Disastrous Lessons

This article still doesn't put a dent in the the most important argument that most Vietnam apologists ignore: Vietnam was a huge STRATEGIC mistake. It's true it was mishandled tactically as well. To say that defeat was snatched from the jaws of victory -- even though we couldn't win with a half a million troops over there -- is dubious, but completely ignores the more important question -- one that today's COIN advocates often ignore -- of is the war worth winning in the first place? (And Afghanistan may be, but the question must be asked and answered carefully.) I can't vouch for the Goldstein's book, but Moyar's article here doesn't give me much hope for either of his. There is no way that Harold Johnson's "five years and 500,000 soldiers" would have been worth the expenditure of blood and treasure. Vietnam was a foolish strategic mistake, which the Russians exploited opportunistically to bleed the United States.

The much more convincing argument that Moyar ignores seemingly for the sake of being contrary is that counterinsurgency tactics undertaken under Gen. Abrams seemed to have done some good. But even this line of argument is moot because both in terms of grand strategy and military strategy the war was simply never worth fighting.

I don't really have a problem with whatever debate Mark Moyar wishes to have with Gordon Goldstein. That's part of interpreting history, so go at it, boys!

Still, I for one would like to know where Moyar gets his psychic powers when he declares..."Goldstein's historical myopia yielded the lesson that is most likely to influence the current White House: that the president should distrust predictions and resource requests from the military." Really now? These folks in the White House, all fairly accomplished intellects, will get sucked in by Goldsteins...arguments? Influence? Magic spells? What is it, that would cause the "current White House" to surrender independent judgement and reason to this man so that they "distrust (the) predictions and resource requests" of the Pentagon?

That seems to me to be a stupid, shallow, self serving, sour grapes kind of statement, one that screams "How come they didn't pick my book? Boo hoo hoo hoo hoo!!!!" If that's the way you feel, Mark, send George Stephonopoulos a copy of your little book and see if you can get it on the White House list. In the meantime, lets try not to turn FP into Fox News, by taking any and every legitimate discussion on policy (including real debates on the lessons of history) and reduce it some pathetic little Barack Obama mind reading session. Is that too much to ask?

"intensified bombing of North Vietnam and insertion of U.S. ground forces in Laos to cut the Ho Chi Minh Trail ... would have reaped huge strategic rewards for the United States."

And these "huge strategic rewards" would have been... what, exactly?

Leaving aside for a moment, the enormous financial cost, the horrendous loss of life, the deforrestation and contamination of the Vietnamese countryside, the social consequences of mass death and destruction, the loss of US prestige and moral standing in the world...

the "huge strategic rewards" would have amounted to the US military proving it could win a war of aggression against a much weaker adversary, quite an important accomplishment for those who believe war is a noble end in itself, and that civil society should fund perpetual war for the sake of the men (and women) in uniform.

If we take into account the aforementioned negatives, it becomes clear that, while war may be profitable for the weapons industry and satisfying for the war boys and war lovers, it is ultimately catastrophic for civil society. Hence civil society calculates the cost of war using a wider range of metrics than is available to the military industrial community.

Civil society should not be required nor forced to fund the destruction of its own moral and financial integrity to sate the bloodlust of a rowdy rabble or to profit a war loving elite.

This is as wrongheaded an argument as I have seen. If the generals had been listened to more there would have been a nuclear war over Vietnam! What planet is Mr.Moyar on?

I understand the need for discussion and argument, but I'd be interested in the editors reasons for publishing this one.

This week is the 47th anniversary of the Cuban missile crisis. Are we going to see articles saying that we should have followed Curtis LeMay's advice and nuked the place, or invaded it as some (not Gen. Krulak) advocated?

Does anyone really think these ideas have any validity with any serious strategists or scholars beyond a few on the fringe right?

Moyar takes LBJ to task for not bombing North Vietnam and for not putting troops on the ground to cut the Ho Chi Minh trail, and therefore he claims we lost the war.

Yet, we did bomb North Vietnam, heavily, all to no avail. We did attempt to cut the Trail and could not for any length of time.

Moyar also holds the absurd belief that ARVN troops could have held the line but that we betrayed them by withholding air support. Yet at the time South Vietnam had the 4th largest air force in the world. Both France and the US had been pouring materiel, money, and training into the country since the end of WW2.

It was the corrupt ARVN Generals and other high officers who betrayed their troops and lost the war. Wages were stolen and went directly into their pockets. Rations were swiped and sold on the black market. Morale therefore was pretty low. In the last battles their officers panicked and abandoned their commands.

South Vietnam was given every chance and opportunity to successfully defend itself.

It should also be noted that we never should have been there in the first place. The Geneva accords of 1954 called for an election in 1956. We realized Ho would win the election hands down and went to war instead. Funny way in install a democracy.

I'm still curious, since I can't pinpoint the exact moment that we became the sole ruler of the world, and everyone else has to listen to us. Did I miss the election where we (as in, our government) were appointed Moral Big Brother To All? Vietnam was a mistake. Plain and simple. We were there because we didn't like THEIR politics... Why was that our business? Did they attack us? It was simply a convinient excuse to get the American people to focus on something else other than the problems of the time. When we can't solve our problems, never fear, we'll just create new ones, and hope the old ones go away! This 'merchant of DEATH' scandal has the same type of ring to it. If he's the arms DEALER, and we know so much about his business, why aren't we shutting down his SUPPLIERS??? (Is it cuz they're our suppliers too?) Why haven't the U.S. officials made this arrest, since he has so many 'business interests' here? Why wait til he's in Thailand where extradition is going to be complicated at best, and impossible at worst? Or is this another ploy to get us focused on something outside our borders, instead of contemplating solutions for the problems within....

I think Obama and the WH staff would be best served by (re)reading A Bright Shining Lie.

The reality is that ISRAEL is arguably neither Jewish nor democratic.
October 22, 2009, 3:55AM

KM, Tzipi Livni, Jerusalem -- Wednesday, October 21, 2009
To Mr. Jeremy Ben-Ami, Executive Director, J Street

'I would like to congratulate you on your inaugural national conference. I believe most American Jews support Israel and want to see it thrive as a Jewish and democratic state.'

However, in the eyes of many, the reality is that Israel is arguably neither Jewish nor democratic.

The state of Israel was established in 1948 by the UN as a Jewish homeland, in the aftermath of the Holocaust in which the majority of European Jews were liquidated by the Nazis in industrial style murder factories.

In the beginning, it served its true purpose and welcomed all those who had suffered from persecution around the world and who were born of a Jewish mother. But in the years that followed, the vision blurred and Herzl's dream of a Jewish agrarian co-operative, set within a Muslim Middle East and living in harmony with its indigenous neighbours, soon turned into a nightmare.

The indigenous Arabs voted, en bloc, against the UN resolution of 1947 that proposed to divide their land to accommodate a Jewish state in Palestine, and when their voices were ignored they attacked the fledgling state immediately upon its birth, which they saw as illegitimate. But the Arab armies, lost, and with that loss the new Israeli state gained an arrogant maturity. If a small Jewish army could defeat the combined armies of the Arabs, then surely God was with them and they could impose their rule at will.

In fact, they succeeded in imposing their will only with the covert, but subsequent overt, help of the United States - or rather, the American Zionist lobby, later to adopt the more benign name of AIPAC, the American Israel Jewish Affairs Committee, that now exerts such a powerful influence on US foreign policy through its control on the voting behaviour of both the House of Representatives and the Senate.

Throughout the post-war years, as America's power increased worldwide, the tiny Israeli state hung onto its coat-tails, fed and sustained with billions of tax dollars from unknowing Americans. And so, the state of Israel grew exceedingly arrogant and with that arrogance, came brutality. For the grandchildren of the survivors of the Holocaust grew to forget the horrors of war-time Europe that had so decimated their grandparents in Germany, Austria, Poland, France, Holland, Czechoslovakia and Hungary.

Like an abused child, who in turn abuses his or her own children - Israelis began to oppress and humiliate their neighbours. Then came the killings, which, it was claimed, were in self-defense. But too often it was women and children who died at the hands of the Israeli army. Too often, unarmed civilians.

But the IDF was increasingly composed of young soldiers of Russian or Ethiopian origin, whose parents may, or may not, have been born Jewish.

Israel consistently claims to be the only democracy in the Middle East, but her actions are anything but democratic. She kills, imprisons and tortures many thousands - even up to today. Without trial and without any semblance of justice but with every semblance of inequality.

That the state of Israel is carried on the back of the American tax-payer is common knowledge but it is open to debate whether that small country is entirely Jewish or democratic. Certainly, as a Jewish Democrat, originally from a very old, east European Jewish family, I am exceedingly doubtful.

But there is one thing of which I am certain - unless the US changes course and stops arming Israel, a nuclear war in the M E is inevitable, with devastating consequences for the world.

GDriver

The article ignores both history and politics. On the matter of bombing, is Mr. Moyar somehow unaware that the United States did indeed intensify bombing multiple times with absolutely no effect? On the Ho Chi Minh Trail does the man understand the worry of bringing a nuclear China into the war?