"I've seen this before in my life. This is the same situation we had in Vietnam. Everybody then kept saying, 'just another year, just stay the course, we'll have a victory.' Well, we didn't have a victory, and this policy cost the lives of an additional 25,000 troops because we were too stubborn to recognize what was happening."
Whatever else one thought of Dean’s remarks, and whatever one’s views are on the propriety of analogizing the conflict in Iraq with Vietnam, Dean’s equating of the Bush Administration’s statements about the Iraq war to the statements which Americans heard from their Government throughout the duration of the Vietnam War was absolutely, indisputably accurate as a matter of historical fact.
Much of the American population is too young to remember how it was that the combat phase of the Vietnam War dragged on from 1965 until 1975, with virtually no progress, culminating in clear American defeat.
But a review of what Americans were being told about the war as it was being waged – the falsely optimistic reports from the Executive Branch and military leaders, the endless promises of imminent improvement which never arrived, the equating of anti-war sentiment with surrender and cowardice, and even the misleading Governmental accounts of the Gulf of Tonkin incident which manipulated a compliant Congress into initially giving Johnson war authority – reveals striking similarities in both rhetoric and substance with respect to the Government’s claims about Vietnam and Iraq.
Following are representative statements made by Presidents Johnson and Nixon, military leaders, and others regarding the Vietnam War was as it evolved. These are all contemporaneous statements made at the time, and are thus free of any retrospective interpretation or distortion.
The similarities between them and the statements we have been hearing, and continue to hear, about Iraq are self-evident and require no explanation:
INTERVIEW WITH U.S. ARMY MAJOR ROBERT RYAN, 1962:
Q: Major, how would you say the war was going in your sector?
A: Well, I think here, lately, the... it's going a lot better; I think we're beginning to win the people over; our operations are going better. We're actually getting VC.
Q: What evidence do you have that the... you're winning the people over?
A: Well, we've got the "strategic hamlet" program going on. And when we go out on these operations, it seems like the people are more friendly. Several times recently we've had people warn the Vietnamese troops that there was an ambush ahead, or something like that. This means the people are getting on our side.
John Kennedy Press Conference, December 12, 1962:
Q: It was just a year ago that you ordered stepped-up aid to Vietnam. Seems to be a good deal of discouragement about the progress. Can you give us your assessment?
A: No, we are putting in a major effort in Vietnam. As you know, we have uh, have about ten or 11 times as many men there as we had a year ago. They are... We've had a number of casualties. We've put in an awful lot of equipment. We've been going ahead with the strategic hamlet proposal. In some phases the military program has been quite successful. There is great difficulty, however, in fighting a guerrilla war; you need ten to one, or 11 to one, especially in terrain as difficult as South Vietnam. But I'm, uh... so we're not, uh... we don't see the end of the tunnel; but, I must say, I don't think it's darker than it was a year ago -- in some ways, lighter.
Robert McNamara, in South Vietnam, 1964:
We are here to emphasize that the United States will maintain its interest and its presence in your country. There is no question whatsoever of our abandoning that interest. We'll stay for as long as it takes. We shall provide whatever help is required to win the battle against the Communist insurgents.
U.S. Navy Film, omitting critical facts in order to falsely depict the Gulf of Tonkin incident as an unprovoked North Vietnamese attack on the U.S.S. Maddox:
In international waters in the Gulf of Tonkin, destroyers of the United States Navy are assigned routine patrols from time to time. Sunday, August the 2, 1964, the destroyer Maddox was on such a patrol. Shortly after noon, the calm of the day is broken as general quarters sound.
In a deliberate and unprovoked action, three North Vietnam PT boats unleash a torpedo attack against the Maddox. At once, the enemy patrol boats are brought under fire by the destroyer.
MAN-ON-THE-STREET INTERVIEWS:First Man: Well, I think that President Johnson has done the correct thing. I really do.
Second Man: I don't think that he could have done otherwise. Especially when they attacked the American flag, yeah.
Third Man: I'm behind him on it. I'm not for Johnson. I'm for Goldwater. But I'm behind him on this.
JAMES THOMSON: The minute incident number one happened, the attack on our ships, the resolution was brought right back off the shelf, put right to Congress and of course, after incident number two, sailed through with virtually no dissent. A blank check.
SENATOR WILLIAM FULBRIGHT, war supporter:Well, I think it's a very clear demonstration of the unity of the country behind the policies that are being followed by the President in South Vietnam, and more specifically, of the action that was taken in response to the attack upon our destroyers. It shows a practically unanimous approval. It was unanimous in the House, and only two dissented in the Senate.
SENATOR WAYNE MORSE (one of two Senators to vote against the war authorization): Being in the minority never proves that you're wrong. In fact, history is going to record that Senator Greuning and I voted in the interest of the American people this morning when we voted against this resolution.
And I'd have the American people remember what this resolution really is. It's a resolution which seeks to give the President of the United States the power to make war without a declaration of war.
PRESIDENT JOHNSON, July 28, 1965:
We do not want an expanding struggle with consequences that no one can foresee. Nor will we bluster or bully or flaunt our power. But we will not surrender. And we will not retreat. We intend to convince the Communists that we cannot be defeated by force of arms or by superior power. I have asked the commanding general, General Westmoreland, what more he needs to meet this mounting aggression. He has told me, and we will meet his needs.
GEN. WILLIAM WESTMORELAND, press conference in October 1965, after the slaughter of 155 US troops at Landing Zone Albany, in the battle of Ia Drang:
"I consider this an unprecedented victory. At no time during the engagement were American troops forced to withdraw or move back from their positions, except for tactical manoeuvres. The enemy fled from the scene."
President Johnson's State of the Union Address, 1966
The enemy is no longer close to victory. Time is no longer on his side. There is no cause to doubt the American commitment.Our decision to stand firm has been matched by our desire for peace.
And we will continue to help the people of South Vietnam care for those that are ravaged by battle, create progress in the villages, and carry forward the healing hopes of peace as best they can amidst the uncertain terrors of war.And let me be absolutely clear: The days may become months, and the months may become years, but we will stay as long as aggression commands us to battle.
President Johnson's State of the Union Address, 1967
So our test is not whether we shrink from our country's cause when the dangers to us are obvious and close at hand, but, rather, whether we carry on when they seem obscure and distant -- and some think that it is safe to lay down our burdens. . . .
Our men in that area -- there are nearly 500,000 now -- have borne well "the burden and the heat of the day." Their efforts have deprived the Communist enemy of the victory that he sought and that he expected a year ago. We have steadily frustrated his main forces. General Westmoreland reports that the enemy can no longer succeed on the battlefield.
So I must say to you that our pressure must be sustained -- and will be sustained -- until he realizes that the war he started is costing him more than he can ever gain.
VICE PRESIDENT HUBERT HUMPHREY, October 1967:
And may I say that despite public opinion polls -- none of which may I say have ever been friendly toward a nation's commitment in battle -- despite criticism, despite understandable impatience, we mean to stick it out, until aggression is turned back and until a just and honorable peace can be achieved, until the job is done. That is the policy of the President of the United States, the Vice President of the United States and the Congress of the United States. So let people understand that.
General Westmoreland and Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Ernest Wheerler, November 16, 1967:
REPORTER: How do you see it, General?
GENERAL WESTMORELAND: Very very encouraged. I've never been more encouraged during my entire, almost four years in this country. I think we're making real progress. Everybody is very optimistic that I know of, who is intimately associated with our effort there.
GENERAL EARLE WHEELER (Chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff): We feel that on the military side there has been substantial progress over the past two years, that in the last six months, the progress has been even more rapid than in the 18 months before that.
PRESIDENT JOHNSON, December 22, 1967:
All the challenges have been met. The enemy is not beaten but he knows that he has met his master in the field.
Gen. William Westmoreland, February, 1968:
While he expected the siege to continue for a few more days, he said, there were signs it was "about to run out of steam."
The next day, Westmoreland's headquarters put out this communiqué: "Although the enemy raided numerous cities and towns throughout the republic and achieved some temporary success, they have failed to take and hold any major installations or localities. Although some enemy units are still occupying positions in a few cities, they are rapidly being driven out."
War hawk Joseph Alsop, column in The Washington Post, February 1, 1968
"We are already engulfed in another spate of warnings that all is hopeless in Vietnam because of the attack on the U.S. Embassy and the other V.C. efforts in Saigon and other cities. In reality, however, this flurry of V.C. activities in urban centers will almost certainly prove to have just the opposite meaning in the end. The nearest parallel is probably the fruitless Japanese use of Kamikaze pilots in the Second World War's final phase."
GEN. EARLE G. WHEELER, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, excusing the photographed 1968 execution of a bound prisoner by South Vietnamese General Nguyen Ngoc Loan:
Wheeler expressed a "sense of revulsion at barbarous acts and summary executions," but then added that the killing outside the Vietnam pagoda had happened "more in a flash of outrage" than in an act of cold blood.
PRESIDENT LYNDON JOHNSON, March 1968:
Now to meet the needs of these fighting men, we shall do whatever is required.Make no mistake about it. I don't want a man in here to go back home thinking otherwise. We are going to win!
Gen. William Westmoreland, March, 1968:
In 1968 a new phase is now starting. We have reached an important point when the end begins to come into view.
President Nixon, May 5, 1969:
We can have honest debate about whether we should have entered the war. We can have honest debate about the past conduct of the war. But the urgent question today is what to do now that we are there, not whether we should have entered on this course, but what is required of us today.
President Nixon, November 3, 1969:
For the future of peace, precipitate withdrawal would thus be a disaster of immense magnitude.
A nation cannot remain great if it betrays its allies and lets down its friends. Our defeat and humiliation in South Vietnam without question would promote recklessness in the councils of those great powers who have not yet abandoned their goals of world conquest. This would spark violence wherever our commitments help maintain the peace-in the Middle East, in Berlin, eventually even in the Western Hemisphere.
Ultimately, this would cost more lives. . . . .
The defense of freedom is everybody's business-not just Americas business. And it is particularly the responsibility of the people whose freedom is threatened. In the previous administration, we Americanized the war in Vietnam. In this administration, we are Vietnamizing the search for peace. . . .
And now we have begun to see the results of this long overdue change in American policy in Vietnam: After 5 years of Americans going into Vietnam, we are finally bringing American men home. By December 15, over 60,000 men will have been withdrawn from South Vietnam-including 20 percent of all of our combat forces. The South Vietnamese have continued to gain in strength. As a result they have been able to take over combat responsibilities from our American troops. . . . .
Two other significant developments have occurred since this administration took office: Enemy infiltration, infiltration which is essential if they are to launch a
major attack, over the last 3 months is less than 20 percent of what it was over the same period last year. Most important-United States casualties have declined during the last 2 months to the lowest point in 3 years.
None of this proves that Iraq is Vietnam. It may be that what was said year after year in Vietnam to justify the continuation of the war was false and inaccurate, whereas the same exact things being told to us today about Iraq are true.
But what it does prove is that Howard Dean's statement was historically factual:
"I've seen this before in my life. This is the same situation we had in Vietnam. Everybody then kept saying, 'just another year, just stay the course, we'll have a victory.' Well, we didn't have a victory, and this policy cost the lives of an additional 25,000 troops because we were too stubborn to recognize what was happening."
Many of Bush's statements and those from our Generals and war pundits are not just similar but almost verbatim to what was said in Vietnam in order to convince the public to support ongoing war and to attack those who favored an end to the war. Because all of this occurred almost 40 years ago, memories have faded and many, many people did not live through it.
For that reason, it is incomparably valuable to go back and review what was being said at the time. If nothing else, it enables one to assess the Bush Administration's claims about Iraq with some historical perspective.
Great, great work here. Thank you. When you look at it this way, it's hard not to think of Americans as stupid dupes who, like Charlie Brown to Lucy, keep going to kick the football and falling for the same gag over and over.
ReplyDeleteWe lost Vietnam because people like you kept saying we were losing. If that hadn't happened, we would have won. Try not to make the same mistake again.
ReplyDeleteMisleading statements about the Vietnam war by the government and military are not the whole story or only lesson of of that war. Military historian Victor Davis Hanson writes, in an essay drafted before 9/11, a candid assessment that grapples with how a free society can win a war when the media is free to distort and activists to generate a political climate that can dictate sometimes unswise war tactics. Hanson fully concedes govt lies:
ReplyDeleteThe American media had it mostly right relatively quickly about Vietnam: The military and the administration in Washington often misled and sometimes lied about the course of the war. American tactics, especially the carpet bombing of jungles and forests, could be ineffectual, inhumane, and counterproductive. Draft exemptions were not equitable. The South Vietnamese government was often dishonest. The rules of engagement were ludicrous.
But there is more to the story, and it is relevant to assessing how to proceed in the Middle East.
Yes, me again.
Glenn, I think this is a spectacular post. I hope you keep it up. I don't know how you do it in the first place.
ReplyDeleteAs to "Me Again" - it is strange to hear you say "activists" as if they were not Americans, too. If a substantial portion of a free society believes a war to be wrong, why should they not be heard? Perhaps their dissent is in fact accurate and appropriate. Perhaps that war then and this war now are totally for the wrong reasons.
Even more, what were the terrible outcomes of leaving Viet Nam as we did? Did communism rule the world? Did American influence disappear? Did more Americans and Vietnamese die from our leaving than would have died from our staying?
Me Again, Iraq is the wrong war, the wrong time, and the wrong place. The fact that we were lied into it doesn't change any of that.
Jake
how a free society can win a war when the media is free to distort and activists to generate a political climate that can dictate sometimes unswise war tactics.
ReplyDeleteWinston Churchill made this point constantly. That it was more difficult for him than any other war leader -- including FDR -- to lead a war because he constantly had to answer questions directly from the House of Commons and disclose way more of his thinking - and accommodate public pressure and opinion way more - than any other leader, and certainly more than the German and Italian dictators.
Nonetheless, the democracies prevailed in that conflict, and in World War I, and in the Cold War. Ultimately, public opinion of that type serves as an important check on war leaders who can become insular and stubborn to the point of losing touch with reality.
Jake asks: Did more Americans and Vietnamese die from our leaving than would have died from our staying?
ReplyDeleteI am astonished at that inquiry. How old are you? Do you recall the "boat people?"
Because we did not fight to win, because we ended our military offensives in '73 and ceased all military assistance to South Vietnam per the demands of the activists you apparently admire, Communists in Cambodia and Vietnam killed many millions of people. There is blood on the hands of the "peace activists":
As Professor Emeritus of Political Science Rudolph J. Rummel has written:
Cambodia probably lost slightly less than 4,000,000 people to war, rebellion, man-made famine, genocide, politicide, and mass murder. The vast majority, almost 3,300,000 men, women, and children (including 35,000 foreigners), were murdered within the years 1970 to 1980 by successive governments and guerrilla groups. Most of these, a likely near 2,400,000, were murdered by the communist Khmer Rouge.
The Khmer Rouge were fanatical communists who wanted to establish the most advanced and purist form of communism in the world. With military victory over the Lon Nol government in 1976 and absolute power thus in their hands, they hastily proceeded to construct their utopia. No actual or potential opponent was allowed to stand in their way; no violation of their draconian rules could go unpunished; no independent thoughts or groups could be allowed. No independent movement or property or enterprise was permitted. All Cambodians were as bricks in the hands of these supreme social engineers and human lives counted for little.
I disagree with you that the war in Iraq is the wrong war. My greatest fear is that your POV will prevail and we will precipitously withdraw from there before the new govt in Iraq is stable and its military and police have had time to develop a command and officer enclave that fully knows what they are doing. Carnage would result well beyond present levels, and everything we have done there would be for naught. Then, we can have something analogous to what we saw in the late 70s, when some repentant peace activists took out ads in the NYT begging the Khmer Rouge to end the Killing Fields that they had insisted would never come about.
Still me.
Because we did not fight to win, because we ended our military offensives in '73 and ceased all military assistance to South Vietnam per the demands of the activists you apparently admire, Communists in Cambodia and Vietnam killed many millions of people. There is blood on the hands of the "peace activists":
ReplyDeleteHow was it any different than had we not intervened in the first place? Do those who opposed U.S. intervention in Rwanda have blood on their hands, or anywhere where we don't intervene to stop bloodshed?
And who says we could have won in Vietnam?
Glenn writes: Ultimately, public opinion of that type serves as an important check on war leaders who can become insular and stubborn to the point of losing touch with reality.
ReplyDeleteAs a preliminary matter, it must be conceded that Bush is no Churchill in terms of speechifying skills. But as to your point, no one, certainly not me or Victor Davis Hanson, is arguing against free speech in time of war. Indeed, Hanson explicitly argues that, on the whole, it is part and parcel of the reason Western democracies remain strong. (But Lincoln did not abide by that philosophy, and simply imprisoned journalists whose criticisms of Union war efforts he felt were seditious. And he advocated that the same be done for similarly inclined Congressmen. Yet he is a civil icon for most, credited with saving the federation of the United States.)
So, most reasonable people don't claim war critics should be silenced. But. There is no reason they should not be rhetorically pilloried, attacked in print and speech, and, where it is true, their anti-American biases stressed and exposed. Their forebears from the Vietnam era -- some of whom are present and loud in the opposition to the war in Iraq -- should be held accountable.
A few million people died in Vietnam and Cambodia. Yes, our govt did lie and mislead about much, but so did FDR -- only he could get away with it because of a compliant media. Johnson and Nixon did not catch on that there had been a sea change in the intellectual class, including those in the media. There would be no more free passes, especially from liberal journalists who were hostile to the U.S. position(s) on the Cold War.
But what is to be said to the millions killed by the Cambodian and Vietnamese Communists after we pulled out? Our First Amendment is intact, and we are so pleased with ourselves?
Me.
Robert J. Turner at the UVA Law School, among many others, says we could have prevailed in southeast Asia.
ReplyDeleteAs for blood on the hands of those who insisted that the U.S. abandon South Vietnam and claimed peace and harmony would then ensue, former Marxists like historian Eugene Genovese, cited by Turner, accept responsibility and offer mea culpas. Genovese wrote in Dissent that Progressives "broke all records for mass slaughter...we have a disquieting number of corpses to account for."
I have said this before - MILLIONS of Vietnamese died becaus of the war, directly at our hands. Yes, hundreds of thousands suffered after we left - but how many would have died had we stayed?
ReplyDeleteMe, the choice between staying and leaving both have consequences. We only know the one.
Other than, of course, we should never have gone there in the first place.
I missed something - we were talking of Vietnam and you bring up the Cambodia. Me, we were gettin our asses kicked in Vietnam, and it wasn't ending. So, what would we have done, bombed more? Sent another 50k dead to Cambodia?
What you offer up is little more than "well, we are there now, we have to stay until all is well". For all that we have done to insure that Iraq looks like Vietnam, Iraq is a different place. There is no neighboring Cambodia.
The Iraqi's want us out. Most of America wants us out. It's time to GET OUT.
It is a pipe dream, and the drug is power, that we will ever establish an American style democracy in Iraq. Not becuase the Iraqis don't deserve or want freedom, but because freedom is EARNED, not given. The Iraqi's will stand up when we leave, and not before.
Except, of course, to throw a grenade at the occupying Army.
Our Army.
Jake
Jake asserts: I have said this before - MILLIONS of Vietnamese died becaus of the war, directly at our hands. Yes, hundreds of thousands suffered after we left - but how many would have died had we stayed?
ReplyDeleteThat is the converse of everything I have read on the subject -- what is your support for these claimed numbers?
As for the notion that the Iraqis want us to leave now, that is not what their President said when he was here a few months ago. If their govt asks us to leave, we should. It hasn't.
For anon -
ReplyDeleteWikipedia - fwiw - civ deaths 2 to 4 million, 1.25 million Vietnamese solders, 58k American, and 1.1 million North Vietnamese - the official count. So, that adds to 4.5 to 6.5 million. Not counting the merely injured.
As for getting out, here is what CNN reported from Egypt last month -
http://edition.cnn.com/2005/WORLD/meast/11/22/iraq.conference.ap/
In short, the communique called or American troops to be withdrawn as early as the end of next year, and requested a timetable for withdrawal. It also said that attacks not on civilians or infrastructure were not terrorist attacks. That means attacks on US troops are not terrorist attacks, at least according to the Iraqis.
So where is the timetable? Where is the plan?
We don't have one, do we?
Jake
Jake: You claimed, with no support, that millions of Vietnamese died "directly at our hands." A vague, unlinked citation to wikipedia, of all sources, is insufficient to support your assertion, which runs counter to every credible source I have seen. Rather, the bloodbath that many war proponents predicted -- and which many, including John Kerry insisted was a right-wing fantasy (he thought maybe 3,000 would face reprisals) -- ensued after we left and utterly abandoned South Vietnam.
ReplyDeleteAbout Iraq. You insisted we need to "GET OUT," and your strong implication was right now. As I said, if the Iraqi govt asks us to leave, we should. If they formally tell us that they want us out by the end of next year, we should be out by the end of next year. But their President, this past September, said that they still need us there for now.
Anon, you can search as well as me. I used one source for total deaths - if you don't like it, use another. I did look, and the answers are hard to come by. The NYT, in '85, says 400k + in South Vietnam, and an unknown but larger number in North Vietnam. So, at least maybe the total of civilian and military deaths is only 1.5 million or so. And then another 1 million after the war, counting all of French Indochina.
ReplyDeleteNo one knows how many would have died had we stayed. How many would have have died had we left 10 years sooner? Or not lied ourselves into the war in the first place?
I did read further on our bombing of N Vietnam, and I need to revise my choice of words. I don't know how many civilians were killed directly by US activities, but it is inaccurate to say millions were killed directly at our hands.
It matters little what I think about when to get out - but I will keep saying now, hoping that someday soon actually happens.
Say, someday before 2008.
Jake
Well Jake, it is usual netiquette to provide support for one's claims rather than to place the burden on others to research them for you. But in any event. Let's look at William Shawcross, a journalist and author whose career straddles both wars under discussion. Shawcross's 1979 book Sideshow: Kissinger, Nixon and the Destruction of Cambodia was wildly popular with his fellow leftists and established the explanation for the Killing Fields -- and other Southeast Asian Communist atrocities -- that endures with the left to this day. Shawcross in '79 claimed that Nixon, Kissinger and the Evil U.S. Military, drove the Vietnamese and Cambodian Communists insane and "made them" murder a few million of their own people.
ReplyDeleteShawcross has since recanted much of that thesis and the factual errors supporting it, has apologized to Kissinger, and a few years back wrote:
Those of us who were opposed to the U.S. effort in Indochina (as I was) should be at the least very humble in the face of the aftermath of America's defeat. The bloodbath theory was not, as leftists maintained in the 1960s and 1970s, CIA propaganda. It happened as soon as the Communists won in 1975.
Today, Shawcross supports the War in Iraq, and addresses some of the usual objections to it here in Saddam Removal: Why the U.S. had no alternative. (I, btw, am old enough to have contemporaneously read the 1981 article/review of Sideshow referenced in the intro to this article; I in fact still possess a copy of it. I so wish I could cut and paste from it.)
With all due respect, you need to do some of what I suspect from his posting that Glenn has been doing, to wit: reading up on the whole Vietnam thing.
Anon: "So, most reasonable people don't claim war critics should be silenced. But. There is no reason they should not be rhetorically pilloried, attacked in print and speech, and, where it is true, their anti-American biases stressed and exposed. Their forebears from the Vietnam era -- some of whom are present and loud in the opposition to the war in Iraq -- should be held accountable."
ReplyDeleteAnon,
You can source your comments as much as you would like, I believe your logic is flawed because you are assuming throughout that all anti-war people are anti-American, that victory is virtue. I don't know a single anti-Iraq-war person who isn't proud to pay taxes, to vote, who isn't proud to be American. That does not mean we have to be proud of what this president is doing.
Andy W. writes: You can source your comments as much as you would like, I believe your logic is flawed because you are assuming throughout that all anti-war people are anti-American,
ReplyDeleteNow that is just silly, for you to state that directly underneath your quote of me where I had written: There is no reason they should not be rhetorically pilloried, attacked in print and speech, and, where it is true, their anti-American biases stressed and exposed. Did you miss my bolding of the words "where it is true" in the original? Rather obviously, I am allowing for it not always being true.
My own father and mother are strongly opposed to the war in Iraq, because they are paleo-conservatives and hate anything that might remotely benefit Israel. They are with this crowd. (And Glenn is sounding eerily like them lately -- which thoroughly creeps me out -- but that doesn't make him anti-American, and certainly not a liberal.)
Actually the Iraqi government is asking us to leave. It was reported on the WaPo a day or so back
ReplyDeleteAnon at 12:30 a.m. is not me. That anon is also mistaken.
ReplyDeleteMe -- the original and supreme anon.
Heraldblog, as you can read at the CNN article Jake gave the url for, the Iraqi leaders at the Arab Conference were distinguishing Sunnis who attacked coalition soldiers from terrorists who target civilians. The Iraqi leaders seek to make the insurgents legitimate in the legal sense in which Japanese who shot at U.S. GIs in the islands of the South Pacific were.IOW, the Japanese did not commit crimes merely by engaging in combat with other non-civilians, and the Iraqis would like the same status for Sunni insurgents who target only the military. (This seems a politically wise move.)
ReplyDeleteBut they do not want us out now, and they were clear about that. They have asked for a timetable -- which the Iraquis themselves will have to help draft -- but do not want coalition troops out completely until the end of next year. That makes sense -- their President effusively thanked Bush and the American people for the gift of liberating them from Saddam when he (the Iraqi President) was in the U.S. last September, and that recently he said it was too soon for us to leave.
(Formerly me, the anonymous.)
While I disagree with some of the quote-selection of the host's post (eg. General Loan summarily executing a captured VC at the height of Tet was an unfortunate vignette but not that significant in the scheme of things other than presenting the true face of the brutish nature of civil war), I must address the ignorant idea that the US was winning, or could have "won", the war ca 1970. All we had secured after 5 years of combat was "stalemate". That was what Cronkite said in 1968, and that was the case under Nixon.
ReplyDeleteThe VC was largely liquidated thanks to years of executions, the Tet offensives, combat losses, etc, but the NVA was still strong, well-supplied, and confident of victory. PAVN's logistics and strategical position was even stronger in 1972 than it was in 1968... by mid-1972 the following famous border battlefields of the war:
Con Thien
Khe Sanh
The A Shau Valley
Dak To
The Fishhook
The Ia Drang Valley
The Parrot's Beak
The Iron Triangle (a day's march N of Saigon)
were controlled by PAVN. The NVA had improved the Ho Chi Minh trail to supply these border sanctuaries, and the efforts of 1970 and 1971 to clean these out were dismal, dismal failures.
ARVN was relatively strong in the Mekong Delta, Saigon Capital Region, Highlands, Hue/Danang, but PAVN had interior lines of communication and the tactical and strategic initiative after the US withdrew from the battle.
People arguing that the US could have restarted the air war after the Paris Peace accords are ignorant of the fact that any captured aircrews after 1973 would likely never see freedom from NVA prisons. By 1973 the NVA had us by the balls, basically.
Did the US government not overthrow the Cambodian government, leaving it open for the Khmer to take over? Thanks, Nixon conservative apologist with your warmed over dolchstosslegende wingnut revenge fantasy.
ReplyDeleteDo you think bombing the bejesus out of an entire nation such that they lived for years underground in warrens to avoid B-52 raids was a winning solution? Because Nixon tried it, and it didn't work. Reagan wanted to use strategic nukes, but he was too nuts to be president until cocaine became popular.
Wallace-nh, do you believe you can fly, too, mr peter pan? It's a good thing you aren't in a position of responsibility.
The failure, again, is a failure of a Republican administration (Ike and Bush per et fil) to creatively use politics. Tie that to Cheney and Bush financial interests in fostering war and you have the ultimate in conservative fantasies: all the sins they attribute to liberals (financial profligacy bankrupting the nation, debauchery, sodomy [Duke Cunningham and Brent Wilkes? Hello, Brokeback Mountain!], planless waste of life in foreign adventurism) put to their personal profit and Munchhausen-like glory hogging. The Iraqis know what they are looking at and agree on one thing: the white guys are blowing them up again and interfering in their business.
Oh, yeah, we coulda won Vietnam, if only Jane Fonda hadn't blah blah blah. If you let Jane stop you, you aren't much of a macho man, now, are you?
I would also like to say that Hamburger Hill in May 1969 was the true turning point of the war. In a week's bloody battle to take a hill (part of a search & destroy mission in the remote A Shau Valley border sanctuary) we took 70 KIA, the NVA took 700 KIA, and the public came to realize that even these 10:1 exchanges were simply not worth the cost to us since the NVA still had millions of more-or-less willing men to throw into the meatgrinder, and the Thieu regime sure as hell wasn't worth losing ANOTHER 50k soldiers and tens if not hundreds of billions of dollars for.
ReplyDeleteIt was this loss of national will that spelled doom for the Army's mission in Vietnam. Without the will to clean out border base areas like the A Shau Valley, PAVN would continue to accumulate combat power and have the ability, as they later did, to knock over any provincial capital they wanted to.
And it wasn't just Jane Fonda and defeatism that caused this lack of will; searching online records of KIA I was able to find that 3 out of 4 infantry KIA in 1969 were draftees, IOW the Army was drafting its cannon-fodder for this war. This drove the opposition to the war more than anything IMV.
GLENN -
ReplyDeleteGreat post, thanx. Here's a few the AP dug up:
Bush's words on Iraq echo LBJ in 1967
Sep 21, 3:37 PM EDT
http://tinyurl.com/akrgc
(1) "America is committed to the defense of South Vietnam until an honorable peace can be negotiated," Johnson told the Tennessee Legislature on March 15, 1967. Despite the obstacles to victory, the president said, "We shall stay the course."
After 14 Marines died in a roadside bombing on Aug. 3, Bush declared: "We will stay the course, we will complete the job in Iraq. And the job is this: We'll help the Iraqis develop a democracy."
(2) "Our nation was not born easily. There were times in those years of the 18th century when it seemed as if we might not be born at all," Johnson said in a speech on Aug. 16, 1967.
"Given that background, we ought not to be astonished that this struggle in Vietnam continues," Johnson said. "We ought not to be astonished that that nation, wracked by a war of insurgency and beset by its neighbors to the north, has not already emerged, full-blown, as a perfect model of two-party democracy."
In his radio address on Aug. 27, Bush said: "Like our own nation's founders over two centuries ago, the Iraqis are grappling with difficult issues, such as the role of the federal government. What is important is that Iraqis are now addressing these issues through debate and discussion - not at the barrel of a gun."
(3) Bush has often linked the security and freedom of the United States to the war in Iraq. On Aug. 4 he told reporters: "We're laying the foundation of peace for generations to come. We're defeating the terrorists in a place like Iraq so we don't have to face them here at home. And, as well, we're spreading democracy and freedom to parts of the world that are desperate for democracy and freedom."
A secure and free America was tied to the fight in Southeast Asia, Johnson maintained. "What happens in Vietnam is extremely important to the nation's freedom and it is extremely important to the United States' security," he said from the South Lawn of the White House on Sept. 15, 1967.
(4) "Be assured that the death of your son will have meaning," Johnson told the parents of a posthumous recipient of the Medal of Honor during a Rose Garden ceremony on April 6, 1967. "For I give you also my solemn pledge that our country will persist - and will prevail - in the cause for which your boy died."
Speaking to military families in Idaho on Aug. 24, Bush said: "These brave men and women gave their lives for a cause that is just and necessary for the security of our country, and now we will honor their sacrifice by completing their mission."
ON VIETNAM
ReplyDelete"We of the Kennedy and Johnson administrations who participated in the decisions on Vietnam acted according to what we thought were the principles and traditions of
this nation. We made our decisions in light of those values. Yet we were wrong, terribly wrong. We owe it to future generations to Explain why."
Robert S.McNamara,
IN RETROSPECT:THE TRAGEDY AND LESSONS OF VIETNAM
by ROBERT S. MCNAMARA WITH BRIAN VANDEMARK
anon at 7:43 offers discredited history:Did the US government not overthrow the Cambodian government, leaving it open for the Khmer to take over? Thanks, Nixon conservative apologist with your warmed over dolchstosslegende wingnut revenge fantasy.
ReplyDeleteDo you think bombing the bejesus out of an entire nation such that they lived for years underground in warrens to avoid B-52 raids was a winning solution? Because Nixon tried it, and it didn't work
Prince Sihanouk, as he has affirmed only recently, told the U.S. it could bomb NV enclaves in Cambodia; Sihanouk found it in his interest to give that permission. He wanted civilian sectors avoided to the greatest extent possible, and the evidence is that the U.S. was responsible in doing just that.
As one analyst has written:
There are several problems with this explanation. First, it was not US bombing that caused the overthrow of Prince Sihanouk and brought the Vietnam War to Cambodia. It was the Vietnamese who, with Prince Sihanouk's agreement, occupied Cambodia and violated its neutrality in the early 1960s.
Ultimately, the unpopularity of the occupying Vietnamese with all levels of Cambodian society contributed to the successful, bloodless coup of March 1970 against Prince Sihanouk. Even before that coup, Prince Sihanouk realized the problems his pro-Hanoi policy had caused, which is why he told Lyndon Johnson's emissary, Chester Bowles, that he wouldn't denounce US bombing of North Vietnamese positions in Cambodia, so long as Cambodians weren't killed... But the end of US air support on Aug. 15, 1973, and the cutback of all US aid (forced by an antiwar Congress) in 1974–75 gave the Khmer Rouge a huge advantage. The group also continued to receive military supplies from China via North Vietnam.
The anti-war movement prevailed, the U.S. Congress caved to it, and indescribable slaughter followed in Cambodia and Vietnam.
Whole article (blogger won't accept my html tags for some reason): http://216.247.220.66/archives/leftism/morris05-04-00.htm
With reference to the last paragraph of Glenn's original post, I would retool it thus:
For that reason, it is incomparably valuable to go back and review what was being said at the time. If nothing else, it enables one to assess the anti-war critics about Iraq with some historical perspective.
The argument that the left (or more accurately anti-war activists) defeats a military operation from within is specious. I think the reality is that those who pursue military policy misunderstand the base nature of that policy. It is not a political action. You can't win war from a narrow majority, (ie. 51/49), and to pretend otherwise is naive. War is a social action, because it by necessity will involve the entire populations of the countries at war.
ReplyDeleteSo even if war is justified (and I'm just saying that for the sake of argument), if there is no clear and compelling reason to BE AT war -- not to GO TO war, which is much much easier to muster --, and certainly if there are dubious assuptions made to justify BEING AT war, there will be no long-term public support. I think this is bourne out by the presnit's low approval ratings.
The analogy is a father, three kids, a wife. The father wants to quit his job, move to Idaho and live on a survivalist compound to fight the "government". Even if he's right to do so, if the wife and kids think he's nuts, they won't go willingly. And even if the Dad can somehow drag his unfortunate family into the Steel-Reinforced Camo-Bronco with the M-16 gun rack, once there, no amount of "Be happy or I'll be angry" from Dad will change the situation. Is it the family's fault that they are upset at eating freeze-dried food and living in a bunker, using poison ivy for toilet paper? Are they the ones making dad rant about "The Feds" and "David Koresh"? Dad should have known it wasn't gonna work. But he went there anyway, following his "GUT" and muttering something about "JESUS".
I think the war was sold, not explained, and I think people are now shaking their heads and coming to the conclusion that it was a huge setup. It's not our fault we were lied to.
So let's hear it for "You broke it, you bought it." Where can we return it?
I find it interesting that someone would try to blame activists in the U.S. for the genocide in the Khmer. The liability obviously lies in the hands of Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge itself. Playing the game of calling someone an "enabler" and assigning moral responsibility on the basis of that tangential relationship really allows you to assign blame to anyone you like, because a chain of consequence, with more or less plausibility, can always be constructed to lead back to an individual. But the blame attributable to left-wing peace activists who allegedly caused a Republican President to withdraw from a conflict which we would allegedly otherwise have won is simply too attenuated to be credible. The people you would blame for genocide, Anonymous & others, were not the Khmer government, and they weren't even the U.S. government. We might as well blame the people who educated Pol Pot, and gave him his ideas. That's right, once again it's the fault of the French!
ReplyDeletePlaying at historical might-have-beens is a fool's game. No-one has any idea what would've happened if we'd stayed in Southeast Asia or, indeed, if conversely the U.S. had never become involved at all. Developing counterfactual scenarios is just another neat way to assign blame to people for what they never did. It makes no more sense to assign moral responsibility to peace activists because staying might have resulted in fewer deaths than it does to say that Kennedy, Johnson and Nixon were not morally responsible for the deaths of U.S. troops, Vietnamese, Lao and Khmer because not making the initial commitment might have resulted in more deaths. Blaming peace activists in the 60s and 70s for deaths in Southeast Asia is nothing more than a cheap political and rhetorical stunt, the use of an unprovable assertion to justify a specious conclusion.
Anon at 2:39 writes; I find it interesting that someone would try to blame activists in the U.S. for the genocide in the Khmer. The liability obviously lies in the hands of Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge itself.
ReplyDeleteThere can be more than one cause of harm. Certainly huge heaping mounds of blame lie directly w/ the Khmer Rouge and Pol Pot. However, there were pro-war Americans who advocated that the Communists be prevented from coming into power in Cambodia and South Vietnam, and who were willing to impede the carnage they knew awaited if the Communists were not stopped.
The peace activists -- overwhelmingly -- did not argue that a Communist genocide and totalitarian dictatorship was not worth the committing of U.S. blood and treasure. Rather, they insisted that no rescue was necessary because the notion of Communist perfidy was a right-wing fanatasy, a CIA propaganda trope, and etc.
To repeat the words of anti-war activist and journalist William Shawcross that I quoted upthread as anonymous:
Those of us who were opposed to the U.S. effort in Indochina (as I was) should be at the least very humble in the face of the aftermath of America's defeat. The bloodbath theory was not, as leftists maintained in the 1960s and 1970s, CIA propaganda. It happened as soon as the Communists won in 1975.
The situation is analogous to American tort doctrine. There is no duty to rescue someone who is, say, drowning. However, if one lies to another who has made preparations to jump into the lake and save the drowning victim and says: "I know that guy. He is a superb swimmer and is just fooling around. Leave him be," one may well be found liable for a wrongful death. At a minimum, most people would hold the liar morally responsible. Ditto if the naysayer unreasonably believed that what he said was the truth.
The problem was that by 1969 the American public had had quite enough of this getting shot up in the jungle without any clear indication that the war was winnable -- after 5 years, we had secured a just a stalemate against the NVA. Cronkite stated in 1968 that the communists could meet any escalation we could throw at them, so finding a future course was problematic.
ReplyDeleteAs an aside, I find the parallels between Korea and Vietnam fascinating, for their differences explain why we were able to save ROK and not Saigon.
For one, we were fighting China in Korea, we had already defeated the N Koreans. We were not close to defeating the N Vietnamese by 1970, and to do so would require basically mass-murder from the air.
This is a tough row to ask US aircrews to hoe, especially since escalation was a two-way street -- the USSR and PRC were more than happy to provide the air defense hardware for Hanoi to defend itself.
The US POWs held in Hanoi were another wildcard.
To get them home we had to remove all but 50 advisors from Vietnam. Any other personnel we were to put back in, should they be captured, would likely never come home.
Furthermore, Korea was a peninsula, and the mountainous terrain limited combat operations to more or less static defenses. This isolated the S from the N rather effectively.
The strategic situation of SVN was very different.
The coastal lowlands were the major population centers that needed to be defended, and the hinterlands along Laos and Cambodia were increasingly infiltrated by PAVN, 1961-1972.
The main battles of the war -- Ia Drang '65, the Iron Triangle, A Shau, Khe Sanh '67-'68, Cambodia '70, Laos '71 were attempts to cut down this infiltration, but were only temporary. The jungle cover of Vietnam made it impossible to secure the countryside and hinterlands, and from these hinterlands PAVN could collect strength, support guerilla activity, and threaten neighboring provincial capitals with mainforce actions, at its leisure.
I don't think I understand what the comments on Vietnam and Cambodia are getting at when they somehow blame opposition to the war for the Killing Fields and then later for Vietnam killing bunches of Cambodians.
ReplyDeleteThe bombing of Cambodia by Nixon helped to further fuel the appeal of the Khmer revolt that put Pol Pot in power. Pull out or stay in Vietnam would make no difference, and no one was seriously talking about a full-on invasion of another country to prevent another communist regime from taking over. Not Nixon, or anyone else.
Second, Vietnam put an end to the Pol Pot regime because Pol Pot INVADED Vietnam, him being a lunatic and all. The Vietnamese army didn't just invade and go around massacring people for no good reason. And, after they toppled the Khmer, they left. There never has been much in the way of expansionist sentiment on the part of the VIetnamese government.
Thank you Mr. Greenwald for your service here in pointing out the veracity of Dr. Dean's claim. And also in pointing out that this war, at this time has much in common with that ill fated war.
ReplyDeleteThis really depends on how you view the role of war in society.
To me war is the ultimate breakdown of society and civilization. An expression of collective madness wrought by many social, political, religious, and economic forces which contrive to fail at the precisely wrong points in time.
In that respect, war is a waste of monstrous proportions - waste of life, of resource, of human, political, and religious "capital" if you will.
War is not just about valor and heroism alone. It's also about the cowardly and depraved nature of human beings as well which allow one to rape, kill, torture, maim and loot and take pleasure in those things. Sure there are honorable folk in war. But war itself as far as I am concerned is a degrading, dehumanizing experience none should have to suffer.
Obviously Wallace-nh and others feel that it's the right thing to do, w/o regard to the consequences not just to the iraquis harmed but also to our own harmed by this irresponsible war.
Woosta
Not to mention to what gain?
ReplyDeleteDo we have any oil to show for it?
All we have are caskets of dead young Americans and a big hole in the treasury, not to mention political instability in Iraq.
Rebuilding that may have occurred were hampered by war profiteers, and no one in the admin is even willin to admit a mistake or that anything else maybe wrong in iraq.
stevelaw, I would refer you to this that I tried to link to above. Steven J. Morris's -- of the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies of Johns Hopkins University and author of Why Vietnam Invaded Cambodia -- article Don't Blame America for the 'Killing Fields' .
ReplyDeleteHypatia, you make some points but we are talking past each other here.
ReplyDeleteBy 1968-1969 the American public largely felt it was over-committed to preserving the Saigon regime in power. Nixon was elected because he had a secret plan to end the war, not keep it going on and on.
Immediately prior to Hamburger Hill in May 1969 we had lost 41,283 KIA, hundreds of POWs, and hundreds of thousands of seriously wounded.
In the A Shau valley, we took a hill, killed hundreds of NVA (while hundreds more were able to skedaddle the few meters to sanctuary in Laos), then proceeded to abandon the field of battle.
This was the definition of stalemate. We could kill Vietnamese in large numbers (at significant expense of our own blood and treasure), but short of actually going WW2 on the NV people our armed forces were powerless to force a decisive battle on the NVA.
The story of Vietnam was running out of time.
Well, that's a pretty thinly sourced article. I particularly like the unexplained assumptions and conclusions that are thrown down at each stage of the article. Reminds me of law school exams: when you have nothing to back up your statement, always start with the word "clearly" and ignore any underlying unexplained assumptions.
ReplyDeleteThe best line, however, was here: "But we must not forget that a Communist victory in Cambodia, as much as in Laos and Vietnam, had always been the wish of the leaders of the American antiwar movement." Funny, I've never heard a single mainstream Vietnam-era figure who opposed the U.S. involvement in the war actually say that this was their goal. I'm sure there were various fringe groups who might have had some sort of thoughts along these lines, but no one who was taken particularly seriously in American politics stated that as a goal.
All in all, it reads like an article with a particular, er, agenda. Mainly apologia for Nixon and a revisionist slap at those who would criticize the US involvement in Vietnam. Note also that I've never heard any other academic or historian espouse or endorse this view of the Khmer Rouge and the Cambodian-Vietnam conflict.
As much as I was against this war to begin with, I think we can’t reverse this kind of screw-up; what is done is done. The US has one of the world’s foremost government and as such it is responsible to stick to this war until they clean up the mess they’ve created. The truth is that there are evil religious conservatives and warmongers in both Iraq and the US. If you are a pro-peace American or Iraqi, distance yourselves of the evildoers and let them conservatives fight it out. The worst case scenario is that it’s simply going to engage and decimate both groups’ military resources so that they can’t screw up another part of this little blue pearl for a while.
ReplyDeleteRemember that both countries have citizens that believe in peace and freedom. If you are in that group, try to support each other. The world sympathises with you. We wish to do everything we can to help you. Never mind the conservative with their rampant lies and dishonesty. Fighting them politically while keeping your own moral standard is impossible, and lowering to their standard is unthinkable. If you convince them to pull out of Iraq what tells you they won’t valiantly launch more major fiasco of torture and death and this perpetually.
The current sociopathic US administration is *not* your government. It wasn’t elected fairly. Pacifists unite for your strength is in altruism and compassion not in politics. People from both countries and from the world can associate through the Internet to help and support each others. The conservative’s strategy of fighting each other is predictably self defeating. Endure them, get out of their way as much as possible, make an example of their failure and teach pacific principles and values to the next generation and you will thrive. When they are resourceless and tired of fighting they will have to concede and democracy will give the power to the reasonable people of each country.
Stevelawyer writes:The best line, however, was here: "But we must not forget that a Communist victory in Cambodia, as much as in Laos and Vietnam, had always been the wish of the leaders of the American antiwar movement." Funny, I've never heard a single mainstream Vietnam-era figure
ReplyDeleteI don't know whom you would consider "mainstream," but would you agree this should include editors and contributors, as well as subscribers to Ramparts magazine? As David Horowitz and Peter Collier have written in Destructive Generation (a book Glenn should read as he immerses himself in materials relating to the Vietnam war) the 60s radicals -- many of whom have gone on to quite mainstream positions as state and federal legislators, tenured positions in our universities, and to positions in elite journalistic organs -- despised their own country and wanted it to lose in Vietnam. Horowitz and Collier wrote of their book:
In Destructive Generation, Collier and I suggested that a key to understanding the radical agendas of Sixties leftists could be found in the alienation they felt from their own heritage. We offered as an example a cover illustration for Ramparts, the radical magazine we once edited. [Along w/ Robert Scheer - ed.] The cover in question featured the photo of an all-American youngster holding the flag of the Communist Vietcong. The cover line said, "Alienation is when your country is at war and you want the other side to win."
The two go on to observe (in partial support of their assessment) that post-9/11, leftist editor of Dissent, Michael Walzer, in that journal recently asked:
."Can There Be A Decent Left?" a question provoked by the spectacle of his progressive comrades rushing to judgment against their own country in the wake of 9-11. Walzer wondered about the depths of an alienation that could cause people to refuse to come to the defense of their country even when it was attacked: "Many left intellectuals live in America like internal aliens, refusing to identify with their fellow citizens, regarding any hint of patriot feeling as politically incorrect….Many of the[ir] first responses [manifested a] barely concealed glee that the imperial state had finally gotten what it deserved."
Horowitz has also written:
While [Steve] Talbot forgets the denouement, he does get the significance of the war correctly: "The war in Vietnam and the draft were absolutely central. I remember a cover of Ramparts magazine that captured how I felt: 'Alienation is when your country is at war and you hope the other side wins.'" This is a softened version of what we actually felt. As the author of that cover line, let me correct Talbot's memory and add a detail. The Ramparts cover featured a picture of a Huck Finn-like 7-year-old (it was art director Dugald Stermer's son) who was holding the Vietcong flag -- the flag of America's enemy in Vietnam. The cover line said: 'Alienation is when your country is at war and you want the other side to win.' That represented what we believed -- [Tom] Hayden, [Todd] Gitlin, Steve Talbot and me.
Both Hayden and Scheer joined Communist communes, posted pictures of Ho Chi Minh on their walls, and openly rooted for a Communist victory in southeast Asia. Really, this is quite prosaic stuff -- it was absolutely pedestrian for war protesters to chant in favor of "Ho- Ho-Ho Chi Minh." I heard and saw it myself. But if what I've offered above doesn't satisfy you I'll seek to come up with other examples, but not until tomorrow.
Finally, do note that Morris's article, that you find poorly sourced, was not a law review piece. I believe it was in the WSJ, no? If you want to see his foot-noted work, you might try his book I cited.
Troy: Troy: I am respectful of your obvious command of the history of the war by battle and location etc. No way am I competent to match you in that dept.
ReplyDeleteWhere I do hold some competence is in the intellectual and social history of the 20th century U.S. And I'm a bit pooped trying to keep up here just in that narrow area, so I think I'll stick to what I know rather than try to challenge your superior and impressive knowledge of war history proper. You may even be right!
@ Anonymous at 3:07:
ReplyDeletewhat is your support for these claimed numbers [millions of Vietnamese killed by U.S. military]
It's the reputable historical consensus, Anon. In Errol Morris' Fog of War McNamara references a figure of three million. What I usually hear cited
is two million.
eb
Hmm. I find all this rather amusing. Intellectual conversation(s) regarding a war in which none of the participants actually...well...participated.
ReplyDeleteI'm uncertain as to which law school(s) has/have been attended here but, certainly can attest to the ridiculousness of the assumption that when you are uncertain of your underlying facts you should began your case statements with a sentence structure, "clearly." Exactly which law school was that (chuckle)?
Please allow me to interject a somwhat overlooked reality into this thread; When the first round passes by your head - politics goes out the window.
If anyone believes that the Iraq/Vietnam comparison isn't being made by active-duty Marines currently assigned to the Middle East theater - they should get out more.
What combat Marines are talking about is really rather simple:
"Hey L-T, anyone found any WMD yet?"
eb writes:It's the reputable historical consensus, Anon. In Errol Morris' Fog of War McNamara references a figure of three million. What I usually hear cited
ReplyDeleteis two million.
McNamara addressed the John F. KennedySchool of Government at Harvard some ten years ago, in a moving speech with a decidedly intense Q&A afterwards. Googling your claim that there is this supposed consensus that the U.S. killed 2 or 3 million Vietnamese, I didn't find that. Surely something so commonly held, and now claimed here several times, should be easy to demonstrate via google or a brief snippet from a book on someone's shelf?
Indeed, McNamara says something different in his Harvard address, implicating Ho Chi Minh: Thirdly, we underestimated the power of nationalism to motivate people. In this case, the North Vietnamese and the Viet Cong. Then we underestimate the power of ... (inaudible) to motivate a people to fight and die for their people. Ho Chi Minh said, and I believe he meant it, they would have fought another ten years. Just a week ago the Vietnamese completed a study they've been working on for some time and the number of fatalities. I couldn't believe the figure; I heard it over French radio. They say that excluding the South Vietnamese military that were killed which they didn't have data on, that they believed that 3,200,000 Vietnamese, civilians and military north and south were killed. And he said they were prepared to kill another 10 million. I think they were. We didn't believe that. We totally misunderstood the motivation, the dedication of a people motivated by nationalism.
During Q&A, a Vietnamese-American states: I have relatives who escaped by boat. And many others who did not make it and perished at sea. And I'd like to commemorate them, as well as the over three million dead on both sides of the war.
But he doesn't say the U.S. killed them, or how many of this number occurred before and after we were involved.
Anyway, the speech is a very interesting read.
(formerly anon)
Glenn,
ReplyDeleteJust wanted to thank you for replying to my critique of your original post, and to send you a link to my follow-up. It’s here. Cheers.