Pentagon Accused of Whitewashing History of Vietnam War Era

More than 500 scholars, veterans, and activists have signed a petition demanding the chance to correct the Pentagon’s sanitized version of Vietnam-era history, the New York Times reported Friday. 

The Pentagon is commemorating the 50th anniversary of the Vietnam War by holding events around the country, providing educational materials about the war to schools, and launching a website that features an interactive historical timeline.

“All of us remember that the Pentagon got us into this war in Vietnam with its version of the truth. If you conduct a war, you shouldn’t be in charge of narrating it.”
—Tom Hayden

“But the extensive website, which has been up for months, largely describes a war of valor and honor that would be unrecognizable to many of the Americans who fought in and against it,” the Times reports. “Leading Vietnam historians complain that it focuses on dozens of medal-winning soldiers while giving scant mention to mistakes by generals and the years of violent protests and anguished debate at home.”

For example, the site omits mention of the Fulbright hearings in the U.S. Senate, during which Secretary of State John Kerry—then a young Vietnam veteran—asked, “How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake?”

Earlier this year, journalist Nick Turse cataloged some of the website’s “flawed history” at TomDispatch, prompting the government to revise its description of the My Lai massacre from “My Lai Incident” to “American Division Kills Hundreds of Vietnamese Citizens at My Lai.”