Archimedes Patti and Vietnam

My favorite interview during the Vietnam Reconsidered conference in 1983 was with Archimedes Leonidas Attilio Patti. He was the OSS guy assigned to Ho during WWII. Said Ho carried a copy of the US Declaration of Independence in his pocket. He wanted our help to keep his country free from colonialism after the War. Which we promised to do. But we sold him out when France demanded our help in retaking Vietnam in exchange for their joining NATO. We took the deal. And by the time of Dien Bien Phu there was no one left in the State Department who had a clue about the history of Vietnam. But what made it worse -- the McCarthy era was in full swing and everyone was afraid of being tagged with losing Vietnam like others had seen their careers ended when they were charged with losing China. So we stayed and couldn’t pull out because of our domestic political climate. Two million of theirs died and over 50,000 of ours were killed and 300,000 thousand wounded. As Archimedes told me it wasn’t the Vietnam war, it was our war. We made it up. No one attacked us. We created the enemy. The people of South Vietnam didn’t want to fight the people in the North. But due to political pressure and ignorance about Vietnam’s political structure, economic potential, ethnic make up, etc. we invented an enemy and a war. Clete Roberts, correspondent Ian Masters, Director/Producer Michael Rose, Producer Susan Cope, Sound Anne Vermillion, Coordinator Eric Vollmer, Coordinator Vietnam Reconsidered: Lessons from a War, February 6 -9, 1983 WW4