Gerald Ford dead
Dan Duffy <dduffy@email.unc.edu>
date Dec 27, 2006 9:34 AM
subject [Vsg] Gerald Ford dead
I just heard on the radio that President Ford died yesterday. Ford was
once a butt of jokes about his intelligence, a memory that's hard to
assimilate to the present, when we really do have a president of no
depth at all and there's nothing funny about it. Ford had the decency
to acknowledge that the US had something to do with fall of Saigon and
to act for the refugees. It strikes me how often VN Americans speak of
him, in contrast to the rest of us. The man who started the jokes about
Ford being dumb was, um, LBJ. Looking forward to the obituaries, in
Nguoi Viet as well as NYT -
Dan
date Dec 27, 2006 3:33 PM
subject Re: [Vsg] Gerald Ford dead
Truly, a misunderstood man of his times.
Stephen Denney <sdenney@ocf.berkeley.edu>
date Dec 27, 2006 5:16 PM
subject Re: [Vsg] Gerald Ford dead
Unfortunately, the initial response from the American left to the first
wave of Vietnamese refugees was not very honorable. George McGovern
claimed that "90% of the Vietnamese refugees would be better off going
back to their own land" because only "a handful of government leaders were
in any real danger of reprisals." Jesse Jackson urged we not accept the
refugees because they would take jobs away from Americans. see:
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,945381,00.html
- Steve Denney
"Adam @ UoM" <fforde@unimelb.edu.au>
date Dec 27, 2006 5:14 PM
subject RE: [Vsg] Gerald Ford dead - Revue de histoire contemporaine
The below just came through in 'another channel'. I guess many have seen it,
and more have thought about implications.
I recall Ly Quang Dieu, who many say is never wrong, quoted as saying that
'had the US left a division in Saigon the regime would never have fallen'.
As an economist, I would expect various advisers to people in places like
Tehran to have read the books too, and in that context the meaning of
'redeploy' would seem important. Home base or Tan son nhat?
VSG seems to have one of the larger concentrations of expertise on The War
on the planet (I am not one of them). It seems to me that perhaps one lesson
from Vietnamisation is that, as the British Generals seem to say, 'we return
to the barracks' WITHIN Iraq ...
The complete and unusual removal of US troops from Vietnam surely cannot be
separated from Hanoi's victory within the USA homelands (a successful and
classic attack on the enemy's will to fight), being, as it is said, one of
the victories Truong Chinh granted to Le Duan when Saigon fell. Given that
we all read the same books, what does this imply for the meaning of
Iraqisation, not for the Americans, but for their opponents? Another 9/11?
But where?
I recall a recent op-ed piece in the Financial Times saying of the US -
'won't fight, won't pay taxes'.
Life, of course, will go on.
Adam
Dan Duffy <dduffy@email.unc.edu>
date Dec 29, 2006 8:18 AM
subject Re: [Vsg] Gerald Ford dead - Revue de histoire contemporaine ..
I'm afraid I don't have any bright ideas. I'm glad Adam thinks that
some advisers in Iraq are on top of the relevant scholarship on the
Saigon situation.
But I was startled, reading a recent article by George Packer in the New
Yorker about social scientists working for the Pentagon on Iraq, to see
that he and his informants don't seem to know much about scholarship on
Viet Nam, and further that our intelligence people in Iraq aren't doing
the basic work we did do in Viet Nam.
I've even had some odd interchanges with military "interrogation
experts" who seem to have been fed some CIA nonsense about breaking
people, and remain innocent of survey planning, in-depth interviewing,
building order of battle and infiltration route maps and so on. What is
the RAND corporation doing these days?
It's really weird, feeling nostalgic admiration for USMACV. Makes me
wish I wasn't a pacifist eccentric ethnographer - last time I saw George
he remarked as these people do, on my "obsession" with Viet Nam, not
expertise on an important topic like they have - so I could display
credentials and get someone's attention.
How about a group VSG project on "Lessons of VN"? Like some points with
a reading list to pass onto social scientists working with gov't. Like
two pages, about as much as anyone has time to read. That's a proper
role of an AAS area studies group in wartime, right?
Dan
"Sidel, Mark" <mark-sidel@uiowa.edu>
date Dec 29, 2006 8:38 AM
subject RE: [Vsg] Gerald Ford dead - Revue de histoire contemporaine ..
Good idea, Dan. Much needed..... MS
"Diane Fox (dnfox)" <dnfox@hamilton.edu>
date Dec 29, 2006 11:22 AM
Vsg] VSG project on "Lessons of VN"--(formerly--Gerald Ford dead - Revue de histoire contemporaine ..
Yes, Dan and Mark--I'd like to add my support for this idea, and for some way to agree in advance that we won't agree on everything but will make a range of our thoughts available, in short form but with as much complexity as possible.
I'd like to be sure the lessons include the aftermath of the war--the long-term social, economic, health, and environmental consequences.
A good project for a new year.
With best wishes to you all,
Diane
"Adam @ UoM" <fforde@unimelb.edu.au>
date Dec 29, 2006 3:46 PM
subject RE: [Vsg] VSG project on "Lessons of VN"--(formerly--Gerald Ford dead - Revue de histoire contemporaine ..
Me too. I agree we will not agree, but the issues, and how to discuss them, need rehearsing.
I once heard from somebody who worked for the US government that, as with the loss of China (documented in the Best and the Brightest) the relevant cadre in the relevant bits of the US government was largely disbanded after 1975.
Management of decline is never easy - after all I am a Brit born 4 years before Suez.
Adam
"DiGregorio, Michael" <M.DiGregorio@fordfound.org>
date Dec 29, 2006 10:47 PM
subject RE: [Vsg] VSG project on "Lessons of VN"--(formerly--Gerald Ford dead- Revue de histoire contemporaine ..
Adam,
I found a copy of Last Reflections on a War: Bernard Falls last comments on Vietnam in the Ford Foundation's library a couple of days ago. This book, which I had never heard of or seen quoted, has an exceptional chapter on insurgency and counterinsurgency that is directly relevant to the lessons not learned. Fall notes how the categories devised by the US military to measure efficiency and effectiveness were not at all related to the ground truths. Fall, in both the French and American wars, mapped tax data, assassinations, and the appointment of primary school teachers as measures of control on either side. From this, he remarked that insurgencies are wars over administration, fought on the ground through various forms of civil control. All around him, however, he saw carnage, futility, and hubris, this, by the way, applying to the US, France (Vietnam and Algeria), India (Nagaland), Egypt (Yemen)...all cases where military superiority failed to win an insurgent war.
I don't know much about Fall other than Street without Joy and this edition of his last writings. Despite this recognition of incapacity, he still seems to hold out some hope of a US victory. Could others comment?
Mike
Edward Miller <Edward.G.Miller@dartmouth.edu>
date Dec 30, 2006 1:35 PM
subject RE: [Vsg] VSG project on "Lessons of VN"--(formerly--Gerald Ford dead- Revue de histoire contemporaine ..
Dear Mike:
An extremely perceptive recent piece about Fall is:
Christopher Goscha, “Sorry about that … Bernard Fall, the Vietnam War and the Impact of a French Intellectual in the U.S.”, in Goscha and Vaisse, La guerre du Vietnam et l’Europe (1963-1973), (Actes du colloque), Bruxelles, Bruylant, 2003, pp. 363-382.
See also the recently published memoir/biography written by Fall’s widow Dorothy: BERNARD FALL: MEMORIES OF A SOLDIER-SCHOLAR.
Your observation about Fall still holding out hope for US victory in Vietnam is correct, I think. Because Fall was a vocal critic of US policy in Vietnam while he was alive, he is often remembered incorrectly as having espoused antiwar views. In fact, he was a staunch anti-communist and his views on Vietnam were generally more hawkish than dovish. On the other hand, many antiwar readers found a lot to agree with in his writings. A lesson about lessons, perhaps?
Ed
Stephen Denney <sdenney@ocf.berkeley.edu>
date Dec 30, 2006 1:19 PM
subject RE: [Vsg] VSG project on "Lessons of VN"--(formerly--Gerald Ford dead- Revue de histoire contemporaine ..
I suppose most of us here opposed the U.S. going into Iraq. In retrospect,
it was obviously a big mistake. But now that our troops are there, and the
country is enveloped in a civil war, the bloodbath issue comes up, as it
did during the Vietnam war. A bloodbath did not happen in Vietnam after
our withdrawal, but it did happen in Cambodia. The question now is,
how do we withdraw from Iraq in a way that would leave some degree of
stability, if possible, or do we just pull out immediately without regard
to the consequences or our responsibility for having created this
situation.
- Steve Denney
George Dutton <dutton@humnet.ucla.edu>
date Dec 29, 2006 3:02 PM
subject [Vsg] Some "Lessons" of Vietnam
Hi Everyone,
I'm going to be teaching a 1-unit seminar this quarter entitled "The
lessons of Vietnam and the war in Iraq." I taught the same thing two
years ago, in 2004, when it was not clear how long the war would be
dragging on. It is more than a little depressing to be teaching it
again with the war still raging. In any case, I look at the parallels
and differences in the two wars, and then consider the "lessons" of
Vietnam and how they are being applied, or might be applied to the
war in Iraq. When considering "lessons," it is important to
differentiate the "lessons" that have been gleaned by policymakers
seeking to find more effective ways to wage wars, and those whose
interests are more inclined toward avoiding future US involvement in
such conflicts. [Note: I put the word lessons in quotation marks
because some of these I am inclined to view as so-called lessons,
rather than as meaningful ones.]
For policymakers (including, eg.. Bush I and II), some of the
"lessons" derived from VN seem to be the following:
1) Don't make it a political war - Bush II specifically cited this in
2004 as "the" lesson of VN; not that he seems much interested in
applying it, or that it even makes sense!
2) Don't do body counts of the enemy - ie. gives a false sense of
progress. Tommy Franks thus infamously said of the war in Iraq: "we
don't do body counts."
3) Don't show the bodies of returning soldiers - ie. bad PR; weakens
public morale and tolerance for the war
4) Don't let the media have free rein in reporting on the battlefield
- hence "embedding" of journalists. (ie. blame the media)
5) Don't let down the troops - hence, the whole "we support the
troops" movement, which emerged during Gulf War I. This, I think, has
been one of the more clever methods for manipulating public opinion,
though its efficacy is fading. Since "supporting the troops" is not
always that easy to separate from supporting their mission, it was
hoped that this effort would keep up public support.
6) Don't give up/don't "cut and run" - this seems to be the "lesson"
that Bush cited while he was in VN in November. This is in keeping
with the recent revisionism (eg. Mark Moyar's book) and writings by
Melvyn Laird, and others - the idea that we "snatched defeat from the
jaws of victory" by abandoning our South Vietnamese ally when they
all but had the war won.
7) Don't make the military fight with "one hand tied behind its back"
- this emerged after the VN war as one of the reasons for US failure.
That is, we didn't go all out - which presumably included at least
more aggressive (if that is imaginable) bombing, but also extended to
invading the North, or in Nixon's "Madman" scenario, using nuclear
weapons. Hence, to some degree, the whole "shock and awe" campaign in
the early phase of the war on Iraq. Though as much hyperbole as
reality, it seems clear to me that this use of overwhelming force was
in part a response to charges that the military's hands had been tied
in Vietnam.
These seem to be some of the key "lessons" with respect to fighting
more wars, but doing it in ways that are designed to avoid what were
perceived to be some of the problems of Vietnam.
On the other hand, there are those lessons that have been gleaned by
those who saw the US war in Vietnam as a mistake from the outset:
1) Don't go to war unless there is a genuine and overwhelming
national interest at stake.
2) Don't send in troops unless you really understand the historical
and social context of the country in which you are planning to fight.
Much of the US approach in VN, as in Iraq, seems to be divorced from
historical or sociocultural realities on the ground. Decision-making
is based at best on wishful thinking, and at worst on vague
stereotypes about the cultures and peoples involved.
3) Weigh the real costs of getting involved in war, not only in terms
of US money and troops, but in terms of the deaths and injuries to
civilians and the destruction of infrastructure/environment. In other
words, are you prepared to accept the moral responsibility for
killing thousands or millions of civilians?
I see this last as particularly important, and generally ignored by
those who make decisions about whether or not to go to war,
especially in terms of civilian casualties. When one hears
discussions about the benefits of the Vietnam war, there seems to be
too little thought about whether these benefits could conceivably
justify the massive and frequently indiscriminate killing of innocent
people. Although civilian casualties in Iraq are on a somewhat
different order of magnitude, they are still enormous, whether 60,000
or 600,000. Again, the question must be raised. Was it worth it to
cause so many deaths of innocent people in order to achieve whatever
it is that we have achieved in Iraq?
Anyway, these are just some thoughts off the top of my head about
this. I am not a VN war expert by any means, so I hope others will
weigh on on this as well. I agree with Dan that this is a very
important discussion, and one that we as VN specialists have some
obligation to undertake.
George Dutton
Dan Duffy <dduffy@email.unc.edu>
date Dec 29, 2006 3:37 PM
subject Re: [Vsg] Some "Lessons" of Vietnam
Hi all,
I am very taken with Adam's idea that that we put our heads together,
and pleased that Diane thinks it's a good idea and George already has so
much to say.
It would be awfully nice to see a research product that had some claim
to attention among policy makers.
Is there a researcher at RAND or the Pentagon, or some journalist, we
could invite to review our previous discussions, and what we say next,
and write them up some way that would get attention?
"Adam @ UoM" <fforde@unimelb.edu.au>
date Dec 29, 2006 11:04 PM
subject RE: [Vsg] Some "Lessons" of Vietnam
Why is it only the US that is meant to draw lessons? That this is what is
thought by some people to be the central issue seems to me to be part of the
bigger story.
As Clinton said - If you can do it by yourself, then OK; if not, you need
allies, and for that you need politics.
On Fox today, after Saddam's execution, there was a US Major General (Army
Ret.) who thought that around 2004 'the enemy' changed direction, seeking
not to win, but to kill enough US troops to destroy the US will to fight. As
I said earlier, Truong Chinh (I was told) congratulated Le Duan on having
beaten the Americans on both the home and the overseas fronts, leading to
the victory. The General also made his point that war in general is not (he
was criticising Rumsfeld) a managerial conflict, but one between two groups
of people, each of which reacts and acts as they see fit. The lessons drawn
by all parties are part of the state of play (the 'tinh the'). I have long
thought that US-Vietnamese relations remain the best poker game in the world
today. A Polish WWII fighter pilot I once knew said that the best poker is
played between people who have played it against each other for a long time.
May I also point out, with I suspect the concurrence of others, that VSG is
not a solely American community, though obviously it owes much to its
American members, and is kindly hosted in the US. Much of the meaning given
to Vietnam by some American contributors to the VSG seems, I think, to
reflect the sense that the main lessons to be drawn from the Vietnam war are
lessons for Americans. I doubt this, mainly because the US, with its limited
troop numbers, lacks military power. So Clinton is, here, perhaps right.
What lessons about Vietnam were drawn by actual and potential US allies?
Perhaps the simplest is that they do not listen.
The British, in their day, would have been capable of using mercenaries, or
troops from the Empire, if they had been able to pay them. Currently, the EU
and NATO have sat by - look at the problems getting increased numbers for
Afghanistan. Recruiting in Central and Eastern Europe would not be too hard,
if the conditions (pay) were right. This has not happened. What lessons were
drawn from Vietnam by, perhaps, the Poles and the Bulgarians? Not to mention
the Ukrainians.
I am tempted to quote the marvellous exchange about Vietnam in A Fish Called
Wanda, but I am sure it is very familiar to many.
Adam
Adam <adam@aduki.com.au>
date Dec 29, 2006 11:11 PM
subject RE: [Vsg] Some "Lessons" of Vietnam
PS By 'they do not listen' below - I meant the US. Look at the public
criticisms by British Generals of US tactics in Iraq and Afghanistan. And
the problems the Marine Crops had in Iraq in trying early to implement the
same sorts of counter-insurgency stuff as the Brits in Basra.
Politically, this means that NATO or other expanded support could / would
require giving up US military leadership - a deal that is possible, but not
easy to see the US pulling off. Without this, perhaps the main lesson from
Vietnam is that the US finds it very hard to learn from mistakes. To quote
Halberstram from memory - 'all organisations do their thing, and the US Army
(created to fight in Western Europe) did theirs'. The point is that they
were allowed to.
Adam
"wturley@siu.edu" <wturley@siu.edu>
date Dec 30, 2006 7:55 AM
subject RE: [Vsg] Some "Lessons" of Vietnam
Adam's comment below prompts me to make an observation that came to mind
when this thread began. It concerns a lesson about lessons, which is that lessons
don't carry very well. I won't go quite so far as to say that it is then pointless to draw
lessons, but it raises the point about how difficult it is to determine which lessons
are applicable in other situations and how to apply them. Contra Adam, American
policymakers and strategists do learn from their mistakes, but like generals
everywhere they then proceed to fight the last war. To cite just one Iraq example,
"shock and awe" was an application of the Powell doctrine (or that part of it that was
a reaction against graduated response). Note, too, Rumsfeld's abhorence of letting
the Iraqis become dependent on the US as justification for keep US troop levels low.
It is now obvious to all that both of these "lessons" contributed to the failure of US
intervention in Iraq.
It would be helpful to distinguish between two categories of lessons: the lessons
that should have been applied in the situation from which they were drawn (what we
should have done), and lessons that may be useful in other situations (what we
should do if we ever face a similar situation). For the latter category what is needed
additionally is a method for assessing the cross-situational relevance of lessons...a
probably impossible task without which the whole exercise in drawing lessons is
useless.
And of course it is not only Americans who might do well to ponder lessons. Has
anyone pulled together the lessons drawn by the victors? Their publications are full
of them, and they reveal an entirely different "epistemology of lessons" than the one
implied in American exercises.
Bill Turley
"Diane Fox (dnfox)" <dnfox@hamilton.edu>
date Dec 30, 2006 11:08 AM
subject Re: RE: [Vsg] Some "Lessons" of Vietnam
Yes--
Thanks for the thoughts on "lessons". I suppose several of us remember the "lessons" from WWII that supported US involvement in Vietnam: we were there to "stop another Hitler" before things went too far.
And yet...
As for the lessons not only being for Americans--yes, nationality does transfix us in odd ways, obscuring patterns, doesn't it? And yet again... for the moment it is US action in Iraq that is in question.
df
Adam <adam@aduki.com.au>
date Dec 30, 2006 3:08 PM
subject RE: [Vsg] Some "Lessons" of Vietnam
Aha! Engagement.
My point (or at least the point I want to have been making) is not that
Americans did not and do not draw lessons, but that under current
conditions, with US military power clearly limited and so any additional
troops inevitably coming from elsewhere, it is how the US is seen to draw
lessons that is crucial. To be an ally in a risky situation is probably not
to want to write blank cheques.
Bill's statement comes down to 'yes, we have learnt lessons', to which the
reply from many must now be, sure, but not the ones that count for us. And,
with such conclusions, shared Western interests are hard to articulate and
then express in terms of commitments. Personally, reading Fiasco, and the
recent Vanity Fair, it seemed to me that these accounts of US military
actions will be read by many as subordinating to military practices the
notion that, in the end, the solution will have to be political - a lesson
the British learnt to their cost, forgot and had to re-learn - look at
Ireland. And I conclude that so long as this continues, the lesson that will
tend to be drawn is that, as I said, there is little point for others
getting involved, despite the attractions - fear of Iranian control over the
Shia areas of a divided Iraq, Turkey moving in to the Kurd areas, oil
supplies disrupted etc. I feel relatively certain that such calculations
influence much thinking in Europe, supported by reading what the British
Generals have been writing in their memoirs, not to mention informed US
comment.
As for lessons drawn by the victors, I fully agree with Bill that these
follow very different lines of thought. But again the underlying theme must
be that for various reasons, with such interventions, on the ground,
something often happens - a 'style of violence'? - when US troops get
involved that makes it far harder for the US and her allies to attain a
political solution, which aggravates popular opposition in the US and which
means that, post-conflict, there are certain sorts of damage - more people
killed rather than less, more of them civilians rather than less, more
physical damage rather than less ...
In passing, I was struck how relatively few Lebanese civilians were killed
during the recent fighting in South Lebanon.
And all this comes down, for me, to the question of political control over
the military. In some histories of the First World War British problems in
getting out from the military tactics of attrition are attributed to a
combination of the Generals' mindsets with undue military influence over the
Ministry of War (a General as Minister) that had the support of the King,
and was politically therefore very hard to end, even when Lloyd George's
coup replaced Attlee. The problem was not constitutional, but to do with the
political authority of the military and what they used it for. For the King
nowadays read the mass media? In passing, the creation of the system of the
Chiefs of Staff in the UK was, again in some histories, intended to secure
political control. But that takes us deep into US politics, and I don't vote
over there. Nor do I pretend to understand it. But this does again return us
to the politics of it all. Once again one watches fundamentally decent
Americans view with appalling horror what their troops end up doing. The
recent Vanity Fair article is fascinating and awful reading on US military
practice. For me, it ain't so different from practice in Vietnam.
Adam
Chung Nguyen <Chung.Nguyen@umb.edu>
date Dec 30, 2006 4:18 PM
subject RE: [Vsg] Some "Lessons" of Vietnam
I think George's distinction is crucial - lessons for the policy makers to wage "better" wars or for the citizens not to be drawn/tricked/manipulated into unjust wars. For the two require very different kind of lessons. Then Bill raises a difficult issue incapable of predetermined resolution: how are we to know when and with what precise situation to apply the lessons. A right lesson applying to a wrong situation is worse than any lesson at all.
History has shown that unjust wars could be won, at least for a while. The recent century of colonialism is a case in point. The US military intervention in Guatemala, Santo Domingo, Panama, Grenada, Nicaragua, etc. is another.
A common feature of wars won or lost in these cases is that the government always create a bogus casus belli in order to get the support of the country - the fear of some impending catastrophe by a some terribly dangerous enemy if we do not commit our troops - like that tiny island of 100 thousand people in Grenada would be a threat to US existence, or the Nicaraguans would march en mass to Texas in a matter of hours.
The government could win these wars if the war did not cause unsurmountable economic and political problems and could be concluded quickly, or enter into a quagmire if the cost becomes unsupportable, and/or the casus belli could no longer be defended while the war drags on.
The economic issue is rather easy to identify, and could be evaluated objectively. It is the maintenance of the support of the citizens that is an unknown variable that is subject to vicissitude, adjustment, and manipulation.
To answer George's first category, the lesson is to make sure you do whatever needed to maintain the support for the war. In this case, planted faulty intelligences, embedded reporters, staged Iraqi support for the invasion in the taking-down of Saddam statue, no pictures of coffins, no negative pictures from the battlefield, precision bombings with no pictures of colateral damages to civilians, etc.
For the second category, how is it that the government could manage to get the country into war based on evidences most experts know as bogus, but are never given a platform to present their views? The whole Fourth Estate has become embedded. I don't think that's the origin intention of the First Amendment.
Even now, the whole discussion about the Iraq war in the mainstream press in the US is surrealistic, based mostly on unrealistic premises and assumptions. These are solely for domestic consumption, to, well, back to the lesson above, to maintain the support for the war as long as possible. Or at least to reduce the rate of erosion. It's not that the policy makers do not know, but to do otherwise is lose that support altogether.
The war from the perspective of the Iraqi is rarely provided *in context* in the US mainstream press. Exactly the same situation in the case of the Vietnam war - what is revealed in the Pentagon Papers versus what is presented by the policy makers of the time.
Here are the views, I believe, that correspond more closely to the facts on the ground in Iraq:
1) "Interview With Ray McGovern, Part 3"
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/090506R.shtml
The plan to attack Iraq before 9/11. Ray McGovern was the CIA officer who used to brief President Bush Sr. every morning. The facts he claims were later confirmed in the Downing Street Memo I & II - top secret documents leaked from Blair's government.
2) "Unreported: The Zarqawi Invitation"
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/060906A.shtml <http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/060906A.shtml>
Greg Palast's interview of General Jay Garner, the first chief of Iraq occupation authority). He was quickly replaced by Paul Bremer. Why was he fired ? - Failure to stick to Defense Department's 101-page Plan to sell Iraq's assets and take control of the oil.
(For more details, see the BBC interview -
http://www.gregpalast.com/view-the-bbc-tv-interview-with-general-garnerrniraq-for-sale-bbc-tv-exclusive-report-by-greg-palast )
If these could be known in the US, one could be sure that it's common knowledge in Iraq, as common knowledge as the lack of legitimacy of the RVN government in South Vietnam.
In reference to Stephen Denny's question, here's the perspective of a well-known Iraqi;
3) The Trials of Occupation
http://www.commondreams.org/views06/1228-23.htm
By Dr Burhan al-Chalabi is a former chairman of the British Iraqi Foundation and a member of the Royal Institute of International Affairs.
Put ourselves in the position of the Iraqis, how long do we think they will struggle if they see the situation as they do ?
So, back to George's 2nd category, the real lesson is that we need to have a vigorous and independent press, preferably non-embedded.
Nguyen Ba Chung
"DiGregorio, Michael" <M.DiGregorio@fordfound.org>
date Dec 31, 2006 7:25 PM
subject RE: [Vsg] Some "Lessons" of Vietnam
Dear Bill,
There is a Vietnamese expression that states that 'no two mistakes are
alike.' The first time I heard this, it was explained to me that the
mistakes, in fact, be very similar, but because the contexts change, we
don't perceive them as so. I think this is an important consideration
when dealing with the transferability issue.
I apologize for making a US centered argument, but the US led war in
Iraq is extremely relevant since, among other things, some of the
principles are people who should have learned something from Vietnam.
Rumsfeld was put into office to rebuild the US military on the basis of
what the Russians once called the technical revolution in warfare. The
idea was to reduce ground troops in favor of projecting military power
with pinpoint accuracy over great distances. It was, however, a
strategy originally designed during the cold war, as a means of
preventing global nuclear warfare, and in a context in which warfare
took place between states. States can negotiate with other states. In
the 1990s, the idea that the US had to take command of the revolution in
warfare was developed by conservative think tanks. This was at a time
when the US military budgets still reflected the cold war needs for
submarines and aircraft carriers, entitlements (that are reflected in
jobs) that neither Bush (41) or Clinton could overcome.
Bill - you are much more knowledgeable about military issues than I am.
Please correct me if I am wrong.
As far as I can see, the hubris of the moment, the hubris that prevented
the White House from learning the lessons of Vietnam, lay in the vain
assumption that the contexts had now made those lessons irrelevant.
There were plenty of Cassandras - from Shalikashvily (sic) to the
hundreds of thousands of protestors on the streets. But this sense of
living in a whole new context overrode any sense of history.
Now, faced with a multiparty insurgency against and within a weak
government, I sense a bit of the hubris has been wrung out and the
lessons of Vietnam are being reconsidered. No two mistakes are alike.
Mike
"frank.proschan@yahoo.com" <frank.proschan@yahoo.com>
date Jan 1, 2007 2:45 AM
subject Re: [Vsg] Some "Lessons" of Vietnam
Colleagues,
What is missing from this discussion is recognition that for lessons drawn to become lessons learned and finally lessons heeded, policy makers must have 1) the will and 2) the institutional capacity to learn from those lessons. As James William Gibson points out in "The Perfect War: The War We Couldn't Lose and How We Did" (later republished as "The Perfect War: Technowar in Vietnam"), U.S. decision makers in Washington and Saigon had available to them all of the information they might have needed to make sensible decisions; what they also had--as he demonstrates repeatedly--was the remarkable ability to take any negative information and turn it into evidence in favor of the policies already adopted. Even the most damning evidence of failure was magically reinterpreted as confirmation of success. Such self-delusory processes and magical thinking among politico-military leaders in time of war are hardly unprecedented--viz. the U.S. understanding of Japanese intentions immediately prior to (and indeed, even as planes were overhead) Pearl Harbor. U.S. policy makers (and, I trust, those of other nations) have an endless capacity to fall victims themselves to the disinformation campaigns they are themselves propagating; group-think and self-delusion seem to me to be fatal impediments to the kind of optimism expressed by some of our members that the lessons we might draw would somehow benefit policy processes.
One has only to read the Washington Post or NY Times to see ample evidence that today's Cheney-Rice-Bush administration partakes in abundance of the elixir of self-delusion, as their (non-alcoholic?) egg-nog of the season (and all seasons, sadly).
Happy New Year,
Frank Proschan
Dan Duffy <dduffy@email.unc.edu>
date Jan 1, 2007 9:06 AM
subject Re: [Vsg] Some "Lessons" of Vietnam
Hi all, this is great. Maybe a more feasible suggestion for compiling,
reviewing, restating these threads would be a state-of-the-field essay
for the Journal of Vietnamese Studies. Producing such things is part of
the project's policy. Writing and editing one would be a rational
commmitment of time for professionals.
The first state-of-the-field essay JVS did is about Keith Taylor's views
of the last couple of years, an development that is incomprehensible
without taking into account that Keith studied the conduct of the VN war
as a counter-intelligence enlisted man and has struggled to fit that
experience into his subsequent career as a university researcher.
David Elliott, William Turley, Neil Jamieson, William Penziger and
others among us have had comparable arcs of thought, as Bernard Fall
did. In Vietnamese studies we can talk about "lessons of Viet Nam" as
the existential predicaments of individuals, with intellectual
consequences that should be of interest to those outside our field.
As a researcher I am most taken with these narratives of the social
imagination. For reasons that Frank alludes to, I find it difficult to
think about lessons US government learns in Viet Nam. As a citizen
informed by social science I can point to some lessons that US
institutions have demonstrably learned.
The US armed services learned one lesson so well that we no longer
remark on it: the services must be racially integrated. They had been
moving that way in the 1960s, following executive orders from the 1950s,
but the stress of the war brought out the bad faith in those efforts.
Army and Navy officers were almost all white and still had personal
black servants as a matter of course; Jim Crow thinking dominated the
non-commissioned officers. Contradictions erupted in race riots at Long
Binh, and low-level race war throughout US bases worldwide. All that is
gone forever, deliberately reformed as a consequence of the VN war, and
the military now sets the standard for desegregated institutions in the US.
The US armed services learned other lessons, and had a long-held
conviction confirmed, whose consequences we are seeing in Iraq. The
lessons have to do with the enduring rivalry between a professional
armed service and the state militias. The professionals consistently
across US history want citizen bodies without citizen leadership or mass
democratic participation (the scholar on this is Weigley). After VN,
they insisted that the reserves, our militia, would be called for
service in wartime. The chiefs of staff also collaborated after Viet
Nam with such free-market thinkers as Milton Friedman in abolishing the
draft. The professional army, with militia middle management, and no
levee en masse, which the US now has is a reaction, or lesson, learned
from the VN-era services, which had professional leadership and middle
management, with citizens fighting.
Another lesson learned by institutions across US society from the war in
VN is the PTSD diagnosis and its sequellae. The history of the
diagnosis is well-told in the medical ethnography The Harmony of
Illusions, and in Kali Tal's critical study, Worlds of Hurt. The lesson
that war damages the psyche takes part in two longer developments in US
history, the bureaucratic recognition that every soldier is a human
being, and the bureaucratic recognition that war externalizes costs onto
the public health. Our first welfare program was for Civil War
veterans, and veterans remain the only group with anything like European
human rights. Maya Lin put everyone's name on a wall, and before you
know it we have teams aggressively recovering bodies from WWI. The
morbidity approach to war casualties, exemplified by the Lancet articles
on Iraq, becomes credible. It's a hopeful lesson, overall, since the
logical implication, if soldiers really are citizens, and civilian
deaths can be administratively observed and taken into bureaucratic
account, is that at some point people in power will stop deciding to go
to war.
I'm afraid that another lesson ordinary Americans drew from the war in
the Viet Nam, and are drawing again with Iraq, is that leaders just
don't care in any practical way about their lives or anyone else's.
This widely-drawn lesson cannot be expressed directly in a way that
mobilizes social support. It's an implication of the Harmony of
Illusions and Worlds of Hurt that the PTSD diagnosis is a medicalization
of an existential truth that cannot be politically expressed. So people
get sentimental about the troops, and Charles Rangel makes his arch
proposal for a draft, which the leadership absolutely does not want.
It is a lesson that everyone hears but cannot be learned in a way that
an institution can recognize.
Hoang t. Dieu-Hien" <dieuhien@u.washington.edu>
date Jan 1, 2007 10:40 AM
subject Re: [Vsg] Some "Lessons" of Vietnam
Happy New Year to all!
What we need is to learn from the marketing industry and use their strategies to talk to policy makers on lessons learned. That's when we have hope for lessons learned to be heeded. The complication here is that the lessons learned will be different depending on perspectives. If people from all those perspectives are equally skilled in the "marketing" of their lessons, what the policy makers will take away will depend on what speaks to them on a more visceral level.
Thank you for such stimulating discussions.
Hien
"Adam @ UoM" <fforde@unimelb.edu.au>
date Jan 1, 2007 3:08 PM
subject RE: [Vsg] Some "Lessons" of Vietnam
Interesting to see the US administration setting about constructing a 'stab in the back' scenario, as their requests for more troops for the 'surge' seem set to be knocked back by Congress and Republican opponents. What will the counter to that be? Fascinating politics.
On my colleague's posting below, I feel that the idea that the 'problem' is to get policy-makers to listen seems rather odd. Perhaps a somewhat monarchical view of politics, suggesting that the assumption is that the reality of elections will not make policy-makers listen (because if they don't they will lose office), as in essence you are stuck with them? One lesson drawn by some of the English from the horrors of the First World War was that significant political change - popular / democratic political control - was needed to avoid such war - the Secret Treaties, the Union of Democratic Control.
Adam
Dan Duffy <dduffy@email.unc.edu>
date Jan 2, 2007 5:47 AM
subject Re: [Vsg] Some "Lessons" of Vietnam
Hi all, a specific reply to Frank's point from Gibson. I agree with
Gibson about VN. An army that has enlisted Paul Mus and Bernard Fall
from the start, and recruited hundreds or thousands more analysts of
whom we have a few in VSG ranks, obviously had great information on VN
with no good impact on policy.
But the conduct of the war in Iraq has changed my own conclusions from
this fact. The spectacle of an army that really and truly doesn't know
what it is doing makes me prefer the idea of having someone in
government, you know, read Arabic. Almost futile knowledge would be
better than none at all.
Similarly, having some clear and quotable bits of knowledge from the
Viet Nam war circulating would be a good thing. One such lesson would
be that we did indeed have fabulous knowledge of Viet Nam, so it would
be good to have at least that level of effort in Iraq and whatever we're
calling the general war.
Dan
William Turley <wturley@siu.edu>
date Jan 5, 2007 1:26 PM
subject Re: [Vsg] Some "Lessons" of Vietnam
I've been in transit for a few days and so lost this thread. Hope it's not too late to pick it up with a couple of observations, just to stir the pot:
1. What you see depends on where you sit, as does what you learn and want others to learn. The U.S. Army did learn from experience in Vietnam how better to conduct counterinsurgency warfare in Vietnam, but the lessons are contradictory (Harry Summers vs. the CIA). The Vietnamese hope the U.S. relearned the lesson "never again" to conduct a land war in Asia, although they might consider some other form of help in the event of a dust-up with China. U.S. allies want the U.S. to learn how to police the world in a more discriminating manner, with less reliance on military force and more on diplomacy, and not in the EU's backyard. Many people in the 3rd world hope that Yankees would learn, finally, to stay home, until of course it's their ox that gets gored. So I don't see much hope for ever extracting a coherent, internally consistent set of lessons from the Vietnam War for the world.
2. One of the dirty little "lessons" of both insurgency and counterinsurgency, as of any civil conflict, is that terror works, because at the end of the day most people will give their allegiance to the side (state, army, clan, sect, or mafia) that provides a credible guarantee of physical security while exhibiting capacity to deny it. The Vietnamese Communists intimidated fence sitters into silence or submission; Col. Le Roy "pacified" Ben Tre; the French had the FLN on the run in 1959-60; on through Afghanistan, Yemen, Mozambique, Angola, a dozen countries in Africa today -- in every case by making it costly to cooperate with the enemy. The U.S., or for that matter any sizable power like the UK or France, has the capability to defeat any current insurgency on the planet simply by killing a lot of people. Violence works better than "politics" in defeating insurgencies, and it's cheaper, but you have to use enough of it. The problem, thank God, is that "enough" has come to exceed what most people are willing to tolerate on moral grounds or anticipation of payoffs in an iterated game. Just the same, it's a simple fact that helps to understand why the lesson that solutions in the end must be political is so often ignored.
3. One of the stranger lessons many people drew from the Vietnam War is that Vietnam proved the U.S. had no stomach for the long haul. This lesson actually predates Vietnam in the form of the "rule" that democracies are unsuited to fight long wars. This "lesson" gripped the minds of American policymakers from 1973 until 9/11 and was perhaps most pronounced in the Clinton administration. It was drawn by some adversaries of the U.S. as well (although Bin laden seems to have been more impressed by the Marine withdrawals from Lebanon and Somallia than with Vietnam). And yet in Vietnam the U.S. lost 58,000 lives, billions of dollars and its national cohesion pursuing goals that were not vital to its interests in what was its longest war, exceeding the Revolution by 10 months. I find it hard to look at the bald facts without concluding that Americans are remarkably patient with their leaders, quite tolerant of casualties (relative to objective), and more than a little bloody-minded. The polling data to prove this is easily available through the Roper Center. The obvious lesson others should learn is to stay out of the way. Why haven't they?
4. A lesson that should be evident to everyone, not just the U.S. -- and I'm hardly the first to say this -- is that counterinsurgency in an age of nationalism is much more costly and likely to fail than it was in the heyday of European colonialism. It is costly because populations are mobilized and have easy access to abundant, cheap, effective small weapons; and it is likely to fail because of the moral/political constraints on using extreme violence, particularly against civilians. It is for lack of historical perspective that this most obvious of all lessons seems never to be learned.
5. Mike Gregorio points out that "some of the principles (re: Iraq) are people who should have learned something in Vietnam" but had "a sense of living in a whole new context." In general, I agree, at least on the strategic level, but the issues are tangled. The all-voluntary army and the Revolution in Military Affairs (our version of the Russian thing) both had roots in the Vietnam War. The all-volunteer army, because it was believed Vietnam proved that fighting with a draftee army made it more difficult to manage public opinion; the RMA, because a lot of folks believed that technological innovations during the Vietnam War proved the efficacy of fighting all sorts of wars in new ways, maybe even to the extent of making all that messy business with "pacification" obsolete. As the all-volunteer army would be more compact than the one that fought in Vietnam, it would have to compensate with greater technological proficiency. We saw the result in Gulf War I, which greatly helped to bring this thinking out of RAND Corp. and into the academies. "Shock and awe," as I indicated earlier, was a direct application of the Powell Doctrine and the wariness about inviting Iraqi dependency are reactions to Vietnam, too. On the other hand, the Iraq context was in fact very different from that of Vietnam, so the Bushies were not altogether wrong in thinking they had a clean slate to work on. What they failed to do was to appreciate how the differences between Vietnam and Iraq were indicative of certain even greater problems to come in Iraq than ones the U.S. had faced in Vietnam. I refer, of course, to features of society and culture that make Iraq a more difficult place to govern....by anyone. Sorting all this out from Vietnam to Iraq -- how lessons start and transmogrify and get misapplied -- would be a good subject for a book. Surely someone is already working on this.
Cheers,
"Adam @ UoM" <fforde@unimelb.edu.au>
date Jan 5, 2007 6:30 PM
subject RE: [Vsg] Some "Lessons" of Vietnam
Australian press opinion as the 'new policy' on Iraq comes out seems to suggest, as of a pleasant Saturday morning (Australian Saturday papers are far larger than the Sundays, but that is another matter) that this is coming up to be yet another classic 'cohabitation' conflict, with diametrically opposed political expressions of popular democratic will in the different organs of the US state. Similar to the closing stages of the Vietnam war. Not uncommon, of course, in democracies, but with specifically US characteristics of instability.
The elected President, legitimately, orders increased troop numbers and continuation of the 'dau tranh'; the elected Congress, legitimately, especially given what the polls have been saying and the voting in the mid-terms, opposes this. The situation shows how the polity and the constitution lacks a clear way of expressing the popular will, from my perspective clearly marked in the tensions within the Parties as these issues work their ways through, tensions that the lack of Party discipline make hard to resolve. Of course, American political theory says (so I understand) that this is right and proper, and the issues of 'cohabitation' have simply to work their way out. Other political theories say that this is simply a cop out, and offers the state up for capture and muddle. But reams have been written on this!
Since the current 'conjuncture' is one where the President is bellicose, but that can change, surely the obvious lesson for the 'armed opposition', drawn from VN, is to hang on, take the casualties, and wait for the political situation to change - aka who will win the next Presidential election and what will they do? As Bill says, there can be - and here is - but for how long? - sufficient political and elite support for VN-style levels of violence (Phoenix program etc). I point no fingers, the Brits invented Concentration Camps (in the Boer war) ...
More widely, though, one of the lessons of VN that will be drawn here surely is that this support in the US has political expression that is unstable, because of the peculiarities of the US political system under the 'First Republic'. It does not easily reflect changing popular opinion, as that is not what the Constitution is designed to do. At times, different elements/strata capture different parts of the state. This is unstable, so hang in there. Perhaps that is why Bill stresses that ability of the US to 'hang in there' too. and I would argue that one of the lessons that the British learnt was that, all to often, the costs of 'terror' are too high. We killed a lot of Paddies over the years. Look at the Black and Tans. It is not just the Empire that offers an alternative to a life that is 'nasty, brutish and short'. And, these tactics are well known: look up 'Phoenix Program' in Wikipedia, or dwell on Churchill's speech, where he says that Empires of the future should be Empires of the mind.
Rock and roll - any Canadians out there?
Adam
william turley <wturley@siu.edu>
date Jan 8, 2007 8:59 AM
subject Re: [Vsg] Some "Lessons" of Vietnam
Did someone on this list ask about David Petreus's dissertation a
while back? No matter. I ran across a short piece by him that listers
interested in "lessons" would do well to read: David H. Petreus,
"Lessons of History and Lessons of Vietnam," in Lloyd J. Matthews and
Dale E. Brown (eds.), ASSESSING THE VIETNAM WAR: A COLLECTION FROM
THE JOURNAL OF THE U.S. ARMY WAR COLLEGE (Pergamon-Brassey, 1987).
It summarizes the lessons the U.S. Army brass extracted from Vietnam,
with the added interest that it's written by the guy who commanded
the 101st Airborne in Iraq. Also presents some very sound
reflections on the utility of lessons across different situations.
Cheers,
Bill Turley
George Dutton <dutton@humnet.ucla.edu>
date Jan 8, 2007 10:15 AM
subject Re: [Vsg] Some "Lessons" of Vietnam
I agree with Bill that this piece is a very useful and cogent summary
of some of the lessons derived by the US Army. For a useful
compendium of many of the revisionist arguments about the war and its
lessons (dedicated to William Colby, no less) is _The REAL Lessons of
the Vietnam War: Reflections Twenty-five Years After the Fall of
Saigon_, ed. by Moore and Turner (Carolina Academic Press, 2002).
Includes articles by Michael Lind, Mark Moyar, etc. I particularly
like the title and the notion of "real" lessons, not unlike the
closing chapter in Lind's _The Necessary War_ which is "The Genuine
Lessons of the Vietnam War." It would seem that the revisionists have
a particular concern about people learning the "wrong" lessons from
the war.
Best
"Adam @ UoM" <fforde@unimelb.edu.au>
date Jan 8, 2007 1:02 PM
subject RE: [Vsg] Some "Lessons" of Vietnam
There are a few pages in 'Fiasco' on Petraeus' record in Iraq with the
101st, his conclusions in his PhD, and his attempts to put lessons from VN
into practice. The overall message is that what he was trying to do there
was pretty unique - 'counter-insurgency' rather than 'anti-insurgency' was
the rule of the day. One can conclude that, like Halberstram's comment on
the US Army 'doing its thing' in VN, that this was also happening in Iraq
despite lessons from VN. Lesson, therefore, is that lessons were and are not
learnt. The conclusions were there to be drawn, but they were not drawn in
terms of military and political practice.
This naturally takes me, as people must now be getting rather bored of
hearing, to the notion that the main lesson and most important lesson from
VN is that, for various reasons, the lessons were not learnt. Minor ones
perhaps were, and conclusions were certainly drawn by some people, (as the
references cited clearly show), they were even taught in classrooms and
defended in PhD theses, but the way the war in Iraq was fought, and
politically led, as we read in Fiasco and elsewhere , shows that the major
lessons were not learnt.
Adam
William Turley <wturley@siu.edu>
date Jan 8, 2007 2:18 PM
subject Re: [Vsg] Some "Lessons" of Vietnam
The Moore-Turner book is an interesting collection of revisionist bent, but I don't share George's affection for either "real" or "genuine" as adjectives for "lessons." The claim is spurious. I assume you're being ironic, George? The Matthews-Brown volume is far superior, I think, partly because it is not tendentious.
Bill
George Dutton <dutton@humnet.ucla.edu>
date Jan 8, 2007 2:36 PM
subject Re: [Vsg] Some "Lessons" of Vietnam
Hi Bill,
Yes, I was being very ironic with respect to the use of the terms "real" and "genuine," whose use as adjectives for lessons is quite ridiculous. I also agree that the Matthews-Brown volume is far superior. The Moore-Turner book's interest lies in its bringing together a lot of the revisionist arguments, not in the quality of the arguments themselves.
Adam @ UoM" <fforde@unimelb.edu.au>
date Jan 1, 2007 4:30 AM
subject [Vsg] Who gets to be the policy-makers?
So, who gets to be the policy-makers?
It seems to me to make little sense to harp on about the frequent but not
universal shortcomings of policy-makers. To err is human - the point is,
what happens next. The old catchphrase about the English losing every battle
but the last was often said to mean that it usually took that long to get
rid of the peacetime generals.
More seriously, countries, to misquote I think Winston Churchill, get the
policy-makers they deserve. Which? Why? One lesson I think European
governments (amongst others) have drawn from Iraq and Vietnam is that in the
US the choice of policy-makers, and which of them if any to hang so as to
encourage the others (this being British practice with Admirals), follows
certain patterns, and these reflect something, though Lord knows exactly
what. So don't expect big changes without big changes.
Australia, it seems to me, where the choice of policy-makers, and what they
are expected to do, reflects it seems to me bitter lessons learnt in foreign
wars, has so far managed to avoid close involvement with military action in
Iraq. Read Australian books about soldiers' experiences (for example, in the
Great War), and watch what the ABC tells people, and this does not surprise
me. The Prime Minister's televised speech to us explain why the government
was supporting the US operation relied almost entirely on appeal to
self-interest, including access to security information, and had almost
nothing in it about bringing democracy to Iraq or suchlike. This, I think,
follows certain patterns, and these reflect something, though Lord knows
exactly what. These were also reflected in the pubic discussions about the
anniversary last year of the 1966 Australian military operation in Vietnam,
which again seemed quite impossible to have happened in the same way in the
US.
As for lessons drawn, I recall being told about a delegation of Australian
generals who visited in Vietnam in the early 1990s, where they met of course
various Vietnamese generals, and, after mutual measure had been taken, were
told by one of them that 'yes, we remember you, you buried our dead'.
Whether this is true or not I have not the faintest idea.
Annoying, isn't it?
Regards
Adam
Thomas Jandl <thjandl@yahoo.com>
date Jan 1, 2007 8:33 AM
subject Re: [Vsg] Who gets to be the policy-makers?
RE Adam's quote: I know one by George Bernard Shaw: Democracy is the process that assures that we get the leaders we deserve
On Saturday, Dec 30, 2006, at 16:45 US/Pacific, quang@qxpham.com wrote:
> http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/12/29/
> AR2006122901070.html
>
> Ford's Finest Legacy
> By Quang X. Pham
> Saturday, December 30, 2006; A21
>
Christoph Giebel <giebel@u.washington.edu>
date Dec 31, 2006 8:29 PM
subject Re: [Vsg] Ford's Finest Legacy -- the empire's usual amnesia
In the grand picture of a dead president's career, Quang X. Pham finds
Ford's "finest legacy" in his moral support for RVN evacuees. Perhaps
not the finest compliment in the current hagiographies and flatteries,
but okay. But I wonder what Quang Pham means by "... a 'peace with
honor' that the congressional Watergate class would not enforce"?
Perhaps he'll explain? I always thought that it was Thieu's RVN that
immediately repudiated and ignored the Paris Agreement and was, on
balance, the aggressor during 1973, when the political provisions of
Paris might still have had a chance to succeed. And yet, the US
Congress appropriated military aid funds to the RVN as required, and up
to the very end. No "cut-off" there. I am not aware that anybody
tried to "enforce" Thieu's treaty commitments, but I await being
corrected.
For a concise and different reading of Ford's presidency, see the
indefatigable Stephen Zunes in:
http://www.commondreams.org/views06/1231-20.htm
Two points:
First, Zunes states: "Despite brutal repression, massive corruption and
widespread violations of the Paris Peace Agreement, President Ford
continued to send billions of dollars of aid to prop up the tottering
dictatorship of General Nguyen Van Thieu in South Vietnam. This support
needlessly prolonged the war until the Communist-led uprising finally
ousted the regime in April 1975." This would not have been my
phrasing, but it raises a more compelling point about post-Paris
developments than, perhaps, Quang Pham's aside about the 1973/74 US
Congress. But, again, I am looking forward to his clarifications.
Second, since VSG is operating within the larger context of Southeast
Asian Studies, Zunes is far too lenient with Ford (and the supposedly
morally superior Carter) regarding his culpability in the East Timor
genocide. He is quite correct in saying that in December 1975, "on a
visit to Jakarta, Ford gave the Indonesian dictator Suharto the green
light to take over East Timor, then just emerging from Portuguese
colonial rule. Less than 24 hours later, Indonesian troops invaded the
island nation, embarking upon a series of massacres that would
eventually take the lives of 200,000 people -- one third of the
country's population." But Ford's actions were far more monstrous:
most of the genocidal violence --fatalities in East Timor are
proportionally about equal to Pol Pot's Cambodia-- took place during
Ford's and Carter's presidencies, but, as is well documented, the US
continuously gave diplomatic cover to Indonesia and supplied the
hardware for, and bankrolled, most of Indonesia's atrocities. We are
being informed on this list that Ford was "misunderstood," but the
record on these outrages is clear. And who'd forget the infamous
request by Ford and Kissinger to Suharto to hold off the aggression
until after they had returned to Washington (within three years,
Kissinger apparently had dramatically lowered his standards for "decent
intervals")? Well, obviously a lot of people: the US media have,
predictably, no critical assessment of this damning episode in Ford's
presidency and, while currently celebrating the demise of one of the
empire's former henchmen, exalt the emperor himself.
Christoph Giebel
UW-Seattle
Stephen Denney <sdenney@ocf.berkeley.edu>
date Dec 31, 2006 11:50 PM
subject Re: [Vsg] Ford's Finest Legacy -- the empire's usual amnesia
Both sides violated the 1973 Paris Agreements beginning shortly after its
signing, but in the end it was the DRV that destroyed the treaty by taking
over the south by military force, abolishing one of the signing parties to
the treaty, and imprisoning its leaders.
- Steve Denney
Chung Nguyen <Chung.Nguyen@umb.edu>
date Jan 2, 2007 6:37 AM
subject RE: [Vsg] Ford's Finest Legacy -- the empire's usual amnesia
I do not want to take anything from Quang's, and in truth, the refugees' gratitude for the generosity and support of President Ford and the American people in opening their heart to the plight of the Vietnamese at that terrible moment of Vietnamese history. For those drowning, any extended hand is a miracle. For those under the rain of bombs in Vietnam, in the rural areas or "free-fire" zones, it was a moment of relief, as much relief as the fact that the country was finally unified, free from foreign intervention after over a century of struggle (1858-1975), but that's another story.
I was a refugee myself. My whole plan to return to Vietnam and teach American literature at Saigon University went by the window after April 1975. As I had no interest in teaching American literature to American students, I lost both a sense of purpose and a vocation to make a living. I then sort of wandered in the wilderness for another 15 years before finally hitting upon something I could enjoy doing.
The point I want to add here is that we can look at history either with a long or a short perspective. Quang Pham piece focuses exclusively on that particular timeframe of April 1975 and possibly a few years afterwards. And there, he is certainly correct.
I just want to add a supplementary perspective in terms of US postwar policy towards VN, starting with President Ford. It was a great help to about a million Vietnamese, but it was also simultaneously a strangling of the other 50 million.
1) Henry Kissinger, in a response to reporters on occasion of the opening of the Gerald Ford Presidential Museum at Grand Rapids on September 16, 1981, referred to the Vietnam War as "a terrible tragedy into which the United States should never have gotten involved." [Capps, The Unfinished War, p. 5]
As a result of that involvement, there were three million Vietnamese dead, two million Cambodians dead, millions more incapacitated. For Vietnam, with a population of about 50 million then, that's equivalent to 18 million American dead, and about 50 million wounded. Could we, even today, fathom such an unimaginable catastrophe that could befall this country?
If there was no US involvement, there would be no April 1975, and the Pham family, most likely, would not end up in the US. This is certainly not President Ford's initiative, for the war began long before he got to the Whitehouse. But in a long view, it's a matter of US history.
2) US post-1975 policy in the beginning resulted in more people fleeing Vietnam, for a country as in desperate trait as VN then, even in the best of circumstance, a chance to relocate to a First World country always had great appeal. Even without any war, millions from all over the world would like to have that chance. The desperate economic situation, plus the government of Vietnam's clear discrimination against Vietnamese with connections to the old regime, no doubt, played an important role in the exodus. When the US changed its policy and no longer accepted parolees/refugees, that exodus slowed down considerably.
3) At the end of the war, despite the opposition to the war by the great majority of the American people, US government policy continued to punish Vietnam with the most gargantuan embargo, class X. It prohibited all international aid agencies to provide assistance to a disaster-stricken country. This could considerably bring about the death and sufferings by serious diseases, deprivation, hunger, and malnutrition of hundreds of thousand people.
For a perceptive analysis of US long-term policy toward post-war Vietnam, i.e. how to strangle Vietnam (excluding the short semi-thaw under Carter and the real thaw under Clinton), make it into a parah country by using the Boat people images, the Cambodian occupation (while the US government in cooperation with China supported Polpot), and the MIA issue, see Bruce Franklin's two provocatively argued books on the war. While Vietnam still struggled to stand on its feet with three hundred thousand MIA's missing that still remain missing to this very day, US policy punished Vietnam for supposedly still holding American MIAs, a supposition refuted by every investigation that has ever carried out by the US government. The total number of US MIAs then was a few thousand, of which the real missing was a few hundred.
4) By the time the war eneded, the great majority of the American people were against the war (according to a Gallup Poll in 1973, about 60% thought that it was a mistake to send U.S. forces to Vietnam). Without the antiwar movement, at least partially, the war might still go on, with hundreds of thousand more killed, and the tragedy would have become much worse. The peace agreement signed in 1973 is almost identical to the one agreed to in 1969, but President Nixon prolonged it for another 4 years, with additional untold number of death and vast expanse of more destruction. And when it was over, anti-war voices such as Thich Nhat Hanh braved the Pacific ocean to pick up floating refugees.
President Ford is a great American, not the least because of his honesty, which is a rare quality for politicians these days. His gift of Supreme Justice John Stevens has been a blessing. Let's thank him on behalf of the refugees, but let's also keep the long view of history in mind, let those voiceless and powerless victims of the war, millions of whom still continue to suffer today, be forgotten. And let's learn something from that horrific past, let's no longer use the refugge issue to foster hostility to Vietnam.
Peace,
Nguyen Ba Chung
Chuck Searcy <chucksearcy@yahoo.com>
date Jan 2, 2007 10:37 AM
subject [Vsg] Ford's Finest Legacy -- the empire's usual amnesia
Chung,
Thank you for your thoughtful perspective and the important historical balance and accuracy you bring to the discussion. There was plenty of pain to go around, during and after the war. U.S. actions after 1975 added further injury to already suffering Vietnamese from all sides who were trying to rebuild their lives, even those fortunate enough to struggle for a new opportunity in America. Now we see pain again, among thousands of Iraqis who would not wish to leave their country under other circumstances, but who desperately are trying to reach the relative safety of other countries as refugees.
Chuck Searcy
Dan Duffy <dduffy@email.unc.edu>
date Jan 3, 2007 5:29 AM
subject Re: [Vsg] Ford's Finest Legacy -- the empire's usual amnesia
I appreciate this fine summary by Chung. In case anyone gets the wrong
idea from my anti-communist view of modern VN history, I would like to
say that I take it for granted that if it was not for the anti-war
movement in the US I would have been walking around VN stepping on
landmines and killing (mostly RVN) babies along with everyone else, and
that the embargo was a great historic crime. I promote scholarship,
testimony, and works of the imagination from those touched by modern VN
history in order to make points of view such as mine more politically
intelligible in the US.
"Quang X. Pham" <quang@qxpham.com>
date Jan 7, 2007 5:21 AM
subject RE: [Vsg] Ford's Finest Legacy -- Epilogue
Three responses to Chuck Searcy, Nguyen Ba Chung and Christoph Giebel:
- Comparisons are being made b/w Vietnam and Iraq with regards to the refugee issue. Of course there is very little “love” between the American soldiers/contractors and the local Iraqi women so there will not be many champions for the Iraqis as there were for the South Vietnamese. In both instances, the best and brightest, for the most part, fled first. I will post another CNN clip via YouTube at my website next week.
- Chung makes some very points that’s impossible to include in a 900-word op-ed. My piece was a tribute to Gerald Ford, not a Vietnam War diatribe. I empathize with your loss and being lost as I was for a long time. When the military draft was abolished in 1973, the anti-war movement also faded. It has had a minimal effect on the war in Iraq and has left no legacy, Cindy Sheehan being the exception. My father came to the U.S. for flight training twice, between 1957 and 1959, and again in 1966. He was livid about fighting a war for South Vietnam while a handful of South Vietnamese were protesting his war at American colleges with their counterparts. Some never returned to Saigon and remained abroad to avoid the draft including members of my family. Certainly privilege had its advantages among the elites in Saigon during wartime. As far as modern Vietnam, I still have family there and harbor no grudges toward its people as nearly two out of three were born after 1975.
- Response to C. Giebel. (I underlined emphases.) This is what Ron Nessen, Ford’s press secretary, had to say in an essay also in the WaPo on 12/28/06. “One day during that dark period, I walked into the Oval Office and showed Ford an Associated Press story reporting that the House had rejected a bill providing funds to help resettle hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese refugees who would probably be targets of imprisonment and execution by the victorious North Vietnamese and Viet Cong. I'd never heard Ford curse before, but he did that day when he read the story. He undertook a public lobbying campaign, including visits to refugee camps in Arkansas and Florida, which turned around public and congressional opposition to helping the refugees. It was his greatest display of moral leadership.”
I’ve excerpted an exchange I had last week with Hoang Duc Nha (former minister of information and Thieu’s chief of staff) who was in Paris during the talks. You can Google his name or read about Kissinger’s spite of Nha in Larry Berman’s “No Peace, No Honor.”
“The South Vietnamese had to accept what we thought at the time was going to be the basis for continued support by the US – that was what Nixon used to get us to sign the imperfect treaty. In spite of the nefarious clauses in the Accords the SVN Government was resolved to implement the treaty and was counting on the US Administration to do its part. After all, the US Government went out of its way, orally and in writing, to reassure SVN that it would react the moment the NVMese were to violate the treaty.
As soon as the NVNese started violating the treaty, in broad daylight and under the nose of the 4-party supervisory commission, the SVNese government called the US to task to fulfill its obligations under the treaty and as it had promised SVN.
When SVN realized that the US Administration was not going to retaliate it had to defend itself and countered the NVMese violations. One thing that most observers as well as students of the VN war did not realize was the fact that the Nixon administration, and later the Ford administration never submitted the Paris Accords for Congressional ratification as it should for international treaties where the US was a signatory. That was the way out for Nixon, Kissinger and later Ford to claim that it did not have the support from the Congress to honor the provisions of the treaty. The US Congress, under the Democratic majority, went on to gradually cut its military and economic aid to SVN, in total disregard of the provisions of the treaty. Whoever claims that the US continues to pour millions of aid into SVN need to go back and research what the Congress did at the time.
In the face of continued and blatant violations by the NVMese – who had in a way gotten the clearance by the US ambivalent attitude on respecting the treaty provisions – and the cut in aid, SVN did as best as it could.
It was not SVN which said “peace with honor” – it was Nixon and Kissinger’s way to give everybody in the US, Administration, Congress, and media a way out to forget the war and blame SVN for not willing to defend itself.”
Best regards,
Quang X. Pham
www.quangxpham.com
"Quang X. Pham" <quang@qxpham.com>
date Jan 8, 2007 1:59 PM
subject RE: [Vsg] Some "Lessons" of Vietnam--Marine Corps officer corps
From my experience in the Marines starting with OCS in 1986, Basic School, aviation flight training, amphibious warfare school for captains, command & staff for majors, plus reading the Marine Corps Gazette and Proceedings for over a decade, there was very little learning with regards to the lessons of Vietnam. There were a handful of articles in the MC Gazette about the Combined Action Platoon Program, maybe one or two articles about Marine advisers in Vietnam, many many articles on Khe Sanh, Hue City and Operation Frequent Wind, and finally, absolute nothing as far as the Vietnamese Marine Corps is concerned. Most of the writings were personal or unit histories.
In 1991, after barely passing the Defense Language Proficiency Test for Vietnamese, I was designated a Foreign Area Officer-Vietnam. I never served in that capacity although I was nearly ordered to Cambodia as part of a U.N. effort there in 1992. The Marines did not have a formal training program back then but they do now and there have been Marine FAOs serving in Vietnam for several years now.
I spent a year (1993-4) serving as an aide-de-camp to a two-star general and accompanied him to the Secretary of the Navy war games held in Quantico, Virginia, and to live-fire exercises at Twenty Nine Palms and Yuma, Arizona. Everything was geared towards amphibious operations and fighting two simultaneous major regional conflicts (MRCs), in the Korean peninsula and in the Persian Gulf/Middle East. We were still on cloud nine after Desert Storm and before the debacles in Somalia and Bosnia.
Most of the generals had served in the I Corps during the war with the exception of officers like Tony Zinni (co van 1966) and John Ripley (Bridge at Dong Ha by John Miller -- Easter offensive 1972). Miller also wrote a book called "Co-Vans: U.S. Marine Advisors in Vietnam." It's more a memoir than a history book.
Bottom line: The training of current lieutenant colonels and above in the Marine Corps (I can't comment on the Army although I did help edit an early version of the revised "Small Wars Manual" which became part of the new counterinsurgency manual that took three years to complete) involved minimal discussions on Vietnam and its lessons.
www.smallwars.quantico.usmc.mil
Best regards,
Quang X. Pham
Author, "A Sense of Duty"
www.quangxpham.com
William Turley <wturley@siu.edu>
date Jan 8, 2007 2:54 PM
subject Re: [Vsg] Some "Lessons" of Vietnam--Marine Corps officer corps
A lot depends on what lessons you are talking about and what you mean by "learning" them. Here are the lessons Petreus says the US Army learned in Vietnam:
1. American public support for US involvement in protracted conflicts is finite, as it is inherently for democracies (but he does not specify what this implies for future action, though I think it's obvious). Readers of this thread will know I think this is a "wrong" lesson, though I don't at all mind if our elected leaders believe it is a correct one and act accordingly.
2. "Civilian officials are responsive to conditions other than the objective conditions on the battlefield." In other words, civilians will set policy and shape strategy in accordance with their political needs, and so the military will never be allowed to fight as it sees fit yet will be left holding the bag if things end badly.
3. "The military took from Vietnam a new recognition of the limits of military power in solving certain types of problems in world affairs. In particular, Vietnam planted doubts in many military minds about the ability of US forces to conduct successful large-scale counterinsurgencies."
Summing up, he says "rather than preparing to fight the last war, as generals and admirals are often accused of doing, contemporary military leaders seem far more inclined to avoid any involvement overseas that could become another Vietnam." I suspect he would extend this by saying that what the generals and admirals mean by "another Vietnam" is not being allowed to win, though the essay makes clear he is too smart and sophisticated a guy to stop at this.
Notice that these "lessons" are interrelated (fickle public support constrains civilian officials from letting the military do what it, in its professional expertise, knows must be done), and they are fundamentally about the functioning of the American political system and its interaction with the military system. They are not tactical lessons; they're not even strategic. They're the sort of lessons bureaucrats draw about the potentials and limitations of their respective niche in the total institutional structure of state. This is why they don't show up in the small wars manual or in the battlefield behavior of generals in Iraq. This is not stupid: at tactical level, a lot of lessons are just too idiosyncratic to be of much use, and trying to apply them would stifle innovation and creativity. The real problem at the JCS level is to do with the political slugfest at home.
That said, I think you can see how the "lessons" above exercised some influence on Gulf War II: The generals were happy to knock off Saddam but wanted no part of the nation-building to follow (lesson 3). They devised an attack that would knock off Saddam quickly, very quickly (lesson 1). There's never much they can do about lesson 2 so long as the military is subordinate to civilian authority, but a coup is not in the cards, so it's time to retire.
Cheers,
Bill
Adam <adam@aduki.com.au>
date Jan 8, 2007 4:21 PM
subject RE: [Vsg] Some "Lessons" of Vietnam--Marine Corps officer corps
Hi Bill
Thanks for the reply.
You restate various points, which is fair enough. You stress that the main issues "are fundamentally about the functioning of the American political system and its interaction with the military system. They are not tactical lessons; they're not even strategic."
I agree. The American political system sits within wider systems and values, as we all know.
You then conclude that "the "lessons" above exercised some influence on Gulf War II: The generals were happy to knock off Saddam but wanted no part of the nation-building to follow (lesson 3). They devised an attack that would knock off Saddam quickly, very quickly (lesson 1). There's never much they can do about lesson 2 so long as the military is subordinate to civilian authority, but a coup is not in the cards, so it's time to retire".
You thus consider that the people who are meant to have learned these lessons as 'the generals'.
This seems to me to miss the point, which is that Generals, within US and similar polities, are subject to political control. This is what I understand you to be saying above. So the failure to learn the relevant lessons should mainly be looked for in issues to do with American politics; thus, the coming crisis, if there is one, is essentially political rather than military. Blaming the Generals is, at the end of the day, silly; you (governments) can always deal with them, in principle. The British at one time gained a reputation for hanging their Admirals. A big problem in World War II was that, since he had the support of the King, inter alia, it was very hard to deal with Haig. And so the slaughter continued.
But ... people cannot and should not hide behind 'orders' (as we know from the Nuremberg trials and a million subsequent jokes told in bad German accents) I am prompted to add another basic point, which is that a reading of Fiasco argues for me that many US generals, on the whole, do not seem to have operated in ways that differed greatly from Vietnam. Rules of engagement, both formal and informal (in terms of what would be enforced and how), gave let us say lower value to the lives of different sorts of people. As citizens, they too could have resigned rather than implement such rules, or see them implemented. Yes, that is a big issue for a General, but the fact remains.
As Lord Acton said (I think) "You can have power without authority, but you cannot have authority without power."
It is the risks associated with the use of power without authority that creates political crises. It now appears that the US Congress will not use the power of the purse to impose that expression of US popular will over and against the instructions of the President, using another expression of US popular will. Since the Congress is more up to date, tensions seem likely to mount as US popular will once again finds itself muted by "the functioning of the American political system and its interaction with the military system."
An interesting scenario, perhaps similar to the fall of the 4th Republic in France: Through use of biological weapons, the US military in Iraq lose 10,000 men in an afternoon, and breaks. Troops (National Guard soldiers on their third rotation?) being prepared for a 'surge' ordered by the President refuse to obey orders. There is no Petain (so far). There is then a coup in Saudi and a French-led NATO force is sent there, successfully. Bush loses all practical authority, resigns, and Congress (and some of the military) cannot stomach Cheney, who is known to be talking to certain 'revanchist' military people. Classic political crisis. There emerges from this a Second Republic, with constitutional changes that follow the French 5th Republic, with a Prime Minister and Cabinet (?? my knowledge of French politics is not good enough here) in Congress, but with Powell as the new President - and Powell makes it a condition of his taking office that these Constitutional changes happen. Like de Gaulle. Powell guarantees various things, especially civil-military relations. Jamaica celebrates. Best party on the planet for years. But Powell remains not only the only West Indian to make it to the Oval Office, but the only Jamaican male on the planet with such stripes who cannot dance (strange but true) - poor Colin. Nelson Mandela (who has no sense of rhythm at all) sends commiserating telegram after watching inaugural ball. VSG thread on lessons from Vietnam overloads VSG hard drive and is lost for eternity.
??
Regards
Adam
"Adam @ UoM" <fforde@unimelb.edu.au>
date Jan 8, 2007 4:44 PM
subject RE: [Vsg] Some "Lessons" of Vietnam--Marine Corps officer corps
What about informal learning?
There was a very good documentary on ABC here called 'Soundtrack to War' - an Australian got a camera crew inside the Green Zone and wandered around talking about music and recording songs etc. It seemed clear to me that the blacks were often far more clued up on where they were, why and so on than many of the whites, browns, yellows and pinks etc, and for them it was something that came with their communities.
On the Marine Corps - did you know that the lads who guard the Embassy in Hanoi are called the MSG? Adds flavour. I bought a blue dragon T-shirt from the man in the glass box with the weird hair cut when I visited - they took Dong but it had been made in Thailand ... bay diem?
You have to laugh!
But what about informal learning? Books found in the library?
Adam
william turley <wturley@siu.edu>
date Jan 8, 2007 4:01 PM
subject Re: [Vsg] Some "Lessons" of Vietnam--Marine Corps officer corps
Adam,
You are in agreement with the US generals. And very funny, too. One
could carry the point further and observe that one of the reasons the
generals have been lapdogs of the president on Iraq is that he (or
Rumsfeld) appointed lapdogs to the top commands to make sure the war
was fought the way he (Rumsfeld) wanted it fought.
On the question of an Iraq end game, which you have raised more than
once, I think you are correct. You need to add only one dimension;
party competition and the abiding Democrat fear of appearing weak on
defense and not "supporting our troops," yet needing to make good on
antiwar sentiments expressed in the recent election. If the Dems
support the "surge," they will have to turn their backs on the
Deaniac wing of the party. If they cut funding for the war a la
Vietnam, they'll take the blame for defeat. Pelosi is trying to
temporize by criticizing the surge but not cutting funds, but Bush
will find another way to double bind her down the road. As Ford did
in 1974-75.
But at this point we are in danger of drifting away from Vietnam and
its lessons.
Cheers,
Bill
"Adam @ UoM" <fforde@unimelb.edu.au>
date Jan 9, 2007 11:07 PM
subject RE: [Vsg] Some "Lessons" of Vietnam--Marine Corps officer corps
This gives the BBC's take on comparisons between Iraq and VN
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/6245851.stm
Adam
William Turley <wturley@siu.edu>
date Jan 10, 2007 10:49 AM
subject Re: [Vsg] Some "Lessons" of Vietnam--Marine Corps officer corps
If this is the BBC's take, maybe I should turn elsewhere for my evening news: There never was a "surge" in Vietnam of the type being discussed for Iraq. The Wise Men Johnson consulted were confidantes of his choosing, while the Iraq Study Group was appointed by Congress. Westmoreland asked for more troops in Feb. 1968 but did NOT get them. There is more, but you get the point. BBC correspondent Reynolds must be a young person.
Cheers,
Bill Turley
David Marr <dgm405@coombs.anu.edu.au>
date Jan 17, 2007 7:04 PM
subject RE: [Vsg] Some "Lessons" of Vietnam--Marine Corps officer corps
It's summer vacation in Australia, so I'm a bit slow to read the extensive exchange on 'Some "Lessons" of Vietnam'. I have the feeling that useful things are being said, but it's all too late for Iraq, and in any case none of us speak Arabic, etc. to be able to make a systematic comparison.
Nevertheless, there will be other such American (mis)adventures, so let me stir the pot. At the beach I read George Packer's essay on "Knowing the Enemy" (New Yorker, 18 Dec 06), which relies heavily on the counterinsurgency ideas of an Australian, David Kilcullen. It reminds me of the brainstorming by young American officers that I participated in during 1963-64. Our little Hawaii group estimated that it would take several thousand US officers and NCOs fluent in Vietnamese, mostly attached to ARVN units, each prepared to remain for 3 years, to gain the upper hand -- in a low-level conflict that might persist for a decade or more. These cogitations were rendered redundant by Westmoreland's conventional search and destroy strategy a year later, by which time I was a grad student at Berkeley.
I wrote briefly about "The rise and fall of counterinsurgency (1961-64)" in vol.5 of the Gravel edition of the Pentagon Papers (Beacon Press, 1972). After the war, I wrote "The technological imperative in US war strategy in Vietnam" (Kaldor and Eide, editors, The World Military Order, Macmillan, 1979), by way of critique.
Members of the US political establishment have often pushed hi-tech military solutions overseas, partly because they know that the American public will not stomach a strategy that predicts body bags coming home for years and years, which will be the case in most counterinsurgency efforts. As for Iraq and Kilcullen's arguments, I question whether it is possible to start up a serious counterinsurgency campaign after hi-tech has failed. I predict that Iraq will be partitioned.
David Marr
William Turley <wturley@siu.edu>
date Jan 18, 2007 3:33 PM
subject Re: [Vsg] Some "Lessons" of Vietnam--Marine Corps officer corps
I have difficulty suppressing the thought, to twist David's finishing words, that the US political establishment pushes hi-tech military solutions because it believes, mistakenly, that the American public will not stomach a strategy that predicts body bags coming home for years and year. It looks to me like the public has a cast iron stomach for death. Consider the toll in Vietnam, our longest war, for objectives that had no bearing on people's lives and little to do with the nation's interest. Or in Iraq, already longer than World War II, for objectives hardly anyone any longer believes in, and against which there is rather little public protest. If the public's tolerance of body bags coming home was as low as a succession of American leaders apparently has believed, broad public demand to shorten both wars would have erupted early and powerfully. It didn't. I suppose you could argue that this just proves that hi-tech military solutions have "worked" in the domestic political context if not overseas, but I would say David's apt statement actually points to the fact that the US political establishment is out of touch with the obdurate bloody-mindedness of the people it purports to lead.
Forsake your beach to come live awhile in the small-town midwest, David, and you'll quickly sense what I mean.
Cheers,
Bill Turley