Better Clerisy Needed

This was my plan for a blog post. I was going to observe that there are certain circumstances under which it might be a good thing indeed to have a "foreign policy clerisy." In particular, a bipartisan, yet also non-partisan, group of experts would be a useful thing to have on hand if, for example, both the President of the United States and a leading Republican candidate for President were to endorse a lunatic revisionist view of the Vietnam War. Members of this clerisy, Democrat and Republican alike, could set the country straight on the facts.

Then I was going to observe that the clerisy we have has done no such thing and has, in fact, stayed utterly silent on this small question that happens to rest at the center of the Bush administration's justification of its policies.

Then, being a responsible blogger, I sauntered over to the Brookings website to confirm my guess that there's be no commentary on this issue.

Well, I was half right. There's nothing new up on their site, but there is a July op-ed by Senior Fellow Peter Rodman endorsing the lunatic revisionist view. Who's Peter Rodman? Why he was an Assistant Secretary in the Don Rumsfeld Pentagon. Why the Brookings Institution would look at the past five years and think that it ought to reposition itself on foreign policy further to the right by handing out sinecures to veterans of the Rumsfeld Defense Department is something I couldn't really speculate on.

Comments

We need a list of Brookings Institute sponsors and donors.
Then we need to tax the hell out of those sponsors and donors.
Because they obviously have too much money.

Posted by Joel Patterson | August 23, 2007 1:30 PM

didn't the Brookings Institution used to be legitimately left-wing, rather than right-lite? or was I deluded all that time?

In any case, it's obvious the DFHs need their own think tank. Call it, "The Institute For Dirty Fucking Hippies Who Were Proved Fucking Right, And Not Judith Miller Fucking Right Either".

OK, TIFDFHWWPFRANJMFRE would be a sucky acronym. But, you get the idea...

Posted by r€nato | August 23, 2007 1:32 PM

It really makes you think that the fix is on, and that the political process is null.

Posted by John Emerson | August 23, 2007 1:36 PM

It get curiouser and curiouser. Inertia is a powerful thing but this is crazy.

Posted by Bajsa | August 23, 2007 1:38 PM

How about TIFDFHWWPFRANJMFRETY (...Thank You)

Posted by Bajsa | August 23, 2007 1:42 PM

I think it's okay to fantasize about some rational, impartial, intellectual, honest, fact-based group of truly insightful foreign policy advisers who could help out.

I think it's also okay to imagine the Justice League of America coming in to save the world from an imminent asteroid collision.

I don't recommend seriously planning policy, though, on such shaky and imaginary grounds.

Posted by El Cid | August 23, 2007 1:44 PM

Those of us who were dirty fucking hippies back when it really wasn't cool, e.g. during the run-up to Operation Desert Storm, could have told you that the notion that Brookings is "left-wing" has always been a wingnut myth.

Welcome on the big bus with the rest of us.

Posted by s9 | August 23, 2007 1:49 PM

I'll speculate for you - they are heavily invested in the war, their members are more than just rhetorically invested in it, we're talking millions and millions of dollars, and they will do anything they can to support it and keep the propaganda coming no matter what happens.

The profit motive is too high for misadventures like this for there ever to be a class of trustworthy, 'nonpartisan' analysts who are viewed by all as objective observers. We have to make it explicitly illegal to profit off of a war, occupation, or military exercise first. Which will never, ever happen.

Posted by onceler | August 23, 2007 1:50 PM

"... Congress subsequently pulled the props out from under that balance of forces—dooming Indochina to a bloodbath. This is now a widely accepted narrative of the endgame in Vietnam, and it has haunted the Democrats for a generation."

Widely accepted but, still a crock of %#$@.

DFH Bong Hits 4 Clerisy Institute

Posted by wwz | August 23, 2007 1:53 PM

Makes as much sense as putting a Bush speechwriter onto the CFR.

When I saw Gerson's email address with cfr.org at the end, that was it for me. How can anyone claim that this is anything but clique moderation service? What has Michael Gerson done to put him into the clerisy?

Posted by jayackroyd | August 23, 2007 1:59 PM

I think most people in the Washington policy circles believed in the Rovian notion of a permanent Republican majority, and they were positioning themselves accordingly. Unless its board members were content having its employees feed pigeons in the park all day long, the Brookings Institution had to find a way to make itself heard in Republican circles. So, like the K Street lobbying firms, they haired some Republican hacks and started selling more conservative policies.

Oh, and Israel.

Part of the antipathy on the part of the Washington Democratic establishment to the DFHs, bloggers and the like--and their successful effort to elect a Democratic majority in Congress last year--is the fact that these obstensibly liberal groups were content playing Colmes to the AEI/Heritage/etc.'s Hannity.

Posted by jlw | August 23, 2007 2:07 PM

True story: I was at a cocktail party here on the Cape talking to a very nice woman who told me proudly that her husband (also at the party) had been in the Clinton Administration and was not at Brookings. I said "Brookings? They've gone so far to the right they make me sick."

"Oh, no!" she said, hastening to reassure me "Brookings is the *left wing* think tank!"
Me: Not on Iraq.
Her: "Well, *leaving aside Iraq*"
Me: I don't give a flying fuck about campaign finance reform. (see, I"m as charming in real life as I am on the internet!)

Actually, she was a fantastic person and a very hard worker for seriously liberal and progressive causes but Brookings seems to be so big and so decentralied that no one feels responsible for calling their colleagues on their shit. It doesn't seem to occur to Guy X at Brookings that these right wing policy wonks are *screwing with their brand identity* as well as screwing the country.

aimai

Posted by aimai | August 23, 2007 2:09 PM

This is just one more indication of the utter bankruptcy of the Carter-to-Clinton era of self-hating liberalism of our parents' (and David Broder's) generation. I'll feel a whole lot better about the future and fate of this country if and when we step out from under this crippled, blinkered, gaslighted deadweight of ideological victims and forge a fresh new path....

Posted by elle loco | August 23, 2007 2:15 PM

I must say that Brookings' turning into a nest for the Iraq Dead-Enders (Pollack and O'Hanlon) AND a home for the Don Rumseld Pentagon alumni club this late in the horrific Iraq War Disaster really surprises even me...

I think that Don Williams' rather simple and straight-forward explanations seem more plausible every day. Occam's Razor after all...

Posted by RKU | August 23, 2007 2:16 PM

Yes, Brookings was definitely left at one time, but started moving right in the late 70s, and hasn't stopped.

Posted by Gee | August 23, 2007 2:17 PM

"This is just one more indication of the utter bankruptcy of the Carter-to-Clinton era of self-hating liberalism of our parents' (and David Broder's) generation."

Elle loco, you nailed it!

We are dealing with the long, slow psychodrama of self-hating baby boomer liberals.

One reason I'm increasingly leaning toward Obama is that he is actually a Gen Xer and doesn't have this Vietnam-era baggage. It's time to get past the boomers and their neuroses.

Posted by MaximusNYC | August 23, 2007 2:20 PM

From here on in, please refer to me as:

Hank Essay, Soros Scholar at TIFDFHWWPFRANJMFRETY.

OK?

Posted by Hank Essay | August 23, 2007 2:26 PM

My understanding is that Brookings has always claimed to be non-partisan. The right-wingers didn't like what was coming out of Brookings and the Rand Institute, so they started funding their own.

Posted by FS | August 23, 2007 2:27 PM

Some historical perspective on just how far Brookings has moved:

***
JOHN DEAN: ...[I]t’s on tape. It’s really quite remarkable. Four times, with Nixon pounding on the desk at one point, saying he wants a break-in at the Brookings Institute where they are convinced that there's a set of the Pentagon Papers and Brookings is going to do something with them. And so, he wants those documents. It’s really quite startling.

AMY GOODMAN: What stopped him?

JOHN DEAN: I happened to stop him. I learned about it, and I thought they had lost their mind. Somebody, Chuck Colson, had called in a private eye who had worked in Ehrlichman's office before he was assigned to my office. He came in and said Chuck Coulson wants me to firebomb the Brookings Institute. I said, “What?” He said “Yes,” when the Fire Department comes, to send some burglars to get into the safe at the Brookings Institute and take out these papers the President wanted.

DANIEL ELLSBERG: They were going to rent a fake firetruck and go in as fake firemen.

JOHN DEAN: That was later Liddy's plan, that he was going to design it when the first plan fell through. But it was so outrageous.

***

The whole thing is worth reading.

From http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=06/04/27/149236

Posted by Gee | August 23, 2007 2:29 PM

Kudos to Matt on this one. All part of the picture and deconstruction of the puzzle.

Posted by kennthp | August 23, 2007 2:30 PM

Brookings is/was considered a "left-wing" think-tank by those on the far right. The origins of this is a bit interesting actually. Brookings used to be pretty much the only game in town when it came to expert policy white papers and the other sorts of things a think-tank is actually supposed to do. The material coming out of Brookings in those days was pretty much non-partisan and reality-based.

Of course, the far right assumed since Brookings findings and suggestions pretty often contradicted their POV, it must be run by a bunch of leftists. They never seem to realize that the reason they find so many "lefties" purporting to be giving non-partisan reality-based information is that non-partisan reality-based information is actually opposed to what they think.

Brookings has shifted around a bit ideology wise, especially with the rise of really partisan right-wing think-tanks. Of course "serious" people a Brookings now have to take the "centrist" position somewhere just the left of Mussolini.

Posted by travc | August 23, 2007 2:32 PM

Well, you're the guy that ranks enough to get published in the Guardian and listed on Real Clear Politics for your article, but I will disagree.

The notion of just a few people endorsing the "lunatic revisionist view" of Vietnam is not quite accurate. Military historians and scholars have had a chance to really go through the Soviet, N Vietnamese sources and have reached a rough consensus sharply at odds with the Left - Vietnamese were ready to admit defeat after blowing Tet, and were shocked that the USA media began calling it a major "liberation forces victory." The Soviets were shocked because they expected the Americans to shut down the Defeatists as seditious. That didn't happen.

The scholars who have examined the military memoirs of USA, ARVN, and NVA leaders have found they all roughly agreed that S Vietnam had been trained up by Nixon adequately to hold off N Vietnam as long as the Americans provided equipment, some air cover and recon intel. That the terms of the Paris Peace Agreement reflected that consensus that S Vietnam would likely hold on for many years, and N Vietnam was preparing to shift to forcing Communist regimes on Laos and Cambodia, which was always their plan - a plan opposed by the Chicoms, who wanted to protect Overseas Chinese 1st, after the Indonesian 1-month Jihad killed 1/2 a million in 1965.

In 1975, thanks to the NVA, the Khmer Rouge was in place. Destabilizing Cambodia and installing a puppet state was always the N Vietnamese Plan. The USA had little to do with it. But the Khmer Rouge were very different than the N Vietnamese figured, they were trained by French Communists as students and had bizarre ideas and almost immediately bucked the Vietnamese to create their own unique, awful killing fields revolution.

If S Vietnam had not fallen, the North Vietnamese would have ripped out the Khmer Rouge and installed more compliant puppets long before 1978.

But S Vietnam had fallen with the US cutting the legs out from underneath the South, and the only priority they had was to consolodate, and fully integrate S Vietnam into one country. And kill a few tens of thousands of people there beyond rehabilitation...Doing that meant they had to ignore that the Khmer Rouge had gone Jim Jones snakeshit crazy and were murdering millions of their own people, half depopulating Cambodia...

Military historians in the US and Vietnam say that if aid had not been cutoff to S Vietnam, the North would have stopped the Cambodian Genocide in 1976. Many in the north advocated not waiting anyways, but leadership said the focus had to be on bringing Vietnam together 1st.

So, yes, not only was the aid cutoff the fall of Saigon, it was the doom of the Cambodians...and that is not insane revisionism. Those that call it such are just a bit sensitive about tainting one of the Lefts greatest triumphs - the defeat and humbling of America, the dishonoring of it's 'Nam soldiers as "pillaging Genghis Kaaahhhhns" - with unpleasant facts...

Unpleasant facts like the North Vietnamese saying they would have lost without the American Left intervening for them after Tet, the American Left greatly helped the Communist bargaining position in Paris, the American Left by giving support had delayed N Vietnam final agreement to a Peace Treaty and extended the POWs captivity by two extra years. Unpleasant facts like South Vietnam would have survived many more years with US aid.

The truth, as Soviet/Russian, Vietnamese, and American military historians roughly agree, the Cambodia Genocide was not America's "root cause fault" but the Khmer Rouge turning out to be crazy psychopathic thugs none of their sponsors anticipated, and VIetnam was too busy consolodating their conquest - a gift of Congressional Democrats - to intervene and stop it.

The Left, very protective of their great Vietnam triumph, are also getting sour news from Holocaust historians that the Kmer Rouge had planned the Genocide or at least discussed it 20 years earlier in their Paris student days. And that the plan was always to install the KM, the only issue was as China's proxy under Sianouk, or as Vietnam's planned commies on Hanoi's leash. Both China and Vietnam denied ever knowing what psychopaths the KM were.

Posted by Chris Ford | August 23, 2007 2:32 PM

Yet military historians are coming to a consensus that by the end of 1972, there was a much-improved balance of forces in Vietnam, reflected in the 1973 Paris agreement, and that Congress subsequently pulled the props out from under that balance of forces—dooming Indochina to a bloodbath. This is now a widely accepted narrative of the endgame in Vietnam, and it has haunted the Democrats for a generation.

He then goes on to name these historians, who are...

Oh, wait a minute, no he doesn't.

Never mind.

Posted by commie atheist | August 23, 2007 2:37 PM

Mr Ford, I hope you know that you're lying here, because the tripe you're peddling is *well* past its sell-by date.

Posted by David Parsons | August 23, 2007 2:47 PM

I adore the way you write.

Posted by Matthew | August 23, 2007 2:47 PM

Peter Rodman:

http://www.mediatransparency.org/allinonesearchresults.php?searchString=Peter+Rodman

Posted by Rob Levine | August 23, 2007 2:50 PM

Chris Ford writes articulately and with the sheen of an expert. It takes one a moment to realize how batsh** crazy he is and then to realize that he is writing fiction of the highest class.

Posted by elliotg | August 23, 2007 2:52 PM

Posted by Chris Ford | August 23, 2007 2:32 PM

Sources, Chris?

*crickets*

Posted by Max Renn | August 23, 2007 2:57 PM

Military historians and scholars have had a chance to really go through the Soviet, N Vietnamese sources and have reached a rough consensus sharply at odds with the Left...

The scholars who have examined the military memoirs of USA, ARVN, and NVA leaders have found they all roughly agreed that S Vietnam had been trained up by Nixon adequately to hold off N Vietnam...

Military historians in the US and Vietnam say that if aid had not been cutoff to S Vietnam, the North would have...

Name some sources. Otherwise STFU.

Posted by commie atheist | August 23, 2007 3:00 PM

The Soviets were shocked because they expected the Americans to shut down the Defeatists as seditious.

Clearly some Americans have learned from their mistake.

Yes the Tet offensive was a military victory and propaganda defeat for the Americans. Perhaps because the US military had so lied to the people about the capabilities of the VC that Tet caught everybody by surprise.

Perhaps South Viet Nam would have stood up had Nixon remained in power, but there was a wee matter of fixing presidential elections that required him to take early retirement, and this country was consumed by revelations of various kinds of presidential abuse. If we're going to say that the killing fields happened because Viet Nam was diverted by the need to consolidate the victory caused by American leftists (I mean, WTF?), how about the diversion of attention in the US caused by rightists fixing elections and engaging in domestic surveillance and sabotage of political opposition? In any case, a more likely scenario was that the South would have collapsed from its own corruption. Viet Nam was always a civil war that the US stumbled into without knowing what it was getting involved with. As far as "tens of thousands" killed by those evil commies, give me a break, Nixon and Kissinger killed thousands just prolonging the bombing with no objective but to look tough for domestic consumption.

As far as KM coming to power in Cambodia, I could have sworn I heard something at one point about "secret bombing".... Let's not forget BTW that Pol Pot continued to receive support from the West even after forced into exile by those evil Viet Namese commies.

Translation of Mr Ford: I love the smell of burning history books in the morning.

As far as Brookings, in the immortal words of Hal Holbrook: Follow the money.

AIPAC.

Posted by Taylor | August 23, 2007 3:30 PM

The US had little to do with destabilizing Cambodia?

Wow. That coup and all those bombs had nothing do with driving the peasants into the arms of the Khmer. I'm sure that's seared into your memory.

I know exactly what you're going to say in 30 years - "The US had little to with it" to destabilizing Iraq.

Posted by srv | August 23, 2007 3:37 PM

Posted by Chris Ford | August 23, 2007 2:32 PM
Unpleasant facts like the North Vietnamese saying they would have lost without the American Left intervening for them after Tet
...
Cambodia Genocide was not America's "root cause fault" but the Khmer Rouge turning out to be crazy psychopathic thugs none of their sponsors anticipated

Tet was a disaster for the VC and NVA. The casualties were huge and a lot of military communication from the period reflects depression about the losses. But General Giap's theory we would have lost without our American leftist friends idea needs to be read properly. Giap was a true believer in communism and communist theories, so to him the idea of American workers being part of the Vietnamese victory was very seductive because it fits in his communist 'march of history' worldview. But it is as grandeoise as it is wrong. Much more important was the deteriorating internal political situation in Saigon from Tet onwards, which was quite independent of America, to Johnston and Nixon's frustration. The communists were humbeled but they were not giving up. They made good their losses and bided their time. Giaps view is communist chest puffery about world revolution.

One thing you left out about cambodia. The KR were very marginal players in Cambodia. It was only after the massive bombing of easten Cambodia next to the ho chi min trail by the USAF that the people in the region abandoned their traditional village leadership to follow the KR who promised to 'make it stop' This is where some US responsibility for what followed rests.

Posted by Northern Observer | August 23, 2007 3:53 PM

In 1975, thanks to the NVA, the Khmer Rouge was in place. Destabilizing Cambodia and installing a puppet state was always the N Vietnamese Plan

Hmm, the Voice of America still thinks that the Khmer Rouge were Maoists. As in aligned-with-China, the long-time adversary of Vietnam.

Maybe VOA is full of Maoist sympathizers.

Posted by darrelplant | August 23, 2007 3:56 PM

Funny, I thought Iraq was nothing like Vietnam.

Posted by tom | August 23, 2007 4:00 PM

"In particular, a bipartisan, yet also non-partisan, group of experts would be a useful thing to have on hand if, for example, both the President of the United States and a leading Republican candidate for President were to endorse a lunatic revisionist view of the Vietnam War. Members of this clerisy, Democrat and Republican alike, could set the country straight on the facts."

And this is precisely why you and Glenn Greenwald will not be in senior foreign policy positions (unless an extreme version of Carter is accidentally elected - or John Edwards, with his pledge to educate and provide free health care for the entire world within two years). Because presumably you see yourself - or people who you agree with - as this kind of person. If not - if you saw yourself as a hyperpartisan ideologue, you wouldn't be calling for nonpartisan "truth-tellers."

You assume that what you think is "the facts." You assume people like you are "bipartisan" or "nonpartisan" and that these people would be able to give the President the cold, sober picture of what's going on. When in reality, you're just as partisan, if not more so, than the next guy. Even realists, who like to see themselves as non-ideological, "just the facts, ma'am" types are as ideological and partisan as the next guy.

Partisan doesn't just mean wedded to one party - it also means being wedded to one particular viewpoint, no matter which party is currently promoting it. And that is why no one is taking your complaints about the foreign policy community - for all their blunders, failures and screw-ups - other than people just like you who also think you're nonpartisan and deal in nothing more than the cold, hard facts.

Posted by Dan | August 23, 2007 4:14 PM

"I was at a cocktail party here on the Cape talking to a very nice woman who told me proudly that her husband (also at the party) had been in the Clinton Administration and was not at Brookings."

Oh good grief, I'm rolling out of my chair in laughter. Way to completely confirm the liberal elite stereotype. You didn't need to mention cocktail party or that it was on the Cape. But you did, because those are the kind of things that matter apparently, and good on ya.

I wonder if people here actually realize how far to the left they really are compared to the rest of America? Do you all consider yourself "moderate?" Perhaps that would explain why you all think Hillary and Brookings are actually on the right.

Posted by Dan | August 23, 2007 4:20 PM

I've never been on The Cape and I don't drink cocktails but beer and root beer.

But let me add "Fuck Brookings." Their support for the Iraq fiasco is hurting our nation, draining our treasury to the point where all else is subsumed by their dirty occupation.

These professional policy types lack the stones to stand up to Right. Fuck the cowards.

Posted by AlphaLiberal | August 23, 2007 4:35 PM

The scholars who have examined the military memoirs of USA, ARVN, and NVA leaders have found they all roughly agreed that S Vietnam had been trained up by Nixon adequately to hold off N Vietnam as long as the Americans provided equipment, some air cover and recon intel.

Name them.

Posted by rootless2 | August 23, 2007 4:47 PM

Joel Patterson raises an excellent point: Why are my tax dollars subsidizing (through non-profit status) these think tanks? If they want to advocate for their particular ideological bent, fine, but I don't see why they shouldn't pay to operate just like everyone else.

Posted by Kenneth Fair | August 23, 2007 4:54 PM

Oh good grief, I'm rolling out of my chair in laughter. Way to completely confirm the liberal elite stereotype. You didn't need to mention cocktail party or that it was on the Cape. But you did, because those are the kind of things that matter apparently, and good on ya.

Posted by Dan | August 23, 2007 4:20 PM

---------
Poor right wing suckers, think that the summer home of Fox news guys and corporate honchos is a hotbed of left-wing liberalism. Oooh, Jack Welch is a commie. Help!!!

Posted by rootless2 | August 23, 2007 5:06 PM

Chris Ford is Just Making Stuff Up.

Anyone who thinks Ho Chi Minh, with a *lifetime* of freedom fighting and the backing of his entire people, would *ever* have surrendered, has not studied history.

The Vietnam War might have been longer and bloodier if the US hadn't withdrawn, yes. Or, it might have entered a temporary period of peace and partition -- before the Saigon government collapsed under the weight of its own corruption, criminality, and unpopularity, and the North attacked again. But the US had no chance, from day one, of winning a war of attrition against a *popular independence and self-determination movement*, any more than the French or the Japanese had a chance. If the South Vietnamese government had been credible and trusted, it would have been a different matter.... but it wasn't.

Posted by Nathanael Nerode | August 23, 2007 5:58 PM

And our Proxies rarely are. I'm looking at you, Pervez Musharraf. Shah Reza Pahlavi. Saddam Fucking Hussein.

Posted by Gregorio | August 23, 2007 6:55 PM

r€nato said:
>In any case, it's obvious the DFHs need their own think tank.

There is; it's called the blogosphere.
(Or, is it blogofascism?)

Posted by bartkid | August 23, 2007 7:27 PM

Posted by Chris Ford | August 23, 2007 2:32 PM

Lost again - now that's telling.
-

Posted by QuentinCompson | August 23, 2007 8:13 PM

Posted by Chris Ford | August 23, 2007 2:32 PM

Lost again - now that's telling.
-

Posted by QuentinCompson | August 23, 2007 8:15 PM

Bush was reminding us that after the US withdrawal, Ho had killed tens of thousands of Vietnamese.

Nobody seems to recall that LBJ and Nixon had killed a couple of million Vietnamese - in their zeal to "prevent a bloodbath".

Posted by "As You Know" Bob | August 23, 2007 11:48 PM

Regarding Brookings ... a solid, on the mark comment by travc

"Brookings used to be pretty much the only game in town when it came to expert policy white papers and the other sorts of things a think-tank is actually supposed to do. The material coming out of Brookings in those days was pretty much non-partisan and reality-based.
Of course, the far right assumed since Brookings findings and suggestions pretty often contradicted their POV, it must be run by a bunch of leftists. They never seem to realize that the reason they find so many "lefties" purporting to be giving non-partisan reality-based information is that non-partisan reality-based information is actually opposed to what they think."

A clear demonstration that the American Conservative Movement is based on fantasy and wishful thinking, inherently dishonest and corrupt.

Posted by cal1942 | August 23, 2007 11:59 PM

There were two bloodbaths in Southeast Asia:

1. The Suharto bloodbath in Indonesia, which killed 1 million people. Memorialized in the film, The Year of Living Dangerously. We helped organize that bloodbath. To the point of our Embassy distributing lists of people to be executed.

2. The bloodbath in Cambodia, which also killed 1 million people in a much smaller nation. We did nothing to stop it and, with the Chinese, vigorously opposed the Vietnamese intervention that ended it. Too bad Chris Ford doesn't care enough about the victims to tell the dirty truth.

In contrast, there was no bloodbath in Vietnam.
Usually, when wingnuts and Rethugs start shedding crocodile tears about impending "bloodbaths" - something they did from the late 60's on - it is because they are planning THEIR OWN bloodbaths - or wiping up the blood.

Posted by Cambridgemac | August 24, 2007 12:10 AM

FOR CHRIS FORD:

How North Vietnam won the war
Wall Street Journal. (Eastern edition).
New York, N.Y.: Aug 3, 1995. pg. A8
Copyright Dow Jones & Company Inc Aug 3, 1995

(relevant excerpts)

Bui Tin, a former colonel in the North Vietnamese army, answers these questions in the following excerpts from an interview conducted by Stephen Young, a Minnesota attorney and human-rights activist. Bui Tin, who served on the general staff of North Vietnam's army, received the unconditional surrender of South Vietnam on April 30, 1975.

Q: What about Gen. Westmoreland's strategy and tactics caused you concern?

A: In January 1967, after discussions with Le Duan, Gen. Thanh proposed the Tet Offensive. [snip] Only in July was his plan adopted by the leadership. Then Johnson had rejected Westmoreland's request for 200,000 more troops. We realized that America had made its maximum military commitment to the war. Vietnam was not sufficiently important for the United States to call up its reserves. We had stretched American power to a breaking point. When more frustration set in, all the Americans could do would be to withdraw; they had no more troops to send over.

Posted by Steve J. | August 24, 2007 6:11 AM

Just to add to the pile-on on Chris "Batshit-Insane" Ford, it's worth remembering that the Cambodian genocide was actually stopped *by a Vietnamese invasion*, against which the US provided military aid.

Posted by Kalkin | August 24, 2007 11:54 AM

Dan: "You assume that what you think is "the facts." You assume people like you are "bipartisan" or "nonpartisan" and that these people would be able to give the President the cold, sober picture of what's going on. When in reality, you're just as partisan, if not more so, than the next guy. Even realists, who like to see themselves as non-ideological, "just the facts, ma'am" types are as ideological and partisan as the next guy."

We've seen your version of the 'facts', for the past few years. Yes, we are far, far closer to the facts than you and yours will ever be.

Posted by Barry | August 31, 2007 12:57 PM