I Don't Know About That - The Vietnam War

Episode Date: April 13, 2021

In this episode, the team discusses the Vietnam War with professor of history at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and author of "American Reckoning: The Vietnam War and Our National Identity", Christian Appy (@ChristianGAppy). Follow Christian on Twitter at @ChristianGAppy.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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which one's the healthiest? You might find out, and I don't know about that, with Jim Jefferies, Kelly, Jack, Forrest, and Louise. Depends where the water's from. I'm guessing doctor, because... He's a doctor. He's a doctor. I tell you what, if you ever do Dr. Pepper with me,

if you ever do an episode on Dr. Pepper, I'm fucking ready. I watched a whole documentary on Dr. Pepper. It was made in Dublin, not Dublin Island, but some little shitty town in Dublin, Dr. Pepper. It was originally named by, there was a guy called Dr. Pepper who was, it's always a pharmacy, right? There's always some dude in the pharmacy that's like, I made this sugary drink. It's an el was, it's always a pharmacy, right? There's always something to pharmacies. It's like, I made this sugary drink.

It's an elixir to make you feel good, right? And so this guy made Dr. Pepper and there was a bird he was trying to bang. There's always someone, someone that, it was a girl he was trying to get and her father was called Dr. Pepper and the dad didn't like him. So he thought if he named the drink after that bloke, then he could be impressed. The guy was not impressed. Said, you made a sugary drink about me.

I'm a doctor, God damn it. I'm Dr. Pepper. I'm to be taken seriously. And he didn't stay with him, so he still had to call it Dr. Pepper. Well, they just came out with Dr. Pepper Zero Sugar. So now the guy can fuck the doctor's daughter, which is really exciting. I like the Dr. Pepper 10 where they just put 10 calories in there

so you could have the little tiny taste of sugar. But with those adverts, they said something like, it was a really bad advert campaign where they went, not for girls. Where it was like, because girls drink diet drinks, and men, we like a little bit of sugar, not for girls. And then like years later, they went, why didn't they sell well? Because you told half the population to fuck off.

Well, I guess we don't need to do an episode on Dr. Pepper now. No, no, no, there's a lot more to it. I don't want to bore you with all the facts or entertain people too much before our guest comes. Yeah, it's true. God forbid. It's very dour of you, Jack. What have you got for us, Jack?

I have a joke book. Wait, it's a new segment. It's a new segment. We went over this last time. We have to explain the segment. I was about to explain the segment. Yeah, he's about to explain it. Let him explain it.

Okay, sorry. You know what? I came in hot there. Sorry about that. I have a joke book from written in 1895. Why? Cause it was called the encyclopedia of comedy. It's not at all what I was expecting.

It's just some guy wrote a bunch of jokes and just said, Hey, if you buy the book, you can use it. His name is James Melville Jansen. You can't find any information on the man. I saw him once at the chuckle hut in Cincinnati. He would have been the 150 years old. Yeah. him once at the Chuckle Hut in Cincinnati. He would have been 150 years old.

Yeah, he was at an open mic. You know what's bad about peeing your pants? So I pulled a bunch of one-liners and a few longer jokes. These are from 1895. We're going to read them out and see if we can make them work today.

I did not include the racist ones because there were some, there are a lot of slurs in this book. Civil war. Wait, do we all have different jokes? We all have different jokes. Oh, I've got a joke. I've got a joke sheet. We each have seven jokes, so we can just go one at a time.

We can see if we can sell them. Some don't make sense, some do. I don't even understand three of these. Yeah, it took me a few times to read some of these. You have to get in the right headspace. All right, who's going first? Jim can start. All right, I got a good one.

Here we go. A doctor. Maybe called Pepper. Who knows? I put my own spin on these jokes. A doctor who is a complete cunt. There we go. I made it like Jim Jefferies right there.

A doctor was hurt very badly by a well caving in on him. Common thing that we could all relate to. He should have attended to the sick and let the well alone. Yeah, I get it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. He went after the well and then it caved in on him when he should have just attended to the sick. It's a play on words, you see.

I've got one here that I just thought of. Tompkins, just some guy. I don't know where they go with the names. There's a lot of jokes with just some guy named Tompkins. I don't know why. That's his best friend. Tompkins named his baby Macbeth because he murdered sleep. What?

Not sure. That's it. Well, let's say that again. Tompkins named his baby Macbeth because he murdered sleep. Ah, yeah, yeah, yeah. He was a good sleeper. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Pretty funny. Here's one that definitely makes sense to me. Never throw your old shoes good sleeper. Yeah. Wow. Pretty funny.

Here's one that definitely makes sense to me. Never throw your old shoes in back alleys because alligators are dangerous. Alligators must have

been a term. No, because the shoes are made out of alligators. Oh, I got an edgy junkie. The shoes are made out of alligators?

Yeah, I'm guessing because alligators are dangerous. Alligators. A lot of these are going to be puns. Oh, got it. Yeah. Okay.

That took a second. I was on a train of cars. I put my head out the window to kiss my girl goodbye. The train was going so fast, I kissed a cow at the next station. Hey-o! Why did you keep all the good ones for yourself? You guys got good ones? Here we go.

This is a good one. This is a good one. My girl refused to marry me, so I said to her, I'll get a revolver and blow my brains out. She said, don't go to the expense of buying a revolver to blow your brains out. Get a pinch of snuff and sneeze. Because I'm a moron and my brain's really small.

I shouldn't get a gun and blow a hole in my head. I was amazed by how modern some of the phrasing was. Like blow your brains out. Here's one that, okay, see if you guys know what's going on here.

Man, are you the barber who shaved me before? Barber, yes sir. Man, well chloroform me. What does that even mean?

Did they use chloroform? The haircut's so bad, he's like, just knock me out. I gotta write you one. I can't go. I'm so excited to read jokes. To weigh pork in Texas, get a rail, tie the hog on one end, then put stones on the other end until it balances, then guess at the weight of the stones. That's it. Sounds like a TikTok.

Same thing to weigh your wife. Wooden legs running the family. That's it. What? I don't know. What does that mean, wooden legs running the family? This one's slightly bigoted So I'm going to read it as like a bigoted person

You ready? If you bring a Swede to this country Slightly If you bring a Swede to this country He's a Swede If you bring a Russian to this country He's a Russian If you bring an Irishman to this country

He's a policeman the minute he lands. Damn, he's never going to live that down. There's also a lot of Irishman jokes in here. Yeah, I have one on my sheet too. That's the thing is we do them all as Irish jokes and you do them all as Polish. Yeah, we do Polish. That type of stuff.

And so I found it weird. It's not even that bad though. I know Irish people are like, you don't even know we had it bad too. And then you hear that and you're like, yeah, real bad. They all didn't get jobs as police officers. That's why in those old movies

there's always an Irish police officer. There's a lot of Irish people are stupid jokes in this book. A lot of them just didn't make sense anymore. A friend of mine was afraid of being buried alive. I told him there was no fear of that as the doctor said the body had to hang 25 minutes before it was cut down.

It's happening over on your show. There's so much murder happening on my way. I have a lot of deaf and dumb guy jokes. I have a lot about women. Read one of the deaf and dumb guy jokes. It's a really long one.

And if the deaf guy says anything, do the voice. Don't do the voice. A deaf and dumb man was arrested for manslaughter and was to get his hearing the long one. And if the deaf guy says anything, do the voice. Don't do the voice. A deaf and dumb man was arrested for manslaughter and was to get his hearing the next day. They already gave away the punchline. This is a poorly written joke. Just keep going. While he was in his cell, locked up, he was dancing and singing as though he was happy.

So the keeper wrote on a piece of paper, what makes you feel so jolly? The deaf man wrote back, because I'm to get my hearing tomorrow. The guy wrote the joke wrong. It's a 95. what makes you feel so jolly? The deaf man wrote back, because I'm to get my hearing tomorrow. Yeah. But the guy wrote the joke wrong. Yeah. 1895.

And deaf. Hey, my girl says she's not old. But she's got wrinkles in her face so big that the flies go in them to hide. 1895 dice. Shit. Blacksmiths are great rascals for they forge and steal daily. Okay.

Forging still. Yeah. Yeah. Good. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Here.

Okay. I tell you. I bought a half of my wife and I had to run home all the way. What for? She said, I was afraid the style would change before I got you. I bought a hat for my wife and I had to run home all the way. What for? She said, I was afraid the style would change before I got home. My brother was shaving himself and he accidentally cut off his nose. He dropped the razor and as he did so, the razor cut off his big toe. I haven't read this joke either, so I'm going to be surprised

what happened as well. Okay. He was in such a hurry to stick his toe and nose on that he stuck the nose in the place where the toe ought to be and vice versa. Now whenever he wants to blow his nose, he has to take his shoe and stocking off. He sneezed the other day and his shoe fell off and hit a lady in the face. Wow.

It's pretty good that he got the stay on. Yeah. No stitching? This is the dumbest premise ritual I've ever heard. It's so crazy. Yeah, and his nose was on his foot. He sneezed, the shoe came off, smashed a woman in the face.

And it stuck in there because her wrinkles were so wide. You know what's good about that joke is it's brief. It really gets to the point right away. I tell you, I went to church last Sunday with my girl, and her bonnet was so loud I couldn't hear a word of the sermon. What? Yeah, it just sounds like these are like sentences that don't have endings.

I have a one line joke. Can anyone tell me what it means? Right? I don't know what it means. I'm still trying to figure out chloroform. You guys just want to know that?

It says, a pair of tights, two drunkards. Because being tight means you're drunk. What? Really? I thought it was being loose

meant you're drunk. It's an old term. A pair of tights you're drunk. What? I thought being loose meant you're drunk. It's an old term. A pair of tights. Two drunk kids. Two drunk people, you'd call them a pair of tights. Who's this guy that wrote this book? James Melville Jansen. He also has some sketches in here.

The King of Zing. Every dog may have his day, but I think there's too many dogs for the days. Okay. His wife said she had pneumonia. He told her that she was the most extravagant woman in the world. Yesterday, it was a new bonnet, and today, it's the pneumonia. Okay, I got one more.

That was pretty good. If there's anything I hate, it's profanity. Everybody knows that. Still, animals use it, right? Yeah. You do? You know about it? I mean, look at the beaver.

It's continually damning the creek. Good delivery. My girl had scarlet fever. She also liked books. You could say she was well-read. That wasn't one of the jokes. I just made it up to see if you could see. I can write an 1818 joke.

Scarlet fever makes you red? No, because the color. I'm trying to make it as bad as these jokes. If I put my effort in. Did you really make that up? Yeah, I made that up. Okay, that's a good one. It did sound like it. Yeah, it fit. It felt like, my, did you really make that up? Yeah. Okay. That's a good one.

Yeah. It fit. It was like, well, I don't remember that one. Oh, I got another one here too. There was a deaf and dumb guy.

And I said to him, Hey, can you hear me? And he couldn't wait to the other deaf and dumb. I just made the other deaf and dumb one though. Okay. I suppose when deaf and dumb people marry, they may be said to be unspeakably happy. Here's one that's full.

Because they don't speak. Why is it? Why wouldn't they just say he's deaf and can't speak? I think that's what dumb was back in the day. No, I know. Yeah. I don't know. We know.

I don't know. I'm just, I don't know. We didn't think. They seem genuinely confused. We just didn't think Helen Keller wasn't know. We know. I don't know. We seem genuinely confused. We just didn't think Helen Keller wasn't intelligent. Why are stockings like dead men? Stockings? Stockings.

Do you mean stockers? Like socks. Why are stockings like dead men? When they are past their healing, their souls have departed and they are past their healing, their souls have departed and they are in holes. Pretty good. Makes you think.

Yeah. It really makes you think. An Irishman walked into a manhole. And we're not done? Dumb cunt. You have another Irish one, right? How do you know all the jokes we have? You know how many I read through to pull these?

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Chris. How are you? Thanks for being on the podcast, mate. You're welcome. Happy to be here. Now we're about to do a segment we call Yes, No. Yes, No. Yes, No. Yes, No. Judging a book by its cover. Alright, so I'm looking at Chris here. He's got a bookshelf on cover. All right. So I'm looking at Chris here. He's got a bookshelf on him. Now, I'm going to let you in on a little secret. When he was just brought on the show,

Forrest went, do we call you doctor or professor? Right? And then Chris just said, call me Chris. Right? So I'm going to say he's a doctor. Are you a doctor or a professor? Yes. All right.

But what if he wasn't? And he's like, just call me Chris because I'm not a doctor or a professor yes but what if he wasn't and he's like just call me chris because i'm not a doctor or professor how's that can help you there's a lot of it could be a doctor could be a medic are you a medical doctor no okay are you a doctor of philosophy yes ah boom philosophy that's our subject no uh uh plato no don't get away from philosophy oh george carlin that's all the big ones um we are talking about something today that you've wanted to talk about since the beginning of the podcast it's one of the subjects when we made a list at the beginning you said this is one of the ones well he's not a medical doctor so it's not hemorrhoids remember that being on the list it's always on my mind yeah um uh oh um okay uh so we've done the greek gods we've done the thing you're a doctor of philosophy um uh are you a doctor of

history as well yes okay all right here we go i'm back go. I'm back on track. I'm back on track. Is your subject a war? Yes, it is. All right. I love wars. Is it World War II? No. Is it Vietnam? Yes, it is. Finally did it. I watched a Ken Burns documentary whilst I all episodes. Hi. I'm not good on this one. Let me introduce him. Christian Appy is a professor of history at University of Massachusetts Amherst.

He receives his BA at Amherst College and his PhD at Harvard University in American Studies. He's best known for his books on the Vietnam War, including American Reckoning, the Vietnam War, and Our National Identity, and Patriots, the Vietnam War remembered from all sides. You also have a book in the works. Is that correct? Or is it coming out soon? You can tell us about that if you want. Yeah, it's a book about Daniel Ellsberg, who was a famous whistleblower who turned over to the New York times and 18 other newspapers, the 7,000 page, top secret pages that came to be known as the Pentagon Papers.

That might've been a question that Jim won't remember. I just say Pentagon Papers. Okay, great. Thank you for being here. What we're going to do is we're going to ask Jim everything he thinks he knows about the Vietnam War. We're going to ask him some questions too. That'll take about five to 10 minutes. And then at the end of that. We're going to ask him some questions, too. That'll take about five to ten minutes. And then at the end of that, you're going to grade him on how accurate he was, zero through ten, ten being the best. Kelly's going to grade him on confidence. I'm going to grade him on et cetera.

We're going to tally the scores up, 21 through 30, Apocalypse Now. All right. 11 through 20, Good Morning Vietnam. Zero through ten, Operation Dumbo Drop. Did you know that was a Vietnam movie? Yeah, I did. I did not know that. I don't know why that was Operation Dumbo Drop. Did you know that was a Vietnam movie? Yeah, I did. I did not know that. I don't know why

that was a Dumbo. Okay, Jim, how did the Vietnam War start? Like the events leading up to it? Ah, God. It's not documentary. It's the first question.

He's like, ah, fuck. If I could refresh for like an hour, I could really nail this. This could be an exam that I could do at school if I cramped. Okay, there was something going. Okay, so what happened was Americans didn't like the communists, right?

Communism was hot on the thing. After the Second World War and the communists got half of Germany and all that type of stuff, and then you had your Cuban missile crisis with Kennedy and all that type of stuff, and they were worrying about Cuba and all that type of stuff. And then you had your Cuban missile crisis with Kennedy and all that type of stuff. And they were worrying about Cuba and all that type of stuff. They didn't want there to be because there was a fear that communism, if it took hold in any country, then it was going to take hold

in more countries and then democracy was going to die out. So there was, before the communists came in, so Marcy Tung, is it? What? No, not Marcy Tong, is it? What? No, no. Marcy Tong. Marcy Tong? Marcy Tong is the number one tennis player in the world. No, no, that's the wrong one.

What's his name? Mickey Mouse? Pol Pot. Oh. Pol Pot, right? Pol Pot. He liked the communism, right? And before that, there was-

Can you make this briefer? No, because there's no easy way to how a war started, right? So what happened- Just the gist of it. You're saying communism? That's good. Communism. But I'm going to get more in depth with you.

Now, before that, in Vietnam, there was, I believe, a French presence. We have a lot more questions. The French were in there. The French were in there. And then the people were like, oh, we want our independence from the French, right? And then they said, and then one person goes, oh, Pol Pot was like, we could do that with communism, yo. Right? And then some people were going, all right. And then the other people were going, no. And then the Americans decided to come in and stop

communism in that part of Asia. Okay. What years did it span? Oh, God. So, okay. So Kennedy got assassinated and that was, we just put some troops in there and then Lyndon Johnson sort of carried on with it because he wanted to carry on Kennedy's policies and all that type of stuff. So I want to say that 1960, Kennedy assassinated in 63 or 62 or something like that.

Let's say 1962, right? Yeah. There was already troops on the ground, but they didn't really go into full like how you're going until like- I just asked you what years it's been. No, no, no. Just answer these questions. Okay, so we started being involved around 62, 63 in Vietnam.

We didn't have troops really going in there heavy until 1966, 67. Now, the Beatles. No, the whole war. Not just America, the war. You know, the years it spanned. I'm going to say 62 to 77. Okay. The longest answer for years ever.

Yeah, but I was giving reasons, man. No, we have to like, we're hearing your thought process. What countries. People don't tune in just for the answers. They tune in for the commentary. Yeah, but okay. What countries was the war fought in? It was fought in Vietnam.

And that's it? Sure. Okay. Australia was there. Australia. Okay, there you go. What countries participated in the war? Australia.

We're the only ally of America that since we've been an ally of America, we haven't missed a war. Never heard you say that before. All the other countries, they miss a war. They miss a war. Australia, we're there. We'll fight anyone with you. We don't give a shit.

Okay. Even if you're in the wrong, we'll go, all right, we'll come along. What other countries were in? On both sides. Britain wasn't in it. You said the French earlier. The French, yeah, sure. They wouldn't have wanted it.

They wouldn't have wanted to keep control, so the French would have been there. I don't know if the Canadians were even involved. I'm going to just go America, France, and Australia. There we go. Probably wrong, but that's what I'm going for. And on the other side, Vietnam and I'll say China was helping them out. Like just all of Vietnam was on the other side?

So the Ruskies probably came down to help. They probably, the Russians probably got involved and we'll help out as well with the communists. Okay. What is the Viet Cong? They're the baddies. Okay. I believe they might be the goodies.

You're going to do so well on this. Who was William Westmoreland? I don't know. Westmoreland. I don't know. Okay. What is the significance of the 17th parallel? It's two lines.

And they run next to each other. What was the Gulf of Tonkin incident? That was a war where they were fighting over a gulf, which is a body of water that comes in. Just stop me when you know one of these. Operation Rolling Thunder? That was when ACDC touished. Okay tours okay we're just gonna ask a few more here i think that's the name of an acdc tour that sounds awesome

ho chi ming trail oh the ho chi ming trail is where people went up and down through the country and we're trail yeah no but it was it was a road it was a roadway it was like a roadway of sorts where where the communists could travel through and all that sort of stuff, and they did a lot of fights on the Ho Chi Minh Trail. Okay. Do you have any idea of the number of casualties on, like, the U.S. side, the Vietnamese side, other countries?

I don't want to underestimate this one. I'm going to say we lost 200,000 American soldiers. What about Vietnamese? Same. Okay. Exactly, huh? Yeah. Eye for an eye.

Like a guy that called a duty. Do you know what napalm is? Yeah. Yeah. Okay. What about Agent Orange? He was a guy who was- This documentary really stuck with you, used to work with james bond

get me agent orange now agent orange is another thing napalm is like an explosive that comes around it sticks a bit too it's got chemicals in there and all type of stuff i love the smell of napalm in the morning when you use call of duty you can do a napalm drop and kill about six people from a plane um it's it's it's stuff it's it's it's like fire dropping from the sky napalm drop and kill about six people from a plane. Killtacular. It's like fire dropping from the sky in a napalm. It's like, you know, it's bombs, but it's just like boom and flames and all that type of stuff. You know, like when Forrest Gump was running and he picked up Bubba and that was like-

What about Agent Orange? That's, I think, another chemical that- It's not like- So you have like mustard gas and stuff like that in the First World War and they made those gases illegal. So I don't know what it is, but it's a chemical that now people still have deformities from and stuff like that.

Okay. How much did the war cost? You know, like just, um, well, it, it cost America.

It's innocence. All right. Um, what do you want? Like an actual figure? Um, they usually figure that out. I saw it somewhere,

but I don't know. I'm going to say in today's money, I'm not going to say back in the olden days money, What do you want, like an actual figure? Yeah, they usually figure that out. I saw it somewhere, but I don't know what's right. I'm going to say in today's money, I'm not going to say back in the olden days money, I'm going to say in today's money, ooh, a trillion dollars. Okay. Let me ask you a few more here, and we'll get to some of those ones. Like was there a lot of drugs used in Vietnam by the troops? Yes, yes.

A lot of the troops were on, they were smoking marijuana, but they also, there was a lot of heroin use in the thing, and a lot of people got addicted to morphine and stuff because of their injuries and stuff in the prison. But as we learnt from our addiction thing, the rate of people who came home after the war who were mentally sound, they actually gave up the heroin pretty quickly in comparison to someone who just takes up heroin on the streets here because their pain

was gone because the war was over. Okay. A couple more questions. Do you know what the significance of Kent State is in relation to the Vietnam War? I have no idea what that is. Kent State shooting? Never heard of it? No.

Okay. If I knew about this, I would have read something. I would have watched the episode one of the documentary. That's why we didn't tell you. That's why we didn't tell you. Do you know what the Pentagon Papers are? Yeah. Yeah, that was the bit where they were in the Pentagon.

They had a bit of papers and they were like, oh, golly, this war is going out of control, a trillion dollars. We're running out of oranges with all the Asian orange or the Asian orange. And so Vietnam veterans in general during the war were treated differently in the United States than let's say World War II. Like, why was that?

Because, well, a lot of that had to do with that. The Vietnam War was the first war that Americans got to see on television. So, you know, the propaganda around World War II and even the Korean War and World War I was like, our boys are out there helping the people. Here we go. Want to travel the world? Become a soldier. You know, that type of stuff, right? Now with this one, they just saw the horrors of just people running away with their kids burning and all that type of stuff and bomb drops and all that type of stuff. So the hippies came along and they

were like, peace, man, we don't need war. And so when the soldiers came back with their medals, they weren't given a big welcome back. A lot of them were spit out in the street and they were called baby killers and all this type of stuff. So they weren't given respect mostly because of what the media had shown and also because a lot of people thought the war was immoral and wrong.

All right. Thank you for waiting there, Chris. How did Jim do? Zero to ten, ten being the best. Ooh. That's the first OOF. It kind of went downhill, I have to say. I was impressed that you got France in there at the beginning,

the origins of the war. But I have to give you a two. All right. Yeah, no, I didn't think I was doing well. I love that you said it went downhill because the first answer was like ten minutes of like, well... And then it went downhill from there.

Confidence, yeah, no, I... Before you answered the questions, I would have said your confidence is very high, but I'm giving you one. Yeah, it's not my... Look, you get me World War II, I would have said your confidence is very high, but I'm giving you one. Look, you get me World War II, I'll go for it. Vietnam's not my strong spot. Et cetera, you get zero. Three, Operation Dumbo drop.

But that's good. That means we'll learn some shit today. Good. Yeah, we'll get it all out the next 40 minutes. I watched a 12-hour documentary and then I still didn't learn anything um so uh christian appy how did the vietnam war start what were the events leading up to it well i would date it all the way back to 1946 when the united states helped the french re-enter

uh into what they called into china colony, and to reconquer it. That led to a bloody eight-year war, sometimes called the First Indochina War, the French Indochina War, which the French decisively lost in 1954, whereupon the United States moved in to try to build a permanent non-communist country called South Vietnam. That American phase spanned from 1954 to the communist victory of 1975. So briefly, in American terms, it was a Cold War battle against communism. Jim was right, there was this sort of domino theory, this idea that if communists took hold, Jim was right. There was this sort of domino theory, this idea that if communists took hold, even in a country like Vietnam that posed no threat to the United States, who they saw as a new

kind of colonial power, one that didn't want to take direct control, but wanted to rule by proxy. So, they would refer to the United States as imperialist or neocolonialist. So, yeah, that's the, it has complicated roots, and no historian can exactly agree on the, you know, when it, when it really began. Everyone does agree. It ended of course, end of April, 1975. I said 1977, didn't I? Yep. All right. Close. I wanted to think that I was alive during it. Wait, so there was troops from America, like almost 20 years, American troops from there.

No, the support for the French was all money and military equipment. There were no troops until the 50s when hundreds of military advisors were sent. And then under Kennedy, up to 16,000 were sent before he was assassinated. You're right, 1963. And then it was Johnson that led the huge escalation mostly from 65 to 68 at the end of which there were 540 000 american troops um on the ground all right so i'm weighing it with 200 000 deaths yeah i don't know i actually don't know you can jump ahead to that yeah if. If you want to. Americans lost just over 58,000 in deaths. And the Vietnamese, not the same.

Hardly. Three million. Holy. Oh, my God. Holy bulls. All right. That's not good. Yeah.

Wow. America. But when you say the Vietnamese, so the South. OK, so let's just get to the next. What countries was it fought in? Jim said Vietnam. Right. And yeah, yeah, it's the what a lot of Americans don't realize is the although the United States bombed North Vietnam, which was controlled by the communists. Most of the war was all of the war, really, except for the parts that extended into Cambodiaodia and laos were fought in south vietnam

the country we claim to be protecting from external aggression um so that's the united states dropped in total in the war eight million tons of bombs which was more about three times more than dropped in all of world war ii most of them were dropped on South Vietnam, 4 million tons. Jesus. Okay, so it was fought in Laos as well? Yeah, there was a secret war in Laos overseen by the CIA against Laotian Communist Party,

the Pathet Lao. And to go back to your reference to Pol Pot, Pol Pot was not Vietnamese. He was the leader of the khmer rouge in cambodia and who presided over the genocide after the communist victory in cam in cambodia in 75 it was ho chi minh was the leader uh the revolutionary national that was the one i said masi tung or something ho chi min Ho Chi Minh. I was close. I wasn't close. And so what countries participated in the war?

Jim said Australia. He went on about that for a while. And then France, Vietnam, and China, and the Russians. Well, the United States wanted to recruit allies, but weren't too successful. The one thing that is distinctive about Australia is the United States didn't actually pay for them to fight, except in some indirect ways. Did it for free? They did pay. They paid South Korea an enormous amount. And South Korean troops

constituted the biggest force of allied to the United States troops that they ended up losing about 7,000 South Koreans. I think Australia lost about 500. That's the most Australian thing I've ever heard is you're not getting paid. You're like, we just want to fucking fight, man. Australia is just that drunk bloke at the pub. He sees another fight break out and goes,

I'll shut this out. I'm with this fella in the blue t-shirt. They're like, we don't even know this guy. Yeah, look, we're going over here. It's to cost like i'll pay for myself wait so so australia was in it and then there were a few filipinos some thais new zealand but small numbers the exception of south korea as for the other side yes there was a lot of um military and economic support from both russia and china but no combatants so there were a couple of hundred thousand chinese that served in various ways uh in the north um but not in combat in the south

uh i wasn't that far i asked jim what is the Viet Cong? He said the baddies. Well, this is not widely known, so I don't fault you too much. The Viet Cong were known to themselves as the National Liberation Front or the People's Liberation Armed Forces. In any case, they were Southern revolutionaries from South Vietnam. They did not infiltrate from the north the northern communists that fought in the south down coming down the ho chi minh trail right about that um were regular troops from the north known as the people's army of vietnam or americans called them the north the nva the north v Vietnamese Army, but they were distinct from the Southern revolutionaries, the Viet Cong. This is very The Life of Brian.

We are the people's front of Judea. The Judea's front of people, all that type of stuff. It gets confusing. Yeah, because for the movie, I remember Viet Cong and all of the Vietnamese movies, or Vietnam War movies that I've seen. That was a question I didn't even ask, like why are there so many movies made about the Vietnam War.

It seems like more than any other war or anything. No, I actually disagree with that. I mean, if you go back to World War II, there were, you know, I don't hundreds, if not thousands of movies made even during the war. And Vietnam was so controversial that Hollywood made virtually no movies about the war as it was unfolding, with the exception of this perfectly hideous movie called The Green Berets, starring none other than John Wayne. Right. A tedious, long pro-war film, completely implausible. They used to show it to GIs in Vietnam who would laugh hysterically.

show it to GIs in Vietnam who would laugh hysterically. But so the Vietnam movies, when they started to come out, you know, in the 80s, and there was a run of them, but, you know, since then there haven't been that many. I would argue that why they all came out in the 80s, like so 10 years after the war had ended, we have all these films from Vietnam, I would argue is because the music in the 80s sucked so badly and all the great songs.

Whenever you watch a Vietnam movie, you're like, these are some good tunes. And then it's like, I see a red door and I want to play. And you're like, this is a great movie, right? And then if you had a war that broke out in the 80s that was really big, that movie's going to be terrible. Dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, um okay i don't even know who was william westmoreland oh yeah he did not know did not know i did not know he didn't know did you know forrest well i i i read up on this yeah but before you read up no no okay good i still don't know who he is he was a four-star general who was the

commander of american forces in vietnam from 1964 to 1968. So he was like the Colonel Patton of his time. He was, yeah, he was in charge and, you know, often blamed for things like very brutal policies like the search and destroy missions, the creation of free fire zones, the use of the so-called body count as the primary measure of success in Vietnam, which was a great incentive to just simply to kill as many people as possible. And if you happen to kill civilians, we won't be too fussy in counting them as all enemy dead.

In fact, to go back to that horrifying 3 million dead figure, roughly half of them were civilians. Oh, God. Terrible. Because you see all those movies, they always burn down the village as soon as they leave. Yeah. And it must have been tough on Blakes.

We just got a letter through the mail, like, you're in the war, and then a year later they're burning down fucking villages. How horrible. Yeah, that was that. I know all my movies that was the michael j fox one the casualties of war with i think sean penn or some of them there's even there's like that was the one that they were dressed out a lot in that movie what's the one with charlie sheen another platoon platoon platoon yeah that's a big thing

buddy johnny depp it's one of his first roles he's burning down a village bloody johnny depp um what is the significance of the 17th parallel jim said it's the two lines and they run next to each other and he trailed off well it's a line of latitude but roughly halfway uh dividing uh the north and the south one interesting historical point of great consequence is that North and South Vietnam were never intended to be two separate countries. When the French lost in 1954, there was a big conference in Geneva to sort of set the terms of peace. And there was a good argument to be made that the communist-led anti-colonial forces should have had control over all of Vietnam. They had strong support

all over Vietnam, but there was pressure to make a temporary division of the country that would be followed in two years by a nationwide election to reunify the country. So, the 17th parallel was just a temporary dividing zone. Now, who do you think sabotaged those elections so that they were never held? Was it A, Ho Chi Minh, or B, the United States and our South Vietnamese allies under Ngo Dinh Diem? I'm going to say B on that. That'd be correct. Because Eisenhower, president at the time, his own intelligence indicated that if there were to be democratic elections all over Vietnam, Ho Chi Minh would win by something like 80%. So that was not the outcome they were looking for.

Why did Lyndon Johnson, and for lack of a better term, have such a hard-on for the whole thing? Why did he really step? Was it because he was trying to continue Kennedy's work and look like a strong leader, or it just did it get away from him? Well, he was never enthusiastic about the war. I mean, he really fancied himself the greatest reformer since FDR and wanted to surpass him. He was really interested in domestic legislation and he passed a pile of it, really a historic between 64 and 66, all these incredible pieces of legislation, the Civil Rights Act, Voting Rights Act, aid to education at all levels, some of the first environmental laws. So,

you know, had it not been for Vietnam, I think he would be much more highly regarded. The thing with Johnson is he just didn't want to be the first president to lose a war. That was true of all these guys, not going to be the first president to lose a war. And let's just let's just try to. He was getting in, by the way, no one was telling him, oh, you know, another hundred thousand troops and we're going to win. All he was being told is another hundred thousand troops is all is what we need to avert defeat. The best we can hope is that it will forestall defeat, at least until your next election. And so he went with that. Now, in fact, I think the public was turning against the war so rapidly that if he had been smarter politically and he was a political genius, he actually would have pulled out and would have a much better shot of being reelected. I mean, he actually dropped out of the 68 election and didn't run,

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Okay. Gulf of Tonkin. Oh, I know me question. Okay. I know me question. Okay. So do you say that America lost the war? Because I hear some people say in America I was basically a draw.

You lost, right? Absolutely. Yeah. right? Absolutely. But the key thing here is the United States had the military power to occupy South Vietnam as long as it wanted. We could still be there. But what you have to understand is that the war is determined by politics. The United States failed in Vietnam because it was never, the government it was supporting in Saigon never had the broad or sufficient support of its own people to really with great fervor take the war against the insurgents. Otherwise, the outcome might have been different.

But yeah, it was a defeat, one of the most sort of staggeringly surprising defeats in world history. You know, it's one of the reasons why these generals are pulling their hair out. How is it? You know, and Nixon himself, you know, and Kissinger and Johnson. How can this, what they call this little fourth-rate pissant little country, beat us? Every country's got a breaking point. So when I was in school, we were taught that we lost the war because of guerrilla warfare and we didn't know how to fight guerrilla warfare. So you're saying it was more

political than that. It was more, it was done in offices. It was lost. Yeah. And it's true that the blunt and brutal way that the war was fought did more to recruit Vietnamese to the other side than to win their hearts and minds. I mean, that was always this debate. How can you wage a war in a country where you're widely perceived as hostile and invaders, and at the same time, you know, win their allegiance to a government you're supporting? They immediately look like collaborators and puppets, as they were called by the communists, the government in Saigon, you know, referred to as puppets.

Did any American soldiers stay after the war? Because you always see in movies, they've always got like a girlfriend or a child at the end of the film. Is that all? And then at the end, you see that whole thing where the helicopter takes off from the embassy. Then they all get to the battle, the aircraft carriers, and they're pushing helicopters off so they can fit more people who are flying in or rowing in or whatever like that. What was that like? Because you even see Miss Saigon, the second act starts with them talking about orphanages filled with children from GIs and all that type of stuff. Am I rambling or am I making... No, I mean, GIs staying after the war

was not a thing. Not thing basically everybody got out but you're alluding to the fine you know the so-called fall of saigon the end of the war um or as the communists called it you know the liberation the final liberation um it was totally bungled as was so much else by the united states i mean it was not an orderly departure the united states i think bears great responsibility for not doing a much better job of helping to evacuate the Vietnamese who had cast their lot with the Americans and were vulnerable. The war was not followed by the kind of bloodbath you saw in Cambodia, but hundreds of thousands of people were rounded up and put in so-called re-education camps after the war

and many of them would have been spared that if we had begun the evacuation sooner we we had a kind of delusional ambassador at the time who waited to the very last minute to order an evacuation it was so late they couldn't even use ships and planes they had to rely on these helicopters flying off the tops of safe houses in Saigon and even the embassy itself. So did America accept many refugees after the war? Yeah, there were hundreds of thousands, and ultimately there, you know, over a million overseas Vietnamese settled in the United States, also in other countries, you know, France and so forth.

But, you know, it was a very traumatic experience for them. They had not only lost a war, they had lost their country. And what happened to the American sympathizers who did not, Vietnamese who did not get out of Vietnam? Were they killed? Were they whatever? Were they put in prison? What happened there?

Yeah, most of them were put in prison, or these so-called re-education camps, and they were indoctrinated to, you know, hoping to convince them that they had sold themselves over to the Americans and the imperialists. But yeah, some people were in prison for many, many years. Sort of the average period was two or three years. That sounds less, but yeah. Here's where it really fell off the rails for Jim. What was the Gulf of Tonkin incident?

He just said a war where they fought over the Gulf. He was giving up here. Yeah, I didn't know what that is. No, I know, but I'm just saying. Well, it became a great pretext for greater American intervention based on all kinds of deceptions and flat out lies. Johnson would have said what happened in August of 1964 in the Gulf of Tonkin, just off the coast of North Vietnam, is that two American destroyers were attacked by North Vietnamese

patrol boats and torpedoes were fired at them. And that this was an unprovoked attack on America, on the high seas, who were just these ships innocently sailing there. In fact, the United States had been engaged in a secret war against North Vietnam for years, dropping commandos into North Vietnam, shelling coastal towns and installations. And indeed, the destroyers were not there innocently. They were on these intelligence, they were trying to gather intelligence in concert with American or South Vietnamese, but American bought PT boats that were launching attacks

on North Vietnam. But it became the pretext not only for a raid of sort of 60 war planes to go hit targets in North Vietnam, by the way, that those ships received no damage whatsoever. It wasn't a single American casualty, there was maybe one bullet actually struck. And the so called second attack never even happened. In any case, it was a pretext not just for a retaliation, but a congressional resolution called the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, which was passed with only two dissenting votes. And the language of it gave a blank check to Johnson to escalate, to take any measures necessary

to respond to aggression against the United States. How long did... There was no declaration of war. We haven't had a declaration of war, which is the constitutional responsibility of Congress. We haven't had an actual declaration of war since World War II. So it... How long did it take for the general public to be told

that no Americans died in that incident and that it was all just a bit of bullshit? Like how long was it before you were teaching kids that? You know, it took some time, but I would say certainly within two or three years, a lot of serious questions were being raised about it. It didn't take long. And that's one interesting thing about that whole period. You had this really dynamic,

vibrant anti-war movement. I mean, the way it's been caricatured in the post-war decades is, in my mind, a complete sort of demonization and caricature. These sort of hippies that really just want to keep safe from the war. And even you refer to this idea that they were spitting upon returning veterans. You know, that may have happened a few times, but nothing like this myth that it was routine, you know, that these anti-war activists would line up at airports, try to, you know, yell at returning veterans. In fact, one of the least known aspects of the war is that a lot of veterans themselves were completely disaffected uh certainly by 69 70 and 71 yeah the level of

of dissent and outright mutiny was getting to a level late in the war that american commanders were increasingly concerned about the ability to continue to feel a force. So you're saying Forrest Gump is not accurate. Is that what you're trying to tell me right now, like historically? What percentage of Americans supported the war? Because all you see in the movies is people who are anti-war, anti-war. You must've had a lot of support for it as well, right? Because we, we'd see how much the country is divided now. Was that a big thing?

Yeah, no, it took a long time for the public opinion to shift. All through the early 60s, really until about 67, a majority of Americans, in one way or another, supported the war. They might worry that it wasn't being effective or a lot of hawks really thought it should be fought more aggressively. Let's invade North Vietnam, which we never did. We bombed it, but we didn't, in fact, invade it, in part because there was a fear that that might draw the Chinese directly into the war, as it had during the Korean War. But yeah, it was a slow process.

But when it turned, it turned. I mean, by 1971, 71% of Americans said the war was a mistake. And even more astonishingly, 58% said it was immoral. Now, since the Korean War and Korea got separated into two halves, and you got Vietnam and like that, has America, since Vietnam, fought against anyone about communism? Except for the Cold War, of course, with the Russians, but has there been any bullets shot in the defense of capitalism? Just domestically.

Well, you know, these small wars like in Grenada and so forth, but no, not anything like Vietnam. But no, not anything like Vietnam. I mean, to that extent, I think the experience in Vietnam did provide a kind of check on American military interventionism, at least up until 9-11. And then all of that constraint went out the window. But that doesn't mean we haven't been involved all over the world. And still, throughout this whole period from 1945 on, every American president has been devoted to military primacy in the world. And, you know, this is, I think, called American imperialism. Also, I think that communism isn't just, no one's really thinking it could take off again

well bernie sanders that's why yeah yeah socialism free medicine you know in the domino theory if you think about it it's not just um a political anti theory of anti-communism or democracy it's also an economic theory about capitalism because you know when you say oh what will happen if another country falls like a domino to communism we're not going to have access to their markets you know and their resources and their labor was there a Vietnamese resource that we were like because everyone goes we got went into Iraq because of oil. What? Faux. Faux. It was faux? We wanted their faux? Faux. Faux.

You know, noodles in a broth. Yeah. No. Vietnam, per se, was not of great economic interest. But, you know, these presidents were thinking globally, regionally. They wanted, you know, they were concerned that the biggest domino was Japan. They wanted Japan to have trading alliances all over the Pacific Rim. The biggest prize was Indonesia with its oil,

and Malaysia had lots of tungsten and tin and other rubber. Vietnam had some rubber. I tell you, Japan's never going communist. I've been to Japan. Anything with that many computer games and hello kitty dolls it's just it's not ready for communism they're too fun there's never been a communist walking around in a robot suit um i didn't ask you what the tet offensive is you know what that is i've heard of it i don't know what it is it was one of the battles we tried. I don't know. We lost. What was it?

What's the Tet Offensive? Well, in early 1968, Tet, which is an annual holiday, in American terms it's sort of like Fourth of July, Thanksgiving, and Christmas all rolled up into one. Huge holiday. And that's when the communist forces launched a a coordinated surprise attack all over south vietnam striking virtually every provincial capital every military base of the americans and their south vietnamese allies and for the first time the war was being fought not out in the countryside, but right in the middle of cities. A group of, you know,

commandos even penetrated the gates of the American embassy in Saigon. And communist troops occupied the big city of Hue for almost a month before being driven out. So, the significance of it is that it was such an incredible shock to the American public who had been told for years that, well, it's a long and dirty war. We have to be patient, but progress is being made. The enemy is tiring. Their morale is collapsing. We've sort of got them on the ropes. The end is at sea. Is it light at the end of the tunnel? And then all of a sudden, there's this massive attack. And so Americans think, how did they pull this off if they were getting closer and closer to defeat? And so it was very demoralizing in terms of public support for the war. In South Vietnam, too, among the people that had sided with the U.S., theyoffensive, which was effective in narrow military terms. It killed a lot of people. But even Walter Cronkite, you're too young to remember him, but-

I've seen his footage of him. He was the big trusted anchor of CBS News. And in those days, anchors prided themselves on being perfectly objective. They would never editorialize, never leave their desks. He actually went over to South Vietnam, reported from the war zone, and said that he had come to the conclusion that the war had evolved into a bloody stalemate with no end in sight. LBJ was reported to have said, having seen that, well, if I've lost Cronkite, I've lost middle America. I'm fascinated by conscription, right? Who is eligible, what age, what sex, and how likely were you

to get that letter in the mail? Is that draft? The draft. Yeah, okay. Just the draft. There was a draft from the late 40s until 1973. And I would have to say that it was class biased in almost every imaginable way to privilege those of greater wealth and connections. The most obvious example is that if you were going full time to four-year college, you got a draft deferment.

And you could often, so that lasted, that kept you free for at least four years. All right, I wouldn't have done that. And a lot of people could then turn that into a graduate school deferment, or many of them were able successfully to get medical exemptions. medical exemptions. Because if you go for, you know, you're called by the selective service for a physical, and you have a note from a private doctor saying that you've got skin rash, you know, any could be almost anything. Shin splints like the president. Heelspurs. If you had that letter, they'd say, okay, you're out. But all the ordinary guys, you know, poor working class

guys who didn't go regularly to a doctor they don't know to come they don't have that documentation they should have sent the defective ones over there that's what they should have done there was a thing like so muhammad ali he got the draft and then he said he wouldn't go and fought and the other option was him going to prison for a while but they took away his medals and all this type of stuff and they said he he couldn't fight. Was it only men that could be in the draft? Yeah. Look, I have a rich history of being a feminist, but I've got to tell you, when I hear women go like this,

we didn't get the vote until blah, blah, blah. Did you? Did you not? We fought in wars. We got sent to war to die. Stuff your vote. You should vote. I don't know. You got sent to war to die. Stuff your vote. You should vote. I don't know.

You got sent to war? No. What would your doctor's note for draft deferment say? Hemorrhoids. I can't shit in the forest. Forest? What would yours? You know, I'm fat.

I think mine would be like, she's really tired all the time. Yours would be, you're a girl. I'm talking about when they reinstate the draft, she's really tired all the time. No, yours would be you're a girl. No, you're a girl. This is being a girl. I'm talking about when they reinstate the draft. Oh, dear. You're really tired? Fatigue? I'm so tired.

You're like, fatigue? You know what I would have done? I would have just cling it up. I would have just showed up with a dress going, I'm mad. That was the whole theory that you have to do. Like getting out of jury duty. Getting out of jury duty, yeah. They'd put me in a mental asylum until the war was over. Yeah.

But I'm telling you, if you had like a bum leg or something, that's who you would send over there. I think Bruce Springsteen said he couldn't go because his eyesight was too bad or something like that. What? Oh, really? Yeah. His eyesight was too good?

Put some glasses on him. He's never fallen off the edge of a stage. He had a motorcycle accident. I read that too. Maybe it was that. Yeah. Yeah, well, that's how you do it. You have a motorcycle accident on the way there.

On the way there, you get the draft, you get the letter. All right, I'll have to get my health check. Drive into a tree. That's me done. That's what I would have done. I would have shot myself in the foot day one. Yeah. I would have gone out there and gone, all right.

Oh, the Viet Cong got me. That did occasionally happen in Vietnam. Guys would inflict wounds on themselves to just get out of it. It was so hellish. They just wanted to get out. Yeah, yeah. All day. Yeah, I can't.

I haven't been to Vietnam, but I've been in some countries nearby there. And just having to live out in the elements in Southeast Asia would be brutal. I mean, let alone the war. Just forget that there's a war going like live out in the elements in like southeast asia would be brutal i mean let alone the war just forget that there's a war going on but just the mosquitoes and the thing and having to sleep in the swampy water and all type of crap if the movies taught me anything that the sleep sitting up and all that i don't know back to back this is forrest gump still you got everything for forrest gump I know they had to sleep out in the rain and all that type of stuff, but of course they did. Operation Rolling Thunder is not when ACDC toured.

Thunder. Rolling. I was in Vietnam. Vietnam. Thunder. Maybe you're right. Okay. Is he correct?

Vietnam. Thunder. Maybe you're right. Okay. Yeah. Is he correct? That, Rolling Thunder was the name given

to the systematic bombing of North Vietnam from early 65. By Angus Young. By Angus Young in 1968. Wow.

What a nice name, Rolling Thunder. That's really cool. Unfortunately, the outcome was horrible. It's a good name for a lager that has a little bit more alcohol in it. You know what I really like? When it's about to rain and there's a rolling thunder comes through, I put in some Fleetwood Mac.

Yeah, it's like such a... Thunder always rolls when it rains. Fleetwood Mac. And the Ho Chi Minh Trail, Jim said, was a roadway of sorts where communists could travel through. Lots of fights on the trail. They got up and down. Lots of fights on the trail. I mean, that was a staggering feat of human labor.

These young kids, 15, 16-year-old boys and girls helped build those trails. It wasn't just one. It was dozens of paths of, uh, paths, some of them just footpaths, but later ultimately roads that, uh, were eventually even paved with pipelines going down them at the very, by the very end, um, that could accommodate, you know, big heavy trucks. And, but they were so heavily bombed, all those trails, you know, constantly bombed that these people lived out in the jungle. Again, a lot of these young women under excruciating circumstances, and they would have to run out in the middle of the night after a bombing

strike to fill in the craters and the holes. So the next convoy could get through. Wish we had them on my street. Bloody hell. I've had a pothole to deal with. Talk about war. Right out the bloody front of me fucking house. I almost stepped in it once. Hell of a thing. I'm so sorry for that. Is the Ho Chi Minh Trail, is it still around? Can you still as a tourist walk it or drive it or anything? Yeah, there is actually just a book coming out

later this year that writes about the Ho Chi Minh Trail today. And it's sort of a tourist book. You can do it. There's people on the side selling those nuts that they put in a big thing and they cover them in something. Yeah. On Instagram.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Put it on Instagram. There's good photo ops. Casualties we already talked about. You said 3 million for the Vietnamese. Just quickly before that, while we're still on the Ho Chi Minh Trail, is there still landmines? Can people still walk this?

I assume landmines are still a big problem over there, right? Oh, my God, yes. And all of that whole region, Laos, Vietnam, Cambodia. There have been undoubtedly more Vietnamese killed after the war by stepping on unexploded ordnance than Americans died in the war. Oh, holy shit. Occasionally, though, there's been a lot of effort to try to train groups, uh, and to train farmers. Like if you see something,

don't touch it, call in this trained group, that'll come in and remove it. Is it, are they American bombs? Yeah. Most American bombs. I mean,

the Vietnamese, the Vietnamese didn't have any bombs. I mean, they had mines, but they weren't nearly as dangerous as these unexploded bombs. Some of them, 500 pounders. Fuck.

We also had these things called cluster bombs. Well, we we still do but we pretend not to use them anymore but it's like a big bomb casts out these little tiny baseball size bombs and inside those baseball bombs are like hundreds and hundreds of little razor sharp uh darts that go out in a 360 degree direction and sometimes those little baseballs are still in the ground. Some kid goes and it's, Oh, it looks, this, this is pretty interesting. They pull it up and it's just, you know, I would think that the bomb would have gone off by now. You know, like I have, if you have beer in your cupboard for five years,

it's no good. You know what I mean? Like, how are they still good? And they don't all go off, but you know, 2% of all bombs that were dropped were duds, but they're still very volatile. And if they get, you know, if they get moved or something, it could just trigger it. Do we know how much the war cost? I think the trillion is a decent enough guess. Probably, you know, at the time, these would say 160 billion.

But in today's dollars, that's, that's gotta be around a trillion. But it's probably more than that when you take into account all the post-war money spent on, you know, taking care of people and all the after effects of the, you know, physical and psychological. This is a little bit off the subject. Is Rambo a true representation of a Green Beret? Because the first film is quite a good one.

I don't think Rambo is a true representation of anything except a kind of fantasy of sort of a remasculinization of the culture and a kind of fantasy of, you know, revenge against these, you know, demonic communists. It's almost a retroactive, you know, you know, celebration of the justice of our effort. I mean, if these people are so, you know, so terrible that Rambo has to go back and rescue these phantom POWs, you know, we probably were right to go in there in the first place.

There's never been ever a scintilla of evidence that Vietnam kept POWs after the war. This is a complete post-war myth. We still fly flags by law over every federal and most state buildings, post office, universities, you name it. You know, the POW flag, which is sort of a black flag of shame. You know, it's a portrait, a cameo of a prisoner of war with his head bowed, with a strand of barbed wire going across his back and a guard tower behind him. And that's from Vietnam? From Rambo.

Yeah, that law wasn't passed until 1990 and it explicitly says to remember not just pows in general in all wars but the pows uh and missing and missing in action from the war in southeast asia and still missing and anyway then still held prisoner it almost it pays homage to this myth that they're still being held. It blows all the movies for me. The first Rambo is a very grounded film. Yeah, the first Rambo doesn't, he's not here. He's just in a town trying to, he's just trying.

That's actually interesting. That's a more interesting, much more interesting movie. He was a guy, he was a little bit lost because he had all these skills driving tanks, and he was an important person in the war and now I can't even get a job pumping gas. I don't know why I made him so Italian. Yeah, I don't know. But he gets to play the role of the Viet Cong, right?

He gets to go out in the bush. Yeah, he hides. And the people coming after him are the blundering Americans. It's sort of a reversal. But then when he's got the two fully automatic machine guns and he's got his shirt off and he's got like the curly hair and the bandana and he's just going like that. That one, you can't.

You've got to look down your eyesight a bit. You can't just carry two of them like that. No, he's that good. He's shooting down helicopters and shit. I like that he got more politically involved as a movie star. He's like, I'm going to Afghanistan now. Did anyone see the last one? It was just like a friend of his daughter gets kidnapped or something,

so he just goes in there. It's like the movie Taken. But with Rambo. But with Rambo. You're going to get my friend's daughter back. Pretty good impression there. Not bad. Ask what Napalm and agent orange is i mean i got you were just

talking about the cost of the war after the war too so agent orange probably yeah well you got napalm right it is a kind of firebomb it's a jellied gasoline but it burns hotter than you could ever imagine you can't you know it burns right down to the bone there's nothing you can do about it when it gets on you. And I think everyone has seen the famous picture of a young Vietnamese girl running naked toward the camera. She's a victim of an APOM attack. And still alive, but she's had over 50 operations because of all the burns on her back. Agent Orange is the name of a whole cluster of anti-defoliants. They're chemicals, you're right, chemicals. There was Agent Blue, there was Agent White, there was Agent Orange,

which is the more famous one, out of an orange drum, that's where it got its name. But the reason it was used was to try to destroy enemy crops, but more than that, to destroy the foliage, the, the, the jungle itself, which was providing cover and hiding places for the enemy. So it really is their slogan. The people that dropped it was, uh, only we can prevent forest. So, so they just, as, as well as killing every, like people in vietnam we were destroying the entire environment at the same time oh yeah i mean it's a real crime one of the most toxic if not the most toxic toxic chemicals ever invented called dioxin and even just a tiny tiny bit of that can do not

damage to the food chain the water and it as you say, it can get into your bloodstream and be passed on and cause birth defects from generation to generation. When you said that unrest in America brought a stop to the war, was it the hippies that helped out? Did the John and Yoko War Is Over campaign, did that do anything or was it just a bit of fun? Well, to my mind, that really didn't have a big effect. One thing is the hippies, there was a kind of divide. There was the counterculture and then there were the politicos, the really active, the real activists, anti-war activists.

And there was overlap, of course, you know, cultural overlap. But, yeah, there were some hippies who really were only interested in kind of cultural ways of living differently, you know, rock and roll, drugs, communes. I mean, that's a cliche, but they weren't necessarily so involved in protesting the war. They probably thought the war was a bad thing, but a lot of them were not really that involved. The people who were intensely anti-war, a lot of them gave up enormous amounts of time and, you know, educating themselves about it, trying to convince other people and not just sort of going out for the big demonstrations. Now, John McCain, President Trump said he only likes the people who don't get caught. Was he a pussy?

I feel like I've watched some John McCain stuff. They broke his hands. He lived in a prison. He had to tap against the wall to his friend against the wall. It feels like he was a pussy. I had a lot of differences. I always had lots of differences politically with McCain, but I don't think you can call him a wimp. He actually had an opportunity. They were going to release him early and he declined to do that because he was the son of an admiral. It would have been a propaganda coup to let him go early. Wait a minute. Trump was wrong?

That's shocking, isn't it? Record scratch. What a storm. I watched the locked up abroad of John McCain. Fuck it. Oh, that was a toughie. He had a mate who lived next door to him in the cell, who was in the cell for years with him, and then they started, like, tapping. One tap means A, two taps means B.

Yeah, they all did that. All those prisoners, all 591 of them learned how to do that tap code. He lived next door to this guy forever and ever and ever. One time they moved him, but they moved him with bags on their heads, you know, to a different site. And then years and years later when Trump, when McCain was a politician or whatever, the guy came up to him like, I was the guy that was next door to you with the tap tap.

And he's like, oh, man, that was next door to you with the tap tap. And he's like, oh man, you're alright, you. I feel like the story was this pretty good version of it. It was pretty sweet though, that they didn't see each other and they had this relationship for so many years. It was quite adorable. So, in the movies, the

troops are always doing a lot of drugs. Is that true, that they were doing a lot of drugs? And if so, how were they fighting if they were always high? Have you ever seen a guy on meth? I mean, that's the best. I play Call of Duty High so much better.

On heroin? No, on heroin I play it terribly. I feel like being on drugs, though, you'd be, you wouldn't be afraid of. No, they're always, they're always doing heroin or smoking opium in the movies.

I don't feel like that's a good fighting drug. That's fucking sick, dude. That's on the down time. We should love our enemy, man. Have you ever slept back to back with me in a swimming pool? So they're like, hey, get on a bit of smack, man. We don't have a battle for two days.

Let's do some heroin. I don't know. Were they doing that many drugs? It gets greatly exaggerated. I mean, it's true. Late in the war, marijuana was everywhere. Everybody was smoking it, but not necessarily before combat. It was much more in the rear in down times.

Heroin was prevalent and incredibly cheap. You could get a little vial for $2 that was unbelievably pure. Some of it, by the way, was carted to markets by the CIA who were buying it from the Hmong in Laotia. I'm in Laos. In a way to recruit them to the anti-communist cause, they were helping getting their opium to market. A lot of it ended up in South Vietnam in the arms of GIs. They didn't shoot as much as often they would put it in cigarettes and lace lace marijuana with it i would say it's possible that as many as 10 by the end of the war i mean the final years 10 of american gis may have been

addicted to heroin um and 30 may have tried it once, you know, a few times. But yeah, I mean, which is significant. I would have been all over that if I was in the war. Let's make this thing go a little faster. Time go by faster.

Well, and with all the weed you're smoking, which makes time go slower. You always see them using the the gun barrel as a pipe that's always footage of that i don't know if it was one bloke but i always see the same guy platoon i think in the movie platoon you see document footage of that as well okay yeah so you don't have an apple to make a little yeah you make a little thing out of an apple you do it that way yeah they didn't have apples. Coconuts? Yeah, they would have had. They would have given him cigarettes

and stuff like that. If you said to him, you go, but I'm a pipe guy, they would have given you a pipe. You'd be out in the jungle. Military issued pipe. So this is kind of like all how Vietnam veterans were treated in the US and the US response to the war. And I asked Jim what Kent State was. He didn't know what that was. So is kind of like all how Vietnam veterans were treated in the U.S. and the U.S. response to the war. And I asked Jim what Kent State was. He didn't know what that was.

So that kind of is all encompassing kind of what was going on here. Yeah. Briefly, just after Nixon announced the invasion of Cambodia in 1970, campuses all over the country erupted. Hundreds of them went on strike. Hundreds of campuses were just shut down for the rest of the semester. And at Kent State in Ohio, like everywhere else, there was a rally to decide whether or not they were going to go on strike. And the National Guard had been called in the night before because there had been a few downtown disturbances and the ROTC building had gotten burned down, which also happened at a lot of campuses. And the guard began trying to

get the kids off this common, drive them off the common and started using tear gas. And the students would throw the tear gas back at them. And there were rocks thrown back and forth. And eventually the guard, a small contingent of the 1,200 guardsmen that were on campus, it was like an armed camp, walked up this hill about a group of, I can't remember the number, say 20 of them, turned, you know, simultaneously, making it look like a planned sort of maneuver, turned like 180 degrees or more, aimed down the hill at a group of demonstrators students uh some of them taking a knee some of them standing up and all basically at once began firing their weapons for um a period doesn't sound like a lot 13 seconds but if you're at the receiving end of that barrage it seemed like forever uh four of them were killed um nine of them were injured including one was paralyzed of the four that were killed two of them were um not even participating in the demonstration they were just walking between classes and they were over 300

feet away i mean way away doesn't sound like our national. People didn't even know the National Guard had loaded weapons. A lot of them weren't even sure. I mean, it's crazy that they were loaded. Then Neil Young wrote a song about it. That's how I learned about it. Within days after. Yeah. Was there only one incident of someone coming up and putting a flower in the barrel of a gun at a protest?

Because that seems to be like... Yeah, the most famous of that. Yeah, not much but people may think it because it's a famous picture from the um protest at the pentagon in 1967 where they're they stick a uh you know a blossom into the yeah gartman's rifle all right um so i wouldn't have done that he would have been still busy doing the heroin I would have put a Philly cheesesteak on top of the barrel

just sit down and have that he would be in a better mood later he would cheer up then you would have eaten it or hand him a Pepsi I would have handed him a Pepsi like Kendall Jenner that would have been a good thing this is part of the show called Dinner Party Facts

where we ask our guests to give us a fact about the subject. Talking about that might be obscure, interesting, or that most people might not know that they can use to impress their friends. I don't know if they impress your friends with a Vietnam War. Let me tell you. This is kind of a crude story more than a fact, but it does have a source. I mentioned earlier that at a certain point, Johnson had no confidence that he could be successful in Vietnam, but he kept escalating it anywhere. So, that's sort of a question. Why? Well, one day in the

Oval Office, a bunch of journalists were pressing him on it. You know, why are you continuing to escalate this war that's so problematic and there's so much opposition to it? At which point, escalate this war that's so problematic and there's so much opposition to it. At which point, he unzipped his fly, pulled out his penis, and he says, that's why. Wow. That's recorded.

Robert Dalek, well-known presidential historian, cites that in the book. It is sort of a second-hand source. Johnson by name. It's very typical. He did that kind of, he did weird stuff like that. He used to like to take meetings while he was sitting on the toilet,

didn't he? He used to tell people he'd be having a shit. That's what I do on me texting. I understand. It's almost like a lot of our presidents have been bad guys. Because we had a. I have to. Who did you interview that did the movie?

Was it Rob Reiner? Rob Reiner. Rob Reiner did the movie about him a couple years back, and I remember watching it when you were doing the interview, and there was a scene where he's taking a dump, and there's people in a meeting,

and he's like, keep going. Which I appreciate that. I get that. I sometimes would like that. No time off. Yeah. Okay.

Thank you very much, Professor Christian Appy. That's A-P-P-Y for everybody at home. If you're looking for his books, um, as I mentioned before, they're, uh, American Reckoning, The Vietnam War, International Identity, and Patriots, The Vietnam War Remembered from all sides. And please look out for his new book. You have like a working title for it, you said? Yeah, I think I'm going to call it ellsberg's mutiny war and resistance in the age of vietnam the pentagon papers and nuclear terror catchy yeah rules off the tongue uh thank you very much for being on the podcast thank you so much thank you so much chris it was very informative everyone we gotta get out of this place um all right it's

time to go uh look if you're ever at a party and someone comes up to you and goes, ah, the bloody Vietnam War didn't involve the French, go, I don't know about that, and walk away. Thank you very much, Australia. Good night.