BBC VERSION OF VIETNAM CONFLICT PURE BULL
RICK STEIN: GREAT FOOD BUT DUMB ON POLITICS AND HISTORY
By Gordon Duff STAFF WRITER
While at RAF Alconbury, just outside Cambridge, last week I made the horrific mistake of watching BBC television. I want to thank my hosts, of course, for the delightful accomodations and kindness but, at the same time, as a Vietnam veteran, I can’t let the cheap anti-American propaganda the BBC was promoting go unpunished.
BBC chef, Rick Stein, a great seafood expert, was doing a tour of Southeast Asia and its food. Having spent more than a bit of time in that country myself, I was impressed with their varied cooking and wish that I might have seen some of that myself when I had the chance. However, Chef Stein spent too little of his time talking food and much more talking politics, war, history and promoting fiction as a pawn of the communists.
Even as a long time critic of the Vietnam War, I can’t let this stand. I can understand Stein’s ignorance of history but the BBC has no excuse for promoting a version of the Vietnam War so hateful and demeaning to American troops. It’s bad enough I have to watch their phony version of WW2..
For decades we have been polite about certain aspects of World War 2. I am not going to compare the American stand in the Philippines with the British surrender in Singapore or Montgomery’s "Market Garden" fiasco or his failures after D-Day. Brits hear nothing of this, only fiction with the current lies having Britain and France defeat Germany in World War 2 while the millions of Americans who actually won the war (along with the Russians) are relegated to 3rd class status.
Combining the French version of the war that has De Gaulle defeating the Germans and the British version where Americans play almost no part at all, the truth tends to take a terrible beating. Generations of Europeans are raised on little but open propaganda and lies. Of course, I still believe my family lands are being occupied by the British since Culloden in 1746.
Anyway, I digress. Back to Rick Stein and his "Commie Cooking." For every dish shown, and some were really impressive, we saw films of Russian tanks crashing into Saigon and "heroic" North Vietnamese being called "Viet Cong heroes" for beating America AFTER AMERICA PULLED OUT OF VIETNAM.
Stein talked about how spoiled Americans were, living on steak every day while the poor VC starved in the bush. He continually referred to them as conquering heroes.
This ignorant prig, however, fails to mention that, when North Vietnam conquered the south, the VC heroes, the few the Americans didn’t kill after the 1968 TET offensive, were imprisoned by their allies. Many were murdered. Communists are famous for killing off their allies. They did this during the Spanish Civil war. Think about Stalin’s purges. North Vietnam did the same thing.
Someone needed to tell the BBC.
Hundreds of thousands didn’t flee the communists, many dying in the process out of "inconvenience."
I would like to take this opportunity to inform our British friends that the United States Marine Corps didn’t find the VC or North Vietnamese all that frightening nor difficult to defeat. Though we were heavily outnumbered and lived under identical circumstances, call it "steak free" if you will, to those the VC lived under, we had no difficulty holding any territory we wished while inflicting massive casualties.
After 40 years of Hollywood baloney and a current military that spends as much time bashing Vietnam vets as the commies of old, the record needs to be set straight.
I don’t need to watch a BBC cooking show to get my daily dose of lies and propaganda. I have Fox News for that. Like all Americans I live under bombardment from Commie stooges on the left and Facist "Reich Minded" goons on the right.
The "Disneyland" version of Vietnam and the totally fictional version of the Vietnam War that the BBC presents to its audience is not only shameful lies but part of the "old line commie" agenda of the British "elite" that we have been polite enough not to talk about over here.
I expect the French, who suffered a devastating defeat in World War 2, Vietnam and Algeria to rewrite their history. After all, their national hero is Charles DeGaulle, whose policies can only be described as "curious."
French children are lied to about their debt to America but have the good taste and sensibilty, for the most part, to eventually learn who they owe for their freedom. You can’t drive far in France without coming on an American cemetary or war memorial.
Britain has no excuse. Just outside Cambridge, 4000 crosses dot a field.
5500 names of missing adorn a wall.
The British saw millions of Americans pour into their country. Brits ate American food, their government lived on our money and our military power vastly overshadowed Britains when it came to defeating Germany.
There aren’t so many survivors from Vietnam around, not real combat soldiers anyway. We were a few, fewer than most realize, fighting a war that probably should never have happened in one of the worst places on Earth.
In Vietnam we lived on WW2 era C-Rations when we could get them or starved. Most around me were skin and bone, many covered with sore, more with malaria and all with malnutrition. Rick Stein’s stories about Americans living in comfort on grilled steaks may be amusing to his local audience but to those of us who survived Vietnam looking like concentration camp victims, many losing teeth and more facing a lifetime of crippling illnesses and early deaths, we would like to correct his misconceptions.
We were abandoned by our government, our own people and have had to survive wounds, disease and ignorance for decades. Why should I expect more from the BBC?
If the Vietnamese want to tell people they beat us, maybe they earned the right to lie. They earned it by dying by the millions. I forgive them that as they were, in a sense, brothers in arms.
The BBC…..take your chef, your lies….and put them where the sun doesn’t shine.
Gordon Duff is a Marine combat veteran and regular contributor on political and social issues.
Gordon Duff posted articles on VT from 2008 to 2022. He is a Marine combat veteran of the Vietnam War. A disabled veteran, he worked on veterans and POW issues for decades.
Gordon is an accredited diplomat and is generally accepted as one of the top global intelligence specialists. He manages the world’s largest private intelligence organization and regularly consults with governments challenged by security issues.
Duff has traveled extensively, is published around the world, and is a regular guest on TV and radio in more than “several” countries. He is also a trained chef, wine enthusiast, avid motorcyclist, and gunsmith specializing in historical weapons and restoration. Business experience and interests are in energy and defense technology.
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