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

Tue Oct 27 16:33:47 CDT 2009

It makes a difference whether people think they should say, "Hold out, Brave 
Barack, against those malign forces (mostly officers and Republicans) who are 
pushing you into escalation!" -- or, "Stop committing the supreme international 
crime, aggressive war, as you are."  --CGE


Robert Naiman wrote:
> 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
>>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>>> Peace-discuss mailing list
>>>>> Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net
>>>>> http://lists.chambana.net/cgi-bin/listinfo/peace-discuss
>>>
>>>
> 
> 
>