Great opinion piece by Eric Margolis.
As the saying goes, "those who forget the history are doomed to repeat it," because we, humans, always think that other man was stupid & I won't make that mistake, & ironically, he makes that same mistake (at least the net result is same).
Other man was stupid or not (we can only justify it if you are better educated or know more than that guy or have some kind of a better knowledge about the case at hand than that other guy); the primary problem is the person, who is currently in change of the situation, has never tried to understand the situation, old or new.
US wouldn't have gone into Afghanistan, albeit in a fit of rage like a little kid or a teen with raging hormones, or Iraq, if the leadership would've sincerely looked at why did we ever fail in Vietnam. What was the real underlying causes for that failure & then try not to repeat those actions.
But, since, US never looked / analyzed those failures with a critical eye, they went, guns blazing, in both countries & after sacrificing manpower & billions of dollars on countries, whose citizens still hate US (America never won their "hearts & minds"), & the end result is that one country (Iraq) is in complete chaos, while in the other one (Afghanistan), Taliban have amassed enough power that Americans have to negotiate with them (just so they can still come out of the country unscathed & claim that "adventure" as a "win").
So, in a way, just like the lives of 250,000 American soldiers were wasted in the Vietnam conflict, the lives of some 4,000 American soldiers are now wasted in the Afghanistan conflict. I don't even know how many died in Iraq conflict. And I am not going to even put the numbers here for the injured soldiers, who are injured physically & mentally (PTSDs etc.). American economy is also in shambles that billions are spent in those countries but American veterans & own patriotic citizens are going hungry & homeless.
So who actually destroyed America? Foreign terrorists or the hubris of its own leadership?
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LIFE CAN only be understood in retrospect. With the wisdom of hindsight, most people consider the 20-year long Vietnam War a terrible mistake, even a crime. But at the time, US military involvement in Indochina appeared to make sense. It certainly did to me. I was proud to wear my nation’s uniform.
General Douglas MacArthur warned Americans “never fight a land war in Asia.”
But that is exactly what the Kennedy administration foolishly did. At the time, US power was at its zenith. Washington was gripped by post-war arrogance & hubris.
There was also a very compelling geopolitical reason. At the time – the later 1960’s – it appeared certain that the Soviets & Red China were working together to dominate all of Indochina. “If we don’t make a military stand in SE Asia,” was the consensus, “the Reds will take the entire region.” So it looked in 1967. So we hear again today. Just replace “Reds” by Al Qaeda or Daesh.
But the basic Western premise back then – as now — was dead wrong. In one of history’s biggest intelligence failures, we failed to see the seismic split between the Soviet Union & Mao’s China, one so profound that the two super-powers almost went to war over their contested Manchurian borders in 1968-1969. Just as our intelligence services also missed the impending collapse of the Soviet Union three decades later.
Had the US been aware of the violent tensions between Moscow & Beijing, it would likely have avoided expanding the Vietnam War, or just left it to its own devices.
Instead, the US & its allies waged a long struggle against the Vietcong local guerillas & the battle-hardened North Vietnamese Army that had defeated some of France’s finest soldiers a decade earlier. President Lyndon Johnson drove the US deeper into the war by staging the phony Gulf of Tonkin naval incident.
It did not take long for US troops in South Vietnam to realise the war was a pointless bloodbath. Without the 24/7 support of US airpower, the American army & marines in Vietnam would not have been able to hold out. Today, without US airpower, American forces would be driven from Afghanistan. By the January, 1968 Tet offensive, it was clear to many of us in uniform that the war was lost (I was stateside at the time). The US won almost every battle thanks to air power, but it lost both the military momentum in the war, the strategic direction & the political struggle. America’s South Vietnamese allies often fought bravely but their political leaders were hopeless.
Much of Vietnam, Laos & Cambodia were ravaged by US bombing & toxic chemical defoliation. In the process, some 250,000 American soldiers were killed or wounded; 250,000 South Vietnamese soldiers died. At least three million Communist soldiers & Vietnamese civilians were killed, mostly by US air power. As I look back, it’s very painful to realise that the war was, to paraphrase the wicked Tallyrand, “worse than a crime, a mistake.”
The red hordes did not swamp Indochina nor did they march on Cleveland. Our side committed as many crimes as our enemies. The CIA-run Phoenix programme, for example, “liquidated” up to 41,000 communist cadres. Our “counter-terrorism” campaign today in Afghanistan, Iraq & Somalia follows the same pattern.
Today, the US & united Vietnam have $36 billion in bilateral trade & warm commercial & diplomatic relations. Vietnam is becoming an important ally for the US against China.
Alas, we seem to have forgotten everything about Vietnam & learned nothing. The new bogeyman is Iran instead of China, but the song remains the same.
As the saying goes, "those who forget the history are doomed to repeat it," because we, humans, always think that other man was stupid & I won't make that mistake, & ironically, he makes that same mistake (at least the net result is same).
Other man was stupid or not (we can only justify it if you are better educated or know more than that guy or have some kind of a better knowledge about the case at hand than that other guy); the primary problem is the person, who is currently in change of the situation, has never tried to understand the situation, old or new.
US wouldn't have gone into Afghanistan, albeit in a fit of rage like a little kid or a teen with raging hormones, or Iraq, if the leadership would've sincerely looked at why did we ever fail in Vietnam. What was the real underlying causes for that failure & then try not to repeat those actions.
But, since, US never looked / analyzed those failures with a critical eye, they went, guns blazing, in both countries & after sacrificing manpower & billions of dollars on countries, whose citizens still hate US (America never won their "hearts & minds"), & the end result is that one country (Iraq) is in complete chaos, while in the other one (Afghanistan), Taliban have amassed enough power that Americans have to negotiate with them (just so they can still come out of the country unscathed & claim that "adventure" as a "win").
So, in a way, just like the lives of 250,000 American soldiers were wasted in the Vietnam conflict, the lives of some 4,000 American soldiers are now wasted in the Afghanistan conflict. I don't even know how many died in Iraq conflict. And I am not going to even put the numbers here for the injured soldiers, who are injured physically & mentally (PTSDs etc.). American economy is also in shambles that billions are spent in those countries but American veterans & own patriotic citizens are going hungry & homeless.
So who actually destroyed America? Foreign terrorists or the hubris of its own leadership?
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
LIFE CAN only be understood in retrospect. With the wisdom of hindsight, most people consider the 20-year long Vietnam War a terrible mistake, even a crime. But at the time, US military involvement in Indochina appeared to make sense. It certainly did to me. I was proud to wear my nation’s uniform.
General Douglas MacArthur warned Americans “never fight a land war in Asia.”
But that is exactly what the Kennedy administration foolishly did. At the time, US power was at its zenith. Washington was gripped by post-war arrogance & hubris.
There was also a very compelling geopolitical reason. At the time – the later 1960’s – it appeared certain that the Soviets & Red China were working together to dominate all of Indochina. “If we don’t make a military stand in SE Asia,” was the consensus, “the Reds will take the entire region.” So it looked in 1967. So we hear again today. Just replace “Reds” by Al Qaeda or Daesh.
But the basic Western premise back then – as now — was dead wrong. In one of history’s biggest intelligence failures, we failed to see the seismic split between the Soviet Union & Mao’s China, one so profound that the two super-powers almost went to war over their contested Manchurian borders in 1968-1969. Just as our intelligence services also missed the impending collapse of the Soviet Union three decades later.
Had the US been aware of the violent tensions between Moscow & Beijing, it would likely have avoided expanding the Vietnam War, or just left it to its own devices.
Instead, the US & its allies waged a long struggle against the Vietcong local guerillas & the battle-hardened North Vietnamese Army that had defeated some of France’s finest soldiers a decade earlier. President Lyndon Johnson drove the US deeper into the war by staging the phony Gulf of Tonkin naval incident.
It did not take long for US troops in South Vietnam to realise the war was a pointless bloodbath. Without the 24/7 support of US airpower, the American army & marines in Vietnam would not have been able to hold out. Today, without US airpower, American forces would be driven from Afghanistan. By the January, 1968 Tet offensive, it was clear to many of us in uniform that the war was lost (I was stateside at the time). The US won almost every battle thanks to air power, but it lost both the military momentum in the war, the strategic direction & the political struggle. America’s South Vietnamese allies often fought bravely but their political leaders were hopeless.
Much of Vietnam, Laos & Cambodia were ravaged by US bombing & toxic chemical defoliation. In the process, some 250,000 American soldiers were killed or wounded; 250,000 South Vietnamese soldiers died. At least three million Communist soldiers & Vietnamese civilians were killed, mostly by US air power. As I look back, it’s very painful to realise that the war was, to paraphrase the wicked Tallyrand, “worse than a crime, a mistake.”
The red hordes did not swamp Indochina nor did they march on Cleveland. Our side committed as many crimes as our enemies. The CIA-run Phoenix programme, for example, “liquidated” up to 41,000 communist cadres. Our “counter-terrorism” campaign today in Afghanistan, Iraq & Somalia follows the same pattern.
Today, the US & united Vietnam have $36 billion in bilateral trade & warm commercial & diplomatic relations. Vietnam is becoming an important ally for the US against China.
Alas, we seem to have forgotten everything about Vietnam & learned nothing. The new bogeyman is Iran instead of China, but the song remains the same.
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