As everyone knows, the real culprits for the failure of American policy in Vietnam aren't the hawks who ran the show throughout 20 years of U.S. effort to prop up South Vietnam, but rather the opponents of the policy, who handed the enemy the win in congress that they couldn't achieve on the battlefield. Except, Gary Farber points out that neither Richard Nixon nor Henry Kissinger (via Jim Henley) appear to have believed the war was winnable in the early 1970s.
« The Trouble With Biography | Main | They Draw Maps »
Losing Vietnam
07 Aug 2007 09:13 am
Comments (32)
As I've mentioned, I had an older friend who was drafted and killed in Vietnam. Decades later, I was curious about how we became involved in Vietnam -- it seemed an idiotic place in which to fight a war. And Eisenhower was neither an idiot nor one fond of war.
I checked the Pentagon Papers (the real ones, not the bullshit interpretation published by the New York Times) and other sources. I concluded that we originally had two main motivations:
a) One was to seize the only two major deposits of Tungsten outside of the the Soviet Union and China. Those deposits were in Thailand and South Korea.
Tungsten, of course, was ESSENTIAL for the alloy steel necessary to fight the Cold War. It's acquistion had been a high priority even during WWII.
Eisenhower noted this vital need in a little noticed-- and largely forgotten -- address during his presidential campaign.
Federal economic statistics on our tungsten imports suddenly became classified during Eisenhower's administration -- and remained so for decades. Now declassified, they show a massive surge in US imports during the 1950s through 1960s. Even now, we had large quantities in our National Stockpile of war material.
By 1965, of course, this motivation had largely declined.
b) Our second motivation was that Vietnam was a cork which kept Red China stoppered up in the bottle. Chinese expansion is constrained by major barriers -- USSR to the north, deserts to the west, Himalayas to the south and southwest, the PAcific Ocean (and AMerican bases in Phillipines, Taiwan, Okinawa, and Japan) to the west.
However, Cambodia and northern Thailand were sparsely populated and wide open to invasion. Beyond laid Burma and India.
Vietnam was the regional keystone. In part because it's high fertility allows for a high population which dominates the areas.
Plus, US bases in Vietnam would make it easy for US B52 bombers to destroy any sizable CHinese army moving through Cambodia.
c) There were other considerations. Japan was a major prize --already recovering as a power -- and we worried that she might cut an entirely reasonable deal with nearby China. Some of our corporations were pouring huge sums into factories in Japan for the cheap, highly educated labor -- and wanted their investments protected.
Vietnam was a major supplier of rice to Japan. The Pentagon figured that if you control someone's food supply, they will see things your way.
d) In the end , LBJ was left holding the bag of shit. We had extracted much of the tungsten we needed. The Chinese-USSR split was becoming evident. Chinese expansion had become much less likely. Japan had evolved firmly into the American orbit.
However, LBJ was stuck. We had SEATO Treaty obligations -- and if we were seen as welching on them, then our whole patchwork of alliances in southwest Asia would start falling apart. Not the domino theory -- in terms of the Commies conquering the area -- but in terms of Chinese diplomatic and trade successes.
Plus LBJ could not bear being the US President who "lost " Vietnam. So he sacrified tens of thousands of our soldiers.
Don, the Tungsten Theory is interesting but doesn't appear likely. Canada and the US together have 16% of the world's W reserves - mostly in Canada. Thailand and Korea have some reserves, and the bulk is indeed in China, but it's certainly not true that these were the only non-communist sources.
I think your last paragraph nails it.
I'm afraid Steve Duncan is correct. Those who promoted, planned and so poorly executed the war in Iraq, and continue to support it, desperately need to shift the blame for its catastrophic ending elsewhere. The propaganda campaign to blame Democrats has started already.
This thing is turning out to be another Vietnam in more ways than one.
I lost Vietnam.
I didn't mean to, it's just that I put it down somewhere when I was vaccuuming and now I can't remember where.
My wife says that the dog probably chewed it up and left it under the bed with some of my socks but she's just trying to make me feel better.
Oh please. What party did Lyndon Johnson belong to again? OMG history is repeating itself!
Actual mainstream opinion is that we lost Vietnam because we shouldn't have been there. That 30% of the population will insist it was the Evil Librulz fault is no reason to despair and stuff our heads in the toilet.
I agree with Barbar. Much of the general public is far more morally advanced on their understanding of and dislike for the US hawks' war against South and North Vietnamese civilians than are the pundit classes, who must never, ever allow it to be thunk that the aggressive use of US military force could ever be morally wrong, just inefficiently used somehow.
What Nixon or Kissinger believed as nothing to do with the main point. But thanks for making a stupid strawman argument
I was born after Vietnam, but I've heard plenty over the last few years about how the Democrats cutting off funding was what stabbed our brave troops in the back when victory was just right there in our grasp. I've looked into it and am kind of amazed at how far off from reality that claim seems to be...
In January of '73, Nixon approved the Paris Peace
accords negotiated by Henry Kissinger, which
implemented an immediate cease-fire in Vietnam and
called for the complete withdrawal of American troops within sixty days. My dad was one of the last soldiers to leave in '73 and he often talks about how everybody was playing it extra safe and just trying not to die as battalions were being called home pretty rapidly. However, it wasn't until the fall of 1974, over a year later, that Congress reduced funds from 1.26 billion to 700 million dollars to South Vietnam.
My point is, it's not clear to me at all how Congress's cutting funds stabbed our boys in the back... when our boys were all sitting at home a year and a half earlier. Does anyone know how that makes any sense?
the simple fact is that the dems rolled to a major congressional victory in 1974 (admittedly, watergate-driven, but obviously the public wasn't, in fact, driven to massive stab-in-the-back theories at that moment); the dems then won the presidency in 1976 and maintained congressional control, so they still weren't being punished for their stab-in-the-back; ; in 1978, they continued to control congress (i just took a quick look, and the aggregate dem senate vote was 1M higher than the aggregate gop senate vote; the aggregate house vote was 5M higher).
so one could go on.
the point is the "stab in the back," while real, wasn't contemporaneous.
however, as steve duncan points out, times have changed: the attempt to tag dems as the source of our defeat is certainly real and ongoing. that said, i'm inclined to agree with barbar: there's a large quantity of ill-informed, ideologically blinkered right-wingers in america, but not a majority. there's not much we can do about their damaged ratiocinative processes.
My point is, it's not clear to me at all how Congress's cutting funds stabbed our boys in the back... when our boys were all sitting at home a year and a half earlier. Does anyone know how that makes any sense?
Posted by soggy
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
soggy, it's not about when actual funds are cut. It's merely talking about cutting funds. You see, the Right says because Democrats are even discussing any measures to reduce/eliminate U.S. involvement in Iraq they're causing the war effort to flag. Even if Bush initiates a pullout resulting in a perceived lost war it'll be Dems that get the blame. Bush can't lose, can't be blamed, at least not so it'll stick. No matter what is said or done and no matter who says or does it Iraq will be seen as a failed war and Dems will be the culprits. That's the point.
RE Ajay's comment "Don, the Tungsten Theory is interesting but doesn't appear likely. Canada and the US together have 16% of the world's W reserves - mostly in Canada"
------------
Most of those "reserves" were discovered in the period of 1970 to present and many are uneconomical to work.
What you have to do is look at the reserves and productions in the 1950s and 1960s. The report to look at is this:
http://pubs.usgs.gov/pdf/circular/c930-o.pdf
If you look on page 22-23, you will see that in 1950 and 1960, Canada's share of world Tungsten production was ZERO.
China and Russia produced over 50% of the tungsten, the USA only around 10% and Thailand about 2%.
The deposit in Thailand was quickly worked but deposits in Korea picked up the slack. In the 1960, North and South Korea production exploded and accounted for 20% of world tungsten production while the US production was in decline.
Today, China and Russia account for 89 PERCENT of world production of tungsten.
They have us by the nuts and its starting to show.
Total WORLD reserves of tungsten --including the uneconomic ones -- will only last for about 100 more years. China and Russia have roughly 63% of those deposits.
The APT spot price of tungsten has soared from $50 /mtu to almost $250 /mtu in just the past 3 years.
http://www.itia.org.uk/Default.asp?page=40
Anyone read Jared Diamond's "Collapse"?? What happens to a civilization when it exhausts natural resources upon which it depends??
Note how our shitty educational system and news media ensures 99% of our citizens are ignorant of the above facts?
It makes it easier to divert us into pissing away $4 TRILLION in chasing non-existent WMDs in Iraq and into scrapping the Bill of Rights here at home to deal with the "Terrorists". While a bunch of fucking morons wave the flag.
George Bush ran his corporation into bankruptcy. Why did we think he would do a better job running the country??
Re Don Williams
The coke snorting, pot smoking, draft dodging, lying drunk in the White House was voted into office by the assholes in Florida and New Hampshire who voted for Ralph Nader. They are the real fucking morons.
I doubt that many important Republican leaders of the time truly believed the claim that liberals and the media lost the Vietnam war by sapping our national resolve. That line provided a convenient excuse for hardcore nationalists who were unable to come to terms with the limits of US military power, and served a useful domestic propaganda purpose, but little more than that.
This was pretty apparent during the Reagan administration. Reagan's term is sometimes depicted as restoring US self-confidence following the Vietnam debacle. Yet, the actual military interventions under Reagan were notably unambitious - bombing Libya, invading Grenada. The one time that an intervention got somewhat hairy (the Marines in Lebanon), Reagan bailed out in short order. Rhetoric about an undaunted America with unshakable resolve was for public consumption only.
On the other hand, the advent of the George W. Bush and the "national greatness conservatives,"
brought to power political leaders who were dumb enough to actually believe the jingoistic propaganda that previous GOP leaders had fed to their more dimwitted supporters. The results, predictably, have been disastrous.
Howard, you're far too sanguine about the intelligence of the average American. The average American hasn't read a non-fiction book cover to cover EVER. Illiteracy is rampant. Average Americans get nearly all their news from the television. The number even watching that is a small fraction of the electorate. Stand on any street corner downtown and ask a random sampling of people 10 questions about current events. Pick people that seem to have jobs, people apparently on their way to or from a responsible position in some nearby firm. The name of the Secretary of Defense?. Five Supreme Court justices? What nation's citizens comprised nearly all the 9/11 hijackers? What is the Federal Reserve? What is "Gaza" exactly? I could go on. How many questions out of ten would the average American get right? If the questions were similar to the above I'd wager one, maybe two. Americans are blithering idiots. If you care about current events, politics, social & economic policy, medicine, health or other topical issues of concern you talk to other people with the same degree of knowledge and interest. You become insulated from the fact Americans are stupid, bleating sheep led from field to barn and back on a daily basis. They work, shit, eat, fuck and sleep and learning anything beyond what's needed to do those things is beyond their level of effort or care. The Right doesn't have to work very hard at all to deceive them. Being largely a class of superstitious (religious) people Americans are predisposed to hate the dirty fucking hippies. Fox and Rush and Bushco just have to fan the embers a bit. The fire will take off from there.
Wait. Republicans ended the Vietnam war. They had help from the French. This whole liberal back stab narrative is more than just random bullshit; it's the exact opposite of what happened.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
"soggy, it's not about when actual funds are cut. It's merely talking about cutting funds. You see, the Right says because Democrats are even discussing any measures to reduce/eliminate U.S. involvement in Iraq they're causing the war effort to flag. Even if Bush initiates a pullout resulting in a perceived lost war it'll be Dems that get the blame. Bush can't lose, can't be blamed, at least not so it'll stick. No matter what is said or done and no matter who says or does it Iraq will be seen as a failed war and Dems will be the culprits. That's the point."
Posted by steve duncan
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
steve, i fully understand that this iraq debacle is much too large for republicans to ever consider taking any type of responsibility for. I'm just confused how I could have grown up hearing over and over about how democrats cost us vietnam, only to find out that that is laughably inaccurate and no one's ever pushed back. And yes, we'll have to push back immediately and strongly when they try to do the same with Iraq.
If Democrats are worried about being blamed for losing Iraq, why not stop trying to make that happen? Why not stop trying to cut off funds for the mission, and instead, actively support it?
Take the opposite tack, and demand that Bush increase the number of troops in Iraq if necessary. Then, if things don't work out, you can say it was the GOP president who fought the war half-assed, not the patriotic Democratic Congress, that tried to give him the resources necessary to win.
I was born after Vietnam, but I've heard plenty over the last few years about how the Democrats cutting off funding was what stabbed our brave troops in the back when victory was just right there in our grasp. I've looked into it and am kind of amazed at how far off from reality that claim seems to be...
In January of '73, Nixon approved the Paris Peace
accords negotiated by Henry Kissinger, which
implemented an immediate cease-fire in Vietnam and
called for the complete withdrawal of American troops within sixty days. My dad was one of the last soldiers to leave in '73 and he often talks about how everybody was playing it extra safe and just trying not to die as battalions were being called home pretty rapidly. However, it wasn't until the fall of 1974, over a year later, that Congress reduced funds from 1.26 billion to 700 million dollars to South Vietnam.
My point is, it's not clear to me at all how Congress's cutting funds stabbed our boys in the back... when our boys were all sitting at home a year and a half earlier. Does anyone know how that makes any sense?
Posted by soggy | August 7, 2007 11:13 AM
*************************************************
The stab in the back story is built around deserting the South Vietnamese. Nixon withdrew American troops and through the "Vietnamization" process left ARVN troops doing the fighting with American air support. Post-Nixon Democratic Congresses cut support to the South Vietnamese.
the simple fact is that the dems rolled to a major congressional victory in 1974 (admittedly, watergate-driven, but obviously the public wasn't, in fact, driven to massive stab-in-the-back theories at that moment); the dems then won the presidency in 1976 and maintained congressional control, so they still weren't being punished for their stab-in-the-back; ; in 1978, they continued to control congress (i just took a quick look, and the aggregate dem senate vote was 1M higher than the aggregate gop senate vote; the aggregate house vote was 5M higher).
so one could go on.
the point is the "stab in the back," while real, wasn't contemporaneous.
however, as steve duncan points out, times have changed: the attempt to tag dems as the source of our defeat is certainly real and ongoing. that said, i'm inclined to agree with barbar: there's a large quantity of ill-informed, ideologically blinkered right-wingers in america, but not a majority. there's not much we can do about their damaged ratiocinative processes.
Posted by howard | August 7, 2007 11:29 AM
*************************************************
You also have to factor in that the big stories about the Boat People and the Cambodian killing fields didn't start getting a lot of play until later in the Seventies.
Steve Duncan --
What % of Americans today think that the Vietnam war was a good war that we should have stuck out? Have you noticed that as more people think that the Iraq-Vietnam war comparison is a good one, support for the war has fallen?
Yeah, our education system sucks, and braindead morons like Harry will insist that liberals are bringing about America's demise no matter what, but so what? As I said above, the median American thinks Vietnam was a bad war and we had no business being there.
You become insulated from the fact Americans are stupid, bleating sheep led from field to barn and back on a daily basis. They work, shit, eat, fuck and sleep and learning anything beyond what's needed to do those things is beyond their level of effort or care. The Right doesn't have to work very hard at all to deceive them. Being largely a class of superstitious (religious) people Americans are predisposed to hate the dirty fucking hippies. Fox and Rush and Bushco just have to fan the embers a bit. The fire will take off from there.
Posted by steve duncan | August 7, 2007 12:25 PM
*************************************************
Obviously most Americans are stupid. That's why the Republicans are still in control of both houses of Congress.
Uh, wait
Campesino, are you suggesting the election of Democrats to a majority in Congress indicates intelligence in our citizenry? That's a flawed assertion.
Campesino, are you suggesting the election of Democrats to a majority in Congress indicates intelligence in our citizenry? That's a flawed assertion.
Posted by steve duncan | August 7, 2007 2:10 PM
**********************************************
Gotcha! You're going for the "plague on both parties" position
Enjoy!
Re "That's why the Republicans are still in control of both houses of Congress.
Uh, wait "
-----------
Last time I checked the favorable ratings of the Democratic-controlled Congress was about 15 points BELOW George Bush. That's drifting down around whale shit territory.
Something you won't find in the MSM:
The primary force that brought about the Peace Accords and the American troop withdrawal from Viet Nam had nothing to do with Dems, war protesters or anything domestic, it was the rebellion of the troops in the field involving widespread mission refusal and fragging. There were ten large mutinies, hundreds of individual combat refusals and (by one count) over one thousand admitted fragging incidents.
In a letter published in June 1968, a troop in Da Nang wrote, "The big thing is organize against the Army, write Congressmen, cancel Savings Bonds and generally refuse to cooperate as much as you can. If the GIs can stick together we can force the brass to start treating us like human beings instead of animals or half-wits."
The Army, realizing the growing unrest, officially began counting fragging incidents in 1969 and reported that fraggings increased from 126 in 1969, 271 in 1970, and to 238 in the first seven months of 1971 and of these, eighty-two proved fatal and 651 were injured.
I dunno, I think for the average frothing at the mouth wingnut the betrayal wasn't by Congress in the 70s, it was by Walter Cronkite after the Tet Offensive. That was when the Liberal Media combined with the Hippies to betray the troops.
Thanks for the link, Matt; I've added some further tapes analysis.
"The Army, realizing the growing unrest, officially began counting fragging incidents in 1969 and reported that fraggings increased from 126 in 1969, 271 in 1970, and to 238 in the first seven months of 1971 and of these, eighty-two proved fatal and 651 were injured."
This is extremely silly. Once can check statistics any number of reliable places, but here we confirm that U.S. troop levels peaked at 543,400. Close to 60,000 Americans died in Vietnam. A few hundred fraggings weren't even statistically noticiable.
The scale of the Vietnam war was far beyond that of the Iraq war by almost any measure that doesn't focus on modern aspects.
Anyone who thinks that the war was affected by fraggings is entirely ignorant, I'm afraid. The claim is utter nonsense.
Richard Nixon stabbed the South Vietnamese in the back. He is a Republican. Henry Kissinger advised him to do it. Kissinger is a Republican too.
In fact, they would've done it sooner, except Nixon wanted to get reelected. That was more important than the thousands of lives lost in the "decent interval."
That makes Nixon and Kissinger two of the bloodiest back stabbers in American history. They are Republicans.
Gary,
This blog doesn't lend itself to the lengthy exposition of complex situations, but I'll expand a bit. You could get the facts if you tried.
It wasn't the fragging incidents themselves that are statistically significant, but the fact that they took place and the use of this fact by the troops as a threat, tacit or explicit, to back up mission refusal and other acts of insubordination which broke the army.
Do some research and you'll see that it's not "utter nonsense", like your comment.
Acts of mutiny took place on a scale previously only encountered in revolutions. The first mutinies in 1968 were unit and platoon-level rejections of the order to fight. The army recorded 68 such mutinies that year. By 1970, in the 1st Air Cavalry Division alone, there were 35 acts of combat refusal. One military study concluded that combat refusal was "unlike mutinous outbreaks of the past, which were usually sporadic, short-lived events. The progressive unwillingness of American soldiers to fight to the point of open disobedience took place over a four-year period between 1968-71."
The 1968 combat refusals of individual units expanded to involve whole companies by the next year. The first reported mass mutiny was in the 196th Light Brigade in August 1969. Company A of the 3rd Battalion, down to 60 men from its original 150, had been pushing through Songchang Valley under heavy fire for five days when it refused an order to advance down a perilous mountain slope. Word of the mutiny spread rapidly. The New York Daily News ran a banner headline, "Sir, My Men Refuse To Go." The GI paper, The Bond, accurately noted, "It was an organized strike...A shaken brass relieved the company commander...but they did not charge the guys with anything. The Brass surrendered to the strength of the organized men."
This precedent--no court-martial for refusing to obey the order to fight, but the line officer relieved of his command--was the pattern for the rest of the war. Mass insubordination was not punished by an officer corps that lived in fear of its own men. Even the threat of punishment often backfired. In one famous incident, B Company of the 1st Battalion of the 12th Infantry refused an order to proceed into NLF-held territory. When they were threatened with court-martials, other platoons rallied to their support and refused orders to advance until the army backed down.
General Peter Schoomaker, the Army’s top general [until Apr 10, 2007], served in the Vietnam-era Army. “I know what an Army that’s near broken smells like, what it looks like, how it acts,” he said in January. “Drug problems, race problems, insubordination—all kinds of things going on. We’re nowhere near anything like that.”
There you have it. The army in Vietnam was "near broken", unusable for continued suicidal offensive action, and this is what made continuation of the war impossible.
"This blog doesn't lend itself to the lengthy exposition of complex situations,"
True. Try my own blog comments. :-)
Don, I'll agree without hesitation that fraggings were a significant factor in the history of the Vietnam War; I didn't mean to suggest that they played no role. I merely meant that they did not, in and of themselves, win or lose the war. That's all. If you disagree with that, we disagree. I'm sure our lives will go on. :-)
Comments closed August 21, 2007.
| 
Heads in the Sand
The Dems/left/liberals/progressives don't realize it yet but they are going get tagged with the blame for the Iraq debacle. It's a done deal. No amount of pushback or careful explaining of the realities to the electorate will change it. Fox News is #1, besting the other networks. Talk radio is conservative by a huge percentage. The negative media onslaught will be withering and unrelenting. The public is going to be inundated with stories of the military being let down by the Left. When the military eventually breaks under the stress of multiple deployments, equipment breakdown, casualties and the inevitable squeeze on funding it will all be the fault of Democrats. Democrats need to start developing a strategy to deal with being the ones that lost the war. They're wasting time even thinking about how to assign proper blame to the Bush administration.
Posted by steve duncan | August 7, 2007 9:38 AM