August this year marked fifty years since Australian troops were completely withdrawn from Vietnam. This was in accordance with the American drawdown of military forces at the time. Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese paid tribute to the courage and sacrifice of Australian soldiers who served in that conflict. His speech was one of many commemorative activities held across the country regarding the final withdrawal of Australian troops.

While hailing the values of courage and sacrifice is all well and good, Albanese’s perspective serves a definitive political purpose; whitewashing the criminal and predatory nature of the US attack on Vietnam. The courage and sacrifice of soldiers in conflict sounds like a nice, value-free statement – who could dispute that sentiment? Only traitors and scoundrels question the heroism of frontline troops, surely? Such sentiments provide a soft scented candle to mask the odious stench of criminal wars lurking underneath.

PM Albanese, in an attempt to appeal to the normally conservative military lobby, spoke of the suffering of Vietnam veterans, stated that many of them were disrespected and ignored upon returning home. There is no evidence that anti-war demonstrators ever spat at, or hurled abuse at, returning veterans. Many of these myths of the badly-behaved protester are recycled as a way to distract from the criminal and barbaric nature of the assault on Vietnam.

The Vietnam veterans did suffer – from post traumatic stress disorder and various psychological afflictions. These conditions were the result of a predatory war waged by political masters in Washington and Canberra. The short-lived tyrannical republic of South Vietnam, based in Saigon, was propped up by American force of arms. Notorious for torturing and killing prisoners in its ‘tiger cages’, stories about the barbarity of the American backed Saigon dictatorship are overshadowed by the manufactured concern of the obnoxious protester.

The United States undertook military action in Vietnam, not for any humanitarian reasons, or for the dubious claim about promoting democracy and confronting Communism. The US sought to replace France as the preeminent imperial power in Indochina. Having ‘lost’ China itself in 1949 to the Maoist revolution, Washington’s ruling circles were intent on imprinting their own footprint in Vietnam. The latter defeated French colonialism in the 1950s.

Myths about sacrifice and nobility in war become the basis of self-serving fiction. Remembering the Australian troops who served in Vietnam is not a value-free, altruistic exercise motivated by pure dedication to nationalist ideals. Notions of heroic sacrifice for king and country obscure the cynical calculations involved in starting and prolonging imperialist wars. December 2022 was the 50th anniversary of the misremembered and euphemistically named Christmas bombing of North Vietnam.

Why does this Christmas bombing matter? That particular aerial attack, lasting over eleven days in December 1972, is said to have brought Hanoi to the negotiating table to sign a peace deal. That fictionalised memory, which elevates American air power to a decisive factor, not only misrepresents a crucial historical period. It also has provided a misleading influence on American foreign policies.

Peace talks between Hanoi and Washington has been proceeding since the early 1970s. Throughout 1972, the prospects of a peace agreement looks optimistic. The Nixon administration, in an exaggerated sense of aerial ‘military might’, began an intensive bombing campaign against Hanoi and Haiphong. Civilian installation were targeted, including electric plants, hospitals and schools. Operation Linebacker II, as it is officially known, was one of the largest bombing campaigns since the end of World War 2.

The scale of civilian deaths and destruction is difficult to contemplate. The Vietnamese victims of this bombing campaign are largely forgotten. To be sure, the US Air Force experienced heavier than expected losses. Hanoi and Haiphong were well defended by anti-aircraft installations.

What is also forgotten is that the peace agreement, signed by Hanoi in 1973, did not contain any new concessions or changes that had not already been agreed to in October 1972. The war was needlessly prolonged, escalated to new levels of destructive violence, and thousands more Vietnamese suffered the consequences.

This belief in ‘bombing power’ is a self-serving delusion. It has underpinned subsequent US invasions of, and defeats in, Iraq and Afghanistan. What is forgotten in all of the commemorations is that Vietnam veterans joined the anti-war demonstrations in the 1960s and 70s. Rather than being abused or assaulted, civilian demonstrators welcomed the participation of military veterans for the purpose of achieving peace.

The civilian-military divide was overcome precisely in the anti-Vietnam war movement. As the Vietnam conflict wore on, increasing numbers of soldiers questioned the American government and turned to the anti-war campaign. The Pentagon Papers, released by whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg, exposed a systematic pattern of lying about the conflict on the part of Washington.

In 2019, in an eerie parallel with the earlier Pentagon papers, the Afghanistan papers revealed the systematic deceptions and duplicity of American (and Australian) authorities in covering up the failing war in Afghanistan. Senior military figures questioned not only the motives of the war in Afghanistan, but also expressed alarm that the U.S. government was “failing to tell the truth” – in other words, lying to the public.

As the last American troops madly scrambled to the rooftop of the US embassy in Kabul in 2021, the parallels with the chaotic American retreat from Saigon were unmistakable. In the wake of the defeat of US forces in Afghanistan, serious questions were asked about why we have not learned lessons from similar defeats in Iraq and Vietnam.

In an ironic turn, US President Joe Biden will visit Vietnam for the purpose of strengthening bilateral relations. Following in the footsteps of former president Obama’s pivot to Asia, Biden is hoping to draw Hanoi into its anti-China military alliance. Hanoi, while welcoming reconciliation, strongly rejects any participation in a hostile military bloc against Beijing.

Whitewashing past imperial wars, and recycling durable myths about them, only serves to reinforce Australia’s relegation as a deputy mercenary in America’s criminal wars overseas. It is time to reevaluate our priorities, and take a stand against the wars that make the crimes of Ben Roberts-Smith possible.