 and everything in between and beyond. I'm Dr. Rita Forsythe, coming to you from Maui on the Think Tech Network series, broadcasting from our studio in downtown Honolulu. The title of today's episode is American Armageddon. Most of us have probably watched movies about the Vietnam War, such as Apocalypse Now and Full Metal Jacket. Remember that epic scene from the movie Platoon where the dust-off helicopter pilot risked his life to rescue the wounded soldiers? Well, our guest today is one of those pilots, highly decorated and now an author, Dr. John Glenn. John, thank you for your service and welcome to the show. Thank you, Rita. Thanks for inviting me. John, you wrote about your experiences in your book, American Armageddon, American Exceptionalism in Vietnam, a Fatal Hubris. John, why American Armageddon? Excellent question. I taught the class on Vietnam for about 20 years. And I think it ended up being, the Vietnam War ended up being an Armageddon. That is, in the biblical sense, it's a battle between good and evil. And a lot of Americans would have argued at the time that the communists were evil and that the democracy was the good. And so they were fighting the good versus the evil. And the subtitle, as you pointed out, has to do with hubris. And I'm disappointed that a lot of American political leaders have this hubris, or you might even say arrogance. And we might even be getting involved in that here now in Ukraine. And I'm amazed how prescient this particular book is in that it was published in the summer of 21. But a lot of historians call the battle, the war in Vietnam a proxy war, P-R-O-X-Y. And that is, it's a war between, at that time, China and Russia versus the United States, but not fought in either of any of those countries. And what we're seeing now in the Ukraine is a similar situation. And we're dumping, as you know, billions of dollars worth of war materials. And I'm frightened that if the next step is boots on the ground, this may end up being another similar Armageddon. Yeah, let's talk about boots on the ground and let's go back to Vietnam, where more than 58,000 Americans were killed. In fact, my husband Eric was wounded during combat and somebody just like you saved his life. So what was the rationale for that conflict? That's another great question. And people ask me all the time, they say, I never really understood while we were in Vietnam. And the answer couldn't be simpler. We were there to contain communism. The policy of the United States was to contain communism all the way from Truman to Nixon. We were successful in Berlin and in Korea and unsuccessful in China and in Cuba. And so the thinking was, okay, we're gonna turn Vietnam into kind of something similar to Korea. We're gonna have a North Korea and a North Vietnam and a South Korea and a South Vietnam. Didn't turn out that way. One of the things that the planners forgot was that Korea was a peninsula and Vietnam is not. And the North Vietnamese were able to continue to ship goods and supplies and manpower down what they call the Ho Chi Minh Trail from North Vietnam into South Vietnam. Well, and let's talk about the domino theory because people our age, we know about that. But some of the younger people may be hearing that term lately, domino theory. Can you talk a little bit about that? Yeah, that was, I think, first promulgated in the Eisenhower administration. The thinking was that if Vietnam became a fully communist nation, then that would expand westward into the rest of what the French used to call Indochina and maybe then continuing westward and taking over the entire world. And the fear was absolutely palpable as you remember with the communists being the bad guys and it looked like Nikita Khrushchev was going to try and take over the world. The communists were taking over the world and America or somebody, once the French were defeated at the Indian flu, somebody needed to step up and the Americans decided that it would be them. So would you grace us by reading a little bit of your book? Sure, I'd be glad to. This is from the chapter where Johnson takes command and I wrote immediately following his landslide victory over Goldwater, Johnson's advisors were asked to form a working group on Southeast Asia. And this would be chaired by the Department of State's William Bundy. And roughly three weeks later, the group gave a report to LBJ outlining three broad alternatives. The first called for a continuation of the current policy which was essentially advisors that was started by President Kennedy that was unsuccessful. The second recommended a harsh program of attacks and increasing intensity against North Vietnam during which negotiations would not be our immediate goal but would not be ruled out. And the third option which appealed to Johnson called for a slow controlled squeeze on North Vietnam in order to bring about negotiations. Now George Ball still virtually the only member of the government speaking and writing against escalation sent McNamara, Rusk and Bundy a 67 page memorandum outlining his minority, dissenting views. Essentially he argued that escalation by one side reads escalation by the other. And in a famous and prophetically prescient phrase he argued once on the tiger's back we cannot be sure of picking the place to dismount and contended instead for a negotiated settlement. In Saigon the government was still in turmoil continued student and Buddhist unrest together with the declining military confidence resulted in yet another coup. Now there's a new commander in president in Vietnam. The arvin was little better than the political leadership corruption was rampant. Officers were often promoted because of political connections instead of ability peasant soldiers deserted in droves although troop levels increased to over 500,000 in late 1964, desertion rates also increased to over 10,000 a month. Desertion rates over 10,000 a month. And by 1966 this had reached epidemic proportions. Widespread evasion of conscription exacerbated the problem to an ever greater extent. By the end of 1965, nearly a quarter million men in the South were draft evaders. Despite the best efforts of American advisors with few exceptions the arvin performed miserably in combat. In simple terms, the incompetent corrupt government and its armed forces could not handle the Viet Cong and their North Vietnamese allies. Johnson had but one alternative rescue the situation by sending in the American military. Therefore clad in the panoply of what I call American exceptionalism and unwilling to learn from the lessons of the French in Southeast Asia. On February 26, 1965, Lyndon Johnson made the momentous decision to approve Westmoreland's request for US military ground forces. Two weeks later on March 8th, 3,500 Marines landed in Da Nang and the American ground troop buildup that would eventually peak at over half a million men in 1969 began. Johnson said, I want them to get off their butts and get out in those jungles and whip the hell out of some commies. I want them to leave me alone because I got bigger things to do right here at home. Johnson was stuck between doing lots of good at home in his great society program and fighting this war in Vietnam. And what historians call it is trying to have guns and butter and presidents who try that are almost always unsuccessful. So America comes to the rescue. You need some more? Wow, only if you want to, but I would love to talk about a couple of things that you said. Tell me more about American exceptionalism. It has to do with this hubris that a lot of Americans and a lot of American politicians have and it can result in unpleasantry. An example, a current example is when Nancy Pelosi went to Taiwan just recently. The Chinese, as you know, said, hey, we don't think that's a good idea. And the American hubris was essentially the hell with you, we're going wherever we want and you can like it or lump it. And that could get us in trouble. We kind of have a big ego, don't we, in America? That's exactly, and the subtitle of my book, as you pointed out, is American exceptionalism in Vietnam, a fatal hubris. And it was this, the French are defeated at Yen Bien Phu by the, what's it called, the Viet Minh at this time, 1954. And so the Americans are going to come in there and essentially they're going to do the same thing. Well, if the French were defeated, what makes the Americans think that they can do any better? Well, this American hubris does. But to their credit, the Americans did have this plan and that was we're going to use these helicopters. We got this ubiquitous Huey helicopter and we can move troops and we can use them for gunships and we can use them for medical evacuation, which is what I did as you pointed out. And so that's going to win this activity for us and that'll be different than the French. The Americans had no idea how strongly the North Vietnamese would fight to unify their homeland and the Americans wanted to contain communism. And another thing that you talked about in your book was the idea of escalation. And that word just scares me because that could happen pretty fast, huh? It sure can. And as I pointed out in the book, one side's escalation brings the other side's escalation and back and forth and there's no telling what they finally recommended to Johnson was that he would now mobilize the American Army Reserves. Well, at the time, as you remember, and I do as well, lots of student and other people anti-war demonstrations. And if Johnson knew that politically, this was a disaster if he was going to have to mobilize the American reserves. Now, who knows what sort of civil disobedience and unrest was going to result in the country. And I see parallels to that, to past skirmishes, World War II, Iraq and Afghanistan 9-11 and our current situation with Russian and Ukraine. Can you talk a little bit about that? The situation now with Russia and the Ukraine is eerily reminiscent of what happened in World War II. 1939-1940, Great Britain was on the ropes and pleading for American aid. Len Lise is what Roosevelt ended up calling it. And I'm sorry, I don't know whether we're getting paid for all the stuff that we're sending to the Ukraine, but in 1939-1940, Great Britain ran out of money and they couldn't pay for it. And so we were lending it or leasing it to the British. Essentially, we weren't getting any money out of the deal after they ran out of money. And if our situation in the Ukraine is similar to that, but I can just see the similarities between what's going on in the Ukraine and what went on in Great Britain. And finally, as everyone is well aware, Roosevelt couldn't hold off any longer. And he started putting, as we say, boots on the ground. It's interesting, fascinating that the Japanese, as you know very well, attacked Pearl Harbor December 7th, 1941. And we then went to war with Germany on the 11th of December. Hitler declared war on America. And I think if Roosevelt had said, okay, we're going to war with Germany because Japan attacked us, a lot of people would have questioned that, but Hitler was nice enough to declare war on America. And so now that allowed Roosevelt to go to war against Germany and Japan as well. I like how you could bring a little humor into it. Difficult time in our nation. Oh, boy, for sure. Yeah, let's go talk about your time in Vietnam. Can you share a story of one of your missions? Oh, sure. I had a flight one time. Any pilots that are watching will be able to really get a interest, really have interest in this. We landed at the refueling position in Da Nang right between thousand foot runways. And Da Nang main airport, the US Air Force main airport there was the second busiest airport in the world at this time. Chicago's O'Hare was number one and Da Nang main was the second busiest. So they have landings and takeoffs going off all the time 24 seven, very, very busy. So we're in between the two runways in this Huey helicopter and we're refueling. And it was what they call hot refueling that as we left the engine running and the rotor blades turning and the copilot would get out and stand on the skid and kind of oversee refueling the crew chief, we had a crew of four the crew chief would put the fuel in and the medic who was with us, he would sort of, he would stand by with a pharynx extinguisher just in case something went wrong and the aircraft commander, the fourth member of the crew would hold the controls. And I was the aircraft commander at this time and we're refueling. And just as my crew got finished refueling and got in, we got a call for a Dust-Off that is a medical evacuation, an urgent they called it Dust-Off south of Da Nang about 50 miles. So I called the tower and I said, Da Nang main tower, Dust-Off 619 just got a call for an urgent Medevac requesting departure as soon as possible. The air traffic controller came back and in one long continuous sentence said, all aircraft cleared for departure, hold your position. All aircraft cleared to land, make a 360 degree turn to the left for clearance. Dust-Off 619, you are cleared for immediate departure should it's out. All in one sentence, we picked up immediately and scooted out south at about 50 feet over the ground. But there's airplanes, we could see them, we're under way underneath them but we could see them out for miles making these turns for spacing and several airplanes ready to go being held for us to go and make this immediate departure and for an urgent medical evacuation. It even makes the hair on the back of my neck stand up now 50 years later. I got chicken skin just listening to you. Hey, tell me, don't leave me hanging. So you get to the mission, what was it? This particular mission was a hoist mission. We have an external rescue hoist that's in the back of the helicopter and these guys were in contact right at that time and they couldn't move, they're wounded. So we had to hover over the top of about a hundred foot tall trees and let this rescue hoist down and they would put their wounded on what's called a stokes litter, it's kind of a wire mesh basket type arrangement and we'd hoist them back up. If the unit that we were going to work with was in contact or had been in contact in the last 30 minutes, we were required to take gunships with us. And so I called what we're called the black cats, they were right there at the Danang main and asked them for gunship support and they of course responded immediately with two Cobra's gunships and we met them on a frequency as we were headed south and they were faster than we were. The Cobra helicopters are faster than the medical evacuation ship in flight time. And so they got there and turned out that the enemy machine gun was up on a hill, I can't recall how far away, but they were taking fire. And so I turned the tail of the helicopter towards the machine gun so that the copilot and I wouldn't be facing the machine gun and hopefully they couldn't shoot out the tail rotor, you know, maybe they could, but that seemed like the most logical thing and that gunships were shooting at them at the time and we were able to make two hoists, two patients, get them into the helicopter and head back to what was called the 95th evacuation hospital in Danang. Yeah, one thing that was kind of frustrating about flying a medical evacuation is that we don't know how they did. We were busy and we would land and the corpsmen would take them into the hospital on gurneys of course. We would go and refuel and often had another flight and so I heard that over 90% of the casualties in Vietnam survived because largely due to the fact that they could get to the hospital so quickly. And as you say, your husband was one of those. That's right, he's here today. Mary Tumua as of dust off pilots like you. So John, what's the answer here? I mean, how can we avoid this happening again in our world? Avoiding this hubris that you and I have been talking about avoiding this arrogance. We don't want to let people walk all over America of course but diplomacy is the answer, not a war. General Westmoreland in Vietnam decided on a particular strategy called attrition. He was going to kill 10 communists to every one American boy that was killed. And he told us to a South Carolina Senator friend of his named Fritz Hollings. He said, Fritz, we're gonna kill 10 of their men to one of our guys that gets killed. And Fritz said, Westie, the American people don't care about the 10. They care about the one. And that was eerily prescient on the Senator's part because that's what they cared about. And as you mentioned, 58,000 Americans were killed and untold numbers wounded PTSD as you're aware as affected thousands and thousands of Vietnam vets and then Iraq vets and then Afghanistan vets. And I'm frightened that President Biden will not be able to avoid this hubris. And what could happen is we send a small contingent, a small group of advisors to help the Ukrainians. Then one of them gets killed and then here we go. And so I'm hoping that that doesn't happen. But my book outlines how we got into Vietnam, how we were going to do better than the French, how the president wanted to get in. He got advice either get in or get out and he chose to get in and then finally Nixon decided that we had to get out. And so he pursued every course he could and finally pulled the Americans out in 1973 and was successful in extracting after almost 10 years. Well, if you could sit down with our president today, what advice, what would you say to him if you had two minutes to talk to our president? I'd handed my book and I'd say, read this book and don't let us get stepped into this quagmire like Johnson did because it seems like American aid to Ukraine can help them succeed and it certainly can. But what's the next step for Russia? Maybe it's to join forces with the Chinese. And if that happens, then we've got another proxy war going on in Ukraine between the Russians and the Chinese on the one side and the Americans on the other side. And that's not where we wanna be. Hey, let's send him the book, I'll pay for postage. Good one. That's all the time we have today. Oh, I could talk to you for hours. I wanna thank you, John, for being my special guest. Thank our broadcast engineer, our floor manager and Jay Fidel, our executive producer. A special mahalo, yes, special mahalo. Thank you so much, Rita. Thank you, a special mahalo to our underwriters and thank you audience for joining us. Books, books, books will be back in two weeks. Until then, read, write and create your own world. Thank you so much for watching Think Tech Hawaii. If you like what we do, please like us and click the subscribe button on YouTube and the follow button on Vimeo. You can also follow us on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and LinkedIn and donate to us at thinktechhawaii.com. Mahalo.