Giving McCain a Vietnam history lesson
Joe Conason thinks McCain doesn’t know much about history, in particular the Vietnam War and the lessons he should have learned from it.
Conason, as the possessor of a 1975 degree in history from Brandeis where they no doubt taught an unbiased version of the entire Vietnam conflict, knows better than McCain. And his subsequent stints at The Real Paper, the Village Voice, Details, and the New York Observer have undoubtedly objectively filled in whatever knowledge gaps might remain.
So what does Conason think McCain should have learned about Vietnam and didn’t? The revealed truth that we could never have won the war no matter what we might have done. As Conason puts it:
The most pertinent issue is not what McCain did or didn’t do during the war in Vietnam, but what he learned from that searing, incredibly bloody and wholly unnecessary failure of U.S. policy….he also seems not to have learned why that war itself was a tragic mistake—and why we needed to leave Vietnam long before we did. Indeed, what is most striking about McCain’s attitude toward Vietnam is his insistence that we could have won—that we should have won—with more bombs and more casualties.
To bolster the idea, Conason quotes a speech made by John McCain in 1998 on the occasion of the 30th anniversary of the Tet Offensive, as well as McCain’s 2003 testimony to the Council on Foreign Relations in the context of discussing support for the Iraq War.
Here is the first McCain quote:
Like a lot of Vietnam veterans, I believed and still believe that the war was winnable. I do not believe that it was winnable at an acceptable cost in the short or probably even the long term using the strategy of attrition which we employed there to such tragic results. I do believe that had we taken the war to the North and made full, consistent use of air power in the North, we ultimately would have prevailed.
And here is the second:
We lost in Vietnam because we lost the will to fight, because we did not understand the nature of the war we were fighting, and because we limited the tools at our disposal.
Try as I might (and I have tried rather hard) to find links the full versions of McCain’s words on each occasion, they seem to be unobtainable online. The best I can do is this expansion for the second one:
Our defeat in Vietnam nonetheless holds cautionary lessons. We lost in Vietnam because we lost the will to fight, because we did not understand the nature of the war we were fighting, and because we limited the tools at our disposal. Tet in 1968 was a massive battlefield defeat for the North but a strategic defeat for the United States, because the American press and the American public saw our leaders talk about a light at the end of the tunnel that did not exist. We can win the war in Iraq, but not if we lose popular support in the United States of America.
Note that the context for the sentence Conason quoted was the negative and misleading press coverage at Tet as a turning point in the Vietnam War, and the concern that the same loss of support due to unwarranted negativity from the press would lead to a similar loss of will in the Iraq War. That’s hard to argue with (I’ve covered some of the same territory here and here).
As for the first quote, McCain appears to have been advocating a fuller use of air power in the North. A controversial assertion to be sure, but hardly—as Conason seems to assume in the sentence that follows the McCain quote—a ground invasion of the North. Again, it would be wonderful to have the entire speech, but in the absence of that you might take a look at an excerpt from McCain’s 1990 Senate exchange with Henry Kissinger, here (it’s embedded in a larger article which distorts McCain’s viewpoints on the surge, a misrepresentation I’ve tried to correct in this post).
That testimony indicates that when McCain discusses increased bombing of the North he seems to be referring to the sort of the thing that was done in 1972, during an extremely important and oft-ignored stage of the Vietnam War that I’ve called the second act (see here). It was successful enough that it was instrumental in bringing the North Vietnamese to the bargaining table.
Part of the history of that second act is something Conason doesn’t seem to know, which is that from 1969 on there was a steady drawdown in the number of US troops in Vietnam, and that by March of 1973 the last of our fighting forces were gone.
Here’s a chart that chronicles what I’m talking about:
And here’s another:
I cannot understand how Conason could know of these facts and still come to the conclusions he states in his final paragraph—except, of course, his own ignorance of what McCain has actually said; and his need to discredit McCain’s greatest strength, his knowledge about military matters:
But it is easy to understand why a man [McCain] who thinks that we should have escalated the Vietnam War after 10 futile years would talk about occupying Iraq for a century. And it is hard to imagine why voters would elect a president who still believes that 60,000 American dead and more than 300,000 wounded in Vietnam were not quite enough.
Of course, McCain’s “100 years” statement was not about continuing the war in Iraq for that long; that’s been thoroughly discredited (even by the WaPo; see this).
But that’s not the only misrepresentation in Conason’s closing words. There is nothing in McCain’s speeches quoted here that indicates McCain wanted to escalate our troop presence (and casualty total) in Vietnam “after 10 futile years”—in other words, during the second act and after our fighting troops were long gone. The best conclusion I can come to is that McCain seems to have been advocating a smarter strategy—the earlier application of the Creighton Abrams approach (one that in fact was successful until Congress pulled the financial plug on it long after our fighting forces were gone), along with bombing campaigns in the North such as those that occurred in 1972 (see this for a description of what McCain had to say about the 1972 campaign).
Conason thinks McCain could use a Vietnam history lesson. But perhaps he could use one himself, starting with the book A Better War by Lewis Sorley. I’ve written at length about the premise of the book that the course of the war had been reversed in its later years under Creighton Abrams, and how the press and the public failed at the time—and continues to fail—to take notice of this.
Although one can know the facts contained in Sorley’s book and still disagree with its conclusion, Conason writes as though he is utterly ignorant of those facts and even more basic ones about the second act of the Vietnam War. In this, he is certainly not alone.
[NOTE: Read this for an intriguing description of an effort to make academia more evenhanded in its treatment of the history of the Vietnam conflict. You might want to take a look here as well, and even to make a donation if you are so moved.
Any piece on Vietnam can be but a short summary of the relevant information on this always-controversial topic. See this if you thirst for a fuller look at my writing on Vietnam.]
The original hawks on Vietnam, like Goldwater, might not have been willing to fight it if they knew the number of Vietnamese and American dead. I don’t get the sense that anybody in power in the US before 1967 had a deep or long view of the situation.
The reason for limiting the level of force against North Vietnam was the presence of Chinese and Soviet help at the Chinese border. All the US leaders remembered the Chinese attack when MacArthur went too close to the Chinese border; they did not want a repeat of that.
One result of the “Half-hearted” effort in Vietnam was that US citizens interpreted the war as less important. Think cognitive dissonance: what you think is also based on what you do. If the government is not willing to go all the way; Why should I risk my life to kill someone I’m not afraid of?
The Soviet effort in Afghanistan seems to have failed for similar reasons.
“I cannot understand how Conaston could know of these facts and still come to the conclusions he states in his final paragraph–except, of course, his own ignorance…”
Actually, I know from first-hand personal experience with Conason that what he writes, whatever he writes, is always filled with shadings of truth and a rampant agenda to obfuscate facts that do not fit his model.
The man’s a liar. Always has been. Always will be.
But he is, for newpapers and sites that employ him, a servicable liar. They depend upon it and he does not disappoint.
Neo,
What interests me is the strategic fixation, and its repetition in Vietnam Redux. For Conason, more bombing could never work because Westmoreland’s strategy was doomed to fail; Abrams doesn’t even register, as if everything was set in stone by ’66, before your graphs even begin. For Obama and company, the surge couldn’t possibly succeed (because more troops were needed at the very beginning, not later) and so Petraus’ success is invisible. It’s as if the Copperheads of 1864 were stuck arguing that McClellan’s war-fighting tactics hadn’t worked so the only alternative was to elect him to make peace.
In passing, McCain says that the US didn’t understand the nature of the war we were fighting. Fair enough, but I’m not entirely sure what sort of war he thinks it was, or what sort he thinks we’re fighting now. That matters less than whether thinks it can or should be won, but it’s important nonetheless.
I’ve said before that the left needs Viet Nam to have been unwinnable under any imaginable circumstances. Moreover, we should have known it from the beginnng. So we had this tragic, avoidable, inevitable catastrophe.
That having been set in cement, it will be useful next time the left doesn’t want us to prevail someplace. “It’s another Viet Nam.” That should cause us to cease even thinking about it.
Because we might win, and that would never do.
So, Viet Nam becomes an inevitable, inescapable tragedy, and so is anything else awarded that label.
I’d love to add to this, but nothing I can say can fill any gap. There just aren’t any. Another great post.
I am sure that college professors don’t know much about Vietnam, unless they served there or lived there for over a year. I do remember a professor named Ellis that kept telling his personal stories of Vietnam for years to bright eyed students, until uncovered by a real Vet. That Ellis is a published historian of note will never make me forget – he lies, which broadly makes me paint the lot the same color. Vietnam could have been won, but America doesn’t pay full value, they like discount on everything.
What strikes me so much, about so many issues, is how much truth is up for grabs. It’s okay to argue opinions about what would or would not have worked better or worse in Vietnam. However, there are facts which have come to light – facts – and those facts are frequently ignored and disputed. There is a line of demarcation between Vietnam fact and Vietnam opinion. That line is obscured just as surely as a baseball batter rubs out the chalk outline of a batters box.
All of us can think of myriad issues in which facts are known, yet are nevertheless vehemently disputed, i.e. “stolen election” of 2000. Refusal to acknowledge fact bothers me mightily. Eventually, maybe I must come to grips with human’s willingness to ignore or dispute clear fact. I am not there yet. I am still outraged by it. I am tremendously bothered.
For those who don’t know, the definitive analysis may still be Harry G. Summers’s On Strategy: A Critical Analysis of the Vietnam War.
Ms. Neoneocon, let me strongly support your own recommendation that people purchase
A Better War ($10.88 from amazon.com). It is the first book written from a historical and popular level which I have found to mesh with my personal memories of that time period, and which also ties it is to the question of why various strategies work and don’t work.
Thank you for your analysis and your sharing it with the world at large.
I was there and I was a pilot, just like McCain. The strategy and tactics of the air war against the North were ineffective at best and downright stupid at worst.
Why, you ask? We were never allowed to attack targets that would actually cripple the North’s ability to make war on the South. What we were allowed to do was attack oil storage facilities, ammo dumps, bridges, anti-aircraft sites, truck convoys, and army barracks. The tactics were to attack at the same times each day with the direction of attack chosen by LBJ and/or McNamara to minimize “collateral damage.” There was no element of surprise, there was no change of tactics, and there were irrational pauses in the bombings.
We were attacking a few things that the North needed to wage war with, but they found it easy to work around our efforts. When we destroyed their bridges, they just made pontoon bridges that could be sunk during the day and raised at night so traffic crossed at night. When we destroyed their truck convoys they just put the supplies on their backs and humped them down the Ho Chi Minh trail.
When we hit their oil storage supplies they soon replaced them as tankers were arriving daily at Hai Phong harbor, which was off limits.
What targets could have been attacked that would have made a real difference? Hai Phong Harbor, all the rail lines from China, the irrigation dams across the Red river, and Party headquarters in Hanoi. Making it difficult to resupply the North would have made it far more difficult for the North to continue their aggression against the South. Attacking Party Headquarters would have put Ho on notice that we meant business.
The goal was for there to be two countries just as had been achieved in Korea; a Communist North and a free South. Somehow or other this clear goal got lost in the propaganda that the Communists weren’t Communists but really just agrarian reformers and that the country really should be united. We were often told that we had no germane interests in the fight between the North and South. But our stated foreign policy during the entire Cold War was to keep the Communists from expanding. We had done it in Korea, it was the same goal in Vietnam. Somehow the MSM managed to obfuscate that goal and brand it as an illegal, immoral war.
I know for fact that the JCS had recommended to McNamara and LBJ that they hit the North hard and fast. They wanted to close Haiphong harbor, cut the rail lines from China, and breech the irrigation dams on the Red River. My squadron had been tasked with the job of mining Hai Phong Harbor and I was part of the group that made the plans.
Unfortunately, LBJ decided against hitting hard and fast. He opted to gradually increase the pressure, believing that there was a level of pressure that would bring Uncle Ho to the bargaining table. That mistaken idea allowed the war to drag on while the Communists worked their propaganda program that eventually turned the public against the war.
Fred says, “The reason for limiting the level of force against North Vietnam was the presence of Chinese and Soviet help at the Chinese border. All the US leaders remembered the Chinese attack when MacArthur went too close to the Chinese border; they did not want a repeat of that.” And I’m sure that was on LBJ’s mind. It was a mistaken concern as we had no ground troops in the North as we had had in Korea. The Chinese were willing to pass help from USSR to the North, but they were having their own problems and did not want to shed blood for the Vietnamese who were not their friends. That was one reason the JCS wanted to hit them hard and fast. To create a fait accompli so quickly that China and the USSR would be caught off balance.
Well, its all water under the bridge now. But there is a lesson in there. What I take from it is that half hearted measures are never appropriate if war is the only answer.
When you are an abettor to mass murderers, it is quite a good idea, Neo, not to admit that you ever knew such inconvenient facts.
Unfortunately, LBJ decided against hitting hard and fast.
That’s what happens when you get the latest and bestest batch of Democrats these days.
I agree that Joe Conason is a liar. He has made a career out of trying to justify the Left’s undermining of the war effort. Why that is, I do not know. Maybe he is one of those Gramscian Marxists who bought the narrative of the comrades and is invested in fighting his own private war against the imperialistic pig dog United States? People like Joe Conason are not fit to carry John McCain’s jockstrap.
I’ve never read anything written by Joe Conason that indicates he has broad and deep knowledge of the campaigns and battles of that war. He certainly never shows any knowledge about the goals of the North Vietnamese invasion of South Vietnam and the immense suffering the Communists imposed on the people in areas they controlled before being driven out.
So typical of the Left: they know that their efforts tied the hands of this country’s war efforts. And because it was almost impossible to overcome the political hurdles, the de-funding of the Republic of South Vietnam by the 1974 Congress led directly to the fall of the Saigon government in 1975. Joe Conason’s comrades helped make this possible, but he credits the political defeat not to the Left but to inept policy and a failed military effort. Never mind the fact that the U.S. military was not defeated in South Vietnam. When the last units were pulled out in 1973 after the Paris Treaty, we left the field having obliterated the Communists in every way. They never won any significant engagement or battle.
People like Conason perpetuate the lies that feed the Left’s hope for resistance to this day. He is a guardian of the myth – the sloganeering that continues on to this day.
I rank him below maggots in the grand scheme of useful life forms on this planet.
Every war has its mistakes. Our mistake in that war was to blink when the Communists were using Laos and Cambodia for egress, when the Communist world would threaten a global nuclear conflict if we were too aggressive against the North Vietnamese invaders. I honestly do not think the Russians or the Chinese would have let the nukes fly just to save Ho Chi Mihn and his war against South Vietnam. We blinked when the legal Left and its cowed dogs tied our hands with respect to the Communist sanctuaries. We blinked when they intimidated us into fighting a limited police action.
We fought that war with one hand tied behind our back, AND STILL MILITARILY WON!
I’ve read numerous books about the battles, campaigns, and engagements, in search of the facts to displace the confabulations I was fed when I was an adolescent and young adult during that war and its aftermath. Most Americans think we lost, but in fact we did win that war. What happened in 1975 was the result of a policy change, which the Democrats and many Republicans will not own responsibility for.
“Most Americans think we lost, but in fact we did win that war”
We lost that war – there can be no doubt of that. Every single one of our goals was not achieved and nearly every single one of our enemy was. Our goal was not to win every battle nor was theirs. Our goal was to stop the communist side and protect the free, theirs was to unite the country under their rule and slaughter all that opposed them – the won, we lost.
Militarily we drove them into the ground, it took about twice the amount of time it should have but we eventually did it. We found out that micromanaging was a horrid idea and that one can nut slowly increase pressure until the enemy caves (I noticed the “nut” instead of not as a typo, gut given the context I decided to leave it as it was an amusing mistake – it seems and appropriate mistake). In fact we found out what people since at least the time if Sun Tzu knew – when you fight a war you fight it (and he wasn’t considered radical in his time either so it pre-dates him too).
We just had some so called wonderkids who drunk their own kool aid and thought they had a new way of doing something that has been waged for many thousands of years. That many still find them “wonderkids” and listen to what they say is quite sad but then they are simply re-enforcing some ideas people really want to cling too. Same thing with Wesly Clark, of all the military people to pick as your spokesman have one who was relived of command for wanting to kill allies because of a personal slight, not only that but relieved of command by Bill Clinton for that reason.
But still, Vietnam was an unmitigated loss, it was just entirely political. It is the equivalent of a boxer beating the crap out of the other guy and while the other guy on the ground for the ten count the one standing throws in the towel. The team still lost.
For many many many many years Vietnam will be a lesson educated military strategist/tacticians will read as “how to not fight a war”. I’m VERY much willing to bet this is what McCain took away, not that “war is evil so never fight one”. If you believe that may I introduce you to Desert Storm, Korean War, WWII, WWI, War of 1812, Revolutionary war, and many many others outside of the US. Yes, there are bad ones but there are also ones that had to have been fought – plus the loosing side on those probably don’t like them much either.
the press and the public failed at the time–and continues to fail–to take notice of this.
The public can know only what the press reports to it, and the press can report only what others claim. In this case, what Pentagon spokesman claim. If the Pentagons claims were not trusted — not an unreasonable conclusion to reach, by 1968 – there could be no useful source of information on the war.
It is the story of the boy who cried “the light at end of the tunnel is in sight”.
And a few decades of self-justification afterwards, of course.
When we engaged Viet Nam our leaders chose to believe a series of myths rather than paying better attention to the realities of the actual situation. Perhaps the most problematic myth was the so-called Domino Theory. Communism was unquestionably accepted as being a monolithic and undifferentiated movement intent on world domination. Each country that went “red” was, therefore, accepted as being part of a grand scheme and likely to lead to the further spread of communism. The differences between the Soviet system and the Chinese, let alone the various communist parties scattered throughout the world were ignored. The rivalries and different goals of the various “flavors” of communism were ignored.
The ancient antipathy between the Vietnamese and the Chinese was also ignored. We also conveniently forgot that Ho Chi Minh, despite being a communist, was clandestinely supported by the US OSS during WWII when he fought against the Japanese. It is also forgotten that when the North declared independence they modeled their declaration of independence on the French and American declarations and sought early recognition from the U.S. At the outset the North and Ho Chi Minh were not anti-American. Rebuffed, the North turned to the Soviets for recognition and support.
The French refused to accept an independent Viet Nam, which was at the time a French colony. Following the eventual defeat of the French the 1954 Geneva Accords called for an election in 1956 that would have reunified the country. As it was widely accepted that Ho Chi Minh would have won that election, and due to the aforementioned Domino Theory and the notion that we might want to use Viet Nam as a base for possible future military actions vis a vis China, we chose instead to prop up the regime in the South despite its lack of popular support among the Vietnamese people and its reputation for corruption.
However many military victories on the battlefields we achieved, we set ourselves from the beginning on a course that led to the inevitable conclusion that occurred. Our leaders chose a course of action that was politically doomed from the start, whatever the military situation. As one of the more famous quotes from that era put it, “we had to destroy the town in order to save it.” This was the logic behind the entire exercise in Viet Nam. Using a military solution to solve a political and ideological problem had no real hope of succeeding, unless one judges the Korea solution success; perpetual low scale conflict, perpetual military presence and an ever intransigent foe on the other side of a DMZ.
To blame the press or the anti-war movement for snatching defeat from the jaws of victory perpetuates the fundamental flawed reasoning that thinks a military solution can be found for all political and ideological problems.
I think the definitive post on this thread is Jimmy J. July 6th, 2008 at 12:00 am. Mr. J. knows whereof he speaks, and I fear, no, I’m convinced, that the lessons of that war have not been learned, and that we are destined to go down that road again with much worse consequences.
And I wonder if Chris White July 6th, 2008 at 10:56 am thinks we would have still lost without the opposition of anti-war movement, the press, entertainment industry, etc., and the politicians’ caving in to them. What they did was no less than treason, and they are doing it again while the good people of this country watch and do nothing. We will all pay for this.
I follow Michael Barone’s remark that whatever anyone thinks of how the war was fought, there’s no point in arguing with anyone who disagrees with the idea that it would have been better for the South Vietnamese if we had won it.
We did lose the war but one of the ignored or unknown facts, as Michael Lind and Lewis Sorley have pointed out, is that at one point we had won it–given the war aim of a viable South Vietnam able to defend itself.
Relying on our promise to provide air and logistical support, the South Vietnamese army resisted the North Vietnamese onslaught of 1972, most of its units responding decently and some with distinction. The attack was not only turned back but mauled sufficiently that the North Vietnamese were unable to mount another for several years.
And then we reneged on our assurances and in 1975, left without the supplies or air support on which they had relied, South Vietnam collapsed. We had won it and we threw the victory away.
Chris,
Your reasoning follows exactly the Communist propaganda line against the war. It was unwinnable, it was a political situation in which we had no interests, it was a case of agrarian reformers wanting to unite a country divided by “selfish” interests. It was attributed to everything except what it really was: Naked aggression of the Communists against a population who wanted to practice their Catholicism and Buddhism in a country free from atheistic Communist tyranny.
The domino theory did not come to pass because by the time the Communists in Vietnam and Cambodia were through murdering millions of people they were too exhausted and militarily depleted to attempt further subversion in the area. That exhaustion was in no small part due to having to wage war against the U.S. for all those years. Had we not deterred them for all those years they would no doubt have tried to take Laos, Thailand and Indonesia.
You are correct that Communism was not a monolithic block, but you cannot claim that they weren’t united in the desire to gradually dominate the third world and resource rich countries. Their goal: To isolate the free world and control world resources, hoping to strangle the free world economically.
What we did was a cowardly betrayal of people that we had allied ourselves with and had given assurances of further money and military aid to defend themselves. You can cast it any way you like, but it was a democratic majority in Congress that voted to betray the South Vietnamese. Since that time the democrats have been the party of defeat and defeatism. In that war they tried to obfuscate the facts that it was Communist aggression we were fighting. Just as they have attempted to obfuscate the War in Iraq as being narrowly about WMDs rather than a part of a much larger picture, which includes taking down Islamist terror cells worldwide and introducing freedom to the Muslim world.
“However many military victories on the battlefields we achieved, we set ourselves from the beginning on a course that led to the inevitable conclusion that occurred. Our leaders chose a course of action that was politically doomed from the start, whatever the military situation. ”
Ballocks. Read Jimmy J’s post again. If it were treated as a war from the outset, instead of a theoretical exercise involving combat, the war would have been over in 1967.
The original objective of preserving a democratic RVN would have been easily attainable had the NVA and government been incapable of functioning at home, much less projecting power across the DMZ… which is exactly what the situation would have been had the “best and brightest” listened for one second to people who had actually fought wars before – or who knew squat about history.
“As one of the more famous quotes from that era put it, “we had to destroy the town in order to save it.””
Those would be the words of the later-to-be-distinguished and respected by all smart Manhattan folk Peter Arnett, right?
“The United States of America was defeated by the Democratic People’s Republic of North Vietnam.”
That’s what happened. And it is incumbent on those of us who look back on that fact to work damned hard to ensure that the people who made that outcome inevitable never get a chance to play that game again.
Half our polity exist because they think that the outcome of Vietnam was a good thing.
Decadence takes many forms, I guess.
As I said, a military victory cannot guarantee a desired political ideological outcome. When we set ourselves on a course in Viet Nam that ignored the actual will of the people of Viet Nam, misunderstood the differences and schisms among Viet Nam’s communist supporters, ignored the 1954 Geneva Accord and was predicated on supporting a corrupt regime without adequate popular support, we set ourselves on a path to the ultimate defeat of that South Vietnamese government, regardless of the military outcome.
While the situation today in the Middle East is vastly different, certain parallels remain and those parallels are troubling. One parallel is the way the terms “treason” and “traitor” are bandied about by some to describe anyone who fails to offer uncritical and unequivocal support for whatever actions the Pentagon and White House choose to take while prosecuting an effort to change yet another country’s internal politics via military intervention. Another is a common failure to recognize that there is no monolithic foe, but instead an extremely complex set of overlapping, often conflicting, tribal and sectarian alliances and feuds which cannot simply be “solved” by military means. This is particularly upsetting to see as we have a President and an administration prone to bragging that they “don’t do nuance” but instead are prone to black and white absolutes of “you’re with us or against us.”
Whatever the intelligence about WMD or links between Saddam and Islamist terrorists, one might have expected that the links between Iran and the Shiite majority in Iraq, long repressed and dominated by the Sunni Baathists, would lead to complications not ideal for our simply being hailed as liberators while joyful Iraqis quickly joined together in harmony and got the oil flowing freely again.
And then there’s the difficulty of the Kurds, a group subject to near genocidal actions under Saddam, who have a strong desire for complete independence and who have fellow Kurds living on either side of the borders with Turkey and Iran. To believe that we can succeed in Iraq without complications in our relations with our ally Turkey and our enemy Iran is to have faith without reason.
Whenever a government must use military force to keep its own people under control, such a government is ultimately doomed. To think that we can change this by guaranteeing overwhelming military supremacy to a client state in perpetuity is beyond hubris and true patriots will continue to offer alternative approaches to resolving the problems in the Middle East and elsewhere.
“Another is a common failure to recognize that there is no monolithic foe, but instead an extremely complex set of overlapping, often conflicting, tribal and sectarian alliances and feuds which cannot simply be “solved” by military means.”
Let’s just look at this one portion of a post filled with strawmen.
I haven’t called anybody traitors during this war – with the exception of Lynn Stewart and people who actually stood in front of truck traffic heading into ports.
But I could called a lot more out if I’d chosen too.
The active diplomatic/civic affairs solution that has been happening since the fall of Saddam depends on military force to be able to happen – but building infrastructure, schools, and power grids is not military. Nor is living among and operating within the sensibilities of the population as a whole.
Iraq isn’t even a war; it is merely a battle, and if you acknowledge that you are able to understand why some parts of this fight are fought with words but that when necessary all force necessary is available, and more importantly, USED.
If I could have changed one thing (of all the shortcomings/mistakes/blunders/political miscalculations) about how we have gone about the so-called GWOT, I would have had congress vote an actual declaration against both Iraq and Afghanistan, and a further resolve to pursue identified Islamist targets across borders where they were positively located.
I’m not looking to solve a puzzle. I’m looking to win. I believe the Bush Doctrine will stand up to History’s scrutiny a lot better than will the policies and machinations executed by the dishonest and shortsighted Western Left, in search of petty political advantage against the backdrop of a conflict across civilizations, for civilization.
We haven’t fought the tough battles of this war yet. Our kids might. But we haven’t even begun to see what bad can be.
Have a fine day.
“As I said, a military victory cannot guarantee a desired political ideological outcome. When we set ourselves on a course in Viet Nam that ignored the actual will of the people of Viet Nam, misunderstood the differences and schisms among Viet Nam’s communist supporters, ignored the 1954 Geneva Accord and was predicated on supporting a corrupt regime without adequate popular support, we set ourselves on a path to the ultimate defeat of that South Vietnamese government, regardless of the military outcome.”
There are only two classes of people of who believe this – the news media and those that listen only to them. This was *not* the case – the south Vietnamese wanted to be free of the north and supported us, heck after we removed our troops all it took was our continued funding for the war to have guaranteed a free south Vietnam.
The NVA knew *exactly* how to play the news media and the anti-war sentiments back home in the US. Have their people infiltrate into the south, pretend to be locals, and do everything in their power to hurt the US. It is, once more, a great example of my “Throw a Dog a Bone Syndrome” – the media and the anti-war crowd in the US wanted this narrative to be true so badly that they never investigated further and reported it as truth. It never was. They played it well enough that even 40 years later we are only barely starting to find the truth of what went on and even then there are a HUGE amount of people who want the narrative to be true so badly they ignore everything else.
Vietnam was quite winnable but our wonderkid civilians who were running the military didn’t know jack about how to wage war both from a tactical/strategic sense and a political sense. They never fought to win militarily and their continual betrayal of our allies led them to never trust us (including right to the end when we dropped even financial support to a working defense of a free country).
One more thought, this time paraphrased from Bobbitt’s Shield of Achilles: Bobbitt argues that in some ways Viet Nam hurt the USSR more than the USA, because (a) it was fought on the Asian landmass, validating the USA’s expeditionary capabilities, (b) it tied up far more resources than the USSR could afford (though we didn’t know it at the time) and (c) it bought time for Japan, South Korea, Thailand, Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, etc., to build prospering economies that would make it harder communist agitators to gain a foothold.
I’d like to think he’s right; he’s certainly got more exposure to the facts. And with regards to point (c) the fellow regarded as the founding father of one of those nations (Singapore?) has said the same thing.
In other words, the domino theory was quite correct when it was proposed. That only Laos and Cambodia fell when the RVN did was a testament to the power of Western Civilization and its ability to spread its economic power.
But it still would have been better if North Vietnam had been humbled. Problem is, at what point would China have interfered?
LBJ had three serious problems. First, he was a power broker who liked yes-men; he was not a statesman used to dealing with other nations whom he could not out-muscle or buy off. Second, he cared little for ‘Nam or any other world affairs; he was focused on The Great Society; for that alone his name should be Mud Mudd Mud de Mud of Mudville, though his role in rolling back Jim Crow will always stand to his credit. Third, he was surrounded by people like McNamara who believed that they had outsmarted history. (George C. Marshall had; why shouldn’t they? But they were no Marshalls). As Summers points out in On Strategy, LBJ apparently failed to realize that there was no need to deny the operations in Laos; under the traditional and accepted laws of war, when one belligerant violates the territory of a neutral for a warlike purpose; the neutral is obliged to resist. If it can or will not, the opposing belligerant has every right to move in to attack its enemy or secure territory for safety. If the DMZ had been pushed west through the mountains, it would have made the Ho Chi Minh Trail untenable.
Summers’s analysis took place in the ‘back-to-basics movement’ in the US military. Summers relates that he had never even read von Clausewitz; when he did so (at the suggestion of a lunch buddy) he found, on the first page, in the very framing of the issues, an explanation of an error that we made. And again on the second page, and every page thereafter. Courtesy of LBJ, Westmoreland, and McNamara’s Whiz Kids, we literally made every mistake in the book.
LBJ’s Administration deserved to lose. The people of South Viet Nam did not. Nor did the people of Laos and Cambodia. And the damage to American prestige and power brought us perilously close to losing the Cold War.
This thread has spiraled into the all too familiar Viet Nam debate.
But to return to Conanson. I would like to add a comment in addition to Vanderleun’s testimony about his veracity. A look at the time-line tells us all we need to know about Conanson and Viet Nam; he graduated from Brandeis in June of 1975. So, he sat out the last two years of this struggle in the cloistered halls of a liberal University while others served. I am sure the seminars in which he traded wisdom with others of his persuasion prepared him to speak with real depth of knowledge on the subjects of war strategy and in particular the meaning of the war exerience for those who actually fought it.
Conanson is clearly a child of privilege and like so many of his kind he cannot control his arrogance.
Chris White speaks of the conflict as an historical inevitability. This kind of abstract determinism has wisps of Hegel in it, and that is part of how Marxists dissect historical events. I’m NOT accusing Mr. White of being a Marxist, but his explanation of events follows very closely the acceptable academic interpretation of the war. It presupposes that Ho and the Communists had popular support in the South, so it was inevitable that we could not close the deal on the political victory. If this was so, why was there not a broad and deep uprising among the people in February of 1968, when the Viet Cong inaugurated Tet while the North Vietnamese divisions were infiltrating into Quang Tri and Con Thien provinces? The actual result of the Communist offensive was resistance against the Communists. ARVN units fought tenaciously. The populace did not go over the Communists and seize the strategic points and organs of government. The North Vietnamese perpetrated a vicious mass murder in Hue, and similar cleansings occurred across the Republic of Vietnam.
After Tet the Communist insurgents in the South had been nearly wiped out. Even before Tet they were being bulked up and reinforced not by volunteers in the South, but by infiltrated NVA regulars down the Ho Chi Mihn Trail. After Tet, the few remaining units were almost completely filled out by NVA regulars.
The Spring 1972 Offensive was repulsed by the ARVN and our air power – an offensive that was an invasion from the North. It took the incredibly powerful air offensives of Linebacker I and II which just about completely demolished the North’s infrastructure and war capabilities, to bring the North Vietnamese to an agreement at Paris.
Two points need to be stressed at this point. The Communists did not have popular support in the South (crash and burn, Hegel!). There was nothing inevitable to either our political betrayal and capitulation or a Communist victory. The North continuously violated the original treaty of partition. And, second, after the Paris accords the Communists once again initiated an invasion of the South. During the two years before the Spring 1975 Communist victory, the North had been rearmed by the Soviets and other Communist satellite nations. All the armor that had been smashed during the ’72 Offensive had been replaced.
The level of aid given to North Vietnam, after we left victorious in 1973, by the Communist bloc far outstripped what we gave to the Republic of Vietnam.
The political solution in reality was our political capitulation. This was prodded not by historical forces, but by the tireless efforts of the Communist Fifth Column here in the United States. Tet was a brilliant victory for our armed forces, but our media sold it as a defeat, and that was enough of a push to tilt the political support in favor of sustaining the South over to abandoning the fight.
Most of the discussion about the war today, among us Baby Boomers, revolves around the narrative we received and accepted. I received the same narrative that Chris White received. And for a part of my life I accepted it, since there was available very little in the way of an alternative narrative. However, over the years, especially since leaving the Left in 1987, I went in search of the alternative narratives about how our military performed. Along the way, I found many moments when I realized that the narrative I had earlier received distorted the actual facts on the ground.
For much of the conflict the Saigon government, in my view, was more incompetent than corrupt. And yet the people of the South preferred to live under the Saigon government than the Communist North. The people themselves had the stories of how the North’s political officers and operatives treated the South Vietnamese. They really did know what it all meant.
Let me tell you what it meant. In late March and early April of 1975 I was a SP4 serving at Fort Lee, Virginia. I had a friend who was an E-5 who did serve in the Republic of Vietnam at Cam Rahn Bay in 1972. He married the widow of an ARVN major. As we watched the film footage of those tragic last days of the South’s freedom, “An” often had tears in her eyes and anxiety in her mind. She told us how much she worried about her family and friends still over there – because she and all of the people knew how the Communists would treat them.
A popular inevitability? Absolutely not.
An inevitable defeat? No. And it was never a military defeat for us. WE CHOSE the political defeat. And that choice was based on the perceptions we had because of the historical narrative I and nearly everyone else was served by the media and academia.
Disparaging the Domino Theory demonstrates nothing that is truly revealing of the political situation over there or here. However flawed, at times, our strategy was, we correctly (for awhile) understood that it was best for the entire world that we stand against the Communist aggression from the North.
I would like to further add that Joe Conason has not deviated from the Left’s narrative of what the war was all about. I will prefer to walk along with Sen. McCain as he wrestles with the lessons and the war’s meaning.
Conason is in an echo chamber of the Left. I’ve spent time with people like that, and after leaving the Left I am never going back. They’ve lied too much about too many things. They shape shift historical forces to serve their mythology of socialist victory.
Why did North Vietnam invade the south? Simple – to impose their political system – and ideology, to use the Marxist term – on the south.
And they were sufficiently brutal that they succeeded.
Just would like to point out what a major historian said about countries and their power.
“The Strong do what they can; The Weak do what they must.”
— Thucydides: “History of the Peloponnesian War”, Chapter 2 (I think).
At the end of this Glorious Fourth Weekend: Stay Strong, USA.
“Si pacem vis, para bellum.” If you want peace, prepare for war. Latin Proverb
A professor lie? They don’t view voicing their ‘wrong’ opinions as lies. Remember, he is a professor and we should honor his word even if they are lies. I can’t remember the exact number of American combat troops in Vietnam when the democrats surrendered, what was the number, ‘0’, or something close since the country was under control of the Vietnam government. The statement issued by the democrats in congress that ‘America’ would no longer support the government of South Viietnam was all the commie’s (North Vietnam and democrats) needed to slaughter 3 to 5 million people. I”m just glad the blood is on the democrats, then and now, hands and not mine. Some day payment for that blood will come due.
I think a lot of the heavy lifting and massive killing of the enemy forces under Westmoreland set things up for Gen. Abrams rather well. We could hold areas and pacify them because the enemy was reeling from his massive losses on up through the end of the Tet Offensive. Plus, during Gen. Abrams’ tenure at MACV we were more aggressively interdicting the Ho Chi Minh Trail. We made it very hard for Charlie to get “in country” and when he got here he was not strong enough to break our hold of the pacified areas.
In defense of Gen. Westmoreland, when he took command the South was crawling – just super infested – with VC and NVA regular forces. We could not hold ground. We had to foray out, seek the enemy, and kill him where he stood to fight. We had to fight a war of attrition early on. South Vietnam was a far different place in 1970 than it was five years earlier. Ask Gen. Giap about that.
I’m really gratified that there are so many voices out there who have done their homework on Vietnam.
For so many years after 1975 I was in a state of barely contained rage about what had gone down. I lost 6 friends out there and knew three of the POWs who spent too many years at the Hanoi Hilton. All that sacrifice – betrayed in the end by our cowardly Congress.
There were so few people I could talk to who understood and had a grasp of why things went so wrong. Reading the many commenters here who get it, is such a lift to my spirits. Thanks.
JimmyJ,
I didn’t turn 18 until 1973. I went in after I graduated from high school, before I eventually went to college on the GI Bill. I served with a lot of sergeants and officers who did tours over there. I am very, very pleased to have contributed to this discussion in a way that does honor to you guys and lifts your spirits.
Jimmy J: Glad to hear the comments are a lift to your spirits.
If you haven’t already done so, you might want to take a look at the Vietnam entries in my “A Mind is a Difficult Thing to Change” series. The comments sections are particularly interesting as well, I think. Somehow, though, in the transition from my old blog to the new one, the comments for the old posts got placed in the opposite order that they came in. To make sense of the comments, you have to scroll down to the last one in each post and then read them in ascending order.
I didn’t understand the end moves of Vietnam until I was forty years old – and I used to pride myself that I was paying attention. That would be around 1996 – long after I was done with the service.
If we had fulfilled our treaty obligations, there would never have been helicopters on the embassy roof.
Several million lives would not have ended prematurely.
A political movement that can embrace that outcome as a positive… is just sad.
I wish I could have the money I wasted on subscriptions to Time and U.S. News back. I surely do.
Jimmy J:
God bless you and all the others of your tribe* that served in that war and have refused to knuckle under to the constant flood of enemy loving propaganda to become members of the Cult of Victims.
* that tribe being those who served with honor and have remained strong since.
Superp blog and comments this weekend. So, did “we” learn anything from the debacle that was Vietnam? Looking at the polls for the coming election, apparently not. The europeanization and dumbing down of American culture, primarily thru the vehicle of the now great American tragedy that is personified in the so called progressive Democratic Party, is near complete. The global warming demagogues have successfully diverted the international public’s attention from the most immediate and dangerous problem that is really just the continuation of the jihad-nazi movement that didn’t die with Hitler, but is now powered by the greatest energy fortune in history. Following the Clintonistas, and even with the ineptness of Bush-Rice, the oblivious obamatons are about set to take us to the precipice. As “we” betrayed the South Vietnamese, we’ve also betrayed the Serbs. As TmjUtah said, “we haven’t even begun to see what bad can be.” If the western world is unable to find a Churchillian leadership to follow Bush, the jihadis will keep testing their limits. The Israelis might now be slowly awakening from their left-wing malaise, so that the mistakes of the last “summer” war with Hezbollah will not be repeated. If Iran is not stopped, and the Israelis have to go down, with another holocaust casually permitted by the smoke and mirrors of free world so-called “diplomacy”, the Israelis will go down so hard that the rest of the world will be wondering how they could ever have been so oblivious, blase’ and shallow. People like Conosan simply don’t have enough respect for how much has been accomplished in Iraq…
When we engaged Vietnam our leaders chose to believe a series of myths rather than paying better attention to the realities of the actual situation. Perhaps the most problematic myth was the so-called Domino Theory. Communism was unquestionably accepted as being a monolithic and undifferentiated movement intent on world domination. Each country that went “red” was, therefore, accepted as being part of a grand scheme and likely to lead to the further spread of communism. The differences between the Soviet system and the Chinese, let alone the various communist parties scattered throughout the world were ignored. The rivalries and different goals of the various “flavors” of communism were ignored.
Country after country was taken over by the Reds but we are not to believe there was a scheme or jointly held intentions for world-wide domination behind it. Oh, no. As for the differences between the various varieties of Communism, they are much less important than a striking similarity: Communist regimes are invariably totalitarian.
Thankfully, the writer doesn’t complete what is the usually the other half of such spurious criticism – which is that after WW2 many people around the globe were spontaneously overthrowing their ‘slave masters’ and bringing a Communist Paradise into being – all bloodless and democratic. The second assertion usually follows the first in most dialectic along similar lines; the writer chooses to belabor only the first.
The ancient antipathy between the Vietnamese and the Chinese was also ignored. We also conveniently forgot that Ho Chi Minh, despite being a communist, was clandestinely supported by the US OSS during WWII when he fought against the Japanese.
I’m not finding a point in the above, no matter how hard I try. Why was it ‘convenient’ for the US to ‘forget’ supporting Minh? Why use that particular wording? The US had been friendly with others who had Communist leanings and Russia, which was totally Communist, during WW2. Why should the US have need of forgetfulness? Yet such writers always want to inform us with bated breath and an air of great import of something that is not actually applicable to any rationale.
And the Communists only started getting serious about land-grabbing after WW2 when they took over Eastern Europe. The US was fairly friendly toward such folks until then.
Furthermore, whatever ancient antipathy existed between the Chinese and the Vietnamese it seems to have completely vanished in the modern era because the Chinese supported Minh wholeheartedly during the American involvement, to the tune of over 320,000 Chinese regular troops inside Vietnam and providing Minh with weaponry without charge. Why bring up such a historical triviality as an “ancient antipathy” between the two cultures as if it was significant?
It is also forgotten that when the North declared independence they modeled their declaration of independence on the French and American declarations and sought early recognition from the U.S. At the outset the North and Ho Chi Minh were not anti-American. Rebuffed, the North turned to the Soviets for recognition and support.
Most Communist regimes start out with a democratic disguise, using democratic means until they are in control – then of course they morph into what they were all along, when it’s much too late for the hapless populace to do anything. Evidently the US had not “forgotten” that favored technique.
The contention implied by the writer that the US forced Minh to become a bloodthirsty Communist because the US rebuffed him is ridiculous – a variation of the US Causes Despots anti-war meme.
Does the writer think it unusual that the US would not support the usurpation of the government of an ally? I think it’s at least a bit unfriendly to attack and subvert an ally. Would the writer have the US stand by with a contented demeanor while, say, Great Britain or Israel were overrun?
The French refused to accept an independent Vietnam, which was at the time a French colony. Following the eventual defeat of the French the 1954 Geneva Accords called for an election in 1956 that would have reunified the country. As it was widely accepted that Ho Chi Minh would have won that election, and due to the aforementioned Domino Theory and the notion that we might want to use Vietnam as a base for possible future military actions vis a vis China, we chose instead to prop up the regime in the South despite its lack of popular support among the Vietnamese people and its reputation for corruption.
Does the writer believe that if a friendly truly democratic entity other than the Communist Minh had been about to win the election mentioned that the US would have supported a South Vietnam government against it? I believe that the US would have welcomed a really democratic government. But the US also knew from previous experience that Communist regimes always wear democratic trappings at first. Also, corrupt as the pre-Communist governments may have been they represented mild governance compared to a Communist regime – the US policymakers could also see what would follow and what did follow after Minh gained control.
We had seen what had happened to China itself after the Communist takeover and in East Europe and were understandably concerned that the same agenda would have and in fact has been followed by Minh. We will never know how many were murdered after the fall of South Vietnam but if the Boat People are any indication the murder was wholesale. Anyone known to be friendly or to have helped the US are lucky indeed if they survive today. Clearly, the South Vietnam would have a better quality of life today if the US had not handed over South Vietnam to the Communists – just as the South Koreans are much better off not being governed by the idiot in North Korea.
However many military victories on the battlefields we achieved, we set ourselves from the beginning on a course that led to the inevitable conclusion that occurred.
The argument that the defeat was inevitable is bogus conventional wisdom fostered by the media and other anti-Vietnam War folks. The ‘memory hole’ is gone with the advent of the internet. The history is all there that South Vietnam had been saved by the detested Nixon. Nixon had gotten ALL the boys out of Vietnam and had left a South Vietnam that was doing a good job of countering North Vietnam. This good thing that Nixon had accomplished festered among the anti-Vietnam War majority of Congress like a sore. So, simply to abolish a Nixon victory, the US Congress in a feeding frenzy, having just torn Nixon apart, and hating Nixon’s success in the handling of the war, decided to hand South Vietnam over to the North. It is one of the great infamies of American history. South Vietnam was tossed away like yesterday’s newspaper. Now they want to do the same to Iraq and Afghanistan. Just as with Nixon, they would have the contemptible Bush see his war given to the enemy.
Our leaders chose a course of action that was politically doomed from the start, whatever the military situation. As one of the more famous quotes from that era put it, “we had to destroy the town in order to save it.” This was the logic behind the entire exercise in Vietnam. Using a military solution to solve a political and ideological problem had no real hope of succeeding, unless one judges the Korea solution success; perpetual low scale conflict, perpetual military presence and an ever intransigent foe on the other side of a DMZ.
Here we see the philosophy behind a flawed view of history. Doom is the keynote. In this writer’s view South Korea would be better off under Kim Jong-il. Why? Well, because the DMZ is bothersome to the writer. This is consistent with his implication that South Vietnam benefited by a Communist regime. I assume he believes much the same for the present war.
To blame the press or the anti-war movement for snatching defeat from the jaws of victory perpetuates the fundamental flawed reasoning that thinks a military solution can be found for all political and ideological problems.
I do blame the anti-war movement and the media, along with the Congress, and see clearly that they want to do the same today. Yet I assure the readers that I do not believe “a military solution” is necessary “for all political and ideological problems.”
As I said, a military victory cannot guarantee a desired political ideological outcome. When we set ourselves on a course in Vietnam that ignored the actual will of the people of Vietnam, misunderstood the differences and schisms among Vietnam’s communist supporters, ignored the 1954 Geneva Accord and was predicated on supporting a corrupt regime without adequate popular support, we set ourselves on a path to the ultimate defeat of that South Vietnamese government, regardless of the military outcome.
Mainly broad platitudes(A “cannot guarantee” B), sloganeering(“will of the people”), a magnifying of the inconsequential(“differences”), discredited assumptions of doom(“ultimate defeat … regardless”) and very little meat in all this gravy. He does mention the Geneva Accord, the one bit of beef floating around in all this. This was a group of countries, not including the US, who decided they were going to give South Vietnam to North Vietnam. They set up an election that they knew Minh would win to make it look good. Of course the US did not cooperate in such an enterprise. We were not yet into the feckless era of Carterism in our policy decisions.
While the situation today in the Middle East is vastly different, certain parallels remain and those parallels are troubling. One parallel is the way the terms “treason” and “traitor” are bandied about by some to describe anyone who fails to offer uncritical and unequivocal support for whatever actions the Pentagon and White House choose to take while prosecuting an effort to change yet another country’s internal politics via military intervention. Another is a common failure to recognize that there is no monolithic foe, but instead an extremely complex set of overlapping, often conflicting, tribal and sectarian alliances and feuds which cannot simply be “solved” by military means. This is particularly upsetting to see as we have a President and an administration prone to bragging that they “don’t do nuance” but instead are prone to black and white absolutes of “you’re with us or against us.”
The beginning of the paragraph above reads like the lead-in to a Bill Moyers Journal, which is to be expected of this writer. The only folks I call treasonous are those that meet the Constitutional definition: “in levying war against them[the various United States], or in adhering to their enemies, giving them aid or comfort.”
Offhand I would say that the NYT and many others fit the “aid or comfort” clause rather handily. If we were in a less decadent era they would no doubt not have published classified material for fear of the punishment that would have immediately followed such pernicious behavior. Alas such a desirable outcome is not possible in the present political environment. But that shouldn’t keep us from labeling them for what they are: traitors. The lowest of the low.
Whatever the intelligence about WMD or links between Saddam and Islamist terrorists, one might have expected that the links between Iran and the Shiite majority in Iraq, long repressed and dominated by the Sunni Ba’athists, would lead to complications not ideal for our simply being hailed as liberators while joyful Iraqis quickly joined together in harmony and got the oil flowing freely again.
Here again we must search in vain for a point. The syntax is a bit garbled and seems to be a quilt of stitched together platitudes. The unstated assumption in the last line is that the US is in the war for Iraq’s oil. I’m sure the US would have been perfectly content to buy Iraq’s oil on the open market without incident had Saddam not invaded Kuwait and performed a disgraceful series of shenanigans for 13 years afterward. Doesn’t the writer understand the world oil market? All buyers are willing to pay whatever price set by the sellers and no one cares where the oil comes from.
And then there’s the difficulty of the Kurds, a group subject to near genocidal actions under Saddam, who have a strong desire for complete independence and who have fellow Kurds living on either side of the borders with Turkey and Iran. To believe that we can succeed in Iraq without complications in our relations with our ally Turkey and our enemy Iran is to have faith without reason.
The US must not help to establish 2 friendly, democratic allies amid terror-sponsoring rogue states because there may be “complications.” I don’t remember anyone expressing a belief that the Iraq War is without “complications.” I believe most of us know about the Kurds, the religious factions and other entities mentioned. Certainly Neoneocon’s essays say nothing about there being no “complications” in regards to Iraq. So why the emphasis? It’s called the Straw Man:
Wikipedia: “A straw man argument is an informal fallacy based on misrepresentation of an opponent’s position.”
Whenever a government must use military force to keep its own people under control, such a government is ultimately doomed. To think that we can change this by guaranteeing overwhelming military supremacy to a client state in perpetuity is beyond hubris and true patriots will continue to offer alternative approaches to resolving the problems in the Middle East and elsewhere.
Platitude City again.
As far back as living memory goes in this nation, the “peace movement” has not been about ending war, it has been all about ending the US.
I have no intention on hunting for it, but I read quotes by former NVA generals stating that were on the verge of surrendering the whole war until they noticed the Anti-war demostrations back in the US.
They got hope from the demos that the US would falter politically and go home and so mentally they moved from a surrender mindset to an endurance mindset.
This is the exact same thing our Jihadi buddies are relying on..
And the treasonous vile Democrats and Leftists are giving them just that.
I note that a writer above has correctly quoted the constitutional definition of Treason in the Constitution. Rather than throw accusations around, we now can do a series of measurements: do certain actions (I think, except for rare cases, we can ignore “levying war”, but who knows?).
So what constitutes “Aid and Comfort”? Does the Constitution require a formal war declaration? Does a joint resolution meet the standard? My understanding is that Iraq is basically authorized under this type of legislation.
Over to you lawyers – jailhouse or other – out there.
When there was a hot war in Vietnam but anyone could leave freely, few chose to do so. Then peace came, the peoiple’s liberators arrived–and millions fled.
That seems to me to be an adequate commentary on the “peace” crowd’s efforts. And they’re proud of it.
So what constitutes “Aid and Comfort”? Does the Constitution require a formal war declaration?
I’m no lawyer.. but to me “Aid and Comfort” mean whatever the politicians at the Dept of Justice want to ignore.
And former declaration is war is not required. our enemies are our enemies because they declare themselves to be , not solely because Congress has done its job.
“The most pertinent issue is not what McCain did or didn’t do during the war in Vietnam, but what he learned from that searing, incredibly bloody and wholly unnecessary failure of U.S. policy….he also seems not to have learned why that war itself was a tragic mistake–…”
Thank you John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Baines Johnson.
Balderdash.
Our leaders never put the case properly before the American people. Summers treats this at length, because war is ultimately a political act. “War is the continuation of politics by other means.” (If you don’t know the source of the quote, it’s time to start reading.) JFK’s presidency was cut short, and LBJ didn’t want to take ‘Nam seriously–even as he became obsessed with it to the extent of picking routine bombing targets.
Civil Rights may save LBJ from the title of Worst President Ever, but they are the only thing that can. The Cold War was part of the great struggle of the 20th century, and he nearly blew it because he didn’t have the sense to realize that career military officers probably knew more about waging a war than he did.
And LBJ never had a clear strategic goal for military or foreign policy actions. The man was a ddangerous politician within the US political system, but a child in the deadly waters of international politics.
Great posting!
Conason, like the rest of the lefties, will never support defense of American interests by the use of force.
Thanks!
USA has squandered an opportunity to win Vietnam war decidedly by refusing to bomb DMZ once, by a nuke. This will be enough for NV communists to give up. Irrational and exaggerated fear of nuclear escalation doomed American efforts. West routinely overestimates resolve of their opponents. Do not repeate this mistake with Iran.
Victory . . . military victory . . . is never much more than a means to an uncertain end.
It is true that many, including myself, have fervently wished for an unmistakable victory in Iraq, but hopefully not just for the sake of victory. Nor do I want to see a real victory just because I want to be able to say, “I told you so,” to my liberal and other left-leaning friends and acquaintances . . . and even a few some paleo-leaning acquaintances.
I wish it so because there will be a future for both the Iraqi people and for the American people, and for the freedom that we hold so dear. I believe that future for the Iraqi people and for the American people, and for freedom, will be significantly improved if we are the clear victors.
In that regard, whether or not anyone supported the incursion when it happened in the spring of 2003, is now largely beside the point. And I personally believe that was also true back in 2006 as well.
I did support the original incursion, but many did not on at least arguable grounds. Some vehemently opposed the surge, even as late as late 2007, because they did not think it could possibly succeed. They were obviously wrong. Still others have been in denial about the success of the surge well into this year. They were not only wrong back then; they are now stupid.
Sadly, there were others among us opposed the surge because they quite plainly want our nation to be defeated and humiliated — many of them on partisan grounds — Bush hatred.
Call me cynical, but I am not still not entirely certain where Barack Obama falls on that scale. He is either a lefty ideologue, or a lefty ideologue who is now in denial. Either way, he had extremely bad judgment back in 2006, and has thereby undermined the fundamental justification for his run for the Presidency.
I anticipate seeing the televised images of him making an appearance before the American troops when he visits Iraq and Afghanistan, as they either politely but unmistakably “sit on their hands” or, perhaps treat him to a thin “smattering” of applause.
And tehn, I hope that John McCain makes a surprise visit to both Afghanistan and Iraq about 48 hours later, and we all are treated to the YouTube clips of him being warmly treated to a well-deserved “standing O” and a lusty “Hoo-Haa” everywhere he goes!
Sorry to point this out but the U.S. Army WAR COLLEGE agrees with Conason.
By 1967, American planning was reduced to minimizing the humiliation a defeat would cause, and lying to the American public about how utterly the polcies of the Pentagon war planners were failing.
So, along came Tet, a tactical failure that was a strategic success, that proved to America that the Vietnamese would NOT surrender to American bombing, poisons, or superior firepower.
From there on, it was just desperation that caused Nixon to claim to have ‘won’ Vietnam having just signed an agreement leaving the Vietnamese Army (north) in place while Americans ran away.
That’s called “losing”, and the Conason is quite correct in his statement.
Maybe because he read what the War College had to say?
Most likely.
Howdy I am so excited I found your website, I really found yoou by accident, while I was
browsing on Digg for something else, Nonetheless I amm hhere now
and would just like to say kudos for a remarkable post aand a all round enjoyable blog
(I also love tthe theme/design), I don’t have time to
brpwse it all at the minute but I have saved it and
alo included your RSS feeds, so when I have time I will be back to
read a great deal more, Please do keep up the fantastic
work.
Feel free to surf to my blog … buy tissot watches online usa
I think the admin of this website is in fact working hard for his website,
for the reason that here eveery information is
quality based information.
Here is mmy web blog – obstructive sleep apnea treatment
Security: The angry birds friends hack development from expert coders ensures the
security and well organized. Now, let us have a fully
functional application. Before you decide and might make from
this game will be able to obtain adsl at all. 2 mbps and uploading at speeds angry birds friends hack
of 384 kbps. While something turn-based game is that you’re the best way than to
educate. An online Entertainment portal offering complete mobile applicationslike free downloadable mobile software, Mobile
Games industry7. These games provide entertainment value
to a limitless amount of time in the genre.
My web page: angry birds friends cheat
Advocates for Common Core state that there is absolutely no CC
curriculum, only standards and local schools can write their particular curriculum.
But it will burn for months, possibly until California’s dry season ends this fall.
NSSC has been a long-time leader in conducting school site safety assessments.
By using experienced auto sales leads marketing specialists,
we call for that leads and verify them prior to maintaining them in database and serving
them to you in real time. And today the employees who have been around the job at the Capitol,
House and Senate must have felt very upset as they got an e-mail warning
the crooks to evacuate. Remember, whether you do it with raspberry, ruby, or plain old rouge, revamp, redefine, and recreate
the red lip your way. The final Command and Conquer Red Alert 3 mission comes about inside Dutch City of Amsterdam.
Affiliate internet marketing is really a fairly home based
business ‘ it’s almost as old because the Internet, nevertheless it gain popularity only after year 2000.
“We remain very optimistic our containment lines are holding, and we’ll continue to strengthen lines around communities which are threatened across the fire,”
said California fire spokesman Daniel Berlant. They are certainly
not looking to tackle you – they may be helping.
This adrenaline within the system will raise the heartbeat and
acquire the muscles into “red alert” state; this is what’s called
the flight-or-fight response. The first choice is not really cheaper because it will take me for a
long time to figure out a similar thing it requires her
minutes to complete. Sometimes a deeper idea of yourself leads to resentment and feelings of
discontentment. All told, YORW is often a steady
dividend payer that may add stability for a portfolio, specifically if the dividends are reinvested.
The loses to my henchmen just didn’t justify the casual success and the triggers were usually
too unpredictable to get satisfying. If you think that or say, He
is acting such as an idiot He makes me so angry the body will respond for your
verbal cues and kick the bodys immunity process into high gear.
Not simply have we developed means of preventing major problems, we
have developed changes in the way we construct infra structure.
This toggles your mind’s perspective from “Things are not alright, we must fight or run” to
“Things are okay,” which stops the load hormone flow.
Consider the metaphors seen in everything around you.
Every man who really wants to increase their
sperm count can use Semanax (also known as Semenax).
The e-mail has a link that appears like it is going to take you to a Pay
– Pal page but instead takes that you which, obviously,
no more exists; probably got shutdown after it had been discovered.
Wait for the payment through a mailed check or Pay – Pal.
Article Source: Hauver publishes The Double Dividend
Stock Alert. That is the place answers to this un-American, egregious progressive threat to America’s educational system begin. ) and Marcian’s army was seen coming down the direction to fight,
never to pay tribute.
Whoever is holding the item once the music stops (your governing the music)
must reach in and take out 1 article of clothing and place it on. Perhaps you struggle with “standing out” , nor want to get noticed.
You can read game reviews, download and play them online.
Divide your group into two teams and possess two bowls of
Hershey’s kisses with the other end of the room.
Begin using a great search about the search engine
like Bing, Yahoo and Google with keyword casinos or on-line casinos.
To sum it up, in case you have an Xbox 360, then you ought to consider getting an Xbox 360 mod chip.
Customize your MVP by choosing an Internal or External Height
Adjustment Mechanism. Then you’ll want to nevigate to User Configuration \ Administrative
Templates \ Windows Components \ Windows Error Reporting, after which double click
on “Disable Windows Error Reporting” under “Setting”.
These are probably the new features that will give you much
entertainment and fun playing the brand new
game. Some of their hottest lines of Pond’s Cream products are the “Pond’s Vanishing Cream” and “Pond’s Cold Cream” which are known best known due to the
facial moisturizing capabilities. If there is an lowest culture, you will want to include a barbarian uprising event which will destroy
the buildings with the more cultured civilizations.
You could acquire rechargeable power products for virtually any type of controller.
This respect eventually ended in Alienware’s acquisition by Dell in 2006.
You could win by building plenty of buildings and accumulating your wealth that way.
And you are feeling invigorated using your fantasy to
be that unbeatable ace in the aerial combat in college by
just sitting in front of your computer. The shimmering brightness of the choice of priceless artifacts from Afghanistan contrasts with all
the darkness through which they languished for many with their existence.
Spending that level of money only to determine that
the overall game isn’t to your taste is really a costly mistake.
The objective in Agricola is always to build the top and a lot-balanced farm
after 14 turns. It sounded genuinely fascinating in my opinion making me would like to seem
into it additional. Each planet or areas possesses his own special characteristics
or even features which immediately create an added layer or perhaps depth and richness
to the sport. They ought to know about every one
of the teams playing, good and bad matchups among
them, what sort of team may approach a casino game.
Luckily a couple of players within the game who didn’t kill
newbies were happy to explain a number of
things that the help screen didn’t bother posting. com may be
the market-leading platform for sports handicappers the
place where a handicapper can host and manage picks, payments and show a history.
With this, you’ll be able to grab more cash if you can find
more players in bingo hall, your competitors is
going to be also more. It took away the prestige of the action, it rewarded the normal and penalized the super elite class of pvpers which in fact
had developed in the honor days.
“Minecraft PS4 Edition” and “Minecraft Xbox One Edition” were both initially set being launch window games to the
two next-generation consoles that were released late last year.
Gamers determine youll really adore it or otherwise not after they first attempt it.
I can place every type of resource, and also the sort of
tool that is needed to actually gather it. Or, just to become safe,
don’t build a fireplace whatsoever. No should worry anymore because we, as professionals in Axelaris Hosting services, provide you with all the best Minecraft hosting solutions and
never having to be worried about server-side issues.
There are so many options to pick from that they can even sport a
Customizer on their site that permits you to select exactly what texture you need on what specific object within the overall game.
Numerous players adventure into playing minecraft with many undertaking it for free though other folks get it done for cash.
There certainly are a great number of websites which might
be offering free music downloads. ) Materials like sand and dirt almost have zero resistance in any respect,
even though many individuals love to build quick houses from dirt, if you want a Creeper-proof house,
you’ve got to make it away from something strong. Life expectancy
with this hellish cavern is very short. Being a quick example, placing two items of wood
in the bottom-middle within the grid and lining the the surface from the grid with little bit of rock, a
gamer will craft a little bit of rock pickaxe. NLP’s market positioning may have been “right”,
nonetheless it’s generally not what folks want to hear.
Minecraft cheats are some from the most exploited
tools inside whole world of online computer gaming. Finally,
the development team thinks about expanding multiplayer
support in excess of eight players online with another potential title update after complaints from fans.
This leaves you free to construct and design things when you
think fit, with no concern with dying or losing the action. On another
hand, a tiny technique maintenance coupled using the appropriate ways can hold the
overall game back again to its typical doing work situation. There a wide range of equipment to use in this game.
In this underground realm, you’ll find burning rock, fire-spitting ghasts, and hordes of zombie pigmen in the
market to get you. It goes to buy a merchant account allowing you to definitely access the high
quality model from the game. Individuals can enjoy the sport as soon as you would like because this game needs minimal
knowledge to commence savoring. Minecraft is really a 30 megabyte video
game downloadable inside a a definite to two minutes and moveable past belief.
In this situation you are gonna turn back on the table keep building the furnace.
A large amount of players are afflicted by one form
of Minecraft crash. With barely noticeable flaws, that are easily forgotten while using compelling story
and action, it’s difficult to believe up many reasons to never go and purchase Uncharted 2.
Mainly, Minecraft hacks enable you to construct & mine faster inside recreation itself, decreasing the construction time of your respective initiatives drastically.
Numerous evil people today will carry this to their edge. The
records will stay there for thirty days on some programs so you don’t have
to worry about logging in every day either. Cellphones are the primary method that people communicate today, so
if you could see what another person does on their smartphone, you’ll understand specifically what that person is up to.
Vertical gardening might be utilized in small yards or patios where there is
virtually no space, enabling a much more concentrated location at
the base on the plants for watering. If you have a small container garden hand watering may
be all you ever need. It is useful for turning soil, mixing
in nutrients and aerating soil. The first step of rethinking your
lawn is to evaluate how much grass you really need.
Bump up to twice a week for April and May, then once
a week during the hottest part of the summer.
At this time I am going away tto ddo my breakfast, afterward having my breakfast coming again to read additional news.
Wonderful post however I was wanting to know if you could write a litte more on this
topic? I’d be very thankful if you could elaborate a little bit further.
Cheers!