Tom Glenn's Blog, page 86

Viet Cong and North Vietnamese

Readers regularly ask me why I refer to Vietnamese Communist forces during the Vietnam war as North Vietnamese and not Vet Cong or VC. To answer that question, I resurrected a blog post from a couple of years ago. Here it is with some updating:

First of all, “Viet Cong” is short for the Vietnamese Việt Nam Cộng-sản which simply means Vietnamese Communist. The communists themselves never used the term. Americans used Viet Cong or VC to mean the communists native to South Vietnam, independent of the north, as opposed to the North Vietnamese who infiltrated South Vietnam. The Americans who used the term bought into the fiction North Vietnam had created that an independent movement developed in South Vietnam that rebelled against the South Vietnamese government. That movement, according to the fiction, was named the National Front for the Liberation of South Vietnam (Mặt trận Dân tộc Giải phóng miền Nam Việt Nam), shortened to National Liberation Front or NLF. The front was never a real organization. It was a cover for North Vietnamese operations in South Vietnam.

Second, the entire effort to defeat the South Vietnamese government and the American forces was a North Vietnamese endeavor. Every aspect of it was controlled by Hanoi. There was no independent rebellion in the south. So the American distinction between “North Vietnamese Army” (NVA) and “Viet Cong” (VC) assumed a reality that never actually existed. The North Vietnamese army, called the People’s Army of Vietnam (PAVN) by the north, included three categories of forces: regulars, regional forces, and guerrillas. The latter two were what we Americans called Viet Cong, but troops in these categories were neither independent of the north nor native to south Vietnam. All three types of PAVN soldiers included northern, central, and southern natives.

Therefore, the most accurate term for the forces fighting the South Vietnamese and the Americans is the North Vietnamese. That’s who they were, and that’s what I call them.

Trump and Russia (2)

Following the posting of my blog on Trump and Russia some days ago, readers rushed to answer the question I posed: Given Trump’s verbal attacks on all other countries, especially allies, why has he had nothing to say about Russia?

I averred that Russia, or maybe Vladimir Putin personally, held some power over Trump. Thanks to readers, I now know that Russian interests rescued Trump financially multiple times during the 1980s and 1990s by laundering large amounts of Russian cash through Trump’s real estate holdings. I don’t know if those practices continued in the years that followed, including those when Trump was in the White House, but I have no evidence they stopped.

So I have a partial answer to my question. Trump has had an ongoing relationship with Russian financial providers. He had good reason to avoid criticism of Russia lest his Russian supporters turn on him.

I expect that over time more information about Russia’s hold on Trump will become public. But at least we have a start.

Rerun: Tết: The Vietnamese New Year

Yesterday was new years in the lunar calendar, called Tết by the Vietnamese. For many years, I celebrated Tết with my Vietnamese friends. Its recurrence is sufficient reason for me to resurrect a blog post of years ago:

Far and away the greatest annual holiday in Vietnam is Tết, the first day of the lunar calendar and, in Vietnam, the first day of spring. It is celebrated for three days at least and by some for seven days. The festivities emphasize eating and drinking, returning to one’s parental home, buying new clothes, getting one’s hair cut, and being sure one’s house is freshly cleaned. The traditional greeting is Chúc Mừng Năm Mới or Cung Chúc Tân Niên (Happy New Year) or Cung Chúc Tân Xuân (Happy Spring).

Flowers are the sine qua non of celebrating Tết. Preparations to assure that plants are blooming at their peak on Tết begin months in advance, and in Saigon, the Street of Flowers (the street’s real name was Nguyễn Huệ, the name of a Vietnamese emperor), was so filled with blossoms at Tết that the street itself appeared to be in bloom.

Because the date of Tết is determined by the lunar calendar, its date in the Gregorian calendar varies between the last week or so of January and the first weeks of February. The name Tết is known to Americans because the North Vietnamese began a country-wide offensive during the celebration in 1968. It came to be known as the Tết Offensive. That year, Tết fell on 28 January (if my memory is accurate), the same date as in 2017, and both the Americans and the South Vietnamese were caught unprepared because for years both the north and the south had all but ceased combat during the Tết period. In my novel, Last of the Annamese, the date for Tết (in 1975) is 3 February, less than four months before the fall of Saigon.

I have many happy memories of celebrating Tết with the Vietnamese. In 1964, I took my daughter, Susan, then a toddler, to the Street of Flowers to see the display. When I was in the field with combat units, I made it my business to join the locals for the festivities when I could.

But the holiday also brings back memories of sad times. In 1968, I warned the Americans that the North Vietnamese were about to launch a country-wide offensive and wasn’t believed. The saddest was 1975. I alerted the U.S. Ambassador that the North Vietnamese were about to attack Saigon, but he dismissed my prediction. I saw that the end of An Nam (the old name for Vietnam which means “peace in the south”) was at hand.

So my annual celebration of Tết is colored by both joy and sadness. But to all Vietnamese I can say, with utmost sincerity, Happy New Year.  

Trump and Intelligence (2)

Until enough time has passed that the data can be declassified, we may not know the full extent of the damage that Trump did during his time in office through revelation of classified information and sabotage of the intelligence apparatus of the U.S. government. Everything about our intelligence operations is, for good reason, classified. My work in Vietnam was not completely declassified until 2016, over forty years after the end of the Vietnam war. So the details of Trump’s malfeasance may not be made public during our lifetimes.

I am most concerned right now about what Trump may do now that he is out of office. His fondness for Vladimir Putin and the Russians is well known. His desire for revenge against those who failed to reelect him is well documented. He is deeply in debt and owes large sums to foreign interests. Might he bargain with foreign governments offering information in return for favors? Would we even know that he had done so?

It seems intrinsically obvious to me that the less classified information Trump has, the better. Someday Americans will learn the full scope of damage Trump inflicted on our country. My children and my children’s children will likely know the whole truth.

Meanwhile, let’s not give any more precious secrets to Donald Trump.

Trump and Intelligence

I read in the press that President Biden has delegated to his intelligence staff the decision on whether to stop further intelligence briefings to former president Trump. And Biden faces the herculean task of restoring the federal bureaucracy and repairing the enormous damage inflicted by the Trump administration. My guess is that the worst injury was to the State Department and the intelligence agencies. The repairs will take years.

There is no question in my mind that Trump should be denied any classified information. He has proven himself not just irresponsible but actually malfeasant in the handling of sensitive data. He revealed highly classified information to the Russian foreign minister and ambassador during a White House meeting on 10 May 2017. In addition, evidence suggests that he shared secrets with Putin on at least one occasion. And we know that he disclosed national secrets during a pep rally with supporters. Whether he was criminally negligent or actively destructive is not clear. It doesn’t matter. He demonstrated why he is a danger to the nation’s security.

We know that his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, did not qualify for top secret clearances, but a Trump-appointed official overruled career security experts and cleared Kushner. Kushner’s was one of at least 30 cases in which that official overrode security specialists and granted clearances despite information that should have disqualified the candidates.

From my thirty-five-plus years working in the intelligence community, I’m quite sure that Trump himself would not have met the requirements for security clearances had he not been elected president. With huge debts, including some to foreign concerns, and many incidences in his history for which he might have been blackmailed, Trump would have been rejected out of hand.

More tomorrow.

Alan Lightman’s The Diagnosis

I have just finished reading The Diagnosis (Pantheon Books, 2000) by Alan Lightman. I began it more than twenty years ago, when it first came out. Something like a quarter of the way through the book, I was distracted and put it aside. When I returned to it late last year, I had to go back and reread from the beginning.

The novel is the story of Bill Chalmers’ descent into illness. It starts as he’s heading to work, getting ready to board the Boston subway Red Line. It’s 8:22 in the morning. Bill looks at his watch in what becomes one of his most characteristic habits and sees the exact time.

His decline begins when he can’t remember where he’s supposed to exit the train. His deterioration continues until he is completely disabled. On the last page of the text, unable to move, Bill listens to the rain. My sense was that the author intended the reader to understand that Bill is dying. His illness never was diagnosed.

The book is a model of modern literary fiction novel. Not much happens. The focus is on the protagonist and his attempts to go on living in the face of overwhelming obstacles. Given the defeats he is subjected to, Bill comes across as both humble and admirable.

As a fiction author, I found much to admire in Lightman’s work. He made no attempt to romanticize Bill or disguise the human defects that weaken all of us. Instead, Bill comes across as profoundly human, doing the best he can knowing that death lies ahead.

That said, I was less than impressed with some of Lightman’s fiction technique. As is so often true with me, I was impatient with Lightman’s wordiness. I wanted more economy, less wandering. I found especially irritating his fondness for repeating sentences verbatim.

But I’m all too aware that my preferences spring from my discipline, namely writing literary fiction. Most readers won’t notice what I consider flaws. More serious is the overall outlook of the book. It ends with the protagonist accepting defeat. In my writing, I emphasize what I have done in my living: finding hope. All my novels and most (maybe all—I’m not sure) of my short stories end with hope for the future.

Hope springs eternal. Thank God.

Combat

I am the only man I know now living who saw combat as a civilian. For thirteen years during the war, I spent more time in Vietnam than I did in the U.S. My job there for the majority of that time was working with combat troops on the battlefield, providing them with information about the enemy obtained by intercepting his radio communications. Most of the time, I didn’t do the intercepting myself but was the recipient of data from sites all over South Vietnam, from aircraft, and from ships at sea. I operated under cover as an enlisted man assigned to the unit I was supporting.

I was a civilian through it all. I had completed my military service before the Nati0nal Security Agency (NSA) hired me and sent me to Vietnam. Between 1962 and 1975, I did two multi-year tours in Vietnam and many shorter trips, called TDYs (temporary duties), usually four to six months in length. I was comfortable in Vietnamese, Chinese, and French, the three languages that showed up in enemy communications, and early on I earned a reputation for being very good at working with friendly forces on the battlefield. No sooner would I complete a tour and return to the states than a message would come saying “send Glenn back” and back I’d go.

And I saw combat close up and personal. I lived with the outfit I was supporting, pretending to be a unit member. I got to know the guys I was working next to on the battlefield. They were kids, eighteen and nineteen years old. When one of them was killed standing next to me, my psyche was permanently damaged. To this day, I suffer from Post-Traumatic Stress Injury from watching men die hideous deaths in combat.

My soul, in other words, was subjected to enduring injury. As a combat veteran, I am a member of a rapidly diminishing coterie. Something like 7 percent of our adult population are veterans. Of those, 10 percent saw combat. And nearly all of that number show signs of psychic impairment.

Why? Because combat is one of the most ghastly experiences a human being can endure. Nothing else I know of approaches it in horror. I don’t know how to describe it and wouldn’t if I could.

Nor did my support to U.S. and friendly forces cease with the end of the Vietnam war. After 1975, partly because I spoke seven languages, I was sent to a number of other locations for direct support. Where and when that was and who I was working with is still classified, so I can’t talk about it.

I urge all my readers to reach out to any combat veterans you may know. Thank them not only for putting their life on the line for the good of the country but for bearing the weight of unbearable memories. They suffer from wounds that can’t be healed.

But they can be comforted.

Three Interviews

You can access three recent online presentations involving me:

—Larry Matthews just posted again his interview with me from last year. You can hear it at   https://pod.co/impact-radio-usa/matthews-and-friends-1-11-21 

—Spotter Up interviewed me recently. Watch at

—Jim Bohannon interviewed me on his radio program. You can hear it online at https://omny.fm/shows/jim-bohannon/jim-bohannon-02-03-21  Click on the listen button, then advance to 1:40:00

Let me know what you think.

Old Abe Review

My review of John Cribbs’ Old Abe is now available online. You can read it at https://internetreviewofbooks.blogspot.com/2021/02/old-abe-novel.html
Let me know what you think.

Trump and Russia

I wonder what revelations will gradually seep out over the next year or so about Donald Trump and Russia. Trump has verbally attacked just about every nation in the world, especially traditional U.S. allies, but he has never once had anything bad to say about Russia. Russia committed plenty of grievous sins, including the massive cyber attack against the U.S. and the poisoning of Alexei Navalny. But the worst was probably the offer of bounties to Taliban-linked militants for killing U.S. troops. And Trump has said nothing.

Trump verbally attacked hundreds of people, especially on Twitter (from which he is now banned). Why was Trump so hesitant to criticize—or even mention—Vladimir Putin?

I can only conclude that Russia—or maybe Vladimir Putin—has some kind of power over Trump. Maybe it’s financial. Trump has colossal debt. Maybe it’s personal, some scandalous act Trump committed that only the Kremlin knows about. That possibility strikes me as unlikely because Trump doesn’t seem to care much about scandal. Maybe it’s legal. Maybe Russia has damning evidence of crimes Trump has committed.

Or maybe it’s Trump’s pure admiration for dictatorship. While Trump has verbally abused just about every western democratic leader, he has been gentle with autocrats like Egypt’s Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Saudi Arabia’s Mohammed bin Salman. Indeed, he has expressed envy for the power that tyrants hold.

Time will tell. I suspect that in coming months we will learn of some kind of secret tie with Russia that Trump succeeded in concealing during his years in the White House. As more and more of Trump’s secret dealings are revealed, I continue to expect that he will end up in prison.

Unless Biden pardons him. That would be rank unfairness in the service of “unity.”