How The Campus Lied About Vietnam

Leonard Magruder
05/27/2005

“Woe to the nation whose literature is cut off... that is not simply the violation of freedom of the press, it is stopping up the nation’s heart.” -Alexander Solzhenitsyn

 

V.V.A.R.NEWS NOTE:  Vietnam vet group will give away more copies of new documentary to protest History Channel boycott of Long Way Home.

By Len Magruder

August 30, 2002

 

Three new films, including Mr. Magruder’s How the Campus Lied About Vietnam, clearly repudiate the campus version of the war. Magruder says exposing these lies is crucial to minimize dangerous new polarization in war on terrorism.

 

Leonard Magruder, President of Vietnam Veterans for Academic Reform, has just sent out 50 free copies of his documentary, How the Campus Lied About Vietnam, as requested by universities and vet organizations all over the country. This is part of a new national campaign by his organization to promote using three new films on Vietnam to challenge the false view of the Vietnam War that has been institutionalized on campus to protect those who would not serve.

 

In view of the announcement yesterday by the History Channel that it will refuse to show one of the films, The Long Way Home, a four-part series, Mr. Magruder said that, to protest this media boycott, he will now continue to send out free copies of his film to all who request it as long as resources last.

 

The campus version of the Vietnam War also needs to be discredited because it is based on lies of the 60’s being recycled to attack the nation’s war on terrorism and could lead to another polarization and defeat.

 

This is the second time Mr. Magruder has launched a campaign against media bigotry. In 1986 he spent $8,000 in a successful national campaign to get PBS to show Television’s Vietnam, by paying to show the film himself on various TV stations across the country. This, along with a letter of appeal to all PBS station managers, precipitated a massive defection from the boycott. Narrated by Charlton Heston, the film showed how the national media distorted the truth about the Vietnam War. Wrote General Westmoreland to Magruder, “I congratulate you on your success in the showing of “Television’s Vietnam” on PBS stations around the country.” (letter, Sept.13, 1986)

 

Said The Washington Inquirer, “The most dedicated [on the PBS issue] is Leonard Magruder, who has been campaigning on behalf of Vietnam veterans for the last 6 years, having quit his professional job to protest against the treatment of Vietnam veterans.”

 

Mackubin Thomas Owens, who led a Marine rifle platoon in Vietnam in 1968-69, and is now a professor at the U.S. Naval College in Newport, Rhode Island, in a recent article on the Web refered to a “culture war” that continues to rage for the soul of America, the central objective of which is to control the way the past is portrayed (www.nationalreview.com/owens/owens060502.asp).

 

The significance of this is that “to control the past is to give meaning to the present and direction to the future.” Left/liberal academics continue to perpetuate a false image of the Vietnam War in an effort to impose their ideological agenda on student leaders of tomorrow. When this is publicly questioned, the invariable response, said Owens, is “How dare you question or ridicule the idealism of this holy period of history.” Mr. Magruder, who was a professor of psychology on three campuses during the 60’s said he was in complete agreement with Owens that “it was not idealism but hypocrisy.” This hypocrisy is made clear in three new documentaries, based largely on interviews with Vietnam vets, hat are having difficulty getting shown. “There are many forces in our society that would like to keep films like this from the public. We must protest this,”said Mr. Magruder.

 

Mr. Owens in his article went on to say,“There are two competing interpretations of the 1960’s.” In the anti-war version,the 60’s were “exciting, heroic, and uniquely infused with moral passion.” In the second version, “It was a time of incredible intellectual flatulence when precocious adolescents under the tutelage of Herbert Marcuse and the like affected a pose of moral superiority vis-a-vis their countrymen. It was a time when self-styled radicals embraced the enemy against whom their countrymen were fighting and dying.” This second version never mentions the legacy of the campus protestors, 250,000 South Vietnamese war dead, at least 100,000 summary executions at the hands of the Communists, a million and a half “boat people,” half of whom perished at sea, an equal number lost in “re-education camps,” a genocide in Cambodia, (over 2,000,000 lives lost), and an encouragement of Soviet adventurism. There is no question, said Mr. Magruder, that the campus war protestors of the 60’s ended up having supported genocide and tyranny, and if not stopped this time in their use of the same lies against the war on terrorism, they could end up destroying the nation.

 

Three documentaries have recently become available which emphasize the second, less flattering version of the 60’s. The importance of these films is that they clearly show that the war protests of the 60’s were ideologically motivated and rested on a false interpretation of the war more sympathetic to the enemy than to the American effort to save South Vietnam from Communist tyranny, and did great damage to the returned veterans. Said Mr. Magruder, “Bringing this out at this time of a new war, the war on terrorism, is extremely important as large segments of intellectual centers such as Harvard and Berkeley are recycling the same lies and again supporting the enemy, that is, the terrorists, just as they supported the Viet Cong in the 60’s.”

 

The first new film was recently mentioned in a news item out of CNS News.com, “Documentary Sheds New Light on Vietnam War.” Christel and Calvin Crane traveled 14,000 miles across America interviewing Vietnam vets, recorded in a four-part film, The Long Way Home Project, with commentary by General H. Norman Schwarzkopf. According to a promotional press release, the series provides “a more positive and unbiased look at the country’s longest war and highlights many of the misconceptions America has about the men and women who served the country in this conflict.” Said Christel Crane, “It reveals the stereotype of the Vietnam Veteran as being almost completely false.” Vietnam vet and former Sec.of the Navy James Webb said of this stereotype in a recent article in U.S.A. Today, “Those who avoided serving in Vietnam have played the main role in protraying the war as an immoral conflict...to justify not having gone.” The four-volume set of films sells for $69.95. Information on it can be found at www.longwayhome.net. Said the CNS press release, “So far there have been no agreements to broadcast the documentary.” The History Channel has just announced it will refuse to show the film.

 

The second documentary is Silent Victory, produced by Don C. Hall and Annette R. Hall. It is the story of Company F, 51st Long Range Patrol (Airborne) Infantry. Over $300,000 went into the making of the film and it has won three awards at various film festivals, one reviewer telling the producers it had received “the highest rating ever.” Yet all cable and major networks have returned the film to the producers marked “sight unseen.” The film may be purchased from the film’s website, www.silentvictory, for $24.95.

 

The third recent documentary related to the Vietnam War was produced by Mr. Magruder, President of Vietnam Veterans for Academic Reform. In the mid 80’s, Mr. Magruder took his home movie camera to Vietnam vet parades in Chicago and Houston and interviewed 68 Vietnam veterans at random, asking them the question that had been studiously avoided by the national media, “What do you think about the campus war protestors.” Across the board, the general response was that the position of the protestors was “false, hypocritical, and damaging to the war effort.”- (The Stalwart, K.U. student newspaper).

 

The film that came out of these interviews is a 1 -hour representative sample from the 68 interviews and is titled How the Campus Lied About Vietnam. As President of a student organizaton Mr. Magruder is able to reach a large number of faculty, administrators, and student organizations through the campus Internet and has at least three times over the last few years asked for some group or class to sponsor a showing of the film, with no response. “There are any number of classes in political science, American history, Asian studies, etc., that touch on the Vietnam War that should have expressed some interest in this film,” said Mr. Magruder, “but since it is known that the veterans in the film seriously question the campus ‘peace’ movement, this type of film is especially threatening to academics.”

 

American students, in fact the whole country, must become aware, based on films such as these, and all the new books and revelations in recent years including memoirs from the enemy, of how wrong the academics were who engineered the anti-war movement. This could prove a fatal blow to the largely leftist ideological agenda that is tyrannizing American higher, and even secondary education and threatening to lead to a new polarization over the war on terrorism like that which occurred in the 60’s. If students can see how academics lied to students about Vietnam in the 60’s, maybe they won’t take too seriously faculty pronouncements on the war on terrorism. The following is an example of what is happening along those lines.

 

Steve Miller, a junior at Santa Monica High School, CA, said this recently about the indoctrination that is going on in a June 14, 2002,  article in Frontpage Magazine:

 

“There is a war going on in America, - a war of ideology. It’s being waged in public schools like mine. The problem is much more severe than many are aware. Those running the school and teaching the students have such deeply held left-wing beliefs that they cannot help but spread their agendas to the young people. This is evidenced in nearly ever facet of the school and has resulted in the indoctrination of thousands of students, some unaffected, but many more misinformed, misguided, and misdirected.

 

“Subsequent to 9/11, the school newspaper condemned the notion of a military response and a Muslim leader was brought to the school to explain the glory and splendor of Islam. My history teacher handed out a lengthy article lambasting the United States as absolutely wicked and also condemned the notion of a military response. Teachers hand out left-wing articles with little or no balance, administratrors avoid conservative speakers at all costs, liberals are routinely brought in who assert the same position that teachers drill into their students, multiculturalism is coupled with anti-Americanism, and history is rewritten leaving out everything that might cause students to be patriotic.”

 

This is a perfect description of what happened in higher and secondary education in the 60’s.

 

Even though, especially in the light of recent history books, there are no facts that the former war protestors can point to that vindicates their position, it is imperative for them to continue to urge the nation to ignore the correct historical conclusions. To admit to having been wrong in their views on the war would mean to face not only enormous guilt but even more important, disproof of their ideological or philosophical ( usually some version of Marxism) assumptions. They must of necessity cling to the position that they were right, that those who fought were wrong, and that there is nothing to discuss. Demonstrations that they were wrong, however, is absolutely crucial at this time when so many left/liberals on campuses across the nation are coming out in support of the international terrorists that are attempting to destroy America as well as beginning a monstrous new wave of anti-Semitism on campuses.

 

About fifty organizations will initially be showing the Magruder film: universities (such as Univ. of Colorado, Duke Univ., American Univ., Univ. of S.C., Rutgers.), veteran organizations (such as the Special Forces Association, 1st Marine Division Association, DAV, American Legion ), and numerous university R.O.T.C. units. A number of these organizations said they would try to get the film shown campus-wide, and on television.

 

Said Mr. Magruder, “I’m delighted. We have a beginning. The bigots who run the media (see the book, Bias: A CBS Insider Exposes How the Media Distort the News, by Bernard Goldberg)  are about to be exposed on the subject of Vietnam. The national media and the Kansas media, as always, will try to cover this up, but with enterprising students all over the country getting these film on TV, these bigots will eventually be defeated.”

 

Micheal Clodfelter, Vietnam combat veteran and author of perhaps the best history to date of the Vietnam War, Vietnam in Military Statistics: A History of the Indochina Wars,1772-1991, wrote this recently: “During an era when it was both politically incorrect and uncool to show support for the American men and women in uniform, Leonard Magruder was one of the comparatively few members of academia to publicly stand by and stand up for those warriors fighting America’s most devisive war. This film is a testament to Magruder’s loyalty to the veterans of Vietnam and the steadfastness of his convictions.”

 

Leonard Magruder
Founder/President, V.V.A.R.
Phone: 785-312-9303
Magruder44@aol.com
 

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