2023
War, truth, and denial in a
post-fact world War
crimes, truth and denial
Is the era of "alternative facts"
another legacy of Vietnam? "How the trauma of the
Vietnam War led to the age of
"alternative facts""
50
Years Later: Eyewitness to the Last
Day of US Military Command in
Vietnam Remembering
March 29, 1973, at Saigon's Tansonnhut
Air Base
"Reporting and
Commentary about the Vietnam War"
(video)
I was a co-panelist with an old friend,
photographer Neal Ulevich, at Texas Tech
University's annual Vietnam conference.
Neal's presentation, showing a
collection of his wartime photos, shows
why he was one of the most respected
photographers who covered Vietnam.
Reflections 50 years after the January
1973 Paris peace agreement on Vietnam:
In an
essay for the History News Network, "No
Golden
Anniversary for the Paris Peace
Accords"
, I recalled that on the calendars in
Washington and Paris, the day the
agreement was signed was January 27, but
in Vietnam, where I observed the first
hours of the failed truce, it was
already the next morning. Accordingly, I
wrote, "the date that remains etched in
my memory 50 years later is the 28th of
January, not the 27th" -- a difference,
I added, that seems "not just numerical
but symbolic, a telling metaphor for the
wide gap between Washington’s vision of
reality and the true situation in
Vietnam."
I also
recalled that day in a panel discussion
(once again together with Carolyn
Eisenberg) titled "The
Paris Peace Accords: Lessons for
Today?"
(video) presented -- on January 27, of
course -- by the Quincy Institute.
"Ending the American
War" (video) A joint
book talk organized by the Vietnam Peace
Commemoration Committee. I appear along
with Carolyn (Rusti) Eisenberg, a
Hofstra University historian and author
of Fire and Rain: Nixon, Kissinger, and
the Wars in Southeast Asia
"The 'Christmas
bombing' of 1972 — and why that
misremembered Vietnam War moment
matters" The 11-day U.S. air
offensive in December 1972 is widely
remembered as decisive in forcing the
Vietnamese Communists to make
concessions and sign the Paris Peace
agreement, thus supposedly showing that
air power was a crucial factor in ending
the American war on terms that would not
otherwise have been available.
Irrefutable facts show that that claim
is provably false.
2022
"After 50 Years, the Truth About the
Vietnam Peace Agreement Remains
Elusive" a piece for the History
News Network tagged to the 50th
anniversary of Henry Kissinger's
notorious "peace is at hand" statement
on Oct. 26, 1972. It reminded
readers of the larger and seldom
remembered story of what actually
happened that month that led to
Kissinger's pronouncement, and how those
facts contradict persistent myths about
events in the next three months and the
peace agreement that was eventually
concluded in late January 1973.
2021
Leaving Saigon: I wrote this in
2005, 30 years after the end of the
Vietnam war and my last flight to a Navy
ship in the South China Sea. In the
summer of 2021, as another failed war
came to its chaotic end, this essay
sounds hauntingly resonant.
Missing
Voices from the Vietnam War:
unpublished, originally written in 2018.
I have no doubt that similar voices have
been similarly missing in Afghanistan.
Three
last letters (all unanswered) to my
Republican representatives about
Trump's stolen-election lie.
2020
A
post-election email discussion: For
weeks after Election Day 2020, my
Republican representatives in the
state and county legislatures
studiously avoided expressing an
opinion on voter fraud or on President
Trump's campaign to overturn the
election result.
Remembering
Timmie: The woman whose chronic
anxiety made me a reporter. First of
two unpublished essays reminiscing
about my early days in journalism.
Mr. Dorsey's World: Second
reminiscence, about my first managing
editor.
An
Open Letter to My Old Tribe:
Suggestions for journalists covering
the final weeks of the 2020
presidential election campaign.
"A
very small close-up from a very big
picture": a report on a Black Lives
Matter protest in very white, very
Republican, Pasadena, Maryland
2019
