[Peace-discuss] "Lessons in Disaster", indeed

[C. G. Estabrook]

Kennedy is not much of a model for Obama.  The major invasion of South Vietnam 
occurred in 1962, while Kennedy was president.

Kennedy's National Security Action Memorandum 263, dated October 11, 1963 (six 
weeks prior to his death), gave qualified approval to the recommendations of 
Robert McNamara and Maxwell Taylor, who were greatly encouraged by the military 
prospects in South Vietnam and were “convinced that the Viet Cong insurgency” 
could be sharply reduced in a year and that the US–run war effort should be 
“completed by the end of 1965.” They therefore advised “An increase in the 
military tempo” of the war throughout South Vietnam (a "surge") and withdrawal 
of some troops in 1963 and all troops in 1965 —- if this could be done “without 
impairment of the war effort” and with assurance that “the insurgency has been 
suppressed” or at least sufficiently weakened so that the U.S. client regime 
(GVN) is “capable of suppressing it.”

Once again they stressed that the “overriding objective” is victory, a matter 
“vital to United States security.” JFK approved their recommendations, while 
distancing himself from the withdrawal proposal and approving instructions to 
Ambassador Lodge in Saigon stressing “our fundamental objective of victory” and 
directing him to press for “GVN action to increase effectiveness of its military 
effort” so as to ensure the military victory on which withdrawal was explicitly 
conditioned. The president, Lodge was informed, affirmed “his basic statement 
that what furthers the war effort we support, and what interferes with the war 
effort we oppose,” the condition underlying NSAM 263, as consistently throughout 
the period and beyond.

On November 1, 1963, South Vietnamese generals overthrew the Diem government, 
arresting and soon killing Diem: Kennedy sanctioned Diem's overthrow, in part 
for fear that Diem might negotiate a neutralist coalition government which 
included Communists, as had occurred in Laos in 1962. Dean Rusk, Secretary of 
State, remarked "This kind of neutralism ... is tantamount to surrender." (See 
the account of the killing of Diem in Tim Weiner, Legacy of Ashes: The History 
of the CIA [2007].)  --CGE

Robert Naiman wrote:
> President Obama knows better than to agree to General McChrystal's
> proposal for military escalation in Afghanistan. He read the book.
> 
> On October 7, the Wall Street Journal reported that top officials of
> the Obama Administration, including President Obama himself, had
> recently read Gordon Goldstein's book on the path to U.S. military
> escalation in Vietnam: Lessons in Disaster: McGeorge Bundy and the
> Path to War in Vietnam.
> 
> The Journal reported that "For opponents of a major troop increase,
> led by Biden and Emanuel, "'Lessons in Disaster' ... encapsulates
> their concerns about accepting military advice unchallenged."
> 
> Indeed, a central theme of the book is President Kennedy's
> willingness, on the question of ground troops in Vietnam, to do what
> President Obama has not yet done regarding demands for military
> escalation in Afghanistan: stand up to the U.S. military and say no.
> ...
> As former Marine captain Matthew Hoh recently wrote in his letter of
> resignation as a top U.S. official in Afghanistan,
> 
> "I want people in Iowa, people in Arkansas, people in Arizona, to call
> their congressman and say, 'Listen, I don't think this is right.' "
> 
> Now there's a great American patriot. Do what he says.
> 
> http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-naiman/lessons-in-disaster-if-ob_b_335444.html
> 
> http://www.dailykos.com/story/2009/10/27/122437/00
> 
> http://www.justforeignpolicy.org/node/382
> 
> --
> Robert Naiman
> Just Foreign Policy
> www.justforeignpolicy.org
> naiman at justforeignpolicy.org
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