lichty "Rough Justice on a Saigon Street: A Gatekeeper Study of NBC's Tet Execution Film."

Added May 6, 2012


The New York Times article on Loan's death - July 16, 1998 - has the NBC cameraman Vo Suu saying “These guys kill a lot of our people, and I think Buddha will forgive me.”



Next Post: Nguyen Van Lem; Could he be made more despicable?

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The man on the left had to shoot the man on the right

In Eddie Adams' iconic and infamous photo of General Nguyen Ngoc Loan's assassination of Nguyen Van Lem (aka: Bay Lop) and the NBC film capturing the whole event, one thing shines bright; we know very little about what really happened that day other than the man on the left shot the man on the right.

In my last post I questioned whether a reason was necessary to view the photo and film correctly.  As you can see, there are a lot of reasons given, some plausible, others far fetched.

What one should come away with is this; for such an iconic - event changing - photo, why is a truthful rendition of what took place and what was said so hard to come by?

The answer, me thinks, is what context is all about.  Like I've said, I have spent the last couple of weeks researching this topic.  I have a few more documents on the way that might help better understand it, but I think I have a pretty good take on what took place and how we got to this point of convoluted truth and tall tales.

I have the benefit now of 43 years since the event took place.  I have access to the Internet - which helps and hurts, a great library system where quick access to archival data is relatively easy to obtain, plus I have something Eddie Adams, Dave Culbert, Tom Buckley, Peter Rollins, George Bailey & Lawrence Lichty, Howard Tuckner, and the New York Times didn't have when they wrote on this topic; declassified military and CIA briefings and memos.

There is a bigger story to all of this than what has been offered in the books, journals and blogs dealing with Adams and Loan.  A bigger story that still is incomplete.

So with that in mind, I will offer a thesis on the possible reason for shooting the man on the right, who - consensus seems to conclude - was named "Nguyen Van Lem (aka: Bay Lop).

The reason he was shot, I contend, was simply because he was the man on the right that day - at that time.

What he did that day, who he was, what he was connected to, his name...none of that mattered except for the fact that he was caught and he was wearing civilian attire.

It is my contention that General Nguyen Ngoc Loan - the Chief of Police of the South Vietnamese National Police - in Saigon that day responding to the incursion that started the night before, had given the order that there would be no prisoners for men or woman who were caught and not in the khaki uniform of the Viet Cong.

There is good reason to suspect this:

First, it is consistent with US orders to General Westmoreland:

"attrite, by year’s end, VC/PAVN forces at a rate at least as high as their capability to put men into the field." (1)

Second, Loan told Buckley about "a month or so after the killing" (as reported in Harper's April  1972 article "Portrait of an Aging Despot" page 72):

"I respect the Vietcong in uniform.  They are fighting men like me.  People know when they are wounded I take care of them.  I see they get to to the hospital.  But when they are not in uniform, they are criminals and the rule of war is death."

And thirdly, Loan tells Buckley (as reported in Esquire, June 5, 1979 "The Villain of Vietnam" Page 64):

Vice President Ky "had broadcast a warning that persons in civilian clothes found with arms would be subject to summary execution."  (Buckley had not heard about this order till then)

So based on these three points - documented - The man on the right was to be killed that day for wearing civilian clothes and carrying a weapon.  Whether he was guilty or not did not play into it.  There was a war going on all around him.  The time it would take to process the prisoner and transport him to jail was most likely not worth the small chance that the man was indeed innocent -  a wrong place at the wrong time kind of thing.

And fourthly, it's how Loan clearly and bluntly stated his position on this type of matter:

"What do you want us to do?  Put him in jail for two or three years and let him go back to the enemy?" (as reported in Harper's April  1972 article "Portrait of an Aging Despot" page 72)

For Loan, it is my contention, he drew a fine line between a soldier and a terrorist.  Soldiers followed orders, they had an on-off switch.  But these sappers...these terrorists...these communists...they had no such switch.

So on that first day of February, 1968, the man on the left was positioned perfectly to shot the man on the right.  It was probably supposed to be done in the building where they found Lem, but the guy in charge lost his nerve.  So they brought him out to Loan, NBC, and Eddie Adams.

And the rest is a distorted bit of history surrounding a very clear and telling photograph and film,


Next post: What was said after General Loan killed Nguyen Van Lem?


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The problems of the how's and why's

Note: I have done a lot more research on this topic since I started the particular post.  So I am going to continue with the theme I originally started with.

I have been doing a bunch of research on General Nguyen Ngoc Loan's assassination of Nguyen Van Lem (aka: Bay Lop) which was caught on film by NBC and still by Eddie Adams.  I am trying to answer a couple of questions that have made themselves apparent during this quest.

1. What did General Loan say to the reporters?  Which version is closest to the actual statement?
2. What did General Loan know about the man he was going to execute?  Was Lem guilty of everything you read about him?

I am also trying to put into context Eddie Adams' statements regarding the photo he took and the path it lead both him and General Loan down.  Although I had seen the photo before, I knew nothing about what took place February 1st,  1968.  It's not like I'm some teenager bored in history class.  I missed the Vietnam war by three years.  I should know more, but I don't.  So this has been a history lesson that I have enjoyed, although it deals with a pretty gruesome topic and a very costly war in terms of humanity.

What I have found in this short time is that I like Eddie Adams.  What I have also found is that we, as a society that has used his photo to add to our own individual and collective narrative, have misused it to suit our own needs.  In addition, by not fully understanding - accepting really - the context, we have made it into something that sounds good but has no legs to stand on to support that description of what it really shows.  Then, when we hear Adams talk about this very problem, we take his words out of context as well, all to satisfy some primal need to have our view of what it shows be the one everybody should accept.

But what should we see when we look at the photo or watch the NBC film?  What if - as historian David Culbert contends - all the photo and film showed us was the result and not the cause...the reason?  Without background or context, readers saw a merciless Loan and a defenseless Lop.(5)  What reason is needed to fully understand the photo?

We humans like to categorize things, put them into nice little cubbies like our shoes and lunch boxes.  But this photo presents a different that makes categorizing very difficult.  If you are to be intellectually honest, you realize that it is extremely difficult to give General Loan's actions an unqualified "it was okay" or "it was wrong."  Those two cubbies don't work for this without a bit of morality wrestling.

Is there never a case where executing a man on the spot would be warranted?  And, if it's okay to execute a bound man without a trial because he's a terrorist, then its okay for our enemy to make the same designation.  And if war changes everything making this act acceptable in those conditions, then the Bataan death march and the massacre at Goliad would be acceptable as well.

You see, it gets complicated.  So somewhere between never and always there is point where we shift from one side to the other.  But does that shift make it acceptable or does that shift make it only understandable?  Does knowing the reason why the man on the right side of the photo was shot change our perception of the man on the left?  What reason to you have to be told to make this acceptable?

What if the reason the man in the photo was shot was because:

Minutes before he was captured, Bay Lop had killed a RVN policeman's wife and all of his family members including his children. Around 4:30 A.M., Nguyen Van Lem led a sabotage unit along with Viet Cong tanks to attack the Armor Camp in Go Vap. After communist troops took control of the base, Bay Lop arrested Lieutenant Colonel Nguyen Tuan with his family and forced him to show them how to drive tanks. When Lieutenant Colonel Tuan refused to cooperate, Bay Lop killed all members of his family including his 80-year-old mother. There was only one survivor, a seriously injured 10-year-old boy. (1)

Or would it matter if the reason was:

Nguyen Van Lem was captured near a mass grave with 34 innocent civilian bodies. Lem admitted that he was proud to carry out his unit leader's order to kill these people. Lem was in his shorts and shirt. His arms were tied from the back. The pistol was still in his possession. General Loan executed Nguyen Van Lem on the spot. (1)

Or what if the reason hit close to home for General Loan?

Lem commanded a Viet Cong assassination and revenge platoon, which on that day had targeted South Vietnamese National Police officers, or in their stead, the police officers' families; Lem was captured near the site of a ditch holding as many as thirty-four bound and shot bodies of police and their relatives, some of whom were the families of General Loan's deputy and close friend. (2)

 [He] had killed some Saigon civilians, many of them relatives of police in the capital." (5)

[I]t was at this point that Loan summarily executed, in the presence of a wire service photographer, a VC captured after killing the entire family of one of Loan' s senior officers. (9)

The prisoner was identified, accuraetly probably, as the commander of a Vietcong sapper unit.  He was said to have had a revolver in his possession when he was captured and to have killed a policeman. (From Harper's April 1972 Tom Buckley "Portrait of an Aging Despot")

 Or what if Eddie Adams, the photographer, gave the reason as:

Well, we found out later, it wasn't 'til about a couple days later, that we found out that the guy was a  Viet Cong lieutenant, and he had killed the policemen  from  the second story  of the building [i]n the area where we were, and they had grabbed  him  immediately.  And he supposedly had  papers saying that he was a lieutenant in the Viet Cong. (6)

[T]he victim had just murdered one of Loan's best friends and knifed to death his entire family.(7)

[T]he man he shot had just murdered a friend of his, a South Vietnamese army colonel, as well as the colonel's wife and six children. (8)

 Or what if he wasn't Viet Cong, but someone else of importance in your enemy?

The prisoner had not been in the Viet Cong military but was ''a very high ranking'' political official. (4)

Or what if you had to shoot him there on the spot to retain leadership in a time of war?

[I]t had not been the rash act it might have appeared to be but had been carried out because a deputy commander he had ordered to shoot had hesitated. ''I think, 'Then I must do it,' '' he recounted. ''If you hesitate, if you didn't do your duty, the men won't follow you.'' (4)

Or what if the reason was mistaken identity?

"They tell me he had a revolver, that he wonded one of my policemen, that he spit in the face of the men who captured him.  They say that they know this man.  He is not a namelss civilian, as the press says. He is Nguyen Tan Dat, alias Han Son." (3)

Or what if the reason - as Vice President Ky eluded - so what?

The foreign press made a lot of news about this death, but none of you wrote about the Viet Cong.  Why worry about one damned V.C. terrorist when they are killing thousands of Vietnamese officers, men, women, and children?" (6)

Or what if the reason was a difference in how a foreign culture looks at life?

[A] typically corrupt oriental official who obviously has neither concern  for human life nor respect for public opinion.(7)

Or what if the reason was simply that it was an act of war?

So, the fact that if you captured a man in that tense, urban civil  war  context and shot him, in that  highly  irregular, and  tense circumstances did not strike me as an act of wickedness--it's  an act, a very sad  act, but  it's an act of  war, in that context.  Now without knowing who the one was or what the police were up against at that particular time in the Battle of Saigon I can understand that it could be interpreted  by others, but  that was my judgement. (8)

Or what if it was the heat of the moment?

"I am not a politician." Loan said.  "I am not a cheif of police.  I am just a soldier.  When you see a man in civilian clothes with a revolver killing your people...when many of your people have already been killed, then what are you supposed to do? (From Harper's April 1972 Tom Buckley "Portrait of an Aging Despot")

Does the context matter here?  Does the reason change how we should perceive what the man on the left did to the man on the right?  Does it matter that Loan was a General?  The guy in charge that day? The man that had the power and ability to have sent him to jail for the courts to decide his fate?  The Saigon was being attacked since 2:00 am on Wednesday?  That there were snipers, and death all around?  All of these dynamics were in play that morning of February 1st, 1968.

And if you are intellectually honest, you will conclude that the reasons given for General Loan's actions that day have moved from fact to distortion, and in some cases, to tall tale.  We need a reason so we can put General Loan in a cubby and move on.  Hero or villain, good or evil, rightness or wrongness.

So what reason do you need to be told?

And although this action took place on a Thursday, what if General Loan had simply turned to Eddie Adams and the other reporters and said simply; "I don't like Mondays?"

And the lesson today is how to die

And then the bullhorn crackles

And the captain tackles

With the problems of the how's and why's

And he can see no reasons

'Cos there are no reasons

What reason do you need to die?

Next post: The man on the left had to shoot the man on the right