Dad's Was Vietnam, Son's Is Iraq

By Hamish McKenzie
t r u t h o u t | Perspective

Monday 28 January 2008

A unique pair of reporters, a father and son, talk about their different wars. John Berthelsen and his son Christian are perhaps the only father-son combination to cover the defining wars of their generations: Vietnam and Iraq. Hamish McKenzie recently interviewed the men together to talk about the differences in covering the wars. John, who covered Vietnam for Newsweek in 1966 and 1967, and Christian, who has been covering Iraq for The Los Angeles Times, offer unique perspectives and insights in this magazine-length feature.

In 1966, John Berthelsen went to war with a manual Olivetti Lettera 22 typewriter, a copy of Evelyn Waugh's "Scoop" and six weeks of French lessons. The 26-year-old Newsweek reporter, not long out of a job with northern California's Grass Valley Union (circulation: 6,700), was embarking on a one-year assignment to report on combat in the Vietnam War. In his words, he was sent out to be "cannon fodder."

In March 2007, John's son Christian was sent to war with a satellite phone, a laptop and a Kevlar vest. The 35-year-old Los Angeles Times reporter, who usually covers suburban politics, was on his first posting in Iraq: a six-week relief stint for one of the newspaper's regular war correspondents at the start of the current troop surge. It was a journey heavily influenced by his father.

"If you want anyone to take you seriously in journalism, you've got to cover a war," John had told Christian at the start of his career. So when a staff email from the Times was circulated asking for volunteers to cover Iraq, Christian stuck up his hand. He got the go-ahead by return email within seven minutes. "There isn't a huge supply of people wanting to go to Iraq," he says, with a laugh.

The two men are sitting at John's family dinner table in his small but stylish apartment in Hong Kong, where John lives and works as editor of the Asia Sentinel, an online regional magazine. The next day is his 70th birthday, but a morning exercise regime has ensured he looks 10 years younger. The owner of a steely glare and a ready smile, he has thin grey hair on his head and white stubble flanking his jaw. Though his conversation frequently turns to depressing themes - the deaths of friends in war, the threat of being blown up on the front lines - he often finishes his sentences in hearty laughter. Christian, a sturdy-necked and chipper man who can quickly shift to solemn, sweats through a dark T-shirt in Hong Kong's intense humidity. Recently engaged, he's passing through on his way back to Baghdad for a second rotation covering the world's biggest story. This time he'll be there four weeks.

Christian returns to Baghdad at a time when debate over troop withdrawal is intensifying - not least in the presidential primaries, where candidates across the spectrum have scrambled to stake their ground in relation to the war - and when even George W. Bush has compared the conflict Christian is covering with the one reported on by his father.

However, there is a difference between Bush's version of the two wars and comparisons made by critics. At the Veterans of Foreign Wars national convention in August 2007, Bush told the audience that withdrawing US troops from Iraq would lead to widespread death and suffering, as it did, to some extent, in Vietnam. Critics have said there are more striking parallels that don't match Bush's PR story, arguing that both wars have strong insurgency elements, both were started on a questionable basis, and that in Iraq, as in Vietnam, the US is bogged down in an unwinnable conflict for which there is no end in sight.

The two men at the dinner table - perhaps the only father-son combination to cover the two wars - are uniquely placed to offer insights on the differences between Vietnam and Iraq, if only through the prism of a reporter's eye. But that is a significant perspective. Of all the differences between the conflicts, the changes in the role and operation of the media are among the most dramatic.

Saigon Tea, Baghdad Bitter

Saigon in 1966 and 1967 could be exhilarating. Outside of the combat zones in Vietnam's Central Highlands and the Mekong Delta, downtown was where the best action was to be found. On notorious Tu Do Street, soldiers and journalists would make the most of their downtime, availing themselves of the many brothels and bars, and buying bar girls with beehive hairdos and tight skirts "Saigon Tea" - basically, weak soda - in exchange for a variety of affections. The restaurants were plentiful, the food excellent, and the Filipino entertainers first-rate. "Saigon," remembers John, "was wonderful."

Baghdad is way different. "You could never do that now," says Christian, after hearing his father describe times when groups of reporters would take Army generals - top dog William Westmoreland included - out for drinks to discuss the war's progress (or lack thereof). There is almost no place for a reporter to socialize in Baghdad. "Personal security is so limited and danger to war reporters is so ever-present you can't go out in pubs, you can't go into bars," says Christian. It's possible to meet with other reporters within your compound, but only those within about 200 feet.

Immediately after the Iraq invasion and the defeat of the Saddam Hussein regime, there was a brief window for socializing, but that was soon slammed shut when the insurgency began. Christian tells the story of a group of Times staffers who went to dine with friends at an upscale city restaurant on New Year's Eve, at the end of 2003. As some of the group sat down at their table at the front of the restaurant and others parked their car outside, a suicide car-bomber rammed into the back wall, creating a massive explosion that injured all the Times staff and killed five Iraqis.

Since the US invaded in 2003, there have already been more than twice as many journalists killed in Iraq (139 and counting) as were killed in 20 years of the Vietnam War (63). Unlike in Vietnam, any Westerner on the streets of Baghdad is a target. As Christian puts it: "People are trying to kill you. There are certain elements who want to capture you and behead you on camera."

That means it's almost impossible for a reporter to travel around the city, let alone the country, without the military. In John's day, reporters would rise at 4 a.m., figure out where the fighting was, jump on a transport plane, and land close to the combat. Then they'd get on a smaller plane or in a helicopter, touch down, and hitchhike their way into the thick of it, often telling military truck drivers, "We're looking for the action." Once on the scene, they'd scramble for whatever dug-outs and shelters were nearby, with bullets whistling through the hot, sticky air overhead. "That was pretty exhilarating," remembers John, with one of his trademark chuckles.

To get close to the action in Iraq necessitates a convoluted process, involving a series of forms and applications for permission to be embedded with the troops. "Operational difficulties are ridiculous," says Christian. On-the-ground combat is also a different beast. When he has travelled with the military, Christian has reported on improvised explosive devices, elusive snipers and surprise attacks in city streets. In a story from earlier this year, he describes one such incident:

Some of the soldiers were nodding off when the grenade exploded; suddenly, it seemed, there was gunfire everywhere. Pfc. Vincent Rabago, a 21-year-old Humvee gunner from Long Beach, wheeled in his turret to fire, but his mounted machine gun jammed. He picked up his M-4 rifle and began shooting. Just as suddenly as it began, the attack was over. Helicopters were called in but [the crews] saw nothing.

On a more typical day, when he's confined to his compound, Christian has to rely on local Iraqi reporters for news from the streets. "Sometimes you can have a conversation with that reporter prior to them going out and reporting and say, 'Well here's what I need, here's what I'm looking for,' and other times, you're just getting what they give you." Those brave Iraqi reporters collect the grim information: the details and the body counts.

Taking Sides

When it comes to meting out information, the military has learned its lesson from Vietnam, says John, who as a reporter has never been shy of criticizing those in power - a quality he says is at the heart of Asia Sentinel's mission as one of the few independent news organizations covering the entire Asia region. "They've changed everything," he says. "We used to go out on missions called Operation Market Garden. They'd just take two words and put them together and that was the name of the mission. And now it's Operation Total Victory - it's the whole propaganda chain."

Forget application forms and controlled embeds - in Vietnam, war plans were as accessible as the Five O'clock Follies, the daily military briefings much ridiculed for their overly rosy scenarios. Explains John: "I'd walk into a tent out there in some division headquarters and sit down with a major or a colonel, and he'd give me the whole order of battle - so you've got that over here, they're over here, this is going to happen there - you learned everything." By contrast, John says, the process in Iraq seems designed to put reporters psychologically in a place where it is much more difficult to be critical.

His son disagrees. Sure, the military can choose where you go - and sometimes that's determined by whatever offensive they want PR for - but "with the Iraq war, you can't just go out and thumb it." And it's not like the military command is looking over his shoulder while he writes. "When you're there, you're a reporter. Nobody reads your copy before you file it. Nobody tells you what you can or can't write. A lot of it is up to individual will. My bureau chief Tina [Susman] gave me the best advice that I think I've got anywhere, which is just 'Write what you see.' And so if that's what you're going to do, write what you see, there's no way the military can control what you're saying, because you see it, put it down, you send it."

The close contact with the military does, however, have its risks, just as it did in Vietnam - at least when it comes to questions of impartiality. In Vietnam, John had friends who were in the middle ranks of the Army. In Iraq, Christian can't help but be impressed by the troops. "I was astonished how for the most part talented and professional these guys were, and how young they are. It's amazing how young they are." He couldn't imagine being 19 and having that much responsibility. "You're with these guys and they do amazing things, so there's sort of a natural inclination to like these guys. But also your journalistic instinct is there too and you know what's part of a story and you put that in the story."

John likens the predicament he experienced in Vietnam to a football game. "If you're standing on the sideline with the San Francisco 49ers, then there's a psychological thing that the entire crowd around you is for that team. And you're riding in military airplanes, you're riding in military helicopters, you're riding in military jeeps, trucks. You're around military, you're eating in military mess halls, in some cases, you've got your military base stations. So there was always the danger of becoming a cheerleader, which you really had to worry about. And a lot of guys did [become cheerleaders]."

Still, that hasn't stopped some critics from blaming the media for the loss in Vietnam. It's a point that rankles with John - "the US press did not lose the war in Vietnam; the US military lost the war in Vietnam," he says emphatically. It's a theme he has written about many times. In January, in a story called "Who Lost Vietnam? (And Who's Going to Lose Iraq?)," he concluded:

The United States lost in Vietnam. It didn't cut and run. Its resolve lasted for a decade - at that point the longest war in the country's history - and it finally withdrew not because it was betrayed by its press but because the price had become too high for a democracy to pay for a dubious cause, far from its shores. It would be a wise lesson to remember for the neoconservatives who charge the press with treachery.

First Draft of History

Yet, without doubt, the media did have significant influence in Vietnam, stronger than it ever had before. Not for nothing was it tagged the Televised War. Images of war atrocities, and the coffins returning home, were beamed nightly into the living rooms of ordinary Americans, many of whom had sons, brothers, cousins, nephews and uncles who, unlike Dick Cheney and George W. Bush, had been unable to avoid the draft. Television then offered few channels and the nightly news was a ritual for most Americans. (When Walter Cronkite turned skeptical on a 1968 trip to Vietnam, his subsequent commentaries helped seal the defeat of public sympathy for the war.) The magazines and newspapers daily brought more harrowing tales of massacres and mishaps, at the same time as the government told the American public that there was light at the end of the tunnel. America in the 1960s was keenly focused on the media and the war that gripped its sons.

Not so in 2007, where the draft is a distant memory and the Iraq war fights for headlines in the multi-choice universe of the information age with Britney Spears and whatever company Google just bought. As American soldiers, Iraqi fighters, insurgents and innocent civilians are killed and even as the costs of war run into the trillions of dollars, many Americans still look the other way. "My perception is that the American public pays less attention to coverage from the Iraq war, at least on a day-to-day basis, than they did to the Vietnam War," says Christian. "I think the US has gotten very insulated, very comfortable, very affluent."

With today's volunteer Army, says John, most families don't feel personally threatened, as they did in Vietnam. "The volunteer Army is drawn by-and-large from an almost invisible segment of society - the people who are poorer, the people who don't have much influence, the people who want a career, who want to be in the Army." The end result is that the Iraq war doesn't occupy the American consciousness to the extent that Vietnam did. The immediate power of the press, reckons Christian, doesn't have the impact it had then.

But at this critical juncture, as the US contemplates withdrawal from, or long-term commitment to, Iraq, it's possible the press plays as important a role as ever. The difference is that this time that power lies within the cumulative effect of reporting, rather than immediate impact. And finally, the American public is beginning to demand answers from a previously unchallenged administration.

"The fact is that there are atrocities in war and somebody's got to report on them," says John. "It's imperative. [This] may be naive but if you think that the United States is a democracy and one that stands for more than, say, the government of Burma, an integral part of the American political system is the press. That was the First Amendment to the Constitution. That's what makes democracies function."

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"Hamish McKenzie" is a Hong Kong-based journalist. His work has been published in numerous publications, including the South China Morning Post, CNN.com, the New Zealand Herald, the New Zealand Listener, and Asia Sentinel. "Hamish McKenzie" may be contacted at hjl.mckenzie@gmail.com.

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