AMERICAN FUTURE

When American troops returned home from Vietnam, they were, at best, ignored, and at worst, often treated as if they were carriers of some sort of communicable disease and despised (I’m old enough to remember this). On the other hand, our troops coming back from Iraq are treated with the respect they deserve, even by people who opposed the Iraq invasion.

What’s particularly interesting about this difference is that most of the returning soldiers from Vietnam had been drafted (and, therefore, couldn’t be “blamed” for participating in that war), while all of those coming back from Iraq volunteered to serve in the military. So, if anything, one might argue that there’s more of a reason for the Iraq returnees to be mistreated.

I have absolutely no explanation for this very perceptible difference. If you do, please add your comment to this post.

General David H. Petraeus will soon become the senior U.S. military commander in Iraq. Last Sunday’s Washington Post published excerpts from his 1987 PhD thesis for Princeton’s Woodrow Wilson School titled “The American Military and the Lessons of Vietnam: A Study of Military Influence and the Use of Force in the Post-Vietnam Era.” The following are my selections from the Post’s excerpts:

On war and public opinion

Vietnam was an extremely painful reminder that when it comes to intervention, time and patience are not American virtues in abundant supply. . . .

The military want to avoid what former Army Chief of Staff E.C. Meyer termed the Vietnam mistake of “putting soldiers out at the end of a string” without the full support of the American people. Since time is crucial, furthermore, sufficient force must be used at the outset to ensure that the conflict can be resolved before the American people withdraw their support for it. Nothing succeeds with the American public like success, the military realize; the sooner the mission is accomplished, the better.

On fighting insurgencies

Vietnam planted in the minds of many in the military doubts about the ability of U.S. forces to conduct successful large-scale counterinsurgencies. These misgivings do not in all cases spring from doubts about the capabilities of American troops and units per se. . . .

Rather, the doubts that are part of the Vietnam legacy spring from a number of interrelated factors: the previously noted worries about a lack of popular support for what the public might perceive as ambiguous conflicts; suspicions about the willingness of civilian policy-makers—not just those in the executive branch—to stay the course; and lurking fears that the respective services have yet to come to grips with the difficult tasks of developing the doctrine, equipment, and forces suitable for nasty “little” wars. . . .

Others, who believe that the U.S. could develop suitable American forces for counterinsurgency operations, have doubts about the existing capabilities of U.S. units in this area. As one U.S. officer put it, “I submit that the U.S. Army does not have the mind-set for combat operations where the key terrain is the mind, not the high ground. We do not take the time to understand the nature of the society in which we are fighting, the government we are supporting, or the enemy we are fighting.”

On civilian officials

Very importantly, many in the military believe that the United States armed forces can win small wars if allowed to do so. Those who hold this view tend to believe that Vietnam was less an illustration of the limitations of American military power than an example of what happens if that power is limited and not used to best advantage. This feeling springs from conviction that the U.S. military in Vietnam were so hemmed in by restrictions that they could not accomplish their mission. The lesson for those of this persuasion, therefore, is that the military must be given a freer hand in future military operations. Even among the most fervent believers in this logic, however, there is a new recognition that the world is more intractable, and intervention with U.S. troops more problematic. . . .

The military also took from Vietnam (and the concomitant activities in the Pentagon) a heightened awareness that civilian officials are responsive to influences other than the objective conditions on the battlefield. A consequence has been an increase in the traditional military distrust of civilian political leaders. . . . While the military still accept emphatically the constitutional provision for civilian control of the armed forces, there remain from the Vietnam era nagging doubts about the abilities and motivations of politicians and those they appoint to key positions. Vietnam was a painful reminder for the military that they, not the transient occupants of high office, generally bear the heaviest burden during armed conflict.

H/T: Military Quotes

Escalation. The word that more than any other brings back memories of the Vietnam war was used in an article in today’s Washington Post on the deployment of additional troops to Iraq:

There are already signs that a limited U.S. escalation, even when complemented by new political and economic steps, may not satisfy either supporters or critics of a surge. Pentagon officials and military experts say far more troops are needed to make a real difference, but the United States would have to remobilize reserves, extend current tours of duty and accelerate planned deployments just to come up with 20,000 troops, U.S. officials say. And such a surge would strap the military for other potential crises, they add.

The article quotes President Bush as pledging to make sure that the mission is “clear and specific and can be accomplished.” While the nature of the mission has yet to be made public, it’s reasonably clear that it will be defensive: to improve security in Baghdad.

Assuming this to be the case, I find the Post’s use of the word “escalation” to be misleading. During the Vietnam war, it was used to describe increases in the offensive capabilities of U.S. forces. Adding troops allowed the U.S. to increase the size, number, and frequency of its “search-and-destroy” operations. “Escalation” also referred to increases in the range and lethality of U.S. operations—for instance, expanding the bombing of North Vietnam.

By its choice of words, the Post is making an unfortunate, bogus comparison that could influence the perceptions of the tens of millions of Americans who know that Vietnam involved a number of escalations but are unaware of exactly what “escalation” meant in the context of that war.

Reihan over at The American Scene highlights an interesting Foreign Policy essay claiming that mankind entertains an instinctive bias in favor of hawkish analysis:

Social and cognitive psychologists have identified a number of predictable errors (psychologists call them biases) in the ways that humans judge situations and evaluate risks. Biases have been documented both in the laboratory and in the real world, mostly in situations that have no connection to international politics. For example, people are prone to exaggerating their strengths: About 80 percent of us believe that our driving skills are better than average. In situations of potential conflict, the same optimistic bias makes politicians and generals receptive to advisors who offer highly favorable estimates of the outcomes of war. Such a predisposition, often shared by leaders on both sides of a conflict, is likely to produce a disaster. And this is not an isolated example.

In fact, when we constructed a list of the biases uncovered in 40 years of psychological research, we were startled by what we found: All the biases in our list favor hawks. These psychological impulses—only a few of which we discuss here—incline national leaders to exaggerate the evil intentions of adversaries, to misjudge how adversaries perceive them, to be overly sanguine when hostilities start, and overly reluctant to make necessary concessions in negotiations. In short, these biases have the effect of making wars more likely to begin and more difficult to end.

Responding to this essay are Matt Continetti and Matt Yglesias. Continetti notes, correctly, that all of the biases attributed to hawks can also be attributed to doves.

Yet why do only the fundamental attribution errors of hawks lead to “pernicious” effects? Doves share the same bias; it just works in different ways. If hawks treat hostile behavior at face value when they shouldn’t, so too do doves treat docility. Those who championed the 1973 accords ending the Vietnam War saw them as a chance for the United States to leave Vietnam while preserving the sovereignty of the south. But to North Vietnamese eyes, the cease-fire was merely an opportunity to consolidate their forces for the final seizure of the south, which happened a mere two years later.

The second hawk bias Kahneman and Renshon identify is “excessive optimism,” which the authors speculate “led American policymakers astray as they laid the groundwork for the current war in Iraq.” Yet prior to the war in Iraq, some hawks worried that Saddam Hussein might set oil fields ablaze, as he had done in 1991. They worried that he might launch missiles against American allies in the region, that his removal might be long and bloody, and that post-Saddam Iraq would face humanitarian crises of great magnitude. Doves optimistically argued that Saddam could be “contained” even as the sanctions against him were unraveling and as America’s military presence in Saudi Arabia became increasingly untenable.

Continetti then closes by highlighting a glaring omission:

Still, psychological errors are neither the lone nor the most important cause behind policymakers’ reluctance to “cut their losses.” Considerations of honor also play a factor, as do aspirations to glory—two concepts that go unmentioned in our social sciences (because they are difficult to quantify) and in our foreign-policy debate (because they are out of intellectual fashion).

But these two ideas, along with power, ideology, weakness, morality, and interest, are central to any comprehensive understanding of international relations. And they are key to understanding whether hawks or doves triumph in a given policy debate. That Kahneman and Renshon mention none of them in their essay only undermines its persuasiveness.

Yglesias’s response seeks to use the article’s premises—that innate in man is an inclination towards hawkishness—to undermine hawkish arguments generally, and the hawkish argument against Iran in particular:

Unfortunately, Kahneman and Renshon shy away from pushing their psychological analysis into the policy domain, writing that “the clear evidence of a psychological bias in favor of aggressive outcomes … won’t point the international community in a clear direction on Iran or North Korea.” In fact, the implications are rather clear. As members of the Bush administration admit, the decision to rebuff repeated diplomatic initiatives from Tehran was probably influenced in part by irrational “reactive devaluation,” defined by the authors as “the very fact that a concession is offered by somebody perceived as untrustworthy undermines the content of the proposal.”

Many analysts, meanwhile, have raised serious questions about the American military’s capacity to seriously degrade the Iranian nuclear program. Hawks are predictably more optimistic. Strong evidence of a human bias toward overestimation of one’s own capabilities is obviously relevant to evaluating this dispute. Hawks seem unwilling to consider the possibility that Iran’s efforts on the nuclear front are motivated by fear of America’s threatening behavior rather than by Teheran’s desire to behave in an equally threatening way. This would appear to be a textbook manifestation of the authors’ observation that “even when people are aware of the context and possible constraints on someone’s behavior, they often do not factor it in when assessing the other side’s motives.” If hawkish psychological biases are widespread, and if all of those biases are in play in Iran’s case, then hawks’ arguments are significantly undermined.

Even if Continetti is incorrect and it is the case that mankind has an innate bias towards hawkish evaluation, Yglesias is still exactly wrong. What he seems not to understand, or at the very least elides, is that if hawkish psychological biases are widespread, then these biases are widespread everywhere.

If the hawkish bias is part of a universal human nature, then this bias also clouds the thinking of the ruling oligarchy of Iran—i.e. they see America, Israel, and the West as implacably hostile and dangerous and are overly optimistic about their strengths and our weaknesses. Worse, unlike American hawkish bias, the Iranian bias is undiluted by vociferous opposition, constitutional balances of power and prerogatives, democratic intelligence, freedom of information, or erudite foreign policy articles that call attention to man’s innate biases.

If the hawkish bias is widespread, then our enemies have it too. If our enemies have it—and have with it less restraint built into their national system—our hawkishness is justified.

I’ve lost track of the number of people who are vehemently arguing that the opinions and recommendations of those who supported the Iraq invasion (especially the neocons) regarding what the U.S. should now do in Iraq should either be ignored or instantly rejected. It’s reasonable to assume that the individuals who are asserting this opposed the war from the beginning. Their view, then, is that your initial position on the war is the litmus test for judging the value of your current thinking about our Iraq policy.

Lately, I’ve been reading (and re-reading) a lot about the Vietnam war. The most memorable book written while that war was still raging is David Halberstam’s The Best and the Brightest. Published in 1969, the book is a scathing critique of the rationale for, and the conduct of, the war. I read—consumed might be a better word—the book soon after its publication. I was strongly opposed to the war; I felt that it was a vindication of my antiwar stance. Thus, I can confidently say that individuals who are now opining that the views of those who favored the invasion of Iraq should be dismissed would consider Halberstam to be a kindred soul.

They would undoubtedly be surprised to learn that, as late as 1965, Halberstam opposed both the neutralization of Vietnam (a position that was then sympathetically considered by such luminaries as Walter Lippmann and James Reston) and the withdrawal of American troops from Vietnam. In that year, this is what Halberstam said in The Making of a Quagmire about these two policy alternatives:

The basic alternatives for Vietnam are the same now as they were in 1961: they are no different, no more palatable, no less of a nightmare.

First, there is a great deal of talk about the possibility of a neutral Vietnam. But under present conditions this is out of the question . . . The first step toward a neutral Vietnam would undoubtedly be the withdrawal of all U.S. forces in the country and a cutback in American military aid; this would create a vacuum so that the Communists, the only truly organized force in the South, could subvert the country at their leisure . . . There would simply be no force to resist them, and if Hanoi offered us and the South Vietnamese a neutral solution, it would only mean a way of saving face for the United States.

What about withdrawal? Few Americans who have served in Vietnam can stomach this idea. It means that those who committed themselves fully to the United States will suffer the most under a Communist government, while we lucky few with blue passports retire unharmed; it means a drab, lifeless and controlled society for a people who deserve better. Withdrawal also means that the United States’ prestige will be lowered throughout the world, and it means that the pressure of Communism on the rest of Southeast Asia will intensify. Lastly, withdrawal means that throughout the world the enemies of the West will be encouraged to try insurgencies like the one in Vietnam.

The Halberstam of 1965 was against a face-saving policy, worried about the fate of the South Vietnamese who supported the U.S., concerned about American prestige, and feared the spread of Communism and insurgencies. He bought into the domino theory. He was a hawk.

I hadn’t read his earlier book (in fact, I didn’t know that it existed); consequently I was unaware that the dovish Halberstam of 1969 had once been a hawk. I suspect that few people had read it, as Vietnam wasn’t nearly as significant an issue in 1965 as it later was to become. Had I read The Making of a Quagmire, would I have dismissed what he said four years later? I would like to think that I wouldn’t have, recognizing that the events of the intervening years provided sufficient reason for him to have changed his mind. I would also like to think that those who now automatically reject the views of supporters of the Iraq invasion, upon further reflection, will reach the same conclusion.

Read side-by-side, commentaries by Dennis Byrne of the Chicago Tribune and Matthew Parris of The Times of London, are sufficient to make one believe in history repeating itself.

Dennis Byrne, “ISG Prescribes Vietnam All Over Again”

“...[Y]ou have my assurance of continued assistance in the post-settlement period and that we will respond with full force should the settlement be violated by North Vietnam.”

That was a pledge by President Richard M. Nixon to Republic of South Vietnam President Nguyen Van Thieu that the United States would not abandon his nation, if he would only cooperate in negotiations with North Vietnam to end the war.

Nixon’s word wasn’t worth crap.

Nor, obviously, is our word to the Iraqi people, if the Iraqi Study Group has its way. We betrayed millions of people by abandoning our principles and trashing our promises when we stood by—willingly and intentionally—as South Vietnam fell to the tyranny of North Vietnam. Now, as the ISG provides us with intellectual cover for weaseling our way out of Iraq, we’re about to do the same to the Iraqi people.

[ . . . ]

At least the Iraq Study Group hasn’t asked Iraqis to believe the same kind of outright lie that Nixon told the Vietnamese. No, the ISG’s lie is much subtler. First, the group asks us to believe that Iran, America’s most implacable foe, would negotiate in good faith, be true to its word and do us a gigantic favor of facilitating our graceful and face-saving exit from Iraq. Only fools would believe such things could happen and the ISG members are no fools.

Second, the ISG never gets around to saying what the U.S. should do if the negotiations fail . . . The ISG wants to give a role in determining Iraq’s future to a country it fought a bloody war against involving the use of chemical weapons, which has a hand in causing today’s turmoil and which has no commitment to freedom, self-determination and democracy. Without resolute American backing, the Iraqi people are being thrown to wolves fighting over a juicy carcass. In these unfavorable circumstances, the ISG expects Iraq to take control of its own fate.

Left unsaid is what the American goal should be in any negotiations. In its absence, we’re left to assume that only thing the ISG wants for us is our departure. Honorable or not, it makes no difference to the ISG.

Matthew Parris, “If We’ve Lost, Shouldn’t We Just Say So?”

Tony Blair will like the Baker report. It is shallow and dishonest. It shows how to weasel a way out of trouble and leave former friends to fall, undefended, by the wayside. It suggests how blame may be shifted onto hapless Iraqi ministers, and fatuous “milestones” and “timetables” confected with a view to their being demonstrably missed . . . something rises in my gorge at the moral and intellectual shabbiness of the exercise. If we have lost this war, and with it the likely capacity to forestall the vacuum that our defeat will surely leave behind, shouldn’t we just say so?

If you seek the weakest link in an argument — the premise in which its authors feel least confidence — look for the proposition they assert most often . . . Six times in the slim Iraq Study Group report . . . the assertion that Iraq’s neighbours cannot desire chaos to continue is repeated. “No country in the region will benefit in the long term from a chaotic Iraq,” say the authors, repeatedly, in many different ways. The Baker group just cannot leave this supposition alone. They know it is hollow.

If however you seek the strongest link in an argument — the proposition its authors know to be the brutal truth — look for what they touch on most lightly: the whisper, the oh-by-the-way remark.

Only once do Baker and Hamilton engage with the cruelest question. They answer it quickly, flatly — and move on. “If,” they say, “the Iraqi Government does not make substantial progress toward the achievement of milestones on national reconciliation, security, and governance, the United States should reduce its political, military, or economic support for the Iraqi Government.”

Well that’s it, then — isn’t it? Never mind the other 78 recommendations: that’s all we need to know. Given that it is not the case that Iraq’s neighbours want to quit troublemaking, and given that, unless they do, a feeble government in Baghdad will be unable to reassert control, the ISG report is really about a timetable for American withdrawal. The withdrawal is finally unconditional. Baker says so.

[ . . . ]

Notice, not only in James Baker’s but also in Tony Blair’s and George W. Bush’s remarks, a newly reproachful tenor in bewailing the Iraqi administration’s “failure to take control” of militias or “root out corruption” in the police. As though it could. As though the thought simply hadn’t occurred in Baghdad that this might be a good idea. As though that al-Maliki fellow just needs boxing about the ears to get up off his backside, reconcile his warring countrymen, find out who those shockingly corrupt policemen are and sack them — and then sort out the security situation. Goodness me — we never thought of that!

I do find this odious. Those in the Government in Baghdad are at their wits’ end and sinking: powerless to defeat what they hardly need Baker to tell them are the causes of the disaster unwinding on their doorsteps. They and their problems are the creation of British and American policy and if Mr al-Maliki’s Government cannot achieve what Britain and America want in Iraq, it ill-behooves us to establish (in Baker’s phrase) “milestones” for him to reach, to rail at him when he fails to reach them, and then to walk out in disgust at the lack of progress — as though only the Iraqi administration’s foolish shortcomings had cheated the Forces of Freedom of victory.

[ . . . ]

Forgive me, fellow peaceniks. I do realise we ought to be commending this ISG report. It will take our governments where we know they have to go. It will offer a ladder for Mr Blair and Mr Bush to climb down and, heaven knows, a climbdown is what has to happen next. We should be playing along with the elderly diplomatist’s game, grunting admiringly about Mr Baker’s “realism”, and fuming at the White House’s resistance to his conclusions.

[ . . . ]

The plan itself won’t work. As the BBC’s eloquent and curiously underrated Washington correspondent, Justin Webb, put it on the radio this week, “it is the tone” not the detail of Baker’s report that is important and new. That’s true. The tone says: “We’ve lost.” The tone says: “We should have seen this coming.” The tone says: “All we can do now is play a losing hand.”

But Mr Baker has, and furious neocons realise it too. The term realpolitik has become a cliché in media treatment of the ISG report this week but the irony is this: Baker’s conclusions are anything but realistic: they represent unrealism of the most fanciful kind. His route map is to La-la Land. He knows it. His report is the sugar. The pill is Defeat.

I readily admit to being among those who have long believed that, for the most part, the MSM has been biased against the Iraq war, this bias has had a substantial impact on public opinion, and the erosion of the public’s support for the war, by contributing to the narrowing of policy options available to the Bush Administration, has been one of the factors hindering an effective prosecution of the war. This belief has no doubt been influenced by one of the seminal experiences of my youth. As a young adult in January 1968, I well recall the Vietcong’s Tet Offensive and the media’s harsh reaction to it. My recollection that Tet had an immediate, sharply negative impact on public opinion was seemingly substantiated by a recent op-ed in the New York Times. In that commentary, the authors said that, in Tet’s aftermath,

Approval of President Lyndon B. Johnson’s handling of the war slipped to a low of 26 percent. Before Tet, 58 percent of Americans described themselves as “hawks” who wanted to step up American military involvement in the war, while 26 percent described themselves as “doves” seeking to reduce it. Two months after Tet, doves narrowly outnumbered hawks.

No doubt because the statistics conformed to my memories of that time—perhaps better said, to my preconceived notions—I glossed over two things: specific dates were not cited, and the statistics intermingled the answers to two quite different questions: how well LBJ was handling the war and hawks versus doves.

I had yet to pay attention to these shortcomings when I started the research for this post. I anticipated that, by digging into the past, I would uncover evidence supporting both the findings reported in the op-ed and my personal recollections. Had I found what I thought I would find, I would then be able to add to the body of opinion that has indicted and convicted the MSM for its role in the Iraq war.

It didn’t turn out that way. Wandering my way through the archives of the New York Times and TIME magazine (not to mention Walter Cronkite’s televised editorial of February 27, 1968), I found plenty of examples of negatively-slanted reporting, op-eds, and editorials. If the media had a profound effect on public opinion, it should have been visible in the results of polls taken in the first few weeks and months after Tet. Support for the war, which was declining before Tet, should have eroded at a quicker pace after the Vietcong’s offensive. The fact is, however, that opposition to the war did not grow at an accelerating rate after Tet. Accordingly, it simply can’t be argued that the print and television media had a measurable impact on the public’s perceptions and attitudes.

During the Iraq war, there has been no single military event as prominent as was Tet. In terms of the intensity of media coverage, the Abu Ghraib scandal probably stands at the top of the list. Abu Ghraib, however, was a self-inflicted wound; it was not an occurrence initiated by the enemy. As a result of my research, then, I’m no longer willing to accept as a self-evident truth the notion that the bias of the media, undeniable as it may be, has fueled the rising disenchantment with the war. As someone who has been a frequent, harsh critic of the editorial position of the New York Times (and others), this change in my viewpoint is anguish-inducing. But facts are facts.

Tet did have an effect on opinion, but it was on government, not public opinion. A considerable number of senators, generals and elder statesmen (for instance, Dean Acheson) who served as informal advisers to LBJ who had previously supported the war and the manner in which it was being prosecuted suddenly had severe misgivings. It would be a severe stretch to attribute their changes of heart to the media’s reaction to Tet. Instead, Tet called into question the validity of assumptions that had long been taken for granted, including the efficacy of America’s military strategy, the precise nature of the U.S. commitment to the South Vietnamese government, the capabilities of the Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN), and the ability of South Vietnam’s political leaders to gain the allegiance of the people they ruled.

Tet brought to the surface questions that are remarkably similar to those now being asked within government circles about Iraq. Less than a month after Tet began, there was a new Secretary of Defense and the beginning of a reappraisal of Vietnam policy. As an instigator of change, it might be said that the the threat—and subsequent reality—of Democrats taking control of the House and Senate is to Iraq what Tet was to Vietnam.

This post is quite different from what it was intended to be. I expected it to substantiate the view that the media has a large impact on public opinion. Instead, it provides evidence to the contrary. In addition—and I think, more importantly—it documents the changes in government opinion and Vietnam policy and notes the several similarities between the events of the first few weeks after Tet and the current ground swell of support for a “course change” in Iraq.

HOW THE MEDIA REACTED TO TET

The first report of the Tet offensive, published on January 30, said that “American forces seemed dismayed at the success of the closely coordinated attacks” and that an American spokesman said “This isn’t infiltration anymore . . . It is an invasion.” The next day, the Vietcong, wearing South Vietnamese Army uniform, seized parts of the U.S. embassy in Saigon and held them for six hours. Despite prior public warnings by the Saigon police, “the raid seemed to have caught both the Americans and the South Vietnamese by surprise . . . There were no tanks or heavy weapons to meet the enemy.” The raid also took the Johnson Administration by surprise.

On February 1, the Times reported on the views of American intelligence officials and the Pentagon:

United States intelligence officials believe that the enemy hopes to foster war-weariness; to strengthen opposition to the war in the United States and in South Vietnam, and to force the allies to enter negotiations at a disadvantage . . . The over-all strategy of the enemy, as interpreted in the Pentagon, is aimed primarily at political and psychological objectives. The terrorist attacks in Saigon and elsewhere were intended as “headline-grabbers” . . . and to impress United States and South Vietnam public opinion with the enemy’s strength . . . The “one-shot” efforts were launched in most cases by terrorist or sapper squads, also called “suicide squads” . . . As the military see the situation, the widespread Vietcong attacks resulted in a loss of face for the United States and South Vietnam and will have intangible political and psychological effects.

The parallels between this assessment of the Vietcong’s objectives and those of today’s Iraqi insurgents are striking. The goals and the tactics—surprise, terrorism and the use of “suicide squads”—are the same. The difference is that, instead of a sudden, massive escalation of the level of violence against civilians, the Iraqi insurgents have steadily increased the level of violence over a protracted period of time.

The tone of editorials and op-eds published by the Times during the first four days of February were decidedly pessimistic:

• In the first of its editorials, the Times talked about the “limitations” of American power, criticized the optimistic assessments made by U.S. officials in November 1967, and predicted a longer, harder war:

The enemy’s Tet offensive . . . offers further painful proof of the limitations of American power in Asia . . . the Communists have undermined the optimism about the course of the war voiced in Saigon and Washington within the last few months. These are not the deeds of an enemy who fighting efficiency has “progressively declined” and whose morale is “sinking fast,” as United States military officials put it in November. Enemy initiatives inside South Vietnam and along its borders suggest that the United States and its allies cannot yet be said with accuracy to be “winning” . . . The Communists surprising capacity and will to mobilize and to strike . . . suggest that the road to a clear-cut military victory, if that is the road chosen, will be longer and costlier and will require substantially more troops than the Administration has yet admitted, perhaps even to itself.

• In a distant echo of the differing perspectives on the course of the Iraq war, the Times, in its second editorial, took note of the growing ranks of Congressional “doves,” who were deeply disturbed by Tet, and the Johnson Administration’s “hawks,” who denied that Tet was a military setback for the U.S. This editorial brings to mind Vice President Cheney’s remark that heightened violence in Iraq indicated that the insurgency was on its last legs.

Doves tended to believe that their criticism of the war was sustained, while hawks suggested that the wave of terrorism would prove to be a last desperate effort by defeated men . . . Among numerous middle-of-the-roaders who had tended to support the Administration, there was a current of shock and amazement. “What happened?” one Senator demanded. “I thought we were supposed to be winning this war.” “This is really disturbing,” a Southern Democratic member of Congress said. “We’ve been led to believe we were on top of things militarily and past the stage when we were subject to this kind of thing” . . . Officially, the Administration presented an undisturbed face. Gen. Earle G. Wheeler, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff [said that] “the enemy effort has not been successful.”

• While it was willing to admit that the “lasting military effects of these daring enemy thrusts may be relatively slight, as U.S. military authorities predict, the third editorial questioned the credibility of the Administration and the soundness of the American Vietnam strategy. Of particular interest is its skepticism regarding the South Vietnam government, which sounds very much like today’s unease regarding the Maliki government.

The enemy’s Tet offensive has been dismissed by some American officials as a “one-shot effort,” a “psychological gambit,” a “diversionary tactic” and anticipated fireworks. Although the full scope and impact . . . cannot yet be measured, it is evidently far more serious than any or all of these assessments acknowledge . . . Initial Communist successes throw doubt on recent official American claims of progress in the war and “pacification” efforts, undermine faith in the efficacy of allied military and political strategy and raise serious questions concerning the competence of the South Vietnamese Government and its armed forces, which had responsibility for defense of the cities . . . It is in their political effects that this week’s stunning Communist successes are potentially most damaging. Ambassador Bunker’s assumption that the South Vietnamese people will resent the Vietcong attacks and that the offensive will hurt the enemy politically is surely wishful thinking . . . the central problem in South Vietnam remains internal and political. This week’s Communist victories are indicative of the weakness of the political structure on which the American military effort in Vietnam is based, and threaten to compound that weakness.

• In its fourth editorial in as many days, the Times averred that the inescapable problem in Vietnam had been “put bluntly” by outgoing Defense Secretary McNamera (who was replaced by Clark Clifford), who said “This total effort is one in which the people of South Vietnam must play the primary role. No matter how great be the resources we commit to the struggle, we cannot provide the South Vietnamese with the will to survive . . .” In an op-ed published on the same day, James Reston added that “The dramatic events of the last few days have given [Washington] the feeling of dealing with something wholly alien and inexplicable and therefore with forces entirely unpredictable.” Both the editorial and the op-ed have an eerily familiar ring.

• Only nine days after the Tet offensive began, the Times was calling the war a stalemate and advocating a negotiated settlement:

The Administration’s organized optimism over the “failure” of the Vietcong’s Tet offensive is unfortunately ill-founded . . . even if the military side of the Communist “general offensive” achieves little against American power—as is to be expected—the more serious political, administrative and psychological effects have yet to be assessed . . . The psychological damage is tremendous . . . the Saigon Government and its Army have been exposed in all their weakness . . . Politically as well as militarily, stalemate appears as the unavoidable outcome of the Vietnam struggle . . . A negotiated settlement seeking a political accommodation under international supervision remains the alternative to a prolonged war of attrition, a war that neither side can win.

The themes of (1) governmental optimism that lacked credibility, (2) the limitations of American military power, (3) the weakness of the client state and its army, (4) “winning” being beyond our reach, and (5) the involvement of other parties in negotiations are as much a part of the current conversation about Iraq as they were 38 years ago in the aftermath of Tet.

For their part, U.S. Government officials, including Vice President Humphrey, persisted in an efforts to reassure a worried public. On February 17—nine days after the last of the quoted Times editorials—officials, while admitting that the offensive had been “a major political and psychological victory for the enemy, particularly in Europe,” stated that the Vietcong had failed to achieve their objectives of “overthrowing the South Vietnamese Government and establishing control in many of the major cities.” Two days later, Ellsworth Bunker, the U.S. Ambassador to South Vietnam, declared that the allies were stronger than before Tet and that the ARVN had “turned in an excellent performance” in the recent fighting. A week later, General Westmoreland, the commander of U.S. forces in Vietnam, told Americans that the enemy had suffered a military defeat and advocated staying the course, saying that “I see no requirement to change our strategy.”

Walter Cronkite, who had recently returned from Vietnam, offered his huge audience a dramatically different perspective on February 27:

We have been too often disappointed by the optimism of the American leaders, both in Vietnam and Washington, to have faith any longer in the silver linings they find in the darkest clouds. They may be right, that Hanoi’s winter-spring offensive has been forced by the Communist realization that they could not win the longer war of attrition, and that the Communists hope that any success in the offensive will improve their position for eventual negotiations. It would improve their position, and it would also require our realization, that we should have had all along, that any negotiations must be that—negotiations, not the dictation of peace terms. For it seems now more certain than ever that the bloody experience of Vietnam is to end in a stalemate.

To say that we are closer to victory today is to believe, in the face of the evidence, the optimists who have been wrong in the past. To suggest we are on the edge of defeat is to yield to unreasonable pessimism. To say that we are mired in stalemate seems the only realistic, yet unsatisfactory, conclusion . . . it is increasingly clear to this reporter that the only rational way out then will be to negotiate, not as victors, but as an honorable people who lived up to their pledge to defend democracy, and did the best they could.

So did TIME. In a March 1 article, the magazine directly contradicted Humphrey, Bunker and Westmoreland:

At the uppermost levels of the Administration and the Pentagon, where optimism has been endemic from the war’s earliest days, officials were still trying to find something comforting in the recent Communist Tet offensive despite all of the evidence to the contrary. Vice President Hubert Humphrey declared that the Saigon regime “if anything has been strengthened by the attack,” and on TV the U.S. Ambassador to Saigon, Ellsworth Bunker, in effect agreed. Despite some qualifications made by both men, such statements sounded absurd.

The Wall Street Journal, which had been a firm supporter of the Administration’s war policies, had a sudden change of heart:

We think the American people should be getting ready to accept, if they haven’t already, the prospect that the whole Viet Nam effort may be doomed; it may be falling apart beneath our feet. The actual military situation may be making academic the philosophical arguments for the intervention in the first place.

Sometime during the first week of March, the Administration’s words took an ominous turn. Assistant Secretary of State William Bundy confirmed that there had been “a change in the basic strategy” of the North Vietnamese: “They have sent down a great deal more equipment [and men] . . . I see no easy end to this war.” The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, who had conferred with General Westmoreland, said “We must expect hard fighting to continue. The enemy retains substantial uncommitted resources.” The new Defense Secretary, Clark Clifford, and LBJ both said America would stay the course, with LBJ saying “I do not believe that America will ever buckle,” and there must be “no breaking of our trusted commitments, no weakening of will that would encourage the enemy and prolong the bloody conflict.

Here, too, there are distinct parallels with Iraq; specifically, Bush’s repeated assertion that we will stay in Iraq until “our mission is completed” and his continuing support for Prime Minister Maliki, notwithstanding the views expressed in National Security Adviser Hadley’s memo.

In its March 8 issue, Time concluded that “all the signs” indicated that LBJ was “once more going through the process of preparing the nation for news of a major notch-up in the war.” The notch-up came on March 9, when Westmoreland requested an additional 206,000 troops. At the time, there were 510,000 American soldiers and Marines in Vietnam.

The Times reacted by arguing that what was needed was a new strategy, not more troops:

If victory is to be the American objective, neither 50,000 nor 200,000 more American troops will be enough. But if the American aim is simply to deny victory to the Communists, to impose a stalemate that can only be resolved by a negotiated settlement – a settlement that accepts the Vietcong as a continuing political factor in the country – then a half-million American troops should be more than sufficient. What is needed is a new strategy designed to achieve this country’s limited objective with economy of force.

In his March 31 address to the nation—at the end of which he announced that he wouldn’t seek reelection, LBJ stated, as would President Bush decades later, that as our client’s forces stood up, ours would stand down:

Our presence [in South Vietnam] has always rested on this basic belief: The main burden of preserving their freedom must be carried out by them . . . We and our allies can only help to provide a shield behind which the people of South Vietnam can survive and can grow and develop. On their efforts – on their determinations and resourcefulness – the outcome will ultimately depend . . . We shall accelerate the re-equipment of South Vietnam’s armed forces in order to meet the enemy’s increased firepower. And this will enable them progressively undertake a larger share of combat operations against the Communist invaders.

HOW PUBLIC OPINION REACTED TO TET

By the end of March, there were plenty of reasons for a sizable increase in opposition to the war on the part of the American public. A significant segment of the center and center-right mainstream media—the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, TIME magazine, and CBS News’ Walter Cronkite—had put forth a lengthy list of concerns about the war and its prosecution.

• Most importantly, the seeds of what would become widely known as the “credibility gap” had been planted and disseminated. The Administration was criticized for his overly-optimistic pre-Tet assessments of the war and for its equally overstated optimism in the weeks following Tet.


• The Administration, by claiming (correctly) the enemy had failed to accomplish its objectives and had suffered a military defeat and the South Vietnamese forces had performed admirably. The media painted an entirely different picture: while conceding that the Vietcong had been defeated militarily, the media nonetheless decided (1) the enemy was stronger than previously believed, (2) winning the war was now out of the question, (3) the best that could be hoped for was a stalemate, (4) the U.S. military strategy (“search and destroy”) had been shown to be ineffective and had to be entirely rethought, and (5) the performance of the South Vietnamese Government and its armed forces was seriously deficient.


• After several weeks of asserting that all was well, General Westmoreland called for a 40 percent increase in the American force level. This demand that, in addition to contradicting the rosy picture that had been previously painted, indicated that the Administration intended to stay the course. Staying the course in Vietnam meant continuing to increase the size of the American footprint.

The sharp increase in disapproval of the war that might have been expected didn’t materialize. Throughout the war, the Gallup organization frequently asked the following identically-worded question: “In view of the developments since we entered the fighting in Vietnam, do you think that made a mistake sending troops to fight in Vietnam?” Among respondents under age 30, support for the war slightly increased (from 51% in early February to 54% in April); for those between 30 and 49, support was unchanged (at 44%); for those over 49, support modestly declined (from 36% to 31%). Overall, then, there was very little change.

A recent article in Parameters, the U.S. Army War College Quarterly, casts additional light on public opinion during the Tet period. In “War Policy, Public Support, and the Media,” William Darley refers to a book published in 1996 (“The Military and the Media, 1968-1973“) by William Hammond, who, per Darley, is “regarded by many as the premier authority on military and media relations during the Vietnam War.”

In his book, Hammond concluded that there was little evidence to support a causal relationship between the tone of editorial reporting and the general public opinion. For example, he notes the following with regard to public opinion polls taken during and immediately following the Tet Offensive:

Whatever the pessimism of the press, however, the majority of Americans went their own way. Queried by the Gallup Poll on whether they considered the war a mistake, 45 percent responded “yes,” the same percentage as in December 1965; 43 percent said “no,” a drop of 3 points; and 12 percent had no opinion. Even more telling, the number of those who considered themselves “hawks” on the war rose 4 percentage points between December and February, while those who saw themselves as “doves” fell by the same percentage. The number of those expressing confidence in the government’s military policies in South Vietnam rose from 61 to 74 percent. Queried by Louis Harris on whether a bombing halt would hasten the chances for peace, 71 percent of respondents favored continuing the bombing, a rise of 8 points over the previous October, while the number of those favoring a halt fell from 26 to 18 percent. [emphasis added]

Darley reacted to these findings with this:

Thus, if Hammond’s interpretation of polling is a correct analysis of US domestic public opinion through the first part of 1968, the factual content of media reports, in most cases accompanied by editorial content opposing the war, evoked in a significant segment of the US public a desire for more—not less—aggressive and decisive action to finish the war on terms favorable to the United States. [emphasis added]

Importantly, Hammond drew a distinction between support for the war and support for the Johnson Administration:

If Americans were unwilling to repudiate the war, they nonetheless appeared increasingly dissatisfied with their President. Willing to back any decision he made, they saw little forward motion on his part. . . . The air of indecision that hung about his policies as a result took a toll on his standing in the polls, where disapproval of his handling of the war rose from 47 to 63 percent by the end of February. . . . If the gloomy reporting of the press had little effect on American public opinion, it nonetheless reinforced doubts already circulating within the Johnson Administration. [emphasis added]

The next section of this post will deal with the “doubts already circulating within the Johnson Administration.” Before discussing those doubts, this key conclusion reached by in 1996 study by Eric V. Larson of RAND is worthy of note:

One of the most important findings of this study is the central role of leadership—and divisions among leaders—in support for military operations and preferences regarding strategy and the level of commitment. Many public opinion analyses tend to ignore leadership or to treat it simplistically as presidential manipulation of public opinion or a search to find justifications that will resonate with the public. . . . Substantial evidence supports the proposition that leadership consensus or dissensus is an essential element in the character of public support for US military interventions. [emphasis added]

HOW GOVERNMENT OPINION REACTED TO TET

The media quickly detected a change in the mood of various Congressman and officials in the Administration. Less than two weeks after the start of the Tet Offensive, the New York Times, in “War Doubts in Senate: Misgivings Over Administration Policy Said to Spread as Offensive Continues,” said that

. . . the current enemy offensive in Vietnam seems to be setting off within the Senate a critical political reaction against the validity as well as the credibility of the Administration’s policy . . . [Senator Robert Kennedy] sounded a widespread concern last week when he said the Vietcong offensive had “shattered the mask of official illusion” about the circumstances in the Vietnam war . . . [Senator Henry Jackson] said that recent events “demonstrate the need to take a good hard look at the attitude of the South Vietnamese Government in the military effort and the pacification program” . . . The same point is being carried by other Senators to the private conclusion that the United States may have fulfilled its commitment to help the South Vietnamese Government.

TIME followed suit:

“It is time for the truth,” said Robert Kennedy. “It is time to face the reality that a military victory is not in sight and that it probably never will come.” Agreed Bobby’s senior colleague, Jacob Javits, in a Senate speech: “We do not yet have a winning strategy in Viet Nam. The situation there is basically stalemated.” Senate Majority Leader Mike Mansfield likewise called for a major reassessment of the U.S. commitment . . . Senator Edward Kennedy, fresh from a visit to Saigon, warned that if the Vietnamese “are unwilling to accept their responsibilities, then the American people, with great justification, may well consider their responsibilities fulfilled.” Taking up his brother’s theme, Bobby Kennedy told his Chicago audience: “Enormous corruption pervades every level of South Vietnamese official life.” Washington’s Democratic Senator Henry Jackson, a staunch Johnson supporter, demanded that “the Saigon government get off its duff and get moving.”

In its March 1 issue, TIME turned its attention from the Senate to the executive branch:

. . . middle-and lower-echelon officials at the State Department, the Pentagon and U.S. headquarters in Saigon voiced profound pessimism. They were dismayed by the uncertain performance of the South Vietnamese government, dejected by the demoralization of a populace suddenly feeling even less secure than before, disappointed by the failure of U.S. intelligence in anticipating the scope of the Communist move at a time when such attacks clearly should have been anticipated.

As word that Westmoreland was about to request a substantial increase in the U.S. force level began to spread, the Senate’s criticism of the war intensified:

For the first time, some supporters of Administration policy expressed doubt publicly as to whether the Administration should commit more forces to Vietnam, particularly without consulting Congress . . . [Senator Robert Kennedy] said it was “immoral and intolerable to continue the way we are” in Vietnam. He warned that the President would be making “a major mistake to escalate” the war “without the support and understanding of the Senate and the American public.” . . . Senate Democratic leader Mike Mansfield declared “We are in the wrong place and we are fighting the wrong kind of war.” . . . Behind the decision to take to the attack again was a feeling that the war in recent weeks had taken a serious turn to the worse and that the Senate should speak out in offering advice to the Administration . . . Senator William Fulbright renounced the 1964 Gulf of Tonkin resolution . . . The resolution is “null and void” because it was obtained on the basis of “misrepresentations” by the Administration about the mission of the two destroyers . . .

Immediately after Westmoreland’s request was made public, the New York Times reported that it has stirred debates within the Defense and State Departments:

Senior Pentagon civilians have put forward a written counter proposal to President Johnson, calling for a shift in American strategy to a concept of close-in defense of populated areas with more limited offensive thrusts than at present. Much of the military hierarchy is reported to oppose this approach . . . the enemy’s winter offensive has had such stunning impact in some high civilian officials here that they question privately whether the Government should not lower its was objectives. Some have suggested that the ground be prepared for a political compromise with the Vietcong. But that is a position that President Johnson and his inner circle of advisers firmly reject at this point.

More than ever [the Tet Offensive] has left a sense of weariness and irritation over the war. Officials themselves comment in private about widespread and deep changes in attitudes, a sense that a watershed has been reached and that its meaning is just now beginning to be understood . . . another official . . . recalled the Government’s optimistic estimates of progress last fall. “We know now that we underestimated the enemy’s capacity and his will to fight and overestimated our progress. We know now that all we had constructed was built on sand.”

Even supporters of Administration policy . . . are openly critical of American combat strategy. Senator Richard Russell, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, has suggested that the United States has lost the battlefield initiative not only through the enemy’s bold tactics but by what he calls its own defensive, gradualist psychology.

On March 11, Secretary of State Rusk testified before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, promising an “A to Z” review of the war:

Rusk found the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, which has long been critical of the Administration’s policy, turning toward direct opposition to the war . . . Stuart Symington (D-Missouri) and Clifford Case (R-NJ) openly condemned the Administration’s policy as sterile and contrary to American interests . . . Rusk described the current situation as “serious” but “not hopeless.”

In the supposedly dovish stronghold of Concord, Mass., voters defeated a resolution opposing “continued U.S. prosecution of the war” by a 2,188-to-1,405 margin.

The Tet Offensive was the turning point of the war, but not because of its impact, mediated by newspapers and television, on public opinion. Tet marked the beginning of the U.S. withdrawal from Vietnam because of its impact on the perceptions of individuals in both the legislative and executive branches of the U.S. Government.

I’m in the very early stages of preparing a post on how the media reported the Tet Offensive, which began on January 30, 1968. The most famous report—the one that, according to many, caused American public opinion to turn sharply against the war in Vietnam—was Walter Cronkite’s editorial on the CBS Evening News on February 27, 1968. He had recently returned from Vietnam.

Instead of waiting for my Tet post to be ready, I’ve decided to publish his words now. Here, with my emphases, is what the then “most trusted man in America” said:

Tonight, back in more familiar surroundings in New York, we’d like to sum up our findings in Vietnam, an analysis that must be speculative, personal, subjective. Who won and who lost in the great Tet offensive against the cities? I’m not sure. The Vietcong did not win by a knockout, but neither did we. The referees of history may make it a draw . . .

We have been too often disappointed by the optimism of the American leaders, both in Vietnam and Washington, to have faith any longer in the silver linings they find in the darkest clouds. They may be right, that Hanoi’s winter-spring offensive has been forced by the Communist realization that they could not win the longer war of attrition, and that the Communists hope that any success in the offensive will improve their position for eventual negotiations. It would improve their position, and it would also require our realization, that we should have had all along, that any negotiations must be that—negotiations, not the dictation of peace terms. For it seems now more certain than ever that the bloody experience of Vietnam is to end in a stalemate. This summer’s almost certain standoff will either end in real give-and-take negotiations or terrible escalation; and for every means we have to escalate, the enemy can match us, and that applies to invasion of the North, the use of nuclear weapons, or the mere commitment of one hundred, or two hundred, or three hundred thousand more American troops to the battle. And with each escalation, the world comes closer to the brink of cosmic disaster.

To say that we are closer to victory today is to believe, in the face of the evidence, the optimists who have been wrong in the past. To suggest we are on the edge of defeat is to yield to unreasonable pessimism. To say that we are mired in stalemate seems the only realistic, yet unsatisfactory, conclusion. On the off chance that military and political analysts are right, in the next few months we must test the enemy’s intentions, in case this is indeed his last big gasp before negotiations. But it is increasingly clear to this reporter that the only rational way out then will be to negotiate, not as victors, but as an honorable people who lived up to their pledge to defend democracy, and did the best they could.

Words and sentiments similar to Cronkite’s are now being spoken by those who are clamoring for withdrawal from Iraq and negotiations with Iran and Syria. I feel like I’ve been here before.

With an eye on Iraq and using Vietnam and Somalia as examples, Dominic Johnson (a fellow at the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton) and Dominic Tierney (an assistant professor of political science at Swarthmore) have written a truly outstanding op-ed (“The Wars of Perception”) on how the media, in conjunction with overly optimistic statements by presidents and generals, can transform military victories into psychological defeats.

On Vietnam:

The Tet offensive was an unmitigated disaster for the communists. Despite the advantages of surprise, the South Vietnamese insurgents, the Vietcong, failed to hold on to a single target in South Vietnam and suffered staggering losses. Of the 80,000 attackers, as many as half were killed in the first month alone, and the Vietcong never recovered. The United States had clearly won this round of the war.

Yet most Americans saw the Tet offensive as a failure for the United States. Approval of President Lyndon B. Johnson’s handling of the war slipped to a low of 26 percent. Before Tet, 58 percent of Americans described themselves as “hawks” who wanted to step up American military involvement in the war, while 26 percent described themselves as “doves” seeking to reduce it. Two months after Tet, doves narrowly outnumbered hawks.

How did perceptions become so detached from reality? A key factor was overblown expectations. In the months before Tet, Johnson had begun a “progress campaign” to convince Americans that victory in Vietnam was just around the corner. Reams of statistics showed that infiltration rates were down and enemy casualties were up. And it worked. Public confidence ticked upwards. But after Johnson’s bullish rhetoric, Tet looked like a disaster. The scale and surprise of the offensive sent a shock wave through the American psyche. As Johnson’s former aide, Robert Koner, later recalled, “Boom, 40 towns get attacked, and they didn’t believe us anymore.”

The illusion of defeat was heightened by two powerful symbolic events. First, the communists attacked the American Embassy in Saigon. It was one of the smallest-scale actions of the Tet offensive, but it captured America’s attention. The attackers had breached the pre-eminent symbol of the United States presence in South Vietnam: if the embassy wasn’t safe, nowhere was. News outlets reported that the embassy had been captured when in reality all of the attackers were soon lying dead in the courtyard.

Gen. William Westmoreland, the commander of the American forces in Vietnam, held a press conference at the embassy to announce that Tet was an American victory. But behind the general, dead Vietcong were still being dragged away from the blood-spattered lawn. Reporters could scarcely believe what they were hearing. Said one: “Westmoreland was standing in the ruins and saying everything was great.”

Second, Eddie Adams’s photograph of South Vietnam’s police chief executing a Vietcong captive in the street caused a sensation. After he fired the shot, the police chief told nearby reporters: “They killed many Americans and many of my men. Buddha will understand. Do you?” Back home in the United States, the image spoke powerfully of a brutal and unjust war. For some Americans, this image was the Tet offensive.

Finally, the American news media painted a picture of disaster in Vietnam. Even though communist forces incurred enormous losses, reporters often lauded their performance. As the Times war correspondent Peter Braestrup put it, “To have portrayed such a setback for one side as a defeat for the other — in a major crisis abroad — cannot be counted as a triumph for American journalism.”

On Somalia:

From 1992 to 1994, the American humanitarian intervention in Somalia saved the lives of more than 100,000 Somalis and cut the number of refugees in half, for the loss of 43 Americans. Back in the United States, however, this noble mission was widely viewed as the greatest foreign policy disaster since Vietnam. By October 1993, approval for President Bill Clinton’s handling of Somalia fell to 30 percent. Only 25 percent of Americans viewed the intervention as a success, and 66 percent saw it as a failure.

Like Tet, the mission in Somalia suffered from overblown expectations. Intervening in an anarchical, war-ridden country was bound to be difficult. But early efforts to provide food and security in Somalia went so well that the project looked deceptively easy. The American public and news media lost interest — until early October 1993, when American soldiers were killed in the infamous “Black Hawk Down” battle in Mogadishu.

With echoes of Saigon in 1968, powerful images of the Mogadishu battle pushed Americans towards a perception of defeat. Press coverage was dominated by pictures of the captured pilot, Michael Durant, and mutilated American corpses, often with the tagline of America’s “humiliation.” Journalists tended to ignore the bigger picture, in this case large pro-American demonstrations in Somalia and successful efforts to save lives and restore order outside of the capital.

Memories of Vietnam, and fears of getting bogged down in another messy quagmire, also promoted perceptions of failure. In October 1993, 62 percent of Americans thought that the intervention in Somalia “could turn into another Vietnam,” even after Mr. Clinton announced that America was pulling soldiers out of Somalia, and at a time when American casualties were a thousand times lower than in Vietnam.

The authors conclude by asking what the examples of Vietnam and Somalia mean for Iraq:

At the least, Tet and Somalia suggest we should be very careful before concluding that Iraq is a defeat. There is real evidence of failure, especially the escalating sectarian violence. But our perceptions are nevertheless easily manipulated. Iraq looks like a defeat in part because the Bush administration fell into the same trap as President Johnson: raising expectations of imminent victory by declaring “mission accomplished” before the real work had even begun. And as with Somalia, fighting shadowy insurgents in Iraq while propping up a weak government engenders negative memories of Vietnam.

Perceptions of success and failure can change the course of history. Reeling from the supposed disaster at Tet, the United States began to withdraw. Memories of “failure” in Somalia were a major reason — perhaps the major reason — that the United States did nothing to stop the genocide in Rwanda in 1994. If Iraq is perceived as a failure, it is only a matter of time before America pulls out, leaving who-knows-what behind. With the stakes so high, Americans must be certain that their perception of failure in Iraq is not a mirage.

While Iraq certainly looks like a defeat, the authors’ warning is certainly well-taken and worthy of serious consideration.

With the nomination of Robert Gates to replace Donald Rumsfeld as Defense Secretary, there will soon be two high-level national security officials from the Bush 41 Administration working for or with the Bush 43 Administration. The other, of course, is James Baker, co-chairman of the Iraq Study Group. Neoconservative influence in the Executive Branch has been cut off at its knees. Realism, or some semblance thereof, will rule the roost during the remaining two years of the Bush Presidency. This means that the grand experiment of exporting democracy to Iraq is over. Stability is in; idealism is out. We’re back to where we were on 9/10.

Iraq follows in the footsteps of Vietnam, where a similar experiment yielded the same result. The contexts of the two failures are dramatically different, however. The effort to install democracy in Vietnam took place within the context of a bipolar world. Our actions had to be calibrated to minimize the risk of intervention from the Communists, be they Soviets or Chinese. The context for Iraq was a unipolar world, the likes of which hadn’t been seen since the days of Roman glory. There was never any risk that another Superpower would send its troops into Iraq to oppose us—for the simple reason that there weren’t and aren’t any other Superpowers.

What are we to learn from this? Is it that mistakes were made by senior administration officials, who misread how we would be greeted by the Iraqi people, underestimated the size of the invading American force that would be necessary to establish security after the fall of the Saddam regime, and made matters worse by disbanding the entire Iraqi army? I, along with numerous others, have made these arguments.

Interpreting the lesson this way may be to mistake cause for effect. The real cause may be that the American people are simply not willing to export democracy, if doing so requires considerable sacrifices over an extended period of time. Bush and his cohorts may have been well aware of this constraint. If they were, the war had to be sold to the American people as a conflict that didn’t require a large invasion force and would be over quickly. In other words, policy may have been dictated by an assessment of what it was thought the people would bear. This was certainly the approach taken by the Johnson Administration, whose constant and frequent refrain was that there was “light at the end of the tunnel.”

Rummaging through a box of mementos I hadn’t opened in many years, I ran across a personal journal (precursor of a blog!) I’d kept between 1970 (when I was 24 years old) and 1974. Long-time readers of this blog probably have a pretty good idea of where I stand on some of today’s major issues. In the hope that some of you might be interested in what I was thinking over 30 years ago, I’ve decided to post four entries from that journal.

The journal’s first entry is dated April 14, 1970. At the time, we were in the thick of the Vietnam quagmire; only a few weeks later, the “incursion” into Cambodia and the resulting widespread student protests would occur.

After many false starts, perhaps I can finally put some thoughts on paper. I guess the problem has been that I have so much to say that it’s difficult to determine where to start.

Strangely, I don’t know whether to be happy or sad about living when I am and as I am. I am extremely aware of living through a period of intense change, and not knowing the outcome of that change; it is not clear what type of emotional response is most appropriate. The change I am talking about is both collective and personal. Life in the United States is vastly different from what it was only six years ago. Problems that were under the surface then have now been exposed. Will a better life result from this exposure. Perhaps. To what extent has my self-awareness, my thoughts and goals, been molded by being caught up in what I consider to be a revolutionary epoch? To what extent are these changes a result of the maturation process?

Seven years ago, who would have thought that millions of Americans would actively oppose our involvement in a war? That blacks would “riot” in just about every major city? That a “youth culture” would develop? That a Chicago [the riots during the 1968 Democratic National Convention] could occur? That political trials [the “Chicago Seven”] would be held? John Kennedy’s Presidency seemed to have marked the passage of an era, an era in which people thought they understood the problems that had to be solved and were confident that they possessed the means to solve the problems. Such people seem like naive optimists now.

Now the problems seem larger and the solutions more difficult. Government officials still publicly espouse an optimism that I believe they don’t really feel. Furthermore, I don’t think that the people of this country believe these optimistic statements. A more pessimistic national mood is, at least potentially, a blessing in disguise. Problems that aren’t recognized are not attacked. So, in one respect, our pessimism can make us optimistic about the future. But recognition can also breed fear and when fear gains the upper hand, problems are repressed, setting the stage for a further explosion. The people who are willing to admit that problems exist and willing to undertake far-reaching programs to attack these problems must lead this country. Dropping out [a reference to the hippies] won’t work—a nuclear weapon does not discriminate between a flower child and a thrice-decorated colonel. And yet the ideals of the flower child should serve as a guide to action.

For better or worse, all our fates are much more intertwined than they were when a group of like-minded individuals could set up a new community, far-removed from their antagonists.

Of all of the developments of the 1960s, the growth of mass-opposition to the war in Viet Nam was the most significant. That individuals would choose to openly express their disagreement with the official expression of national interest is no small, insignificant, event. It is expressive of a new view of the relationship between the rulers and the ruled.

Five days later—on April 19, 1970—I wrote these words:

Could the following be the crux of the problem? Today, we protest because of a lack of social consciousness; tomorrow shall we protest because of a government that enforces social consciousness? Certainly, history seems to show that those governments whose ideological base is one of promoting collective action to eliminate perceived social ills have tyrannized in the name of humanism. Perhaps the lesson to be learned is that concern for the fate of one’s fellow man must start at the individual level and work upward into government. For one group of people to proclaim itself as the embodiment of the cooperative spirit and then to require others to act in that spirit seems to lead to more evil than good. “Forcing people to be free” is tyranny.

Jumping ahead to the culmination of the Watergate scandal, I wrote this on July 24, 1974:

Today, the Supreme Court announced its unanimous decision requiring President Nixon to turn over the Watergate tapes to Special Prosecutor Jaworski, asserting that executive privilege did not extend to criminal inquiries.

The President has been checked. Democracy may yet survive.

Lastly, here’s my reaction to Nixon’s resignation on August 9, 1974:

Richard Milhous Nixon resigned the presidency at noon today. For the first time in my adult life, I am proud of my country. The Constitution has become a living reality—an abstraction has become concrete.

Finally, America has shown me that she stands for something worth standing for. After having gone downhill for ten long and tortuous years, perhaps this country is now ready to renew itself and become the place I read about when I was a child.

I hope my decision to let you know my thoughts of long ago isn’t a disguised ego-trip (pardon the 1960s-style terminology). Choosing today to do it seems appropriate: with the Democratic victories in yesterday’s elections, change is again in the air. Is it for better or worse? Time will tell.

Yesterday, I made note of Tom Friedman’s observation that

Although the Vietcong and Hanoi were badly mauled during Tet, they delivered, through the media, such a psychological blow to U.S. hopes of “winning” in Vietnam that Tet is widely credited with eroding support for President Johnson and driving him to withdraw as a candidate for re-election.

What Friedman didn’t do is draw the logical—and correct—inference that the media’s depiction of Tet set a process in motion that ultimately resulted in our total withdrawal and North Vietnam’s victory.

The eminent military historial John Keegan takes up where Friedman left off. In the concluding paragraph of his op-ed in The Telegraph, Keegan says “The Vietnam war was not lost on the battlefield, but in the American media’s treatment of news from the front line.”

In the preceding paragraphs, Keegan paints an accurate picture:

The Tet offensive proved to be a military disaster for the Vietnamese communists. It left them scarcely able to keep up their long-running, low-level war against the South Vietnamese government and the American army.

Indeed, insofar as Tet was a defeat for the United States and for the South Vietnamese government, it was because the American media decided to represent it as such. It has become a cliché to say that Vietnam was a media war, but so it was. Much of the world media were hostile to American involvement from the start, particularly in France, which had fought and lost its own Vietnam war in 1946-54. The defeat of Dien Bien Phu rankled with the French and there were few who wanted to see the Americans win where they had failed.

It was, however, the American rather than the foreign media who decided on the verdict. The American media had begun by supporting the war. As it dragged on, however, without any end in sight and with the promised military victory constantly postponed, American newspapers and — critically — the evening television programmes began to treat war news as a bad story.

The media were extremely influential, particularly at such places as university campuses and the firesides of American families whose sons had been conscripted for service. When casualties of 150 a week began to be reported, the war began to be increasingly unpopular. President Johnson, who was temperamentally oversensitive to criticism, believed that one particular broadcast by Walter Cronkite in February 1968, just after Tet, lost him Middle America. “If I’ve lost Kronkite,” he said to his staff, “I have lost the war.”

Despite the fact that American casualties in Iraq are a small fraction of what they were in Vietnam, there are readily apparent similarities:

Once again, the media began by supporting the war.

Once again, there have been repeated assurances from both the government and the military that there is “light at the end of the tunnel”.

Once again, there’s no end in sight, disproving the repeated assurances and creating a “credibility gap.”

Once again, the media has turned against the war. This time, at least, there’s no single newsman with the credibility of Walter Cronkite.

If there’s a single lesson to be learned from Vietnam and Iraq, it is this: given the influence of the media and the receptivity of Americans to its messages, we must employ military force that is so overwhelming that our wars are fought to short, decisive conclusions. This, not worries about whether others will accuse us of using “disproportionate” force, should be our guiding consideration. And, above all, we should not enter a war in the belief that it will be short, only to have it turn out to be long. That was Johnson’s mistake in Vietnam and Bush’s in Iraq.

In a fair-minded op-ed in yesterday’s New York Times, Tom Friedman compares the escalation of violence in Baghdad to the Tet Offensive in Vietnam:

In the competition for the biggest “October surprise” of the 2006 election cycle, it might seem hard to top North Korea’s nuclear test. But I’d suggest that in time we’ll come to see the events unfolding — or rather, unraveling — in Iraq today as the real October surprise, because what we’re seeing there seems like the jihadist equivalent of the Tet offensive.

For those of you too young to remember, the Tet offensive was the series of attacks undertaken by the Vietcong and North Vietnamese armies between Jan. 30, 1968 — the start of the Lunar New Year — and June 1969. Although the Vietcong and Hanoi were badly mauled during Tet, they delivered, through the media, such a psychological blow to U.S. hopes of “winning” in Vietnam that Tet is widely credited with eroding support for President Johnson and driving him to withdraw as a candidate for re-election.

Total U.S. troop deaths in Iraq this month have reached at least 53, putting October on a path to be the third deadliest month of the entire war for the U.S. military. Iraqis are being killed at a rate of 100 per day now. The country has descended into such a Hobbesian state that even Saddam called on Iraqis from his prison cell to stop killing each other. He told insurgents, “Remember you are God’s soldiers and, therefore, you must show genuine forgiveness and put aside revenge over the spilled blood of your sons and brothers.” When Saddam is urging calm, you know things have hit a new low.

The violence in Iraq is not as coordinated as in Vietnam. You have small gangs of Sunnis and Shiites killing each other in sectarian clashes, Baathists and jihadists attacking U.S. and Iraqi forces in more organized efforts, Sunnis fighting with Kurds over turf in northern Iraq, and, on top of it all, rampant crime. Therefore, it’s hard to identify a specific military order to step up the violence in Iraq, as in Tet.

But while there may be no single hand coordinating the upsurge in violence in Iraq, enough people seem to be deliberately stoking the fires there before our election that the parallel with Tet is not inappropriate. The jihadists want to sow so much havoc that Bush supporters will be defeated in the midterms and the president will face a revolt from his own party, as well as from Democrats, if he does not begin a pullout from Iraq.

The jihadists follow our politics much more closely than people realize. A friend at the Pentagon just sent me a post by the “Global Islamic Media Front” carried by the jihadist Web site Ana al-Muslim on Aug. 11. It begins: “The people of jihad need to carry out a media war that is parallel to the military war and exert all possible efforts to wage it successfully. This is because we can observe the effect that the media have on nations to make them either support or reject an issue.”

It then explains that for jihadist videos of attacks on Americans to have the biggest impact, “Some persons will be needed who are proficient in the use of computer graphics including Photoshop, 3D Studio Max, or other programs that the people of jihad will need to design … video clips about the operations.”

Finally, the Web site suggests that jihadists flood e-mail and video of their operations to “chat rooms,” “television channels,” and to “famous U.S. authors who have public e-mail addresses … such as Friedman, Chomsky, Fukuyama, Huntington and others.” This is the first time I’ve ever been on the same mailing list with Noam Chomsky.

It would be depressing to see the jihadists influence our politics with a Tet-like media/war frenzy. But there are only two reasons now for the U.S. to remain in Iraq: because it thinks that staying will make things better or that leaving will make things drastically worse. Alas, it is increasingly hard to see how our presence is making things better. Iraq, under our nose, is breaking apart into so many little pieces that no political solution seems to be in the offing, because no Iraqi leader can deliver his faction anymore — and there does not seem to be an Iraqi center capable of coming together. While leaving would no doubt exacerbate the civil war, staying in Iraq indefinitely to prevent even more Shiites and Sunnis from killing one another is not going to fly with the U.S. public much longer.

In State of Denial, Bob Woodward states that Henry Kissinger recently gave a Bush aide a copy of a memo to President Nixon arguing against troop withdrawals from Vietnam. Near the bottom of the second page, Kissinger writes:

Withdrawal of U.S. troops will become like salted peanuts to the American public: The more U.S. troops come home, the more will be demanded. This could eventually result, in effect, in demands for unilateral withdrawal—perhaps within a year.

I’m not going to pontificate on the parallels—non-exact as they may be—between Vietnam then and Iraq now. If you read the four-page memo, they’ll jump off the page. They did for me.

Martin Woollacott’s column in The Guardian starts this way:

When the US stumbled out of Vietnam 30 years ago, a void seemed to open up for a world which, for good or ill, had become used to a controlling American hand. The US had suffered a great defeat, in part self-inflicted, in the process betraying an ally, and American will and rationality had been drawn down to the lowest levels. Yet the consequences for the region where the war had been waged were surprisingly limited. The dominoes did not fall, or rather, when they eventually did, they fell the other way as Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia were to some degree absorbed back into the global system of which America is still the capstone.

Limited consequences for the region? What about the Vietnamese boat people? What about Pol Pot’s Cambodian killing fields? And while we’re at it, what about the Soviets’ confidence that a wounded America wouldn’t forcefully oppose their invasion of Afghanistan?

Give me a break.

Six days ago, in “Dean the Defeatist”, I posted this quote from the DNC Chairman:

The idea that we’re going to win this war is an idea that unfortunately is just plain wrong.

Thanks to FactCheck.org, here’s the question that prompted these words, along with Dean’s full answer:

Q: Governor Dean, the key to I guess eventually getting the U.S. forces out of Iraq is going to have the Iraqis doing a better job of defending themselves and taking a greater role. Are we on the right track to achieve that goal?

Dean: Well, I think our military is working very hard to do that. But let’s not forget this is ultimately what America had to do in Vietnam. Ultimately they said we are gonna turn this over to the Vietnamese and of course the South Vietnamese couldn’t manage to take care of their own country. As I said, I supported President Bush’s, the first President Bush’s war in Iraq and I supported the President’s war in Afghanistan, but I do not believe in making the same mistake twice and America appears to have made the same mistake twice . I wish the President had paid more attention to the history of Iraq before we’d gotten in there. The idea that we’re going to win this war is an idea that unfortunately is just plain wrong. And I’ve seen this before in my life and it cost us 25,000 brave American soldiers in Vietnam and I don’t want to go down that road again, [sic] get out of there and take the targets off our troop’s back we need to maintain a presence in the area so we can deal with terrorism but not in Iraq.

Dean conveniently forgot to mention three forks in the Vietnam road:

March 1973 – The last American combat troops were withdrawn from Vietnam.

June 1973 – Congress passed the Case-Church Amendment which forbade any further U.S. military involvement in Southeast Asia, effective August 15, 1973. The veto-proof vote was 278-124 in the House and 64-26 in the Senate.

September 1974 – The U.S. Congress appropriated only $700 million for South Vietnam. This left the South Vietnamese Army under-funded and resulted in a decline of military readiness and morale.

Two months after Congress reduced the funding of the war to virtually nil, North Vietnam violated the Paris peace treaty by attacking Phuoc Long Province in South Vietnam. Four months later, Saigon fell to the North Vietnamese.

So, if Dean doesn’t want “to go down that road again,” he should oppose the withdrawal of American troops from Iraq, legislation that would prevent any further U.S. military involvement in Iraq, and any Congressional effort to cut off funds for the Iraq war. Most Americans have forgotten (or never knew) the denouement of the Vietnam war. The Democrats certainly aren’t going to remind them. That’s up to us. If you have a blog, please help in this effort. Let’s get the truth out.

Two months after the last American was evacuated from the US embassy in Saigon, Earl C. Ravenal, writing in Foreign Affairs, presented his view of “The Consequences of the End Game in Viet Nam.”

The following excerpts from Ravenal’s article seem as pertinent now as they were then:

There are two points to emphasize about the effects of the end game in Vietnam. They add up to the conclusion that the effects are not containable by our own will or desire, since they have to do with objective aspects of the operation of (1) our own system and (2) the international system.

The first point is that the American performance in Vietnam has revealed how our own polity, society, and economy work as a policy-making system-particularly the constraints that Congress and public opinion put on the actions of the executive . . . What hobbled U.S. policy in Southeast Asia was not the reluctance of the executive branch to implement its commitments. It was more than willing. What frustrated the American effort at home was the eventual resistance of Congress, and behind Congress, the public, to prolonging sacrifices and risks of lives and resources in situations that were not immediately compelling or clear. Thus, it is not Vietnam directly that will inhibit American responses in the future. It is the structural similarity of future challenges, as perceived by the American people and their representatives, that will be likely to evoke the same responses or obstructions, hence the same ultimately effective constraints on American power. There is no reason to think that, after Vietnam, these factors will cease to operate. [emphasis added]

The second point is that the performance of the American system in Vietnam will have a tangible and profound effect on the actions of other countries, allies and adversaries, and will consequently change the shape of the international system. Other nations cannot simply speculate about the future performance of the United States; they must do something about it.

In his article in the current issue of Foreign Affairs, John Mueller notes that Iraq marks only the third time since 1945 that American troops have suffered more than 300 combat deaths. Using public opinion data, he observes that

Public support for the war in Iraq has followed the same course as it did for the wars in Korea and Vietnam: broad enthusiasm at the outset with erosion of support as casualties mount.

The only thing remarkable about the current war in Iraq is how precipitously American public support has dropped off. Casualty for casualty, support has declined far more quickly than it did during either the Korean War or the Vietnam War. And if history is any indication, there is little the Bush administration can do to reverse this decline.

If this prediction is right—and I’m afraid that it probably is—the future is nothing to look forward to:

More important, the impact of deteriorating support will not end when the war does. In the wake of the wars in Korea and Vietnam, the American public developed a strong aversion to embarking on such ventures again. A similar sentiment—an “Iraq syndrome”—seems to be developing now, and it will have important consequences for U.S. foreign policy for years after the last American battalion leaves Iraqi soil.

In a post at As Seen From Just Above Sunset, Rick Erickson disputes my assertion that Tet was a military victory for the American military. He maintains that Tet was a military, as well as a political defeat for the United States. Then, for good measure, he throws this into the mix: “I don’t understand why the conservatives continue to insist that Tet was a victory for US forces.”

Is it only conservatives who make this claim? Erickson would do well to consult Stanley Karnow’s Vietnam: A History, which was published in 1983. Karnow is a Pulitzer Prize winner; his book was a companion to PBS’s American Experience Series. For Erickson’s benefit, here are three key paragraphs from Karnow (pages 557-558 in the 1997 edition):

If the Americans and their South Vietnamese allies were napping before the Tet upheaval, the Communists also blundered. “We have been guilty of many errors and shortcomings,” their first official evaluation of the campaign confessed. They deplored such deficiencies as their failure to inspire the South Vietnamese population to rebel, and their inability to rally Saigon soldiers and government employees to their banners. Numbers of North Vietnamese and Vietcong troops were plainly disenchanted by the realization that, despite their enormous sacrifices during the offensive, they still faced a long struggle ahead. Senior Communist cadres expressed alarm at the erosion of morale among their comrades, many of whom had “lost confidence” in the cause, and had become “doubtful of victory and pessimistic, and display shirking attitudes.”

Tran Van Tra, a senior Communist general in the south at the time, candidly admitted in a military history published in Hanoi in 1982 that the offensive had been misconceived from the start. “During Tet of 1968,” he wrote, we did not correctly evaluate the specific balance of forces between ourselves and the enemy, did not realize that the enemy still had considerable capabilities and that our capabilities were limited.” The Communists had set objectives “that were beyond our actual strength,” founded “in part on our subjective desires.” Thus, Tra went on, “we suffered large losses in materiel and manpower, especially cadres at various echelons, which clearly weakened us.” As a result, “we were not only unable to retain the gains we had made but had to overcome a myriad of difficulties in 1969 and 1970 so that the revolution could stand firm in the storm.” Revisiting Vietnam after the war, I was astonished by the number of Communist veterans who retained bad memories of the Tet episode — and openly recalled to me their disappointment at its outcome . . .

Not even the North Vietnamese believed that they had scored a military victory. I rest my case.

An increasingly unpopular war. A growing credibility gap. A rapid growth in spending on domestic social programs. That’s what was happening in America in early 1968. Public support for the war in Vietnam, which had been gradually eroding before the Tet offensive, collapsed in its aftermath. Tet was a military victory for the American military, but a psychological defeat for the American public. Televised pictures of the Viet Cong attacking the US embassy in Saigon destroyed the credibility of the Johnson administration’s claim that there was light at the end of the tunnel. And while this was taking place, spending on Great Society programs was skyrocketing.

Now fast forward to the present. Once again, we have an increasingly unpopular war. We also have a credibility gap. This time, the gap isn’t related to the war – Bush has never tried to sustain support for the war by promising an early withdrawal from Iraq. Instead, today’s credibility gap is the result of the mismanagement of the federal government’s response to Hurricane Katrina. As memories of 9/11 faded, out-of-sight, out-of-mind prevailed. With Katrina, heads have come out of the sand, as it’s now abundantly evident that the US isn’t prepared to cope with the aftermath of an act of catastrophic terrorism. Four years after 9/11, the ability of the federal government to provide security has now been called into question. As a perception-changing event, Katrina is to Bush as Tet was to Johnson. And the massive spending that will be required to undo the damage done by Katrina is to Bush as the Great Society was to Johnson.

Two months after Tet, Johnson announced that he would not stand for re-election. Eight months later, control of the White House passed into Republican hands, where it remained for 20 of the next 24 years. It’s fortunate for today’s Republicans that 2006 isn’t a presidential election year.