Yesterday's NYTimes Op-Ed page contained another salvo in the continuing war over the Vietnam War, which ended 30 years ago. Still trying to get it right...
This piece was in the 'revisionist' mold, i.e. we could have won the war, we were winning the war, but we didn't know it, and we lacked the resolve to win it. I'm not a scholar of the conflict, so I can only evaluate the piece in light of what I know from my study, and from my particular point of view. From this vantage point, it is a curious work of analysis.
Oddly, the article ("The War We Could Have Won", by Stephen Morris) devotes nearly half of its space to discussing how the USSR viewed its fractious North Vietnamese allies - they didn't get on well. The Soviets had contempt for them, and thought that they couldn't and wouldn't beat the United States. They fought with the North Vietnamese communists on all sorts of issues. So much for the threatening monolith of international communism, a major justification for our involvement. Dominoes anyone?
Strange that the author puts so much stock in the intelligence estimates of the Soviet Union. These are the same guys who later invaded Afghanistan to create their own Vietnam situation. Yet he claims that the US defeat in the war egged them on to fight that proxy war. Are they a reliable indicator of anything? He says that it is only because the USSR collapsed that Vietnam has changed so much from what it was...uh yeah? Some people knew the USSR would collapse (George Kennan, Senator Moynihan) and they opposed the war partly because they knew the overall rationale was bogus. Morris has a strange way of looking at history because it always supports his argument.
And what is his argument? Basically, it's that the US could have prevailed militarily. That seems to be the common revisionist stance, but so what? Sure, if we had not "tied one hand behind our backs," we could have bombed the north into the stone age, we could have risked a greater war with China, we could have, should have...The point is, why were we in a war when we were not willing to go all out? What about the old chestnut, "war is politics carried on by other means?" That is the real question, not whether we could have beaten the other side to a pulp if we had been willing to incur the consequences. Obviously we were not willing, and a good thing too, because it wasn't worth it, so why were we there in the first place? This question is not hinted at by Morris.
The author also implies that Nixon's polices were working, that the South Vietnamese government was reforming, etc. Perhaps there were land reforms - I don't recall - but when? Too little, too late. President Thieu evacuated with a jet loaded with gold bullion - that was our gallant democratic ally. The predicted bloodbath never happened. Yes, Hanoi was a communist dictatorship, and now it is morphing into a Chinese-style dictorship cum economic engine, but the South was an impoverished realm ruled by an utterly corrupt and detached elite. Absent the supposed world push for communist domination, not very different from some of our best friends in the world.
Morris implies that the "air support" we gave the South was all that was needed to keep the North at bay indefinitely. How much support? B-52 runs ad infinitum? How long would that be necessary? I find it hard to square with the images I recall of the South Vietnamese army cutting and running before the marching North in 1975. The North didn't have air support - why did the South collapse as soon as our planes were withdrawn?
Once again, the larger questions are never asked, and the opinion piece as it is appears to this reader to be an attempt to rewrite history by focusing on a very narrow topic that is irrelevant at this point.
This piece was in the 'revisionist' mold, i.e. we could have won the war, we were winning the war, but we didn't know it, and we lacked the resolve to win it. I'm not a scholar of the conflict, so I can only evaluate the piece in light of what I know from my study, and from my particular point of view. From this vantage point, it is a curious work of analysis.
Oddly, the article ("The War We Could Have Won", by Stephen Morris) devotes nearly half of its space to discussing how the USSR viewed its fractious North Vietnamese allies - they didn't get on well. The Soviets had contempt for them, and thought that they couldn't and wouldn't beat the United States. They fought with the North Vietnamese communists on all sorts of issues. So much for the threatening monolith of international communism, a major justification for our involvement. Dominoes anyone?
Strange that the author puts so much stock in the intelligence estimates of the Soviet Union. These are the same guys who later invaded Afghanistan to create their own Vietnam situation. Yet he claims that the US defeat in the war egged them on to fight that proxy war. Are they a reliable indicator of anything? He says that it is only because the USSR collapsed that Vietnam has changed so much from what it was...uh yeah? Some people knew the USSR would collapse (George Kennan, Senator Moynihan) and they opposed the war partly because they knew the overall rationale was bogus. Morris has a strange way of looking at history because it always supports his argument.
And what is his argument? Basically, it's that the US could have prevailed militarily. That seems to be the common revisionist stance, but so what? Sure, if we had not "tied one hand behind our backs," we could have bombed the north into the stone age, we could have risked a greater war with China, we could have, should have...The point is, why were we in a war when we were not willing to go all out? What about the old chestnut, "war is politics carried on by other means?" That is the real question, not whether we could have beaten the other side to a pulp if we had been willing to incur the consequences. Obviously we were not willing, and a good thing too, because it wasn't worth it, so why were we there in the first place? This question is not hinted at by Morris.
The author also implies that Nixon's polices were working, that the South Vietnamese government was reforming, etc. Perhaps there were land reforms - I don't recall - but when? Too little, too late. President Thieu evacuated with a jet loaded with gold bullion - that was our gallant democratic ally. The predicted bloodbath never happened. Yes, Hanoi was a communist dictatorship, and now it is morphing into a Chinese-style dictorship cum economic engine, but the South was an impoverished realm ruled by an utterly corrupt and detached elite. Absent the supposed world push for communist domination, not very different from some of our best friends in the world.
Morris implies that the "air support" we gave the South was all that was needed to keep the North at bay indefinitely. How much support? B-52 runs ad infinitum? How long would that be necessary? I find it hard to square with the images I recall of the South Vietnamese army cutting and running before the marching North in 1975. The North didn't have air support - why did the South collapse as soon as our planes were withdrawn?
Once again, the larger questions are never asked, and the opinion piece as it is appears to this reader to be an attempt to rewrite history by focusing on a very narrow topic that is irrelevant at this point.
10 comments:
In both this post and the one below on church-state separation the common thread thread seems to be the power that resides in the ability to control the historical narrative. You have to ask yourself who wins, if one version should become dominant, and who loses? If we could have "won" then somebody caused us to lose and lo and behold, the finger points to those permissive,dirty, pagan hippies who are now the volvo driving, latte sipping secular left.
Is there a history of the conflict written by the Viet Namese? Edward Said tried his whole life to explain why the history of the imperialists is suspect at best and so they (ruling class propagandists)simply attacked the scholars and intellectuals and artists (probably Jews and queers!) It would be interesting to see who Stephan Morris recieves his funding from, we know where the Dobsons and Falwells get theirs.
i visited the Memorial in DC a couple of years ago and wept with sadness and rage.You have to have totally sealed off your heart and your mind to walk that granite list of names and think there could be some justification for adding even more.And those are just American dead,a granite wall in VietNam would have to be almost sixty times longer.
Tocqueville wrote "Modern tyranny leaves the body free and attacks the soul".To say you could have accepted more death is to have lost your soul.
Back on the opium jag...Eugene Sue, bestselling 19th century author of the huge novel, The Wondering Jew, wrote a little one called Atar Gull. It's about an African slave who is transported on a slaver captained by a derelict opium addict who believes that his poppy-induced dreams are real, and that his everyday life is just a bad opium trip. These revisionists make me think of them - something basic is mixed up somewhere, it seems.
Of course, you will hardly ever find an empire willing to admit that its acts of foreign intervention were ever wrong, or that a bunch of 'bastards in black pajamas' could've beaten us, the greatest people in the whole wide world. And now that we've embarked on a new round of interference and colonization, people need to be convinced that this whole gambit is doomed to fail.
Oh, and as for my name... in 'The Aeneid' of Vergil, the hero, Aeneas, is a rather unheroic figure. He's beset by doubts, is overwhelmed by his destiny, and has a tendency to burst into tears when things get rough. However, his servant, fides Achates (Loyal Achates) is always there to lend a hand and set things to rights.
The "loyal servant" is almost an archetype, at least a powerful literary figure. Im thinking of Gunga Din, or Sir Lawrence's bedouin guide, Batmans butler,uh, I know theres lots..
One of the most fascinating documentaries is the interview with Robert McNamara, watching as he twists and squirms and finally stares right at the private hell that must be his unconscious.He went on to head the World Bank,a job they seem to reserve for those ,like Wofowitz,with lots of blood on their hands.
Regarding McNamara:
After watching "Fog of War," and discussing it with a friend, I concluded that maybe I was too hard on him. At least he realized his errors. He commissioned the Pentagon Papers. He more or less resigned, or was kicked out.
Perhaps his greatest personal and moral failing was being too much like Loyal Achates - he was too willing to be a good team member, to the point that he wouldn't speak out after he left his administration post. Loyalty and professional code vs. ethics and morality. Personally, I think he came down on the wrong side.
As you say, he has his personal hell - I think GWB is too self-righteous to even dream of such a thing.
I suspect reading his autobiography a few years from now will be like reading the autobiography of Brittany Spears.Same degree of introspection.I look forward to Colin Powells memoirs, I see him as the mcNamara of today.
I don't suppose the words "Boat People" bring anything to mind, does it? How about the words "Re-education camps"? Or "Political prisons"?
Ever hear of the Hue Massacre? Far more people died in that than at My Lai. And that was merely among teh worst ones.
By anychance are any of you guys here familiar with the Northen collectivzation terror of the 1950s?
Here are some more "large questions" you guys can answer--what were all those refugees (2 million from the former South Vietnam alone) running away from? 30 years of warfare and hardly anyone left Indochina--but once the Communists were victorious, millions flee. Doesn't that tell you something? Were all those people supposed to be "corrupt rightwingers"? Were all those people supposed to be CIA "servants"?
What about the ones who were imprisoned?
What about the 70,000 South Vietnamese who were executed?
What about teh Cambodian Killing Fields?
..."but the South was an impoverished realm ruled by an utterly corrupt and detached elite..."
So was South Korea. So was Taiwan. So was Thailand. So was Chile and El Salvador--and who will deny that tehse places are, today, actually free societies compared to "united" Vietnam?
http://carlisle-www.army.mil/usawc/parameters/03autumn/previdi.htm
Diskarapur:
What do the Cambodian killing fields have to do with it in your mind? Do you imagine that I am trying to boost the image of the Vietnamese communists? (Incidentally, they routed Pol Pot, and they never got along with him.)
I was criticizing American policy and our reasons for it. There are plenty of places we could prevent evil and we don't, plenty where we create it. You seem to think that because the enemy committed crimes that our policy was therefore totally right. You don't even deny our crimes (Mai Lai) but you assume that they are equal. A body count would not be in our favor, I suspect, but that's a grisly and pointless exercise.
You seem to believe that the USA can take credit for every free society around today: Taiwan, previously a dictatorship supported by us; South Korea, ditto; Chile, ditto. Was it our wise policy that led them to democracy, or their people's disgust with our favorites?
Did it ever occur to you that one reason there were no boat people while we were bombing the hell of Vietnam was that the people hoped, however tenuously, that we would prevail and they could go back to normal life. And that we would NOT have permitted such an exodus at all. After the end, all bets were off.
I don't feel the US had then ,nor has now, the right to unilaterally intervene in the internal conflicts of soveriegn nations.This task is best left to an international body such as the UN security council and a multi-national force where and when circumstances dictate.Superpower intervention in revolutionary nationalist movements seems to only escalate the level of death and violence as the battle becomes part of a geo-political projection of power and assertion of spheres of influence.The history of intervention in Latin or Central America is far from honorable.
Not to defend the VietMinhs brutality but to understand the historical context,you must realize two million Vietnamese died of starvation in the winter of 44-45 because our allies the French(to whom we later provided 80% of war financing) had a policy to sieze and store all available rice.We helped the French to prevent the spread of communism(domino theory)and made enemies along the way.Setting up Diem in the South and preventing free elections (which he would have lost)caused further loss of support.We know the attack in the Gulf of Tonkin, which precipitated US bombing, was an invention.
I suppose the real question is how can we ever know if our actions, even with "good" intentions, cause more death and destruction than we hoped to prevent?How do we know that what we want is what the people of the foriegn country want?At what point do you realize your strategy has failed, such as fighting a ground war against an insurgency in jungle, or massive bombing campaigns which harm civilians? How many lives are you willing to lose? 58,000 (our side) 3,000,000 (theirs)?many, many more?
Thanks for the historical context, Troutsky, often sorely lacking in these neocons' rants.
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