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From: notes@ucbcad.UUCP
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Subject: Re: Vietnam Series on PBS - (nf)
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Date: Mon, 5-Dec-83 00:46:15 EST
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Posted: Mon Dec  5 00:46:15 1983
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#R:ihuxj:-29200:ucbesvax:7500056:000:3133
ucbesvax!turner    Nov 28 01:03:00 1983

Re: Steve Aldrich's question on PBS's "Vietnam: A Television History"

I watched one episode of that.  It wasn't bad, for time in front of the
tube.  However, it *is* a TELEVISION history--reflecting an unprecedented
level and depth of TV coverage, while at the same time reflecting some of
the inherent biases of the medium and the media establishment of the time.
And I have one big argument with it.

According a review I read, the subject of heroin comes up exactly once.
And I looked in the index of the companion volume in a bookstore, under
'H', and promptly threw the book down in disgust.  There is an entire
*book* about the pivotal role that heroin played in the Indochinese wars,
called "The Politics of Heroin in South-East Asia", (A. McCoy, ca. '72,
350+ pages).  And this whole subject was completely ignored!

One might ask "why bring up such a minor and sordid detail of the war?"
It was not minor, and it was not a detail.  President Thieu and Air
Marshall Ky were intimately involved in the opiate trade festering in
the Golden Triangle.  The CIA got it all started in the 50's, training
and arming hill tribes whose economic base was mountain poppy fields.
The opium warlords of this region vied with each other for the air
transport that the CIA could make available through its ownership of
regional airlines, since this allowed them to circumvent each other's
taxation systems.  The factions most loyal to CIA imperatives were the
ones who got their way.

From there, it is a long and winding story until the heroin epidemics
among GI's in Vietnam in the late 60's and early 70's.  One group within
the country managed to wrest control of the opium trade from its former
bosses, the Corsican Mafia (recall the French colonization) and the Kuo
Min Tang (recall the Chinese civil war, and earlier).  That group built
heroin factories within South Vietnam, to break the production monopoly;
to circumvent the international transport monopoly, they decided to sell
the heroin in a domestic market which they had helped to create: U.S.
military bases.  The U.S. drug market was not, of course, far behind.

This group also had political control of the South.  But you didn't see
that on television.  Television didn't know what was going on.

And is this issue irrelevant today?  Ask yourself what the main cash
crop is in the embattled regions of Afghanistan.  And where is the CIA
money going?  And how well is the drug traffic in the Khyber pass being
controlled today?  Last summer, the Soviets signed a harvest-season
cease-fire with one of the tribes in that area.  Interesting and strange.
I wonder how the CIA felt about that?  ("Well, I guess we'll get those
Afghani hearts & minds next year, eh guys?  Hell, they learned this game
from us!")

Well, sorry to flame, but the whole thing disgusts me still.  Wounds of
Vietnam, you ask?  Look first at Vietnam.  Then at the needle-scars of
some of the drifting veterans I see around here.  I hope the U.S. has
cleaned up its war habit.  Its going to need some resolve to resist
re-addiction in the next year or so.
---
Michael Turner (ucbvax!ucbesvax.turner)