McNamara's Tragedy
Robert McNamara's passing reminds us that "the best and brightest" often are the most tragic characters in the Shakespearean world of politics. To read Tim Weiner's magnificent obituary is to understand the depth of that tragedy.
The war became his personal nightmare. Nothing he did, none of the tools at his command -- the power of American weapons, the forces of technology and logic, or the strength of American soldiers -- could stop the armies of North Vietnam and their South Vietnamese allies, the Vietcong. He concluded well before leaving the Pentagon that the war was futile, but he did not share that insight with the public until late in life.
McNamara had gotten his reputation for a "right-sizing" turnaround at the Ford Motor Company. I am sure that when Jack Kennedy brought him into the Pentagon, he was thinking the same techniques could be applied to the bloated bureaucracy of the Defense Department. But like the Soviet Nomenklatura, the beast could not be tamed and then the senseless War in Vietnam made cutting budgets impossible. By the end of his term, defense budgets had doubled. The Cost of Empire was never to come down again.
Will the tragedy of the Military Industrial Complex bloated influence continue to haunt us and our children for another generation?
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Your main thesis about empire and its cost is also distorted propaganda. Our empire began with the Louisiana purchase in 1803 and its cost escalated as it expanded and technology grew more expensive. Perhaps Polk should never have gone to war with Mexico or insisted on the line he agreed to with British Canada? Was Theodore Roosevelt supposed to draw the line at our continental borders? Was Wilson supposed to decline participation in WWI, or FDR in WWII? Were we to stand by idly while Stalin did his stuff?
Liberals are crap and their stories are garbage.
July 7, 2009 3:50 PM | Reply | Permalink
The Louisiana Purchase served to help get The French off the North American Continent, thereby removing one of the bellicose European States that were responsible for near endless warring on that continent. It pretty much freed up the Mississippi river for navigation, and opened up the plains for immigration, which kept America from being conquered by a more powerful European State. The New England Yankees were infested with Federalists, who dreamed of reuniting with England. the South was controlled by a large landholder aristocracy which could not prosecute a vigorous defense of the Nation, because that would have left their fat inbred listless backsides exposed to slave rebellions, precipitated by the enemy. America needed the new blood of immigrants for its, and the best way to get them was to promise them their own land out west.
Yeah, we really screwed Native Americans, and Polk was pretty much an evil f**khead for the way he went after Mexico, yet Mexico would be far better off today, if he had finished off the job of expelling the French and Spaniards from continental North America. The Castellian dominance would have almost disappeared by now. And Spain deserved to get kicked out of Florida.
July 8, 2009 7:31 PM | Reply | Permalink
It was said about the Romans that their empire was accidental. Same with the Mongols. Same with us. There are always reasons like you cite.
July 8, 2009 10:35 PM | Reply | Permalink
It is just not correct to say that we could not defeat the North Vietnamese Army or the Vietcong. We did controll virtually all of South Vietnam, and of course, we could have defeated North Vietnam. Look, I am not saying that we should have droped nuclear weapons on North Vietnam. I am not saying we should have controlled South Vietnam the way Rome controlled its empire, ie, if a village co-operated with Rome's enemies, everybody in the village died. No we should not have done those things, but to say it was beyond our power to win that war is just incorrect. The hawks are not totally incorrect when they say that the war in Vietnam was lost by the evening news.
July 7, 2009 4:15 PM | Reply | Permalink
The depth of your thinking seems to be: If WWII was proper to become engage in, and it was military conflict, then Vietnam, being a military conflict as well, was proper to become engaged in. Breathtaking.
July 7, 2009 5:00 PM | Reply | Permalink
That was meant for the bozo known as Ordinary. Sorry.
July 7, 2009 5:01 PM | Reply | Permalink
Polk had nothing to do with WWII. Neither did Jefferson and TR. China fell to the Communists after it ended.
If you could think you would be a human being, but as it is....
July 7, 2009 5:28 PM | Reply | Permalink
Had he suggested either, you might have a point.
I'm surprised you ignore the French and Indian war.
July 9, 2009 1:23 PM | Reply | Permalink
No Faroff we lost the war because we couldn't win it without recourse to nuclear weapons. The war was being fought with a citizen's army that was drafted. The rebellion against the draft was growing. After we had 500,000 troops on the ground in order to increase that number would required activating the reserves. In addition, mutinies were becoming more widespread among the American troops in Vietnam. Quite literally, the war was coming home.
For you to say that we should have done more (short of nuclear war) would have required the country to go on a war footing. It would have required a more repressive police presence here in the US to stop the resistance. It would have probably also likely have required special battalions of MP's to follow GI's into battle to enforce discipline. The people running the show in 1970 were not quite ready to impose a police state to just pursue that war. The US goes to war when the populace supports that war, but not without that support.
July 7, 2009 7:02 PM | Reply | Permalink
Reread my comment. Didn't say we should, in fact, I clearly said we should not.
Your wrong when you say there was mutiny among the troops. Nonesense. I was there. The war was fought with heads down and rifles up, but there was never anything remotely resembling mutiny.
I was there when we invaded Cambodia. We invaded Cambodia because the NVA was using Cambodia as a staging ground to launch attacks against our troops. Real soldiers did not come home because we were not supposed to fight them when they crossed the border into Cambodia. The reaction at home? Kent State. Kent State was when a bunch of week end warriors were given live ammunition, and they got so scared they shot our own students.
July 7, 2009 8:25 PM | Reply | Permalink
I know it is difficult for those who served to say that we lost or if they admit that then claim that we could have won with more effort. My point, is that the more effort was politically impossible.
I over looked the part of your argument that this next step in the escalation was not what you advocated but was something that could have been done. My apology for the oversight but I disagree with your argument. Remember, politics is the art of the possible. That next step would have required changing our politics from our democratic traditions to a police state.
July 7, 2009 9:02 PM | Reply | Permalink
Isn't that what I said? The Vietnam War was lost for political reasons, not military. No, I don't think more military effort should have been extended to win. Do I think we could have won it militarily? Of course we could have.
July 9, 2009 1:23 PM | Reply | Permalink
If we had dropped a "nuke" are you saying we could have "won" the Vietnam War. Killing every human being in Northern Vietnam would not have "won" anything. It might have started a nuclear World War III. 3 million plus Vietnamese were killed without invoking the nuclear horror.
Also there was plenty of "fragging" which was mutiny on a small scale.
July 8, 2009 6:19 PM | Reply | Permalink
Just reread my comment. I didn't advocated dropping nuclear bombs. There was a lot of bad attitude in Vietnam, but nothing that should be described as mutiny.
My point was only that we certainly could have won the war in Vietnam. The military did not lose that war, the politicians did. Again, that is not to say we belonged there. Those who call the Vietnam War "unwinnable" are simply not correct. That is my opinion, and it has nothing to do with the fact I was in that war.
July 9, 2009 1:14 PM | Reply | Permalink
Bro, you need an update on your history lessons.
Check-out the date: December 21, 1970. Before The Winter Soldier Investigation, and before the Dewey Canyon II protest in D.C. had even occurred, both Nixon and Kissinger had given up on South Vietnam, but continued to bleed-out America, South Vietnam, North Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos for almost two more long years, just so Nixon was assured he'd win the 1972 Presidential Election. Did you serve in Vietnam between between December 1970 and October 8, 1972, when the Paris Peace Accords were signed? I did, early on. This wasn't a chance one time short reflection either; it was Nixon/Kissinger Policy: Check-out the date: March 19, 1971. Before The Ohio National Guard opened fire on the Kent State anitwar protesters om Monday, May 4, 1970; Nixon/Kissinger were making machinations to pretend they had "Vietnamized" the war as a campaign strategy.Then there was Dr. Kissinger's "Particularly Loquacious Day", on June 20, 1972 in which he held secret talks with Red China's Prime Minister, Chou En-lai. In this "negotiation", Kissinger laid out an acceptable time-frame for North Vietnam's defeat of the South Vietnamese Government, America's Official Ally, god-damn it!
Kissinger went so far as to claim that North Vietnam wasn't America's enemy, and that the U.S. did not have any long term interests in keeping them from controlling all of Vietnam: Why was Kissinger willing to betray South Vietnam secretly? Why didn't he believe that North Vietnam, which was at that time torturing American POW, was our enemy? Why was he willing to accept a communist government in control of Saigon? For nothing other than Nixon/Kissinger had more important business with other SE Asian States, and US GIs were of little value to this: Check-out the date: June 20, 1972. This was one month before Jane Fonda made her ignoble trip to Hanoi. If she is a traitor, then surely Richard Milhouse Nixon and Dr. Henry Alfred Kissinger are too. Yet even though this is now in the public domain, the right continues to ignore the facts. Also worthy of note is that the NSC staff member listed as being in attendance on Kissinger's "Particularly Loquacious Day" was John D. Negroponte. .July 8, 2009 8:37 PM | Reply | Permalink
yeah, i see that i screwed up on the Kent State date. sorry.
July 8, 2009 8:45 PM | Reply | Permalink
I am not at all sure why you think those quotes from Kissinger and Nixon change anything I said.
My point was that the war in Vietnam was not lost militarily, it was lost due to a lack of political will.
And, let me repeat, I am not saying we should have fought a war in Vietnam.
July 9, 2009 1:18 PM | Reply | Permalink
My point was that the war in Vietnam was not lost militarily, it was lost due to a lack of political will.
It seems to me that the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong had more than sufficient political will.
And willingness to spend the blood and treasure of generations to drive out the foreign invaders.
Didja ever see Red Dawn?
Crappy movie. But it does illuminate a sentiment you seem to have disregarded.
A sentiment that is unchanging regardless of the tongue in which it is spoken.
"It's different because WE LIVE HERE."
The lack of political will was a problem - in Truman's office. All else followed from that.
July 9, 2009 1:42 PM | Reply | Permalink
Jon, thanks for this post. Somehow I feel that what may have been a tragedy for McNamara was something worse (i.e., lower) than a tragedy for the administrations who brought it about, and here I can only hope that everyone reading your post and the obituary will read today's short column on the same subject by Bob Herbert. There are times when Herbert writes something that reminds us why he's there, and this is one of them.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/07/opinion/07herbert.html
This column is a kind of signature piece not just for Herbert but for many of us who received our draft notices when he did.
July 7, 2009 4:41 PM | Reply | Permalink
Actually, Eisenhower first used the term military-industrial-congressional complex... but that pissed off some members of the legislative branch.
JFK, however used the term, military-industrial-congressional complex.
July 7, 2009 4:44 PM | Reply | Permalink
Yeah, the Iron Triangle.
Didn't they record Inagaddadavita?
July 9, 2009 1:52 PM | Reply | Permalink
The loss of China to the Communists was to us what the loss at Kursk was for Hitler. In response, we adopted the same strategy as he did. It may or may not have been the best strategy; it didn't work for him but it worked for us. The Soviet Union is gone and China is no longer Communist.
The cost was very high and our victory may have been Pyrrhic. That remains to be seen.
Of course, our society, like all others is far from perfect. There's terrific corruption and great inequality. Perhaps our leaders could have done better at mitigating both.
But perhaps not. So that many in our society do not identify with "our way of life". They feel left out, abused, wronged, losers...and identify with our enemies. They're called liberals.
July 7, 2009 5:15 PM | Reply | Permalink
You're not ordinary, you're just fooling yourself. I'm a liberal, and I noticed a couple of years ago that the label of one of my T-shirts said, "Made in Vietnam."
What the label suggested was that Vietnam is joining the world capitalist market even though we lost the war. And that got me to wondering just why we sent 58,000 young Americans to their deaths, and killed millions of Vietnamese, and destroyed many more lives in both countries, just in order to end up with a "Made in Vietnam" label that would have been there even had we never gone it.
Mr. Ordinary, be brave: Read this column by Bob Herbert, and then think again about what is ordinary and what's not, and what's liberal and what's not.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/07/opinion/07herbert.html
July 7, 2009 6:17 PM | Reply | Permalink
To think that Vietnam would have joined the world capitalist order if we'd not fought that war, or the Korean war, or many other "stupid" wars in our effort to contain and defeat communism is, well, you find the word.
July 7, 2009 7:10 PM | Reply | Permalink
But we didn't lose the war,
Uh, yeah - the moment we chose to start fighting it, we lost.
July 9, 2009 1:55 PM | Reply | Permalink
Ok. I read Hebert's column. He's a terrific writer but, as he himself admits, all wars involving citizen armies are fought by the same kids who suffer the same horrors.
So what separated Viet Nam from WWII, which Hebert thinks was rightfully fought? Shared purpose and common sacrifice. Roosevelt succeeded where Johnson failed, maybe because he was right and Johnson was wrong, or maybe not. That stuff about Tonkin Bay is just propaganda; Roosevelt was just as manipulative, he was just better or luckier.
And what about Polk's Mexican American war of 1846? He took tremendous criticism for it, from what today would be considered liberals who thought he fought it to promote slavery. Had he not won so quickly with so few resources and losses he would have been reviled forever. But he did win and his win turned out to be one of the most important events in American history (still not properly appreciated).
July 7, 2009 7:31 PM | Reply | Permalink
You're rationalizing atop the corpses of 58,000 young Americans and countless more Vietnamese in a war that was fought with a mistaken understanding of the grand strategy of "containing" Communism. Communism was a real threat, but the notion that we could meet it proactively, militarily, in Southeast Asia was driven mainly by a) domestic American political considerations (Democrats sick of being red-baited), b) the military-industrial complex which Eisenhower and Kennedy had warned about but served, and c) hubris. And, as Herbert shows, the war was undertaken on a pretext that was as false as, and even more trivial than, WMD. I think we need to reflect on how these currents converged and how right most ordinary Americans were to wake up to the fraud and folly of it all.
There are always two kinds of people in a situation like this: Those who realize that they've been had, and those who, having been wounded or lost loved ones, insist that the blood that has been shed sanctifies the cause that should never have been allowed to shed it.
July 7, 2009 8:23 PM | Reply | Permalink
Surely, you're aware that Roosevelt was just as manipulative in getting us into WWII? That, with different policies, he could have avoided the conflict entirely for a long, long time.
You complain about red-baiting and then answer my arguments by waving the bloody shirt? Have you no shame, sir?
July 7, 2009 8:32 PM | Reply | Permalink
The loss of China to the Communists was to us what the loss at Kursk was for Hitler. In response, we adopted the same strategy as he did.
This is a stunningly stupid analogy. There is no comparison at any level.
July 7, 2009 6:49 PM | Reply | Permalink
July 7, 2009 7:13 PM | Reply | Permalink
War is an anachronism that has no place in civilized society. It involves old men who have a financial interest in its outcome, and have no skin in the game because the very people who declare it keep their own children safe.
VietNam is the most obvious example that we can all accept. Iraq and Afghanistan are the ones we haven't yet accepted.
Read any book! Take the time to get educated! Read Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut; read any number of books that might let people realize the reality of war. I am so sick of ignorant people being in charge of things.
"Bring 'em on"" I wish Bush had a clue as to what that even meant!
July 7, 2009 8:26 PM | Reply | Permalink
July 7, 2009 8:38 PM | Reply | Permalink
The person posting under the name "ordinary" has a vulgar and defective knowledge of the period. The first problem with the Vietnam war was that we had "no dog in that fight" from the start.
The U.S. picked up after France abandoned the place during a colonial revolt (you know, like the American Revolution) in the 1950s. We stayed to fight the "Communists," who were never so much out enemy as they were a convenient antagonist for the always-on-war-footing right wingers in Congress, you know, like the "Muslims" are today, although they use some other word to say it (terrorist means Muslim a lot of the time).
The "tragedy" (tragedies are normally a consequence of character flaws, after all) of Vietnam for both McNamara and LBJ was that they were too cowardly (too afraid of being called soft on "communism") to do what was plainly right in their own eyes. Damn them, and the right wingers including ordinary to hell.
The economic problem is of a different order. WWII allowed the development of the Military-Industrial-Congressional-Presidential complex that was, after all, the largest public works program of all time and likely the most successful. It pulled us out of the Depression and kept us pretty stable for 30 years, then it formed the base of our industry for 30 more years. It is still central to our industry.
The PROBLEM is that we won't call it a public works program and, therefore, substitute an more socially desirable public works program... you know, green economy or some such. If we are going to spend so much money on public works, it would be nice if the point wasn't to just blow it up!
July 7, 2009 9:12 PM | Reply | Permalink
If human nature were different our problems would be different. Otherwise, you're spot on.
July 7, 2009 10:29 PM | Reply | Permalink
Actually, the obituary details that McNamara was successful in bringing some order to the Pentagon after he got there. But you're right that the cost of the War overwhelmed everything else.
July 7, 2009 11:09 PM | Reply | Permalink
At the height of the alleged Iranian nuclear weapon program crisis, on September 10, 2009, the Likud party recommended that Iran be invaded within 36 hours. President Obama laid out the prospects for war.
“Israel’s military plan is basically invasion,” he said. “When they attack Iran, they are going to have to attack with an all-out attack.”
He continued, “Iran may, and, I think, probably will, activate cells in the US and Europe to attack civilian targets.” The United States would then have to attack Iranian ships in the Persian Gulf, he said. The chances of an uncontrolled escalation were high.
“And I would say that it is damn dangerous,” he said. “Now, I’m not sure we can avoid anything like that if we allow Israel to attack Iran. But I think we should make every effort to avoid it.”
With apologies to Tim Weiner and his ‘Robert S. McNamara, Architect of a Futile War’
July 8, 2009 4:07 AM | Reply | Permalink
July 8, 2009 5:50 AM | Reply | Permalink
Obama sure does not seem to want to go there!
July 9, 2009 12:13 AM | Reply | Permalink
One of the reasons we will continue to have a bloated military industrial complex is because of individuals like ordinary above. Individuals like him can't stand it when there is any critique of the use of military power. The reasoning usually boils down to: look how great our country is, and it has been allowed to be great because we did what we did with use of miliary force. And if our way of life requried a little empire building, well, so be it.
People like ordinary fear that to critique the use of force in one instance will lead to end of any force at any time. The same rationale is used by gun rights people: To allow them to take away my assult rifle means they will take my hunting rifle.
Basically it comes down to a let them critique an inch and they'll take the whole mile. And then we'll all be commies, or whatever. When the discussion goes to talk about the reducing the miliatary, they scream "liberals!," claim our way of life will disappear. If these liberals think getting involved in Vietnam is misguided, then surely they must think getting involved in WWII was misguided. And since both were guided by the quest to maintain US interests, liberals must be against US interests, which means they're against democracy and the free market.
It becomes very difficult to hold a discourse on the military-industrial complex in a room filled with people like ordinary pontificating. I would add that there are those on the left as well that make a realistic discussion on reforming the complex difficult.
It doesn't help this discourse when so many in this country aren't starting with the basic facts of what actually happened on the ground in conflicts like Vietnam. Instead, the conflicts become infused into a ideological agenda and bent according to the debate at hand. This is how so many can blame the media and the liberals "back home" for the result in Vietnam, as if the regime in the South we were trying to prop up wasn't corrupt and lacked legitimacy in the eyes of so many of the South Vietnamese.
July 8, 2009 10:26 AM | Reply | Permalink
You can't even read let alone think.
Taplin is still trying to peddle ancient liberal bullshit. I gave a more accurate description of reality; liberal defeatism played a large part in our loss in Viet Name and American empire didn't begin after WWII.
I never passed judgment on the worth of that empire nor on the strategy we adopted to combat communism. The cost of empire is high no matter how it is done. If you don't like it then advocate relinquishing it...but do so realistically. Don't try to claim you can retain its prerogatives without maintaining its powers. I'd also note that mounting a critique of policy and society is quite different than refusing military service in time of war and siding with the enemy.
July 8, 2009 10:42 AM | Reply | Permalink
And just what perogratives are claiming that I, or liberals, are wishing to maintain, that result from this empire we wish to get rid of?
And where is the unrealism of the quest of reliquishing the empire?
In your first post, you brought up WWI and WWII. Nothing about our decsision to get involved in these has anything to do with empire building. And the empire that began after WWII was of a different kind than what took place before. Not that politicians never took us beyond our border, or try to deal with the exact nature of the current borders at the time.
And in no way did you detail HOW liberal defeatism led to the defeat in Vietnam. You just say it did. Just like all the others.
July 8, 2009 11:28 AM | Reply | Permalink
As Hebert says, our future soldiers were just skinny, scared kids. Many - especially white middle class college students - were looking for any excuse to escape from danger. Their liberal college professors and over-protective mommies and daddies, who were much like Rosenberg today, gave it to them.
The results are detailed in "syvanen's" first post to this thread. Although he exagerated and distorted, the reality was debilitating enough to our army and its morale.
What would have happened had liberals not existed? Let's just say that the communists would have been much more affected by their Tet defeat than they were.
Why do I have to explain such obvious stuff to you? Especially since most of it is already contained in yours and syvanen's posts. It's not worth arguing with someone as obtuse and biased as you. You'll forget or ignore everything I've said almost as soon as I've said it. So this is as far as I go. You'll have to figure out the rest for yourself.
July 8, 2009 1:02 PM | Reply | Permalink
In order to prop up your points, tt seems you have a compulsion to tear down the other poster. If you call be obtuse, or say I can't think, somehow that makes your points more valid?
I didn't the North were nationalists rather than communists. I didn't say it was illegitimate, rather it just stupid to get involved in what amounted to a civil war (and where we not going to be liked, as you said, because we were the next France). Johnson did use false pretenses to up the involvement. The domino theory has been shown to be a faulty theory to base one's foreign policy on. And given how the war unfolded in the countryside, the north's regime definitely had more support than the south by the time of the Tet offensive.
So believing these makes me bias, but you believing what you do, doesn't make you biased? Whatever.
There were plenty in the intelligence community and the pentagon (who not moonlighting as liberal professors) who saw the futility of the objective of keeping Vietnam from being unified. Who at least were calling for a vastly different strategy. And rarely did people let this information got up the chain to Johnson, who only wanted to surrounded by yes men, as it was.
The Tet defeat for the North Vietnamese didn't much change the status quo. The VC still had the countryside. So what if we decided to push onward vigorously with the war after that. What EVIDENCE is there that somehow the US and the South forces would dramatically change the course of the war? Change in ways they hadn't up to that moment of the Tet Offensive. (were they keeping some tactics up their sleeve the whole time?)
July 8, 2009 2:09 PM | Reply | Permalink
"Beginning with the Pentagon Papers liberals peddled the idea that the war was illegitimate, that it was started under false pretenses, that it was an extension of white, racist colonialism, that the domino theory was crap, that the Vietnamese were primarily nationalists not communists, that support for the South Vietnamese government was non-existant while that for Ho Chi Minh was overwhelming. Exactly the same stuff you and Taplin are still peddling."
I guess the fact that every single statement above is true will not deter your ill-informed tirade.
July 8, 2009 6:32 PM | Reply | Permalink
You're so predictable. Whether its true or not is irrelevant to my post.
July 8, 2009 7:13 PM | Reply | Permalink
So if it's all true why are your shorts in a bunch?
Sincerely,
Mr. Predictable
July 8, 2009 7:43 PM | Reply | Permalink
The question was
Did liberals damage our war efforts and contribute to our loss?
The answer is yes. Without doubt.
A second question - not asked - was
were liberals right to do so?
You respond "Yes. Without doubt!"
I don't.
July 8, 2009 8:36 PM | Reply | Permalink
Actually, so called liberals who were Cold War casualties such as McGeorge Bundy, Dean Rusk, and Robert McNamara were responsible for the war because they couldn't see through their fallacious Cold War assumptions. It took people such as William Fullbright, George McGovern, and a lot of others to make the astute judgments about the fallacies in our policy (that you belittled above) to point out the errors of our ways. So it was so-called Cold War liberals who couldn't break through the blinders that fear of McCarthyism put on our policy who harmed our foreign policy, not the critics who rightly pointed out the error of their ways.
July 8, 2009 9:16 PM | Reply | Permalink
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vietnam_War
A good article about the history of the war. What it shows is confusion and incompetence everywhere. Not just among us but among the communists, too.
Conditions were changing all the time and people were being asked to adapt very quickly. They couldn't.
Eisenhower, who knew a thing or two about war and strategy and who was intimately familiar with all the great players of WWII and Korea, thought that it was very important to prevent Viet Nam from going communist. In the same year that he drove the English, French, and Israelis out of Suez and Sinai he propped up an independent government of South Viet Nam in violation of the Geneva Accords (not an actual violation since we weren't signators).
On the communist side, confusion reigned because of increasing Sino-Soviet rivalries.
What's clear is that the citizens of Vietnam were always pawns in the great power rivalries, never free from their influence.
July 8, 2009 9:53 PM | Reply | Permalink
Pawns maybe but in the same way that the civilians of Afghanistan have been pawns. And just like Afghanistan, Vietnam is a long history of foreign powers trying to bend Vietnam to their will and failing. And in this chaos and resistance, the US was trying to impose the division of Vietnam. They were attempting to impose order in this ever chaotic environment. And I would say they were destined to be like the Russians in Afghanistan, leaving with the tail between the legs.
July 8, 2009 10:48 PM | Reply | Permalink
And one last thing. By saying that liberals in large part help cause the defeat in Vietnam, it imply it was winnable. And usuaully when people claim it was winnable, they are saying it was a good idea to get involved.
A primary point of this thread is the expansion of the military-industrial complex, which really took off because of Vietnam (or whatever conflict they might have found had Vietnam not happened). It is about taking a stand. One would take from your original post that the expansion was necessary and, had not for those pesky liberals, we would have won in Vietnam and everybody wouldn't have a problem with that expansion.
To get divert attention from a lack of support for that view, you equate empire building after WWII with what happened prior to WWII. Since the US was involved with "border" issues prior to WWII, discussion on the changing dynamics of empire building after WWII is just stupid.
July 8, 2009 11:56 AM | Reply | Permalink
By the way, did you ever read I.F.Stone's "Hidden History of the Korean War"? He made the same claims about South Korea that you make about South Viet Nam. Look how things turned out, honey.
Open your eyes. The world is a shitty place full of deception, half-truths, and cruel and dangerous people. The Vietnamese saw Americans as successors to the hated French. That doesn't mean they were right or that the Vietnamese communists were manna from heaven.
July 8, 2009 10:48 AM | Reply | Permalink
I do have my eyes open. And yes the world is shitty place, etc. One just had to watch the thugs attack the protesters in Iran to know that.
And your critique is based on the idea that an empire is an empire is an empire. Thus, US economic expansion around the globe becomes equated with the westward expansion of the US during the nineteenth century. I see them as having different mechanism and motivations and beliefs about US role and interests in the world.
One of the primary reasons that the US didn't get involve in WWI until it did was that most of those in power didn't believe US should involve itself in the world outside it borders. Let Europeans do what they want to each other, it's none of our business.
We were defeated in Vietnam because our objective was to save South Vietnam and keep the status quo. It was a losing proposition. Nothing about the attitudes of Americans back home was going to get the people of Vietnam behind the South Vietnam regime.
US bombers could have bombed the rice paddy dikes in North Vietnam and caused massive drownings in Ho Chi Minh City. Especially when they went underground to avoid the bombs being dropped. They didn't, because the objective wasn't to annihilate the North Vietnamese people. Even if one did do this. Would this have given the South Vietnam regime anymore legitimacy? No. They would have maintained control only through the means that current Iranian regime is using.
July 8, 2009 11:13 AM | Reply | Permalink
And again, you use that special logic: Look at how South Korea, so obviously the same could have happened with South Vietnam. (They both have South in their name to boot!)
And if the Vietnamese did see us as successors to the hated French, and the South Vietnam regime was our boys over there, what hope could any of us having of succeeeding? Especially when we were destroying villages to save the villages.
I don't believe that the Communists from the north were manna from heaven. Just that they had the will of the majority thanks in large part to the blunders of the South Vietnam leaders and it would have been in US interests to stay out the conflict and deal with a reunified communist Vietnam.
July 8, 2009 11:41 AM | Reply | Permalink
I did read Stone's book.
July 8, 2009 8:20 PM | Reply | Permalink
Tim Weiner's obit in the Times really was terrific.
Like many I found it hard to be compassionate. McNamara was a man tormented by his past, which could not be forgotten - by him or anyone. There were a lot of people whose orders he followed and many who supported his policies. But it is he who implemented them. And we have the wall in Washington to show for it, and the Vietnamese have uncountable losses.
My blogpost links to James Fallows and David Halberstam's thoughtful remarks. http://blackstonetoday.blogspot.com/2009/07/mcnamaras-war.html
- GWC
July 8, 2009 12:57 PM | Reply | Permalink
The Tragedy of McNamara?
Yes, pity the poor man! So bright, architect of the mass murder of 2-3 million people, and died peacefully in bed, not as he should have in a dark cell in a Vietnamese prison.
May the devil has his soul for all eternity.
I need the emoticon for vomiting. Where is it?
July 8, 2009 2:18 PM | Reply | Permalink
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July 8, 2009 8:52 PM | Reply | Permalink