wnyc.org / 93.9fm / am 820

Comments

• [1] George from Bay Ridge November 25, 2008 - 05:46AM

  One failure in Vietnam was a misunderstanding of the situation. We did not understand Vietnamese nationalism nor the willingness of the North Vietnamese to absorb casualties. The military was hampered by political micromanagement and flaws in doctrine - focusing on nuclear war and not on conventional tactics such as counterinsurgency and dogfighting. Finally, America was too blinded by our power and arrogance. To quote John Kerry in 1966, "To compound the problem, we continue to push forward our will only as we see it and in a fashion that only leads to more mistakes and deeper commitment. Where we should have instructed, it seems we did not; where we should have been patient, it seems we were not; where we should have stayed clear, it seems we would not. Never in the last twenty years has the government of the United States been as isolated as it is today."

  
  
• [2] RC November 25, 2008 - 12:01PM

  The other lesson is that we can't predict the future and we can't apply what happens in one part of the world (eastern europe) to another part of the world South East Asia. When Vietnam fell to the Communists, they went to war with China. Which was not predicted by Western policy makers.

  We maybe on the verge of making the same mistakes again by assuming that Iraq and Afganistan are the same.

  Also we used WW2 analogy in dealing with Iraq "Well saying we shouldn't fight Iraq after 911 is saying we shouldn't have fought Germany after Japan attacked us" Joe Lieberman basically said that. The better analogy would have been that we didn't fight the Nazi's and the Soviets at the same time.

  We need to drop the WW2 analogies since those wars are anomalies. Most wars are like the French in Algeria, USA in the Philippines, Somalia, and Vietnam. The British in their imperial conflicts.

  
  
• [3] KO from Westchester November 25, 2008 - 12:15PM

  MacNamara's book was not blasted for being too little too late but for being disingenuous. As for academia running Viet Nam, Bundy and MacNamara, let's not forget Kissinger's influence on JFK. Academics were a big part of the cluelessness of Washington's processing of the Viet Nam conflict.

  
  
• [4] Hugh from Crown Heights November 25, 2008 - 12:21PM

  Bundy was just as cynical and malevolent a manipulator when he was advising Presidents as he was at Harvard. The difference: his actions in public office resulted in deaths.

  That Gordon Goldstein seems compelled to pull his punches (presumably what passes for 'balance' in the delusion of American historical scholarship) doesn't speak well Goldstein's work.

  Likewise, Goldstein picks and chooses from the facts in exonerating Kennedy. OK, a hundred plus Americans dead by the end of the Kennedy administration. How many Vietnamese were dead? Tell us about Pinkville. Tell us about the use of napalm on civilian populations.

  
  
• [5] Scott Smith from Manhattan November 25, 2008 - 12:33PM

  It's interesting that Kennedy opposed Americanizing the war in Vietnam on the grounds that we could not defeat the Viet Cong because in actuality we did defeat the Viet Cong and in fact by 1971 the Viet Cong had ceased to function as a fighting force. The eventual defeat was at the hands of regular North Vietnamese forces, after the withdrawal of US military aid and air support (the south had repelled a previous invasion without US ground support).

  As for Laos, the role of Laos in Vietnam was like Pakistan today in the Afghan War. It is a territory from which the enemy launches attacks on our ally while being granted sanctuary from reprisal for political reasons.

  
  
• [6] Scott Smith from Manhattan November 25, 2008 - 12:40PM

  Does Goldstein cover disputes among the generals about HOW to conduct the war if was Americanized between the likes of Westmoreland on one hand and Johnson (Army Chief of Staff at the time) and Abrams?

  
  
• [7] Ben November 25, 2008 - 01:04PM

  Not a mistake, we didn't misunderstand. It's what happened when you had a right-wing coup d'etat by a racist military that "knew" that it could whip a bunch of small, yellow-skinned guys, no matter what the intelligence reports said.

  
  
• [8] Susan November 25, 2008 - 01:55PM

  Important historical context and references were not part of the interview and should have been. As early as 1955, Graham Greene called attention to the presence of the US in Vietnam in The Quiet American. The American of the title was a CIA operative, who was laying the groundwork for a more extensive US presence in Indochine/ Vietnam. Knowing that France, the colonial power, was going to withdraw from Vietnam, the US was planning to fill in the vacuum; it was a great opportunity to extend US power in the "Far East"; to fashion a bulwark against the expansion of Communism, our constant foreign policy concern. (As you will recall, Greene was immersed in Indochine politics and was stationed in Saigon from 1951--1954. The account that he gives of Saigon and the war being fought in Vietnam-- is an eyewitness report -of course transformed into a marvelous novel-- of what was happening in 1955. Remember, too, that a fine film, The Quiet American, was released in 1958, three years after the book's publication [and in 2002 a new screen version with the book's title again used appeared]. Thus Vietnam, was long on the consciousness of policy makers before the US became overtly involved.

  
  
• [9] Susan November 25, 2008 - 01:56PM

  Apropos of dominoes. The use of this catchy phrase facilitated selling the war to the US population; dominoes, a game that most could visualize was a rhetorical device, the type that Orwell had long ago alerted us to beware of. Kissinger and others of his ilk intoning about the necessity of standing strong, upright, like a dominoe? [silly but saleable], otherwise all of southeast Asia would fall like dominoes, one country knocking down the next, and so forth, until the entire area was flattened and became commmunist and the Free World would disappear in the Manichean struggle of the Titans. No, I am not a political scientist, but I still have a memory.

  
  
• [10] DAT from Nathan Straus Projects November 25, 2008 - 03:08PM

  The Mailman knocked on

  my door and delivered

  the DVD I had ordered.

  Winter Soldier is the title.

  It is an account by actual combat

  Vietnam Soldiers of the atrocities

  they witnessed and committed.

  Regardless of who was wrong and who was right,

  viewing Winter Soldiers, brings home the

  fact, that Vietnam permanently damaged

  those combat veterans.

  I wonder about their families,

  wives and children, how they were able

  to cope with the human wreckage left

  by the Vietnam War.

  I don't know how they were able to fit into

  "normal" society again.

  One guy says,

  " I didn't like being an animal,

  and I didn't like seeing everybody else

  turn into an animal either."

  Another admits to being the soldier

  in smiling next to the body of a Vietnamese

  man and he says

  "Don't ever let your goverment do this to you."

  http://www.wintersoldierfilm.com/

  I think we are still recovering from this

  War.