by Robin Collins
The idea of Canadian complicity in the Vietnam war was once contrary to the customary mythology that "Americans fought and killed in Vietnam while Canadians opened their doors to conscientious objectors." But these days, as memories fade and Vietnam war revisionism is buoyed by the end of the Cold War, there are new calls for official government recognition of the estimated 10,000 Canadians who served in Indochina as mercenaries. There has been de facto recognition already as a result of increased visibility of these soldiers at Rememberance Day ceremonies but some want the government to establish monuments to honour Canadian Vietnam war veterans. Is this a good idea?
American direct involvement in Vietnam which followed the withdrawal of French colonialism in the mid 1950's and continued until the signing of the Paris Peace Accords in 1973, left 1.7 million dead, 2.7 million wounded and 13 million as refugees. The U.S. military dropped 7.1 million tons of bombs and sprayed 75.5 million litres of defoliant over South Vietnam. Despite the enormity of these numbers, studies indicate that today the average American citizen believes that "only" 100,000 people died in a decade of intervention (close to the same number of Iraqis killed by the U.S. military in the Gulf war in just six weeks.)
The perception of a neutral Canada during this period is belied by the fact that Canadian industry supplied $2.47 billion worth of war material to the United States between 1968 and 1973 through Defence Production Sharing Agreements. More than one third of all Canadian defence sales during these years - includinig aircraft parts, shells, and even napalm - were destined for use in Southeast Asia. However, Canadian Prime Minister Lester Pearson declared that the shipment of weapons directly to Vietnam "would be incompatible with our role" as impartial observer in Vietnam. Therefore Canada shipped its weapons and related equipment to the U.S., and from there they made their way to battle in Vietnam. Pearson, a recipient of the Nobel Prize for Peace, stated that "equipment goes into the general inventory of the U.S. armed forces and may be used for such purposes and in such parts of the world as the U.S. government may see fit."
The 1954 Geneva Conference which temporarily divided Vietnam into North and South, also established the International Control Commission (comprised of representatives from India, Poland and Canada) to oversee the process towards elections for reunification by 1956. The outcome of the elections was not in dispute. U.S. President Eisenhower wrote in his memoirs that "had elections been held...80% of the population would have voted for Ho Chi Minh" and the country would have rejoined along terms set by the north. However, elections were not permitted by the U.S.-supported Diem government in the south despite the provisions of the Geneva Accords. Victor Levant in his detailed 1986 study (Quiet Complicity, Canadian Involvement in the Vietnam War) underlines the fact that "the most fundamental violation of the Accords was the failure to hold the 1956 elections."
U.S. President John F. Kennedy backed the autocratic Diem regime until it became expedient to back Diem's assassination in a military coup in 1963. It was Kennedy who began the early escalation of military aid to the south including the introduction of U.S. "advisory" personnel. In November 1963, the American troop presence had reached 15,000 but numbers peaked at 525,000 American troops by 1968.
Justifying the war
Critical to validating U.S. military intervention during these years were the claims of threatened or actual military "infiltration" from the north into the south. It was primarily the Canadian delegation that formulated the 1962 Special Report to the Co-Chairman of the Geneva Conference on Indo-China that was used to justify U.S. allegations of "internal aggression" by north Vietnam. Canada supported the spurious claim that Vietnam was divided into two sovereign states. This position was never sanctioned by the Geneva Accords, but as a technical claim, it enabled the U.S. to deny that the conflict was of a civil nature to be settled by Vietnamese and not by an American "police action". Canada's third ICC commissioner in Vietnam, Bruce Williams, concluded from his instructions that Canada's main concern was not the "fulfillment of the Geneva Agreements per se, but the maintenance of peace in Southeast Asia as a method of thwarting Communist ascendancy in the area."
There was no clear evidence of north Vietnamese involvement in the south after 1954 until after the U.S. itself intervened. It was estimated that in 1965, when there were 140,000 fighters in the NLF ("Vietcong") fighting the U.S.-backed government, they were joined by only 400 soldiers from the north. In fact, there were more U.S. "advisors" in the south of Vietnam than there were "infiltrators" from the north.
Canadian support
In Canada, Diefenbaker's Conservative Party supported the U.S. policy in Vietnam. His external affairs secretary stating in 1962 that "any action the U.S. has taken has been in a measure of defence against communist action."
In 1965, Paul Martin spoke for the Pearson (Liberal) government, stating that "the American forces were in their right in answering those attacks against them and South Vietnam as provided by section 51 of the United Nations Charter" (a section restricted to members of the UN, a status not held by "South" Vietnam.)
The Canadian ICC contingent twice offered legitimation for U.S. troop intervention and air war over North Vietnam; it furnished the U.S. with strategic intelligence about the location of enemy troop movements; and it acted as messengers by relaying threats issued from the American military. One Canadian retired military officer once stated that he was "bloody ashamed of some of the things I was required to do."
Role for peace
Instead of complicity, we remind ourselves that up to 40,000 American draft resistors and deserters came to Canada to escape the war in Vietnam, and this was a role that many Canadians are proud of. In 1972, however, the Trudeau government changed immigration legislation to make it illegal to apply for landed immigrant staus from within Canada or at the border. This new policy was "tantamount to the closing of Canada as a haven for most military war resisters and deserters."
The next year, 1973, the peace was signed and the draft was abolished in the United States. The war in Vietnam ended and the syndrome began.
Converted April 6, 2001 - Lg
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