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

Tue Oct 27 15:43:09 CDT 2009

I agree that there is a liberal mythology around both Obama and
Kennedy, but I don't agree that that is the most important problem
here. I think the more important problem right now is the mythology
that Obama is politically constrained to escalate the war. It's in the
interest of attacking that mythology that I wrote this piece. If
people believe that Obama is politically constrained to support
escalation, they're less likely to take action. If they think (as I
do) that it could go either way, they're more likely to take action.

On Tue, Oct 27, 2009 at 4:21 PM, C. G. Estabrook <galliher at illinois.edu> wrote:
> 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
>>>> _______________________________________________
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>>
>>
>>
>

-- 
Robert Naiman
Just Foreign Policy
www.justforeignpolicy.org
naiman at justforeignpolicy.org