Exceptional article. Hopefully you contact C-Span about tapeing and eventually broadcasting the New American Foundation discussion in September.

I particularly appreciated his description of Democratic approaches as Neo-con lite. I suspect that is true among elected officials, but many past appointees as well as factions within the party do have other ideas, and calling them Neo-con lite may help in bringing forth those who are not of that mind.

Elliott Abrams is "brilliant"? "Few would deny" it? D. C. really is a different planet, isn't it?

Are you aware of the recently released document detailing Henry's "Particularly Loquacious Day", engaging in treachery, and selling out South Vietnam to China in a secret meet with Zhou en-Lai?

When musing about
the desirability of realists over NeoCons;
Never forget the Nixon DarkEvil.

It doesn't rehab Kissinger. He's mentioned in a list of other Secretaries of State.

Yes, Kissinger is reprehensible. However, if Leverett wants to talk to conservatives, he has to at least name-check him. Sometimes it's necessary to use a softer instrument than a 2x4 to get a point across (and of course, sometimes it's necessary to use the 2x4. this isn't that time though.)

Things are getting rather Toynbee-ish. Great Power at cusp of decline searches for external enemy (terrorism, Iraq) to rally the population. Finding nothing suitable it works to create one (Iran, Hezbollah).

We are becoming Rome in its later years---a cultural icon but increasingly easy to ignore and not wise to depend on. Political, cultural, and technological innovation will increasingly come from elsewhere.

Remember the 50s? We did not know much about our apparent enemy, the Soviets, so we encouraged education, technology, and manufacture. Now we think we know what is happening, so those imperatives are set aside as unneeded while we do favors for the rich and powerful.

We view the various "barbarians" that attacked Rome as anti-civilisation, but of course they were the ancestors of modern Europe. This time differs in that the Vandals aren't at our door, only in far-off theaters. I find Islamists perhaps equivalent to the close-in threat Rome faced, while China is sort of equivalent to the Islamic civilisation that arose at the fringe of Empire and carried forward the learning once promoted by Greece and Rome.

KdmFromPhila,

...and shudder to think what 2 and 1/2 more years of American ideological fanaticism, incompetence and militarism will to the Middle East.

Shake it off, and then do everything you can to make sure Santorum doesn't return to the Senate, help your local Democratic candidates for House races reach Congress, and sieze the legislative agenda.

Realism, liberal internationalism, wilsonism, jacksonianism...

What utter nonsense!

Fancy words dreamed up by political scientists to justify the word "science" in their title.

The reality is that all of these schools of international relations agree on the essentials. For example, everyone at the CFR will agree that that yucky stuff oozing from the Arabian deserts is part of our "vital interest" and therefore we're perfectly entitled to go to war to keep control over it.

Now you would think that if political science had a diversity of ideas then there might at least one school, represented at the CFR, that might be called "international equivalency" to give it the kind of silly terminology Walter Russell Mead is so fond of.

An international equivalencist would argue that the US is no more "entitled" to that yucky stuff than China is to the wood of the Rocky mountains. Funny how the basic rules of capitalism cease to apply the minute the merchandise has to do with "our way of life."

But you won't hear that. Instead you'll take pathetically minor differences (like who likes to insult his allies and who likes to flatter them) and make schools of IR out of that!

Now before we wax nostalgic about our ancient heroes....

Except for China, Kissinger's "realism" was an unmitigated string of disasters.

Dean Acheson? Ah Truman, what's not to like? Hiroshima, Nagasaki, that was a good start!

And then we had the Truman doctrine (hello Rachel!) which gave us the Korean war -- that we're still fighting 60 years later! -- and down the road, Vietnam (which at least is over).

But I guess the Marshall Plan made it all worthwhile...

With such talk, folks, we're stuck in reverse!
Back to imperialism with a smile versus imperialism with a frown.

While you pour gallons of ink on the subject, the train is leaving the station.

I respect your meta-analysis, but I'd respect it more if you offered your own up-or-down critique of Steve's judgment as expressed in his lede --

Leverett's "superb American Prospect article [whose] excellence compels me . . . ."

"Superb" and "excellence" are words which go far beyond the requirements of good manners. 

The way the game is played, "superb" and "excellent" don't refer to the contents of what is said but to who says it.

I mean, if the very same piece had been written by Valdron, Steve might have said: "yeah, yeah..."

But it was written by a former Bush boy, so that makes it amazing.

And that's my problem with Steve's gushing like a teenage girl. It's deeply anti-intellectual.
Because what matters then are not ideas and contents, but the characters behind them.

Anne-Marie Slaughter is one of the worst offenders, occasionally praising the most extraordinary, amazing, mind-bloggling, breathtaking piece of writing, which says that if we were nicer to each other we'd get along better... duh.

Einstein's theory of relativity, the Queen of the Night's aria, Tiger Woods's swing are amazing, brilliant, superb, fascinating... NOT the insight that Dear Henry would do a better job in Iraq.

Quibbles, I guess.

Very well, Ellen. Leverett's analysis appears to be both pedestrian and conventional.

"This document reflects what most sensible Republican and Democratic Strategists agree must be done in the middle east. There is enormous consensus..."

There you have it. Bi-partisan consensus established by Republican and Democratic strategists, reflecting each others views in the insular little world of Washington.

This is not to say that its wrong. Its merely a point of view. It is typical of Washington group think that Clemons trumpets it simultaneously as brilliant on the one hand, and relentlessly and absolutely conventional on the other hand. His applause of Leverett is not so much that Leverett has articulated new ideas, but rather, that he has distilled and articulated the common ideas.

There's no indication that Leverett takes strong objection to the administrion's initiatives. Rather, his quarrels are tactical. More emphasis should have been placed on a genuine coalition of the willing. More 'carrots' should have been used to encourage regional states to help us damp the shock waves of invasion and occupation.

As for future policy, Leverett's hardly far out of line with the neocons. Take Iran:

The US should use the threat of force to change Iran's borders or government in order to persuade the Iranians to cut off support to Hamas, Hezbollah etc. and to accept restraints on its nuclear program.

I'm paraphrasing Steve here. If you look to his article, that's what Steve has said, but it isn't the order that Steve has phrased it in. Steve's phrasing is 'kinder and gentler.'

On the other hand, that's what it boils down to, and its more or less what the Bush administration is doing now... excepting only that the threat of force is pretty hollow these days, and there hasn't been a threat to change Iran's borders... merely its government.

When you look at it that way, Leverett is in some ways more hawkish and unrealistic than the Cheney bunch.

But the point is that Leverett's views and recommendations are not radically different in underlying assumptions or overall thrust from that of the Bush administrations. The notion seems to be that there is an underlying uniformity that extends to them.

What else? "Engage Arab moderates more systematically on economic reform and human rights." Wow. How shocking! That's really going to make waves. But look here, "Drop insistence on early resort to open democratic processes."

Bit of a contradictory message there, doncha think? What this amounts to, I think, is largely an endorsement of the Cheney status quo. Or do you figure that Cheney is refusing to engage moderates on economic reform and human rights? Well, I guess that begs several questions. But one of the barometers, one of the measuring indicators of how tolerant a society is of moderates, economic reform and human rights lies with an open electoral process... which Leverett proposes to take off the table.

What does it all amount to? Not very much really. What Leverett proposes is a 'kinder, gentler, smarter' American foreign policy in the middle east along the same lines as established by Reagan/Bush I/Clinton. Bush II can credibly argue that he himself represents a continuation of that policy. The difference comes down to strategic issues and tactics, rather than premises, assumptions, agendas and goals.

Does Leverett really deserve this adulation from Steve? I'm afraid not. Words like Brilliant should be used more sparingly and for more appropriate works.

On the other hand, I can't fault Steve his boyish enthusiasm. And if his language is excessive, well, on occasion, I've suffered the same malady (as you well know) with perhaps less benign intent.

How's that?

A different planet? It's a different universe in another dimension.

"We just hired a new foreman down at the plant."

"MY GOD! The institution I work for has just engaged the MOST BRILLIANT, EXTRAORDINARY, DAZZLING, PROFOUND, INTELLIGENT GENIUS who ever put fingers to a keyboard and tippy typed a policy paper. And he's so DAMNED MODEST TOO! Of course all of here in D.C. are BRILLIANT, but this genius is more BRILLIANT than all of us combined! And if you'd like to hear him make BRILLIANT pronouncements, tickets are still available.

Not bad.  Not bad, at all.

Interesting. I see a closer parallel with early 20th Century Russia - a hopelessly inadequate Tsar advised by reactionary, ignorant chauvinists. jmo

Unfortunately, its often depressing. My overall impression is that the general quality of elite thinking is singularly unimpressive, often pedestrian and prosaic. Groupthink of various sorts is the dominant mode, premises are seldom examined. The place operates on largely unchallenged concensuses.

My sense is that DC is much like the Vatican: the thinking and talking in our imperial capital is so tightly hemmed in from all directions by orthodoxies, platitudes, rules of etiquette, established hierarchies and prevailing ideological requirements, that it takes a very long time for common sense, clear thinking and informed judgment to work their way up the food chain into the privileged perches occupied by approved elite opinion.

In the Roman Catholic world, some theologian may from time to time develop an innovative approach to the traditional teachings, and truly break new ground and argue against a hoary old doctrine. Then, several decades later, or even centuries, some portion of that thinking finally makes its way into the official doctrinal statements.

The things Leverett is saying have been said for several years by many people who do not occupy high-level positions at the White House, Congress or the Washington Post. But perhaps Leverett is a Cardinal of the Washington Church, and so Washington movers like Steve are required to receive his words and promulgate them with the appropriate expressions of admiration, wonder, respect and praise.

I think this essay shows Steve Clemons at both his best and his worst.

His description of Abrams's role in the Washington power establishment may be accurate. But note that the description is not accompanied by any quotes from Abrams or his associates, any selections from his writings or speeches, or any other pieces of hard evidence. On what is it based then? Gossip I imagine. That's something that Steve seems to be particularly good at accumulating, and I'm grateful that he passes it on to us.

But the good stuff often comes along with some bad stuff. It may be unfair to single Steve out, since he only reflects the broader Washington culture, but the blatant flattery, embarrassing obsequy, elaborate courtesies and fulsome pre-emptive apologies appear in an unusually high degree in his essays. I typically find that I have to skip quickly through the first three or four paragraphs to get to the meat of the article. The substance of the essays often comes after tedious preambles that remind one of the dedication pages of the books of courtiers in an earlier age.

I dislike engaging in these personal observations. I only mention Steve's stylistic habits because they tend, in my opinion, to undermine his credibility. For example, in this piece one is left with the impression that Clemons's personal or professional relationship with Leverett might have lead him to take Leverett on as a sort of cause and help promote his career. The take-down of Abrams appears in the context of what appears to be a piece of lobbying aimed at encouraging some unnamed powers that be of helping to push Leverett's into the president's briefings, sack Abrams and replace him with Leverett. And some of his writings on his blog have given me the impression that Steve's obsessive drive to network has opened him up to unscrupulous manipulation by propagandists and operatives. This frequent mixing of personal relationships and political opinion doesn't enhance Steve's claims on intellectual objectivity.

When realist situationalism plays out as three plus decades of deception, it is treachery.

Not treacherous? As a timeline referent, Fonda's odious adventure to Hanoi occurred one month after this secret meeting. She is still vilified as a traitor who gave aid and comfort to the enemy, but Kissinger had stated that the N.Vietnamese were not an enemy of America, but were instead the real power in Vietnam, and their lack of trust in the peace negotiations was an irritant, interfering with 'business'. He even laid out a rough 'decent interval' timeline that was essential for a successful victory by the North, an interval between American disengagement, and the North's re-engagement of hostilities:

Prime Minister Chou: If after you withdraw and the prisoners of war are repatriated, if after that, civil war again breaks out in Vietnam, what will you do? It will probably be difficult for you to answer that.

Dr. Kissinger: It is difficult for me to answer partly because I don't want to give encouragement for this to happen. But let me answer it according to my best judgment. For example, if our May 8 proposal were accepted, which has a four-month withdrawal and four months for exchange of prisoners, if in the fifth month the war starts again, it is quite possible we would say this was just a trick to get us out and we cannot accept this.

If the North Vietnamese, on the other hand, engage in a serious negotiation with the South Vietnamese, and if after a longer period it starts again after we were all disengaged, my personal judgment is that it is much less likely that we will go back again, much less likely.

[. . .]

And therefore, we believe that the war must now be ended for everybody's sake. If the war continues, the Democratic Republic of Vietnam will surely lose more than it can possibly gain. Its military offensive has stopped; its domestic situation is difficult; and we are forced to do things to the Democratic Republic of Vietnam that go beyond anything that is commensurate with our objective. We don't want them to be weak. And I see no prospect for them to reverse the situation. And we want to end the war because it requires now an effort out of proportion to the objectives and because it involves us in discussions with countries with whom we have much more important business.

[. . .]

So we should find a way to end the war, to stop it from being an international situation, and then permit a situation to develop in which the future of Indochina can be returned to the Indochinese people. And I can assure you that this is the only object we have in Indochina, and I do not believe this can be so different from yours. We want nothing for ourselves there. And while we cannot bring a communist government to power, if, as a result of historical evolution it should happen over a period of time, if we can live with a communist government in China, we ought to be able to accept it in Indochina.

The Prime Minister caught me on a particularly loquacious day. (Laughter)

Now consider the Miller Institute's exhibit of Nixon Administration Documents: "Seeking a 'Decent Interval' Exit From Vietnam" that begins with the HR Haldeman diary entry:

• H. R. “Bob” Haldeman Diary Entry on Vietnam, December 21, 1970
• December 21, 1970
• Personal Diary of H.R. Haldeman

Henry was in for a while and the President discussed a possible trip for next year. He's thinking about going to Vietnam in April [1971] or whenever we decide to make the basic end-of-the-war announcement. His idea would be to tour around the country, build up [South Vietnamese President Nguyen Van] Thieu and so forth, and then make the announcement right afterwards.

Henry argues against a commitment that early to withdraw all combat troops because he feels that if we pull them out by the end of '71, trouble can start mounting in '72 that we won't be able to deal with, and which we'll have to answer for at the elections.

He prefers instead a commitment to have them all out by the end of '72 so that we won't have to deliver finally until after the [US presidential] elections [in November 1972] and therefore can keep our flanks protected. This would certainly seem to make more sense, and the President seemed to agree in general, but he wants Henry to work up plans on it.

As a timeline referent, December, 1970 predates the Winter Soldier Investigation by the Vietnam Veterans Against the War (February 1, 1971), and the Dewey Canyon III protests in Washington DC (April 19 through April 22, 1971). The Nixon Administration already viewed Vietnam as a lost cause, but for the sake of the '72 election, delayed what their 'realist' world view saw as inevitable for two more long bloody years. The final document from the Miller Institute exhibit is telling:

• Oval Office Conversation #760-6 Transcript
• August 3, 1972 8:28am - 8:57am
• Location: Oval Office

President Richard M. Nixon: Let’s be perfectly cold-blooded about it. If you look at it from the standpoint of our game with the Soviets and the Chinese, from the standpoint of running this country, I think we could take, in my view, almost anything, frankly, that we can force on [South Vietnamese President Nguyen Van] Thieu. Almost anything. I just come down to that. You know what I mean? Because I have a feeling we would not be doing, like I feel about the Israeli, I feel that in the long run we’re probably not doing them an in—uh, a disfavor due to the fact that I feel that the North Vietnamese are so badly hurt that the South Vietnamese are probably gonna do fairly well [unclear—overlapping voices]. Also due to the fact—because I look at the tide of history out there, South Vietnam probably can never even survive anyway. I’m just being perfectly candid—I—

Henry A. Kissinger: In the pull-out area—

President Nixon: [Unclear—overlapping voices] got to [unclear—overlapping voices] that we can get certain guarantees so that they aren’t, uh, as you know, looking at the foreign policy process, though, I mean, you’ve got to be—we also have to realize, Henry, that winning an election is terribly important. It’s terribly important this year, but can we have a viable foreign policy if a year from now or two years from now, North Vietnam gobbles up South Vietnam. That’s the real question.

Kissinger: If a year or two years from now North Vietnam gobbles up South Vietnam, we can have a viable foreign policy if it looks as if it’s the result of South Vietnamese incompetence. If we now sell out in such a way that, say, within a three - to four - month period, we have pushed President Thieu over the brink—we ourselves—I think, there is going to be—even the Chinese won’t like that. I mean, they’ll pay verbal—verbally, they’ll like it—

President Nixon: But it’ll worry them.

Kissinger: But it will worry everybody. And domestically in the long run it won’t help us all that much because our opponents will say we should’ve done it three years ago.

President Nixon: I know.

Kissinger: So we’ve got to find some formula that holds the thing together a year or two, after which—after a year, Mr. President, Vietnam will be a backwater. If we settle it, say, this October, by January ’74 no one will give a damn.

To this day the right-side of the political bipolarity blames the left entirely for the fall of South Vietnam. Recently, even Melvin Laird was dug up to propose an Iraqization plan of disengagement, and he pitched the same crap. It was published in the Council on Foreign Relations publication, "Foreign Affairs", in their November/December 2005 issued, and was titled, Iraq: Learning the Lessons of Vietnam", by Melvin R. Laird.

It seems that even 'realist' Conservatives are unwilling to accept responsibility for their own actions, as Laird was a Defense Secretary for Nixon 1969-1973, and long term House member from 1952 to 1969, where he sat on key committees. Surely some of the responsibility for Vietnam rests upon his shoulders. Yet he claimed in his article that Nixon lied during his 1968 campaign, and had no plan to end the Vietnam War:

"Richard Nixon was elected in 1968 on the assumption that he had a plan to end the Vietnam War. He didn't have any such plan, and my job as his first secretary of defense was to remedy that -- quickly. The only stated plan was wording I had suggested for the 1968 Republican platform, saying it was time to de-Americanize the war."

Laird then went on to blame the left for current problems in Iraq, and actually posits that a war for oil is righteous:

"Some who should know better have made our current intervention in Iraq the most recent in a string of bogeymen peeking out from under the bed, spawned by the nightmares of Vietnam that still haunt us. The ranks of the misinformed include seasoned politicians, reporters, and even veterans who earned their stripes in Vietnam but who have since used that war as their bully pulpit to mold an isolationist American foreign policy. This camp of doomsayers includes Senator Edward Kennedy, who has called Iraq 'George Bush's Vietnam.' Those who wallow in such Vietnam angst would have us be not only reticent to help the rest of the world, but ashamed of our ability to do so and doubtful of the value of spreading democracy and of the superiority of freedom itself. They join their voices with those who claim that the current war is 'all about oil,' as though the loss of that oil were not enough of a global security threat to merit any U.S. military intervention and especially not 'another Vietnam.'"

Laird then laid the blame for the fall of Saigon upon the left:

"The truth about Vietnam that revisionist historians conveniently forget is that the United States had not lost when we withdrew in 1973. In fact, we grabbed defeat from the jaws of victory two years later when Congress cut off the funding for South Vietnam that had allowed it to continue to fight on its own. Over the four years of Nixon's first term, I had cautiously engineered the withdrawal of the majority of our forces while building up South Vietnam's ability to defend itself. My colleague and friend Henry Kissinger, meanwhile, had negotiated a viable agreement between North and South Vietnam, which was signed in January 1973."

Who is the revisionist? Another absurdity of this article is that Laird first claims that Iraq is not Vietnam, then titles a whole section "Vietnamization as the Model". What modeling is he proposing? To secretly sell out the Iraq government to Iran, if they agree to wait a couple of years, and then blame the left for 3+ decades?

Don't think i am supporting the left here, it's just that, to use the realists' terminology, the Present Danger is from these revisionaries of the right, and they are in my line of sight.

I am a two-party nihlist.

Valdron - Recognizing your name from the Steve and the Bolton battle I need memory help. What was the name of the woman Steve started pushing as an alternative to Bolton? Patricia?? Maybe Steve is doing the same thing here -  piling on the compliments here to position Leverett for something specific? 

Also if I think of the times Steve is most effusive it is with former Bush Administration officials who have come out to contest the Administration position. Steve is constantly trying to build the politically and intellectually viable center to influence this Administration and the next.

While the precise objective is fuzzy, it is very clear to me that Steve is in advocacy mode. Will be interesting to see where it goes.

Excellent analysis of Steve's slicing and dicing of Abrams.

Clemons:   Flynt Leverett's core logic of this piece -- and his systematic treatment of costs and opportunities associated with various policy choices facing America in the Middle East --

Leverett's failure is that he was not systematic. The system in question is not longer just a bunch of states.  A systematic and thus realistic foreign policy would address the states and the non-state actors and forces.  It makes no sense to base a US foreign policy on what used to work, reality has changed.

A glaring example of the inherent illogic is Hamas. Leverett ignores his own recognition of the 2-headed Hamas, led from outside and inside the territories, with a recovery strategy that does not address the reality he noted. 

Thank you muchly. I'm afraid I'm drawing a blank though...

Many "valuable points", but I have some general and particular objections.

The most general is that Steve recommends someone as a better advisor than sinister Abrams and gutless Rice. Well, Powell was there, and he was just neutered and isolated. As long as Cheney and Rumsfeld are there, and Bush listens to them, everything else is a mere cosmetic.

Actually, Cheney has Bush's ear only as long as Bush wishes it, so ultimately it comes down to the mentality and preconceptions of Bush himself. This dog will not learn any new tricks. The corollary is that it makes no sense to tailor foreign policy recommendations in a way that could be palatable to the White House. Nothing will.

Somewhat less general objection is taking "democracy agenda" at the face value. You know, there is a Republic of Korea, and Peoples Democratic Republic of Korea -- one of the Korean states does have "democratic" in its name, and one does not. I would not be surprised if the "democratic republic" had regular elections. Eliott Abrams got his spurs supervising civil wars in Central America where Communists or fellow travellers were fighting with rather fascistic military cliques and death squads. Of course, we were on the side of fascists. So when Abrams says "democracy", my least worry is that he means it in a too literal fashion. Just look at our recent handiwork in Haiti. Two years of unnecessary mayhem and eventually some elections, no thanks to us. Fortunately, Brasil is behaving more responsibly than we do. And what we tried to do in Venezuela also does not follow the paradigm of "spreading democracy".

After Hamas got parliamentary majority, Israel is hunting down their elected members and putting them on trial for the crime of ... belonging to Hamas, which raises no objections from the supervisor of the "democracy agenda". The elections in Iraq were relatively free because we could not afford to fight both Sunni insurgents and Shia militias, so we agreed with the demands of Sistani -- original plans were rather different. How Lebanon was rewarded for his move toward independence we are still observing -- Israel now tries to put in "on a diet", as she did with Palestinians.

The third objection is that attempts to engage Iran, Syria, Lebanon, Palestinians etc. require some consessions that would go beyond "we will not attack you, just believe us". In case of Syria, that means Golan. In case of Iran, that would probably mean end of sanctions and written committment to non-agressions, while Iran can fund whoever they please. In case of Lebanon and Palestinians, that would probably mean end of assasinations, kidnappings, blockades, theft and violation of the airspace by "our allies in the region".

Probably it would not be wise to make all these consessions in one fell swoop, but if we want a lot, we should give a lot. Mere projections of force and resolve will just not do the job.

I agree with you. One thing I've found, is that D.C. reporters and pundits generally don't know any more about a subject than the average political junkie or anyone interested in an issue. In fact, most seem to know less. They all repeat the same misinformation, the same lies, the same spin, the same "sources" - it's disheartening. Of course, when you're a member of the same social circle that you're reporting on, that's all you hear.

USA Today: Consumers think Guinness-in-the-bottle ads are 'brilliant!'

Perhaps because of the Guiness campaign the word "brilliant" is not used for less lofty intelectual achievements than before. There are thing that you can find "brilliant!" while still dead sober, but after a sixpack you can find more, and after two more sixpacks...

Do I hear "two more sixpacks?" Briliant!

Snicker...

I agree.  Sinister is not brilliant.  I brilliance was even on the table, Hugo Chavez wouldn't still be in power. Elliott botched that one real good. What will he botch next?

Neoboho

The internal decision to get out of Vietnam was actually taken at a meeting in 1968 shortly after the Tet offensive. (Documented in the Pentagon Papers - from memory it was mid-May).

On the same weekend as the Xmas 1972 bombing of Hanoi the US cut off funds from the puppet regime in south Vietnam until it agreed to sign the Paris peace agreement, which finalized the actual withdrawal a few weeks later, with Saigon not actually becoming Ho Chi Minh city until a "decent interval" of a couple of years later.

The point of all this was to preserve the sense of powerlessness which it is vital for any ruling class to inculcate in the ruled.

Likewise the decision to get out of the West Bank was taken years ago and recent events in which Israel bombs Lebanon to demand what it had always opposed - an international force at its borders ending the dream of "Greater Israel", bear an uncanny resemblance.

In backing Leverett's rear guard defence of a grand strategy that imploded with 9/11 the pseudo-left is merely playing its usual role of telling people that the empire always wins and never retreats instead of actually analysing the retreat from empire in the Middle East that is increasingly obvious.

Promoting democracy instead of "stability" is the exact opposite of what the US has always stood for. Its not surprising that Washington insiders just don't get it and its not surprising that pseudo-leftists just don't get it either.

They never understood the US defeat in Vietnam and they probably never will. Even with the archives making it absolutely plain that Nixon was retreating from Kennedy's imperial expansion, you still don't get it that Bush is retreating from decades of US support for autocratic stagnation in the Middle East.

The Gravel Edition, available at Mount Holyoke, and, IIRC, Yale's Avalon Project (the latter definitely an excellent resource for Nuremberg), is a four-volume subset of the originally commissioned 40-plus volume Pentagon Papers set.

Some of the documents in the full DoD set, but not in the Gravel Edition, have appeared in Foreign Relations of the United States, declassified documents from Presidential libraries often at the George Washington University National Security Archives, the CIA FOIA Reading Room [Note 1], etc. Few of these documents refer to their inclusion in the Pentagon Papers full set.

Does anyone know if there's been a more extensive effort to index those parts of the full set that are available, or, as unlikely as it may be, that the full set was declassified?



[Note 1] www.odci.gov (not www.cia.gov, the first screening test being knowing the difference), has now converted most links from http to https, "to ensure privacy". If one is neither expecting https nor experienced enough to try it, some links, which are still available, may be inacessible if you use a http://www.odci.gov.... rather than https://www.odci.gov. Personally, and having had often excellent cooperation from CIA librarians and historians, it always struck me as more sensitive that the CIA knew I was reading their public records than a third party knowing so. Go figure. It's an obscure enough change that I suspect it was technically, rather than politically, motiated.

--
Howard

*equal opportunity offense to both extremes*

A quick scan of the Mount Holyoke Gravel version of The Pentagon Papers returned two possible records:

1. May 19, 1968 - The McNaughton Draft Presidential Memorandum - a damned if you do or don't memorandum of futility, which analysed various propositions for Vietnam strategies, and concluded that the best which could be hoped for was a continuing status quo with its attendant attrition exacted upon all within the sphere of the conflict.
2. April 4, 1968 - K. EPILOGUE - Johnson changes war strategy, and enters into negotiations with the North Vietanmese in Paris after heeding the advice of civilians over the Military, and believing that any escalation in force numbers would be easily countered with comparable force increases by the North effectively blocking the completion of any strategic goals, while it increased the levels of suffering both by the South Vietnamese population and American military casualties. Johnson opts for negotiation hoping that it will help to restore unity in an incresingly divided domestic environment, but America instead runs helter-skelter into Daley's head-cracking Chicago machine.

--*--*--*--*--*--*--

the changes in war, only looped iterations:
alternations between {conflict<->standstill}
--reality's sum = continuous descent of darkness
--no honour to be found, and on the return,
possessing only the honour which remained.

Actually, there's an earlier McNaughton memo to McNamara as perhaps the most damning single document in McNamara's tenure,
which I wouldn't quite characterize it as "damned if you do, damned if you don't".

It's a long document, but the key is McNaughton's justification for US involvement:

*equal opportunity offense to both extremes*

PseudoCyant found the correct location.

The meeting I referred is described in section "G. THE PRESIDENT PONDERS" on that page:

At this time, the President sought the advice of a group of his friends and confidants outside of government. These men came to Washington on 18 March at the request of the President to receive briefings on the latest developments in the war and to advise the President on the hard decision he faced. Present were: former Undersecretary of State George Ball; Arthur Dean, a Republican New York lawyer who was a Korean War negotiator during the Eisenhower Administration; Dean Acheson, former President Truman's Secretary of State; Gen. Matthew B. Ridgway, the retired commander of United Nations troops in Korea; Gen. Maxwell Taylor, former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; Cyrus Vance, former Deputy Defense Secretary and a key troubleshooter for the Johnson Administration; McGeorge Bundy, Ford Foundation President who had been special assistant for National Security Affairs to Mr. Johnson and former President Kennedy; former Treasury Secretary C. Douglas Dillon and Gen. Omar Bradley.

The only published account of this consultation, which is considered reliable, was written by Stuart H. Loory and appeared in the Los Angeles Times late in
May. According to this report, the group met over dinner with Secretary of State Dean Rusk; Defense Secretary Clark M. Clifford; Ambassador W. Averell
Harriman; Walt W. Rostow, the President's special assistant for National Security Affairs; General Earle G. Wheeler, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff;
Richard Helms, Director of the Central Intelligence Agency; Paul Nitze, Deputy Defense Secretary; Nicholas Katzenbach, Under Secretary of State; and
William P. Bundy, Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs.

I guess I thought it was May because that was when it was first leaked.

After their meeting, the group met the President for lunch. It was a social affair. No business was transacted. The meal finished, the advisers delivered their verdict to the President.

Their deliberations produced this verdict for the chief executive:

Continued escalation of the war--intensified bombing of North Vietnam and increased American troop strength in the South--would do no good. Forget about seeking a battlefield solution to the problem and instead intensify efforts to seek a political solution at the negotiating table.

The mealy mouthed "epilogue" comes shortly after because that verdict marked "the end" and the Pentagon Papers themselves were originally produced to analyse how the US had got into that situation of defeat and how to manage the withdrawal. Everything from then on was about how to manage the defeat, including how to present it as a defeat of the puppets rather than of the US, a task started in the epilogue and understood by most of the world as years of "negotiations".

Incidentally neither the words "Real Left" nor any claim to be its "Speaker" occur anywhere on the web page for www.lastsuperpower.net as claimed by PseudoCyannts. Nor does the description of the contents of section K of the Epilogue bear much relation to its actual content.

That web site does contain lots of useful material that has nothing whatever to do with conspiracy theories and is actively hostile to them. It explains the mentality of "pseudos" spouting leftist rhetoric.

Although it isn't worth reading the whole 40 volume Pentagon Papers I would strongly recommend carefully reading the whole of that one long page to get a feel for how policy is actually made and of the fact that the US policy makers understood they could not win from shortly after the Tet offensive in early 1968, whereas previously they had been debating various different strategies for attempting to win.

I am simply saying that the reality of Israeli defeat in the West Bank has likewise been obvious for many years now, not just to pretty well everybody else in the world but also to those whose job it is to deny it while managing the withdrawal. That isn't a conspiracy theory its just the way politics works when empires are forced to retreat.

1. The reason McNamara and others needed, given the failure of all their theories, a detailed study to find out what the hell happened was in order for policy makers to be able to formulate policy for managing the withdrawal. That is why the Epilogue to that study comes immediately after the meeting I referred to and subsequent dramatic announcement by Johnson. For insight into the strategy for managing the withdrawal see the stuff from Kissinger and Chou En-lai etc. I was following this stuff closely at the time. We used to have a song "McNamara's War" to the tune of McNamara's Band. From memory the chorus went something like this:

Watch the bombs go bang and the bayonets clang and the napalm blaze away and out of the blue B52s come bombing night and day and Fulbright and Kennedy talkity-talk and we carry on like before cause once you're in you can't get out of McNamara's war

2. I guess I did have you in mind in advising not to try to gain insight by reading the whole 40 volumes. You learn to swim by swimming and you gain insight into policy making by making policy. I was engaged in policy making in the anti-war movement and consequently had to study enemy (US government) actual as well as declaratory policy since its no use drafting talking point memos for other people to make propaganda with unless you understand what needs to be said in the light of what the other side is actually up to rather than just what they are saying. Otherwise you get trapped into the sort of obsessive focus on answering cognitively dissonant declaratory policy with total confusion and moral posturing that is seen here. Disengaged "experts" are never much good at either history or strategic analysis because they just don't have a feel for what it's about. I say that having been a visiting research fellow at more than one strategic studies organization in more than one country.

3. My recommendation to read at least that one long page to get a feel for how policy is made in defeat was aimed at others here who clearly don't do any research at all but just speculate. Sorry if it being in reply to you gave you the impression I was implying you had not even read that one long page. It was obvious that you had from your references earlier in the sub-thread so it didn't occur to me that you might take it that way.

4. I assume your last paragraph is referring to my exchange with you in "Realism about an international force".

I have just re-read that topic and the links from it including to this.

I urge you to read them again too and reflect on whether events in the month since then confirm that I was engaging in uninformed speculation or whether they confirm my warning to you that your speculations about the equipment, tactics, weapons systems and rules of engagement for an international force tasked with suppressing rocket attacks from Hezbollah were completely irrelevant and had missed the point of what was actually unfolding before your eyes.

Your argument is not compelling. Your original assertion stated:

The internal decision to get out of Vietnam was actually taken at a meeting in 1968 shortly after the Tet offensive. (Documented in the Pentagon Papers - from memory it was mid-May).

This seems to imply that some sort of shadow government exists which makes the real decisions, and that changes in the Executive brought about as the result of the electoral process do not also cause changes in Governmental actions. Why else would you state that "The internal decision to get out of Vietnam was actually taken at a meeting in 1968" if this was not what you meant? The Pentagon Papers citation offers no documentation that any decison had been made to abandon South Vietnam. Instead it only documents that the assembled group recommended negotiation to LBJ:

• "Forget about seeking a battlefield solution to the problem and instead intensify efforts to seek a political solution at the negotiating table."

This is a far cry from deciding to get out of Vietnam, and it is amusing that you claim this is the documentation that verifies the decision, but must claim that the succeeding parts of the same chapter are untruthful distortions in order to twist it to fit into your analysis:

The mealy mouthed "epilogue" comes shortly after because that verdict marked "the end" and the Pentagon Papers themselves were originally produced to analyse how the US had got into that situation of defeat and how to manage the withdrawal.

Your citation is:
The Pentagon Papers: Gravel Edition
Boston: Beacon Press, 1971
Volume 4
-Chapter 2, "U.S. Ground Strategy and Force Deployments, 1965-1968
--Section 4
---V. PROGRAM 6, DECEMBER 1967-MARCH 1968
----3. "A to Z" Reassessment
-----G. THE PRESIDENT PONDERS

The epilogue you say is 'mealy mouthed' is:
The Pentagon Papers: Gravel Edition
Boston: Beacon Press, 1971
Volume 4
-Chapter 2, "U.S. Ground Strategy and Force Deployments, 1965-1968
--Section 4
---V. PROGRAM 6, DECEMBER 1967-MARCH 1968
----3. "A to Z" Reassessment
-----K. EPILOGUE

It is absurdity to claim that Vol 4; Chpt 2; Part 3; subsection G of a document validates your proposition, then state that Vol 4; Chpt 2; Part 3; subsection K of the very same document must be ignored, as it is untruthful.

Your statement that the lastsuperpower dot net does not claim to speak for the real left is bewildering. The home page of the website states:

"This site was established by leftwingers who support the war in Iraq. We called it 'Last Superpower' because we believe that US imperialism is weaker than it has ever been before and is no longer the almighty superpower it makes itself out to be. This is a place for people who want to discuss what it really means to be progressive and left-wing in the 21st century - and where we can go from here."

It clearly contrasts and distinguishes itself from a set described as 'pseudo left', and that it exists as a place to discuss what it 'really means to be progressive and left-wing in the 21st century'. How can it claim this if it does not speak for the set; 'Real Left'?

Then at the bottom of the page under the heading: 'Currently featured material' is the section titled: 'What does the real Left think?' Why would a visitor to this site conclude that it doesn't claim to be a voice for the "Real Left"? The site seems to be positional statements made by an offshoot paleoleft variant. Maybe if the author(s) of the site would move away from the antiquated synthesis based on Marx/Engels analysis, and instead work towards a dialectic distillation that includes a heavy influx of Derrida, there would be validity in their claim of lefty progressiveness...

Even so, it would not be an appropriate place for me, nor a place where a rational future is likely to emerge. I'll keep hanging in the tube of the Post-Digital Wavefront.

PS. Didn't notice anything substantive to respond to in latest comments from hcberkowitz below so nothing to add. Except for mentioning that the difference between us reflects the difference between intelligence analysts on the losing side of the Vietnam war and strategic analysts on the winning side. The Vietnam war protest movement in the West, like the people's armed forces themselves, had a lot less resources and a lot more insight. There was never any stage in the war where US government understanding of what was happening and would happen was better than ours.

--
Howard

*equal opportunity offense to both extremes*

I must apologize, for my remarks were apparently insufficient for you do bestow your full gifts of condescension. Further, I must apologize for daring to recognize Israeli lies or war crimes by inference from the weapons and tactics used, as well as analyzing both militarily useful practices and collective punishment by Hezbollah. My guilt being even further, given, as you appear not to have noticed, the Viet Nam War is over, so there is no urgency that prevents the use of relevant historical research.

Feeling your displeasure, my body bleeds at hundreds of stigmata, and I die dehydrated. The cold winds of your soul freeze my essence, and, as I die, I shatter into myriad crystalline shards, briefly glistening in the Great Light you shine. My errors being so great that offense goes beyond humanity, pachyderms pound me into dead slime onto which they defecate. Before your brilliance, I am merely a soulless worm, spawned by ten thousand generations of hermaphroditic ancestors, in the rich mud of a bottomless swamp, where, subject to your power, I split into regenerating fragments.

You were not able to contribute anything relevant to the policy discussions about the recent war in Lebanon but instead made numerous posts about weapons systems etc because you were writing as an intelligence analyst rather than a participant in a political web site.

--
Howard

*equal opportunity offense to both extremes*