Ep. 1055 The Truth About the Vietnam War, with Gareth Porter
The Tom Woods Show
Tom Woods
4.8 • 3.3K Ratings
🗓️ 7 December 2017
⏱️ 42 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
We've all heard the usual arguments: the U.S. government entered the Vietnam War because of the domino theory, or because of SEATO treaty obligations, or whatever. The recent Ken Burns PBS series on the war, for example, repeats many conventional arguments about the war.
Gareth Porter, on the other hand, joins me to discuss rather a different interpretation of the war. We cover the origins of the war, the nature of the war (were civilians deliberately targeted?), the Cambodian incursion, and a lot more.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | The Tom Woods Show, episode 155. |
| 0:03.4 | Prepare to set fire to the index card of allowable opinion. |
| 0:08.2 | Your daily dose of Liberty Education starts here, the Tom Woods Show. |
| 0:14.5 | Folks, it's that time of year again. |
| 0:16.4 | This holiday give Harry's and give Handsome. |
| 0:18.8 | Get your holiday shopping done early and take advantage of free |
| 0:21.7 | shipping to get a limited edition holiday shape set while supplies last go to harries dot com slash woods right now |
| 0:28.9 | that's harries dot com slash woods everybody tom woods here we're talking about the vietnam war today |
| 0:34.8 | there's been a lot of discussion about it in recent months and weeks because of the multi-part PBS special that has the name Ken Burns on it. |
| 0:44.3 | And I thought we would talk to Gareth Porter, who has another perspective on the Vietnam War. |
| 0:50.1 | Gareth Porter holds a Ph.D. in Southeast Asian Studies from Cornell University. He is the author of numerous books including Perils of Dominance, |
| 0:58.0 | Imbalance of Power and the Road to War in Vietnam. |
| 1:02.0 | He was active as a Vietnam specialist and anti-war activist during the Vietnam War, |
| 1:06.0 | serving as Saigon Bureau Chief for Dispatch News Service International |
| 1:10.0 | from 1970 to 1971, and later as |
| 1:13.2 | co-director of the Indochina Resource Center. He's taught at numerous universities, and he joins us today. |
| 1:19.4 | Gareth Porter, welcome back to the show. Thank you so much, Tom. Glad to be on. |
| 1:23.3 | The idea for this episode came from our friend Gene Epstein, who is now happily retired from Barron's, |
| 1:29.5 | and he had commissioned a review from you, and it was all the timing because of his retirement |
| 1:34.2 | didn't quite work out, but he thought maybe this could be the genesis of a great episode |
| 1:39.9 | between the two of us. So that's what we're doing. I have not seen this Ken Burns or who knows |
| 1:44.9 | who's really in charge of its series on the Vietnam War, just because I watched so little |
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