Vietnam Vet & Scholar Andrew Bacevich on Obama War Plan: “The President Has Drawn the Wrong Lessons From His Understanding of the History of War”
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AMY GOODMAN: As we discuss today’s headline: more war, we’re joined in Boston by Andrew Bacevich. He’s a retired colonel and a Vietnam was veteran who spent 23 years in the U.S. Army. He’s now a professor of history and international relations at Boston University and the author of The New American Militarism: How Americans are Seduced by War. Also: The Limits of Power: The End of American Exceptionalism. Andrew Bacevich, Welcome to Democracy Now! Start by responding to President Obama’s announcement, address at West Point Tuesday night.
ANDREW BACEVICH: Well, I think we should view this as a squandered opportunity. President Obama came into office vowing to change the way Washington works. I believe that the Afghanistan decision really was a ready-made opportunity to do just that. He has chosen, instead, I think, to bow the way Washington works, to confirm the way Washington works, to insist that the pattern of behavior that defines our approach to national security, the pattern of behavior that defines our policies in the so-called greater Middle East will continue during his administration. I think that is just deeply unfortunate.
AMY GOODMAN: President Obama made a point of rejecting any comparison between Afghanistan and Vietnam last night.
PRESIDENT OBAMA: There are those who suggest Afghanistan is another Vietnam. They argue that it cannot be stabilized and we’re better off cutting our losses and rapidly withdrawing. I believe this argument depends on a false reading of history. Unlike Vietnam, we are joined by a broad coalition of 43 nations that recognizes the legitimacy of our action. Unlike Vietnam, we are not facing a broad-based popular insurgency. Most importantly, unlike Vietnam, the American people were viciously attacked from Afghanistan and remain a target for those same extremists who are plotting along its border. To abandon this area now and to rely only on efforts against Al Qaeda from a distance, would significantly hamper our ability to keep the pressure on Al Queda and create an unacceptable risk of additional attacks on our homeland and our allies.
AMY GOODMAN: President Obama at West Point last night. Professor Bacevich, your response?
ANDREW BACEVICH: Well I think the President is unfortunately misreading the history with regard to Vietnam. My sense is that the President has made this decision to escalate in Afghanistan with great reluctance. And it’s worth recalling that Lyndon Johnson I think felt a similar reluctance about going more deeply into Vietnam. President Johnson allowed himself to be convinced that really there was no plausible alternative, that to admit failure in Vietnam would have drastic consequences for his own capacity to lead and for the credibility of the United States and so he went in more deeply. And he went in more deeply persuading himself that he, his generals could maintain control of the situation even as they escalated. I think that may well turn out to be the key error that Obama is also making.
The very notion that we can ratchet up our involvement in Afghanistan and then state with confidence at this point that in 18 months we will carefully ratchet our involvement back down again. He seems to assume that war is a predictable and controllable instrument that can be directed with precision by people sitting in offices back in Washington, D.C. I think the history of Vietnam and the history of war more broadly teaches us something different. And that is, when statesmen choose war, they really are simply rolling the dice. They have no idea of what numbers are going to come up. And their ability to predict, control, direct the outcome tends to be extremely precarious. So from my point of view, the President has drawn the wrong lessons from his understanding of the history of war.
AMY GOODMAN: Professor Bacevich, last month Bill Moyers devoted an entire show to making the comparison between President Lyndon Johnson’s decision to send more troops to Vietnam in 1965 and President Obama’s current escalation in Afghanistan, although of course he said that the situations are different. This is an excerpt from “Bill Moyers Journal”, featuring recorded conversations between President Johnson and Robert McNamara just before President Johnson announced the troop increase requested by General Westmoreland.
LYNDON JOHNSON: Do you know how far we’re going to go? Do the Joint Chiefs know? What human being knows? We don’t say what makes people [UNINTELLIGIBLE] we do say if you don’t put them in, you are going to lose substantially what you have. Now we don’t want to promise to do it, but this is more of a holding action. And a hope that through the months they will change their mind, and time will play, instead of being rash, we’re trying to be prudent. Now, isn’t that really what we’re trying to do?
Not a damn human thinks that 50,000 or 100,000 or 150,000 is going to end that war. We’re not getting out, but we’re trying to hold what we got.
Can we really without getting any further authority from the from the Congress have the all-out support, sufficient or over-whelming support to work successfully, to fight successfully?
ROBERT McNAMARA: I really think if we were to go to the Clarkes and the McGoverns and to churches and say to them, now, this is our situation. We cannot win with our existing commitment. We must increase it if we’re going to win in this limited way we define win. It requires additional troops. Along with that approach we’re embarking upon, or continuing this political initiative to probe for willingness to negotiate a reasonable settlement here. We ask your support under the circumstances. I think you’d get it from them under those circumstances. That’s is a vehicle by which you both get the authority to call up reserves and tie them into the whole program.
LYNDON JOHNSON: That makes sense.
BILL MOYERS: July 28, 1965.
LYNDON JOHNSON: I have asked the commanding general, General Westmoreland, what more he needs to meet this mounting aggression. He has told me and we will meet his needs. I have today ordered to Vietnam the air mobile division and certain other forces which will raise our fighting strength from 75,000 to 125,000 men almost immediately. Additional forces will be needed later. And they will be sent as requested.
AMY GOODMAN: That is President Johnson announcing an increase of U.S. troops to Vietnam back in July 1965: that excerpt from “Bill Moyer’s Journal” on PBS. Professor Bacevich, as you listen to this between War Secretary McNamara and President Johnson, your thoughts?
ANDREW BACEVICH: I saw the show when it ran; it is a brilliant piece of journalism. Just listening now to the exchange between President Johnson and McNamara, you cannot help but be reminded of the failure of his advisers, the so-called best and brightest, people like Robert McNamara, McGeorge Bundy who was the national security adviser, General Maxwell Taylor who was at that time U.S. ambassador to South Vietnam—all of whom I think failed the president and failed the country as a result of their lack of creativity and lack of imagination in helping President Johnson come to an understanding of how best to approach the problem of South Vietnam. They lacked imagination because they approached the problem within the box of the Cold War, which limited the range of options available to the president.
I would argue that today President Obama has been similarly ill-served by equally unimaginative advisers: people like National Security Advisor James Jones, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton—all of whom I think adhere to an existing consensus with regard to national security policy, a consensus that was affirmed and strengthened as a consequence of the 9/11 attacks and which to the present moment, at least within Washington, among our leading politicians, has not been questioned despite the failures of the past eight or so years. And so when President Obama gets together with his equivalent of McGeorge Bundy and Robert McNamara, he gets presented with a range of options that basically say, Mr. President, you can do anything you want to do, here’s your choices: 10,000 more troops, 20,000 more troops, 30,000, or 40,000. They are unable to conceive of a basis for national security policy that does not involve the increased commitment of American military resources.
AMY GOODMAN: You are a retired colonel. You went to West Point, is that right?
ANDREW BACEVICH: That is true.
AMY GOODMAN: Did your son go to West Point?
ANDREW BACEVICH: No, he did not.
AMY GOODMAN: I know you do not like to talk about your son, but, who died in Iraq—
ANDREW BACEVICH: That is true.
AMY GOODMAN: … in 2007, but I was wondering your thoughts as you watched the speech last night of President Obama at your alma mater, at West Point as they panned over the audience and you saw those hundreds of young cadets.
ANDREW BACEVICH: Well we now have a pretty well established tradition in this country and I regret this tradition deeply, a tradition of somebody—of a president wishing to be seen as a commander-in-chief using American soldiers as props. I think it may have well been Ronald Reagan and was the first to initiate this practice. Every president since Ronald Reagan, regardless of party, has adhered to this practice. President Obama did last night. I think it’s showing disrespect to American soldiers to use them for political purposes and I wish that the politicians or the political advisors who arrange the sort of events would cease to do that... |
