Kissinger and Those Peanuts
So Iraq critics who would draw out lessons of Vietnam are castigated as traumatized by the past but Henry Kissinger does so? And does so at the highest levels, his own tutorial for the President on comparative case studies and lessons of history.
So let’s use the “salted peanuts” memo. The National Security Archive has it posted. Read it. Read it and weep. The whole memo is about what’s not working, what not to do. “I have become deeply concerned about our present course in Vietnam,” it starts.
“While time acts against both us and the enemy,” it continues, “it runs more quickly against our strategy than against theirs.” The conclusion four pages later: “In brief, I do not believe we can make enough evident progress in Vietnam to hold the line within the U.S. (and the U.S. Government), and Hanoi has adopted a strategy which it should be able to maintain for some time --- barring some break like Sino-Soviet hostilities. Hence my growing concern.”
Ours, too, if President Bush and his top team are basing their strategy on a memo about what wasn't working in 1969, and what over the next seven years didn’t work at the cost of the lives of thousands more American soldiers and Vietnamese, and at that much further damage to America’s power and prestige internationally as well as to our politics and economy at home.
Isn't the bottom line of Kissinger's grand strategy theory that once embarked on an endeavor, no matter how stupid or foolishly executed, the great power must continue that endeavor for the sake of its greatness?
I wonder if the H-bomb changed the needs of the United States from that of the Austrian, English and other Imperial powers of the 19th Century as they organized post Napolean Europe.
Daniel A. Greenbaum
October 4, 2006 1:05 PM | Reply | Permalink
Wow. Who would have believed that Henry Kissinger could rise from his grave and pull us back into the hell of another Vietnam? If POTUS had been sober in the early 70's he would have known that Kissinger was an obsessive/compulsive nut focused on never leaving a war that he advised us never to really try and win. I would have at least thought that Bush would have watched Dr. Strangelove and recognized Seller's hillarious characterization of Kissinger.
October 4, 2006 9:30 PM | Reply | Permalink
JohnW1141
HEEEEEEEEEE'S BAAAAAAAAAAAAACK
October 5, 2006 4:03 AM | Reply | Permalink
I think HAK's involvement is being prematurely criticized. He has a wealth of knowledge and experience and should be a useful addition to an administration that has been dominated by Rumsfeld and Cheney. As for his main point-- it is true, no? Let me put it this way, if you had a choice between
a) the war continuing for another five years with casualties also continuing at the same rate, and the result being the defeat of the insurgency and established of a stable, unitary, and broadly representative government
or
b) withdrawal over the next 12 months, U.S. per month casualties reduced to zero, collapse of Iraq into a civil war, perception that the U.S. lost
which would you choose?
Dr K's point is that a) is painful but necessary. I tend to think this is broadly right.
October 5, 2006 8:16 AM | Reply | Permalink
The chance of a:
stable, unitary, and broadly representative government
developing under US occupation is close to zero. The Israeli's occupied Lebanon for 20 years and there is still no 'stable democracy' in Lebanon, and Iraq is in far worse shape than Lebanon.
In the words of William Lind, military analyst:
The war was lost from before the first bomb fell, because the strategic objectives were never attainable no matter what we did. Further blunders, from de-Baathification and sending the Iraqi Army home through mistreating the civilian population, have moved us from mere failure to incipient disaster. The question, rather, is how we might get out without our defeat being so obvious as to be undeniable.
October 6, 2006 5:56 PM | Reply | Permalink
The news of the celebrated Mr. K. hobnobbing with the architects of the Iraq war must certainly have Christopher Hitchens squirming on a bar stool somewhere. It must be galling to have his nemesis so warmly received by the policy makers he defended at the beginning of the war. To sprinkle salt in the wound, the Kissinger memo repeats one point that Hitchens often does about the need to stay the course in Iraq. Christopher and Henry are both astute enough observers of political dynamics to agree with this passage in the memo:
The memo as whole, however, argues against staying the course as a means to attain the goals that the Vietnam was started for. Kissinger was expressing exactly the sort of pessimism that Hitchens declares to be the true enemy to progress in Iraq today.
Mr. Jentleson is mistaken when he says: "President Bush and his top team are basing their strategy on a memo about what wasn't working in 1969." Kissinger was telling Nixon that the U.S. had lost the war; Deal with it.
October 7, 2006 9:31 AM | Reply | Permalink
A minor correction. Israel using a combination of Lebanese Christian militia and their own forces occupied part of Southern Lebanon. Syria effectively occupied the rest of Lebanon for 20 years.
Daniel A. Greenbaum
October 7, 2006 10:17 AM | Reply | Permalink
Mother, Mother,
there's too many of you crying
Brother, Brother, Brother,
there's far too many of you dying
You know we've got to find a way
To bring some love in here today,
Father, father,
we don't need to escalate
You see, war is not the answer,
for only love can conquer hate
You know we've got to find a way
To bring some love in here today.
Talk to me ...
you know we've got to find a way
to bring some understanding here today
Come on, talk to me ...
What's goin' on?
Brother Marvin
October 7, 2006 4:42 PM | Reply | Permalink
The link to the "salted peanuts" memo can be found on this GWU page along with John Prados' analysis.
Or for a few pennies you could buy the book and read it as it was first published by its very own author in 1979.
October 7, 2006 11:32 PM | Reply | Permalink