Last modified: Fri Oct 24 00:45:04 EDT 2003
I've been reading Robert McNamara's 1995 book "In Retrospect: The Tragedy and Lessons of Vietnam". It's terribly written, and it has the stench of self-righteousness about it, but it has these occasional moments of illumination. This one is a quote from a speech that LBJ gave before the American Bar Association in NYC on August 12, 1964, immediately after the passage of the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, which paved the way for massive escalation in Vietnam. LBJ said:
Since the end of World War II, ... we have patiently labored to construct a world order in which peace and freedom could flourish.We have lived so long with crisis and danger that we accept, almost without division, the premise of American concern for threats to [that] order...
We have done this because we have, at painful cost, learned that we can no longer wait for the tides of conflict to touch our shores. Aggression and upheaval, in any part of the world, carry the seeds of destruction to our own freedom and perhaps to civilization itself.
We have done this, lastly, for a reason that is often difficult for others to understand. We have done it because it is right that we should.
Friendly cynics and fierce enemies alike often underestimate or ignore the strong thread of moral purpose which runs through the fabric of American history.
Of course, security and welfare shape our policies. But much of the energy of our efforts has come from moral purpose.
It is right that the strong should help the weak defend their freedom.
It is right that nations should be free from the coercion of others.
Source: Public Papers, Lyndon B. Johnson, 1963-1964, p952.
We have done this because we have, at painful cost, learned that we can no longer wait for the tides of conflict to touch our shores. Aggression and upheaval, in any part of the world, carry the seeds of destruction to our own freedom...
Doesn't this sound like George W. Bush's justification for preemptive war?
We have done this, lastly, for a reason that is often difficult for others to understand. We have done it because it is right that we should.
Doesn't this sound like GWB's plea that we should liberate the people of Iraq from the tyrant, Saddam Hussein?
The Gulf of Tonkin Resolution gave LBJ the authorization he needed to escalate the conflict in Vietnam to (ultimately) 500,000 U.S. soldiers. The casualty counts:
| Country | Killed | Wounded | Missing |
|---|---|---|---|
| United States | 47,378 | 304,704 | 2,338 |
| South Vietnam | 223,748 | 1,169,763 | unknown |
| North Vietnam/ VietCong | 1,100,000 | 600,000 | unknown |
|
| |||
As I write this, the war on Iraq has officially been "over" for about 6 weeks. There is chaos in Baghdad, the country is at "Orange Alert" status and there have been recent suicide bombings in Riyadh, Pakistan and Casablanca attributed to al-Qa'eda. It's become clear that the Bush administration grossly underestimated the magnitude of the post-war peacekeeping and "nation building" efforts in Iraq. The U.S. is alienated from its traditional allies and the U.N. has become irrelevant. This war was as ill-conceived as the war in Vietnam, and we seem headed for a similar quagmire.