Getting Beyond Stalemate to Win a War

[Stuart]

My personal view is that Vietnam, like Iraq today was mainly about personal vanity and domestic political ambition.

I've often wondered if there was a religious element in there as well. I don't think its a coincidence that JFK was the first Roman Catholic president and Vietnam was about the only place in SE Asia where Romoan Catholicism was actually a significant political force. Domestic politics had a lot to do with that as well; Kennedy had won the election on the basis that a new, pro-active policy to defeat communism was needed and he had to deliver on that. That meant he had to re-create the U.S. Army that had been deliberately run down under Eisenhower (explicitly to prevent the growth of things like Vietnam) and that had dire impacts on the rest of the US defense structure.

I have, and it's terrible. Considering that I'm a fan of Lind's other books, I was surprised how bad it was.

Terrible is a big overstatement. Its poorly written certainly and, like every other book of its kind, its a mixture of valuable insight, mindless trivia and crashing errors. It does give a valaubel insight into why Vietnam was fought though and how great powers interact. (By the way, I think the US intervention was idiotic but that's another matter).

First of all, Eisenhower wasn't the first to screw with Vietnam.

Actually Eisenhower didn't screw with Vietnam at all. His attitude was that it was a pestilential hell-hole that could be left to its own devices. The US ally in the area was Thailand - where the US did make a major investment. For example, the air defense system given to Thailand by the US was actually superior (technically) to the one supplied to Europe. Eisenhower's basic philosophy on the area was that Vietnam didn't matter and if communist activities there caused trouble, the Thais could handle it.

That dis-honor belongs to Harry Truman.

That was probably more a question of timing than anything else; it coincided with the Korean War and the two seemed linked. From the perspective of the time, Vietnam and Korea seemed to be two halves of the same basic strategy. That's something important to bear in mind; when looking back at these events, its important to do so with the eyes of the time, not with the eyes and information resources of today.

Kennedy, Johnson and Nixon kept upping the ante, but it had zilch to do with foreign policy and everything to do with not being the one left holding the bag. But they weren't the ones who started the lunacy, they just piled on.

Of course it had to do with foreign policy, it was perceived as having everything to do with foreign policy. The problem was that the basic presumptions were wrong. Be that as it may, the mistake was getting involved in the first place. That falls solidly upon Kennedy and his clique. Who were Democrats by the way.

[Darth Wong]

Even if they did recruit from outside their borders, they would make sure to recruit people who are sympathetic to their way of looking at things, thus defeating the purpose.

Not so, from personal experience that's definately not the case. What happens is that as contrary opinions go up the food chain they get diluted at each step until they bear no relation to what was originally said. "This is a damned stupid idea" gets diluted to "this isn't a good idea" to "there are problems with this idea" to "although interesting, this idea has some problems' to "this idea is fundamentally good but has problems" to "this is a good idea with some minor difficulties" to "this is a good idea"

Is this a conscious ass-kissing process, or is it a problem of people reflexively applying some sort of "rah rah USA" filter to everything they see?

A very smart lady. The problem with Sun Tzu (if he was one person; I've read theories that 'Sun Tzu' was actually the Chinese equivalent of the General Staff) is that he isn't American. If his name had been Billie-Bob Kravitz, he'd be a lot more widely accepted. You're right on Vietnam, it runs back to the time thing I mentioned earlier. The US can support a war for 5 years, no more. If it isn't won in that time then the US wants out. Casualties don't matter, cost doesn't matter, time does matter. That's pretty finely understood at a lot of high levels hence the US formulation of ideal strategy (devastate, defeat and didimau). Oddly that is a pretty good strategy for handling the so-called "Arab way of war" which is essentially a war of raiding. So we raid back doing what we're good at - blowing things up.

Once that five-year limit is born in mind, a lot of things become much clearer. That was the original thought behind the much-misquoted "exit strategy". The original concept behind that phrase was "we know we have to get out in five years time at most. So what do we have to do to make sure we've won within that time limit and can thus leave".

That's a pretty good question

So what do these people think they're accomplishing when they start talking about a "long war" and getting the public to support it, when they know the public won't? Just Quixotic tilting at windmills? Wishful thinking? Sheer stupidity?

[Stuart]

Is this a conscious ass-kissing process, or is it a problem of people reflexively applying some sort of "rah rah USA" filter to everything they see?

Neither really, its bureaucracy at work. At the worker-ant level we tend to call things more or less the way we see them. After all, the worst the Government can do to us is not renew the study contract. However, as we go up the food chain, each bureaucrat wants to cover his ass so he does that by padding the comment he received from below, adding his own qualifications and reservations so that if nausea ensues, he can point to his addition and say "see, I tried to warn you". The cumulative effect is as described. Its common to all bureacracies but the USA is worse at this than most. Why, is an interesting question.

So what do these people think they're accomplishing when they start talking about a "long war" and getting the public to support it, when they know the public won't? Just Quixotic tilting at windmills? Wishful thinking? Sheer stupidity?

Somebody think? In a government office? That'll be a first

Seriously, all of the above. Wishful thinking was a good part of it; they assumed that the event of an attack on US soil would offset the five year limit. It didn't and won't. They went to Pearl Harbor as an example and forgot that 1941-45 was effectively four years and the USA was very war-weary by 1945. It's not polite to mention it, but Japan might just have pulled off their strategic objective, kept going until the US ran out of the will to fight. I don't think in WW2 the US could have kept going much beyond the end of 1946. But, GWB isn't the sharpest tool in the drawer historically speaking, he probably went with the popular version and decided that he could re-create the national consensus that "existed" in 1942-45