Revisionism: the Vietnam "narrative" exposed

World News Daily: "Finally! A war story the state-run media hate to reveal - Forget what you think you know, here's the real Vietnam account"

Everything Americans know about the end of the Vietnam War is wrong, contends Richard Botkin, author of "Ride the Thunder" and former Marine infantry officer. He reveals the heroic, untold story of how Vietnamese Marines and their U.S. advisers fought valiantly, turning the tide of an unpopular war and actually winning – while Americans 8,000 miles away were being fed only one version of the story. From the American side, I think most people have a completely uninformed or misinformed opinion of the Vietnam War," Botkin told WND. "Most Americans, including people who served in Vietnam, didn't appreciate the level of sacrifice of the South Vietnamese. These people love freedom." (...) 

Botkin toured former battlefields in Vietnam and chronicled accounts of the Vietnamese Marines, or TQLC, and their American Marine advisers, an extraordinary "band of brothers" who fought, bled, endured and triumphed against the growing cancer of communism. The Viet Cong, a band of communist guerrillas in South Vietnam, blended in with the civilian population and even posed as police officers. Known for their stealth and deception, they often poisoned wells and intimidated civilians into silence, forcing them to endure classes of communist propaganda and indoctrination.

Soldiers of the communist North Vietnamese Army, or NVA, routinely attacked thousands of helpless civilian refugees – including young women, elderly citizens and crying children – with intentional and indiscriminate artillery fire. In 1968, communists murdered between 3,000 and 6,000 innocent civilians and buried them in mass graves. Families endured pain, suffering, and indignities that many Americans might never imagine while communists released propaganda readily consumed by Western critics of the Vietnam War. The communists were masters at using propaganda against us," Botkin said. "They would even place high-value targets near civilian centers." (...) >>>

July 6, 2009
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FrontPage: "The Historically-Challenged President", by Bruce S. Thornton 

Barack Obama, as Victor Hanson recently documented, may be our most historically challenged president ever. Some might think that the inaccuracies Hanson identifies are no big deal, but there are several reasons to be troubled by such ignorance. (...) Particularly in our fight against radical Islam, history supposedly provides the basis of Muslim grievances against the West, especially the United States. Colonial occupation, imperialist aggression, the Western imposition of Israel on the “Palestinian homeland” in order to atone for the Holocaust––these sins of the West against the House of Islam are constantly put forth as rationalizations and justifications for violence against Western interests. If history is to provide the foundation of grievance, however, then all of history is on the table, and that history must be factually accurate and judged by consistent standards. If, for example, the enslavement of Africans is an evil for which the West must take responsibility, then all slavery everywhere must be condemned equally. But when do we ever hear about Islamic slavery?  (...) >>>

June 18, 2009
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PJM: "Obama Flunks Histor"y at Cairo U", by Frank J. Tipler

Almost every advance he attributed to the Muslims in his big speech should be credited to someone else. In his speech to the Muslim world in Cairo, President Barack Obama claimed: “As a student of history, I also know civilization’s debt to Islam. It was Islam — at places like Al-Azhar University — that carried the light of learning through so many centuries, paving the way for Europe’s Renaissance and Enlightenment. It was innovation in Muslim communities that developed the order of algebra; our magnetic compass and tools of navigation; our mastery of pens and printing.” Obama is not much of a “student of history” if he believes this. Almost every advance he attributes to the Muslims was due to someone else. 

The non-Muslim Chinese invented the magnetic compass and printing (Gutenberg invented not printing, but movable type). The non-Muslim Hindu Indians invented algebra and the decimal numbering system. The non-Muslim European Christians invented the university. (...) The reason Muslims never developed fundamental physics is because the leading Muslim theologians declared the idea of fixed physical laws to be heretical.  (...) because Allah may change the laws at any moment. (...) During the Cold War, it was commonplace for leftist academics to attribute many discoveries to scientists in Communist countries, discoveries that had actually been made in the West. So now leftist academics attribute to Muslims discoveries that had actually been made by others.I never expected to hear a president of the United States do so. (...) >>>

June 7, 2009
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