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

Tue Oct 27 15:21:03 CDT 2009

Yes, I saw that.  The problem is the liberal mythology that Kennedy and Obama 
wanted to avoid war.  In fact they both, mutatis mutandis, embraced pro-war 
policies.  They didn't need to be encouraged to Do the Right Thing: they needed 
to be opposed.  Even less did they need to be told something about their wars 
that they didn't know.  They knew perfectly well what they were doing. --CGE

Robert Naiman wrote:
> As I wrote in the piece (not in the part that I excerpted here):
> 
> President Kennedy was no dove. Kennedy was willing to violate
> international law and Kennedy was willing to authorize the killing of
> people in foreign countries who had committed no crime against the
> people of the United States. What Kennedy was not willing to do was
> commit U.S. ground troops to an unwinnable war in Vietnam. And he
> wasn't willing to commit U.S. ground troops - as some of his advisers
> were - in the belief that protecting U.S. "credibility" meant that it
> would be better to fight and lose than not to fight. You don't have to
> be a dove to understand what President Kennedy understood: putting
> U.S. troops on the ground somewhere doesn't automatically make you
> more powerful. Indeed, it could make you less powerful, because, all
> other things being equal, a person with more options is more powerful
> than a person with fewer options. And if military escalation closes
> off opportunities for diplomatic and political solutions, it makes you
> less powerful.
> 
> 
> Read more at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-naiman/lessons-in-disaster-if-ob_b_335444.html
> 
> On Tue, Oct 27, 2009 at 12:59 PM, C. G. Estabrook <galliher at illinois.edu> wrote:
>> 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
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> Peace-discuss mailing list
>>> Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net
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> 
> 
> 