The Surprising Re-Learning Of Vietnam
Maybe that should be “The Surprising Un-Learning of Vietnam.” Newsweek’s new cover article, “The Surprising Lessons of Vietnam,” is the latest high-profile media effort not to let our politicians lose another war politically. Subhead in the hard copy:
The most surprising lesson is not that wars of this kind are unwinnable, but that “You must fight to win.”
It is what constitutes “fight to win” that becomes the issue, and the article notes that not only are insurgencies well-fought historically shown t be winnable, but that … both in Vietnam and Iraq … the United States military has demonstrated it knows how to do this. Great lede, BTW:
Stanley Karnow is the author of Vietnam: A History, generally regarded as the standard popular account of the Vietnam War. This past summer, Karnow, 84, picked up the phone to hear the voice of an old friend, Ambassador Richard Holbrooke. The two men had first met when Holbrooke was a young Foreign Service officer in Vietnam in the mid-1960s and Karnow was a reporter covering the war. Holbrooke, who is now the U.S. special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, was calling from Kabul. The two friends chatted for a while, then Holbrooke said, “Let me pass you to General McChrystal.” Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the commander of U.S. and allied forces in Afghanistan, came on the line. His question was simple but pregnant: “Is there anything we learned in Vietnam that we can apply to Afghanistan?” Karnow’s reply was just as simple: “The main thing I learned is that we never should have been there in the first place.”
Words of wisdom, but not all that useful to General McChrystal.
Brutal. The article reflects the debate in DC as illustrated by the nightstand battle between Lewis Sorley’s new military power-read A Better War: The Unexamined Victories and Final Tragedy of America’s Last Years in Vietnam and the Obamist favorite, Gordon Goldstein’s Lessons in Disaster: McGeorge Bundy and the Path to War in Vietnam. In Newsweek’s take by Evan Thomas and John Barry, Sorley wins. Of course he does. It’s that “fight to win” thing again … surrender only ever gets you beaten.
Speaking of which, Newsweek politely includes a token. Who else, but the last mistake to ask other men to die while he abandoned his combat command, John Kerry.
Jon Meacham’s “Top of the Week” introduction to the package remarks:
Analogies are tricky things. Every crisis is not a Munich; every scandal is not Watergate; every conflict is not a quagmire. Our story does not argue that there are precise parallels between Vietnam and Afghanistan, but that the history of Vietnam is more complicated than many people believe, which means that the familiar lessons of the war should not be taken at face value. We might have won in Vietnam in 1965 with a more dramatic conventional effort, and Sorley makes the case that South Vietnam could possibly have survived as an independent nation if America had built on the counterinsurgency successes of the early Nixon period.
Counterfactual history—the scholarly term for “what if?”—is diverting, but it is just that: counterfactual. The lessons from Vietnam for Afghanistan that seem to be rooted most firmly in fact and in history are partial, but interesting. First, there is evidence that counterinsurgencies, when properly supported, can work. Second, presidents can never win military conflicts by halves.
Meacham’s doing great but then goes on to state Kerry “knows of what he speaks” and references his “heroic service.” It raises an interesting question. It’s a side note but a relevant one to go out on.
The Silver Star is a permanent symbol of valor, but how does service hold up as “heroic” when, with three scratches that required no hospitalization, you say sayonara to the boat and crew your nation has entrusted you in time of war, four months into a year-long command? Just asking. But it’s emblematic of a bigger mystery of our times: How can people who have repeatedly shown their willingness to abandon millions of people to murderous despotism and genocide, and endlessly mull exactly which half-measure will satisfy one political faction without alienating another, continue to claim and be popularly granted the moral high ground?
Sorry, I seem to have forgotten. Here’s Kerry: “Beware the Revisionists.”
It makes a fascinating psychological study, as he embraces the mistakes of Vietnam as sufficient reason for its abandonment, and bitterly rejects the notion that Vietnam was winnable or global communism’s expansion worth fighting at all, but grants the ultimate acknowledgement that not only is the former point is untrue but both of the latter points are in fact true: Afghanistan’s mistakes can be corrected, the war there can be won and it is worth fighting. But only, he seems to suggest, if we find the exactly right point at which to split the baby. I’d call it a case of clinging to a narrative in which one is deeply invested while yet seeking redemption … help me out, there’s got to be a good double-barreled Greek or Latin-based psychobabble term for that … but I’m not sure that’s what it is. Looks more like CYA.
Topics: Afghanistan, Obama, military, vietnam
Posted by Jules Crittenden at 8:17 am on Friday, November 13, 2009
