by Henry Precht
Two significant anniversaries this month: the 1914 beginning of fighting in World War I in Europe and the 1964 Gulf of Tonkin incident in Vietnam.
The outbreak of conflict 100 years ago followed a period of intense diplomacy within and between two alliances. Germany and Austria on one side; [...]]]>
by Henry Precht
Two significant anniversaries this month: the 1914 beginning of fighting in World War I in Europe and the 1964 Gulf of Tonkin incident in Vietnam.
The outbreak of conflict 100 years ago followed a period of intense diplomacy within and between two alliances. Germany and Austria on one side; Russia, France and Britain on the other. Everyone feared German armed forces on land, Britain’s at sea and Russia’s quickly developing potential for both. Better to strike now rather than wait until the other side becomes more powerful; that was the dominant analysis. Statesmen and politicians engaged in stale, cliché-formed, fruitless wheeling and dealing. Both sides were confident a quick victory would be theirs. “Home by Christmas,” was the motto. Few and easily drowned out were the voices of doubt, delay and debate.
The naval incident off Vietnam in which an American ship was allegedly attacked led quickly to a congressional resolution giving the Johnson administration unfettered authority to wage war against the enemy we inherited from the French colonialists. No members of the House and only a couple of senators voted against it; they were both later defeated for re-election. Some time later convincing doubt was cast on the authenticity of the reported incident and accusations of misleading Congress were cast on LBJ. Never mind, as the incident was reported by the government-fed press, the public stood squarely behind their leader, confident of victory. Their support for the expanded conflict was the product of government fraud.
History is replete with euphoric moments at the start of a foreign adventure. Think of Afghanistan and Iraq. “Missions [Still Not] Accomplished.” Cheers — then terrible consequences, then condemnation.
How wrong, how tragically wrong initially were the leaders and their people. The four years of World War I became an utter disaster for its participants and for the future development of all nations: depression, fascism, communism, World War II and the Cold War. Vietnam became perhaps the single greatest unnecessary disaster for the US — economically and politically and for the future course of our national progress — to say nothing of the Vietnamese casualties.
Why did the enthusiastic support for war lead to deep frustrations and perverse choices? The key elements were two, in my opinion: First was the ease of going into war — much easier than taking the risks for peace, less taxing than applying creative imaginations to the issues at hand. Second was the absence of doubt, of questioning, of debate. No one asked: Could the leaders be wrong in committing forces; might there be another choice, a peaceful solution? It’s hard to be coldly analytical when surrounded by mobs calling your dissent traitorous.
Which brings me to two new statistics this month: In the Gaza war, eighty to ninety per cent of Israel’s population endorsed the actions of its army in severely punishing that hapless land. In Washington, one hundred percent of the Senate and House voted their backing for Israel without a single word of regret for the suffering of the Palestinian victims. Plus, they threw in an extra $225 million in military aid for Israeli defense. (Never mind the defense of our own borders or pressing domestic needs.)
Wouldn’t it have been a better outcome for the future of two peoples, if Israelis and Palestinians had sat together and talked through their differences — rather than hurling missiles at each other and breeding fear, distrust and hatred? Wouldn’t it have been wise if Secretary Kerry had been willing to sit and talk with Hamas, rather than keeping them at arm’s length as a “terrorist” band? It might, just might, have advanced his goal of reaching a two-state solution. Of course, while talking, it would have been necessary to deal firmly with Palestinian and Israeli extremists and essential to stand up to the super-loyal fans of Israel in the Congress. No easy options there.
In fact, generous and always reliable American support for Israel makes it unnecessary for the hardline regime even to contemplate compromise with its Palestinian antagonists.
The lessons of World War I and Vietnam are plain for all of us to read. If the public is willingly led by self- and special-interest politicians with neither courage nor vision, worse times impend. Not just for the regimes directly involved, but also unhappily for their loyal but misled and fearful citizens.
]]>by Robert E. Hunter
What have we learned in the last half-century about America’s role in the world, and especially about going to war? A neat question, and one that is framed from my own experience, if readers will indulge me.
Exactly 50 years ago today, I was working in the Lyndon [...]]]>
by Robert E. Hunter
What have we learned in the last half-century about America’s role in the world, and especially about going to war? A neat question, and one that is framed from my own experience, if readers will indulge me.
Exactly 50 years ago today, I was working in the Lyndon Johnson White House, on the domestic side — mostly on education and other aspects of the Great Society, as deputy to Douglass Cater, one of the giants of the trade. I was 24, though with two years of foreign policy under my belt, as a Fulbright Scholar at the London School of Economics. I cite my tyro status only as partial exculpation for not foretelling the tragedy that was about to ensue for the United States as it became more deeply embroiled in a conflict, to borrow from Neville Chamberlain, “in a far-away country between peoples of whom we know nothing.”
A half-century ago, I read in my White House office the press release just put out by the White House that talked of an attack by North Vietnam on two US destroyers, the Maddox and the Turner Joy, in a place called the Tonkin Gulf. From that point on, to use a common but in retrospect bitter phrase, “we were off to the races.” The Tonkin Gulf Resolution — technically the Southeast Asia Resolution — followed, and the US became mired in a conflict the purposes of which are still being debated.
But as a White House staff person with top-secret security clearance, I had an advantage over the average American. Rummaging through the files after I joined the staff in July 1964, I came across a draft that had been sitting there for some time which, with emendations, became — you guessed it — the Tonkin Gulf Resolution. Ready to be used, just waiting for an “incident” to set it in motion.
It is now generally understood that the “attack” on the two US destroyers was likely a radar blip and the “fog-of-not-quite-war,” and that, in any event, the US had been engaged in provocative naval actions against North Vietnam.
But so what? I do not ask that question to be cynical, but to introduce another important fact: the US entry into what became the Vietnam War (with sidebars in Laos and Cambodia) was at first immensely popular in the country. It was even more popular in Congress, with a unanimous vote for the Resolution in the House and with only two negative votes in the Senate: Ernest Gruening of Alaska and Wayne Morse of Oregon (both Democrats), and both were defeated in their next re-election campaigns. The floor manager for the resolution in the Senate was the Chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, Sen. J. William Fulbright. Later he argued loud and long that he had been lied to, and that was most likely true. Yet again, so what? He, like the rest of Congress, was primed for such an incident and a full-throated response, which implemented a pledge from President Kennedy’s Inaugural Address: “we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, in order to assure the survival and the success of liberty.”
It was only after, when the magnitude of the war became apparent — in particular the impact of the draft on the American middle class and the disproportionate Vietnam service by African-Americans on Great Society programs — that the pendulum of public opinion began to swing.
Another fact worth considering: the actual decisions on the US escalation in Vietnam (given that the first “advisors” were sent under Eisenhower and the first “escalation” took place under Kennedy) were taken by a small group of people in the administration; almost all of them had been appointed by President John F. Kennedy. They included Secretary of State Dean Rusk, Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, National Security Advisor McGeorge Bundy (and, in time, his State Department brother, William Bundy), and the brothers Rostow — Walt Whitman and Eugene Debs. Lyndon Baines Johnson’s leading speechwriter for the Vietnam escalation was Richard Goodman who, like many of the other Kennedy holdovers in the Johnson administration, later turned against the war (a good thing, I believe) and also personally against Johnson (a bad thing, given their early role in pushing Johnson to escalate — though, of course, a president is ultimately responsible).
One irony is that a decade earlier, when the French were besieged at Dien Bien Phu and asking for US military help, President Eisenhower consulted with Congress. The Democratic leader in the Senate gave Eisenhower the answer he wanted (“Don’t even think about it”). That was Lyndon Baines Johnson.
Fast-forward to 2003. A small group of people in the George W. Bush administration, led by Vice President Dick Cheney, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and his deputies, and National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice — aided-and-abetted by Secretary of State Colin Powell — drove the inexperienced President Bush into what was clearly the worst foreign policy mistakes by the United States since Vietnam: the invasion of Iraq.
But also think of the background. While the margins were narrower in Congress and in the nation than at the time of the Tonkin Gulf Resolution, invading Iraq still had majority support, and an overwhelming majority of the US media formed a cheerleading section for the invasion. The “incident” then did not have the immediacy of the Tonkin Gulf attack, but it was a delayed and secondary reaction to 9/11 — and, as with the purported attack on US vessels 40 years before, it was viewed as an affront to America.
So what does all this mean for us, now? Have we learned anything from these two events, which have done much to shape America’s role in the world during the last half-century, and which, in the case of invading Iraq, continues to pose a serious challenge to US foreign policy? Would that I could say that we have been chastened by both developments. At least it is possible to say that the current president, Barack Obama, has not let himself be bamboozled or buffaloed by those in the Congress, the media, and in some parts of the country — but not even a plurality — who want him to get the US again embroiled in wars that do not directly impact US security. He has been getting the US out of Iraq and Afghanistan, though neither looks very good right now — but how much does the current course of events in these countries directly impact US security? The debate on this question has not even begun.
Obama has also so far resisted going to war with Iran (despite heavy pressure to do so from Israel and its Congressional and media supporters). He did not go to war to get Syria to get rid of its chemical weapons (and has received virtually no credit for achieving that result without firing a shot). He has also kept the US out of war in various other places including Gaza, Yemen and Pakistan (though the US is engaged with drones in the latter two places), kept the US from putting “boots on the ground” in Libya, and resisted meeting (Russian) fire with (NATO) fire in Crimea and elsewhere in Ukraine. The “jury may still be out” in regard to each of these developments, but so far Obama has not taken steps that would be irrevocable, that would enlist the unthinking passions of the US Congress and American people, and that would represent his losing control of his own administration, as was (arguably) true with Johnson and (certainly) true with George W. Bush.
This is at least a start on the major debates we need to have about the proper role of the US in the world, especially regarding issues of war and peace, the impact of our actions on America’s standing as “the indispensable nation,” and the renewal of our capacity for genuine strategic thinking that died soon after the end of the Cold War and that is still absent even in the Obama administration.
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