Why the U.S. Failed in Vietnam: Key Reasons Behind a Costly Conflict

The Vietnam War remains one of the most controversial and analyzed conflicts in U.S. history. In the Sixties it was on the evening news every day and every teen at that time had to think about what they would do if they were called to go serve. Despite the country's military superiority, the United States ultimately failed to achieve its objectives in Vietnam. 

Over the years I've heard many people propose that had John F. Kennedy not been assassinated we would never have gotten mired in that costly, useless war. Seymour Hersh, in his JFK expose The Dark Side of Camelot, shows very clearly that Kennedy was himself a hawk on the war, having mis-read it as Cold War action instead of what it was, an effort to achieve Vietnam's independence from foreign colonial rule. 

Misunderstanding the nature of the conflict was America's chief failure. We believed we were stopping the spread of Communism. U.S. leaders underestimated the importance of Vietnam's quest for national identity. Proponents for the war continuously repeated, as did their media mouthpiece, the Domino Effect theory, insisting that all Southeast Asia would fall to Communism if we failed to stop them here. We failed, and Southeast Asia did not fall.

In addition to this, the U.S.lacked a clear military objective, unlike World War II, where the goals were well-defined (such as the unconditional surrender of Germany and Japan). The U.S. in Vietnam had a more ambiguous mission. Initially, it was to support the South Vietnamese government against communist insurgents, but the lack of a clear exit strategy or concrete end goals made it difficult to measure progress. As a result, the U.S. military found itself trapped in a prolonged war of attrition, with no clear understanding of what "victory" looked like.

The U.S. also severely underestimated the capabilities and resolve of its enemy. (See WWAUA) The Viet Cong and North Vietnamese Army (NVA) were highly adaptable, using guerilla tactics that made conventional U.S. military strategies less effective. The terrain in Vietnam, from dense jungles to rural villages, was ideal for guerilla warfare, and the U.S. military struggled to adapt to these conditions. (See: Battle of Dien Bien Phu)

Additionally, the Viet Cong had the support of many South Vietnamese civilians, which made it difficult for American forces to differentiate between combatants and non-combatants. The extensive use of airpower and large-scale bombing campaigns like Operation Rolling Thunder, intended to demoralize the enemy, often had the opposite effect, stiffening the resolve of the Vietnamese. I remember reading somewhere that for every innocent South Vietnamese civilian we killed, we created 10 more Viet Cong soldiers and sympathizers.

While the war raged on in Vietnam, public support for the conflict steadily eroded in the U.S. By the late 1960s, the anti-war movement had gained significant traction, fueled by increasing media coverage of the war’s brutality, the high number of American casualties, and the perception that the government was not being truthful about the war’s progress. The 1968 Tet Offensive, although a military failure for the Viet Cong, was a psychological victory that significantly weakened U.S. public confidence in the war effort. Mounting protests, political pressure, and a divided public eventually forced the U.S. government to de-escalate and seek a way out.

Finally, the U.S. was supporting a weak and corrupt South Vietnamese government that lacked popular support. Successive leaders in South Vietnam were seen by many Vietnamese as out of touch with the needs of the people and overly dependent on U.S. aid and military assistance. This lack of legitimacy made it difficult for the South Vietnamese government to maintain order and effectively combat the Viet Cong insurgency. U.S. efforts to build a stable, democratic government in South Vietnam were constantly undermined by internal divisions, corruption, and the perception of the government as a puppet regime.

Bottom Line: Vietnam became a "tar baby" for each successive administration from Kennedy to Nixon. Like Brer Rabbit, the more the U.S.got involved, the more entangled we became in a war we could not win, ultimately leading to one of the most significant military and political defeats in American history.

A Brief Review of H.R. McMaster's Dereliction of Duty

"Oh the games people play now, every night and every day now,
Never saying what they mean, never meaning what they say."
--Joe South 

The subtitle of this book is Lyndon Johnson, Robert McNamara, the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Lies That Led to Vietnam.

We all know that it was an ugly war. This book, published in 1997, pulls back the curtain to reveal how much uglier it was than anyone at the time ever knew. The amount of research that H.R. McMaster, a West Point grad, put into this book is remarkable. The end notes and supporting documents are nearly 90 pages.

The book begins with the Bay of Pigs invasion, which was supposed to be a U.S. backed invasion of Cuba to overthrow Castro. It failed because the U.S. did not back the invasion after all and backed off. The reason the Vietnam story begins here is that it shows the rift and distrust between the Pentagon and the Kennedy administration. The Cuban missile crisis only exacerbated this distrust.

In 1961 JFK also riled the Pentagon by appointing a DC outside to be Secretary of Defense, Robert S. McNamara. McNamara was one of the fabled "Whiz Kids" that transformed the Ford Motor Company in the 50's becoming president of Ford before being appointed Secretary  of Defense. 

In conjunction with these Cuba matters we see JFK struggling to sort out our position in Southeast Asia as well as Berlin. Because Vietnam is so far away, it doesn't get the kind of journalistic oversight that happens closer to home, and from the start we see the first lies regarding events unfolding there. American pilots began flying combat missions while telling Americans back home we were not. 

And so it begins. 

The themes that unfold here are twofold: the ongoing lies that Kennedy, McNamara and LBJ were telling to the public and Congress, and the ongoing efforts to gag the Generals who were being ordered to carry out the escalating war that ensued.

I'd forgotten that the press had at one point nicknamed it "McNamara's War." His role in this unwinnable war is shown for what it was. Johnson wanted Yes-men, and McNamara wanted to please his boss. (He served under both JFK & LBJ.)

In 1964, even though we were not in a declared war, McNamara and LBJ agreed to use special forces to execute raids in North Vietnam. Simultaneously, McNamara continued to block backchannel communications between the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) and LBJ.

The JCS decided to play out war game simulations to see in advance whether this adventurism in SE Asia was feasible. The strategy McNamara worked out was "Graduated Pressure" to bring Hanoi to the bargaining table. The JCS concluded that it would not and could not work, and the events the unfolded were accurately predicted in 1964. But McNamara and LBJ were not listening. McNamara had LBJs ear and the JCS did not.

The war was going badly pretty much from the start, but the U.S. has a habit of projecting a winning smile and maintaining appearances. The whole war effort was a sham, but the administration seemed not to care about anything other than looking good in the world's eyes.

I'm skipping a lot here and will note that the book gets tedious. The common thread throughout is how devious everyone seemed to be. The worst thing of all was how many young men they sent to die, knowing that sooner or later they would have to admit it was all a disastrous mistake.

This is an excerpt from one of the review on Amazon that summarizes the contents of each chapter. This a description of an incident in Chapter 15, circa July 1965:

LBJ gave the JCS a pep talk about how they are the team and he is the coach and they are supposed to do what he says. Nobody knew what the objective of the war was, or if they had an opinion, there were different and conflicting opinions. Destroy NVN’s ability to wage war and compel them to call off the rebellion in SVN? Hang on a little longer, propping up the SVN government? Show the world that we are a dependable ally, then figure out a way to exit SVN with honor? 

* * *
WHY I WANTED TO SHARE THIS

The Sixties was a turbulent time to be a teen and over the years much has been written about that period. The reason I wanted to read this book is because many of its features are relevant to what has been happening today and over the past two decades. 

The war in Afghanistan has now become the longest in our nation's history. Why were we there this long? What was the real objective? When did our leaders know it was unwinnable? These are all the same questions that were raised in Vietnam. 

I'm imagining that we did not want to pull out because the U.S. is supposed to be the most powerful nation on earth. Were were afraid we would look like weak?

I'd read earlier this summer that President Biden is a lot like LBJ in that he wants Yes-men and doesn't want to be challenged. The problem with this is that helpful insights get quenched or shut out to the detriment of the bigger picture. I've written about this more than once. (See: The Three Most Important People in the Room.)

This past week I read that two senior FDA officials quit because President Biden was not listening to the science on some matters related to Covid. It made me think of President Johnson shutting his ears to the voices of concern being raised by the Pentagon. 

In the Sixties, there was more concern with regard to projecting an image of strength than to figuring out what the right thing to do would be. That's probably a game all politicians play. 

Having come full circle, I'd best just leave off here. 

Related

Two articles about Afghanistan that especially made me sad:

“A Vast Criminal Racket”: Sebastian Junger on How the U.S. Corrupted Afghanistan"

Assabiya Wins Every Time

A Tale of Two Ships: USS Maddox and USS Liberty

One President, Two Ships and Lots of Questions

Both of these incidents occurred while Lyndon Johnson was president. The response in each instance is shameful and sad, even incomprehensible.

USS Maddox

The notorious Gulf of Tonkin incident, involving the USS Maddox, served as the catalyst that legitimized our going to war on North Vietnam. The president told congress and the media that our ship had twice been attacked by North Vietnamese patrol boats. He did not tell anyone that the reason for the attack (there was only one, and not two) was that for six months previous "South Vietnam began conducting a covert series of U.S.-backed commando attacks and intelligence-gathering missions along the North Vietnamese coast." (U.S. Naval Institute, "The Truth About Tonkin")

These raids were not working out, so General Westmoreland began bombarding the North using South Vietnamese patrol boats. (We were supposedly neutral, yet we were running the show and providing all the ammo.)

The Maddox was specially equipped with communications intercept technology and specialists. It had come down from Taiwan to monitor the situation from international waters. On August 2 while in the Gulf in broad daylight, three North Vietnamese patrol boats approached them. The Maddox fired shots across their bow. In turn they fired a torpedo. We proceeded to bring in four fighter planes in an attempt to blow them out of the water as they fled. One was sunk and the other two were damaged.

On August 4, at night and during stormy weather, overeager sonar interpreters mis-read signals coming from wave tops as incoming craft, first from the south, then the north, creating a fearful sense of being under attack. A 90-minute flyover by a fighter plan indicated that there was never anything out there.

LBJ persuaded congress that this was proof that we were dealing with an aggressive enemy and should not put up with it. "Let's go to war!"  (OK, he didn't say it like that, but Congress was near unanimous in endorsing this call to escalate the Viet Nam conflict, send troops and bomb the smithereens out of the North.)

Read my blog post The Gulf of Tonkin Incident, Revisited and the U.S. Naval Institute's article The Truth About Tonkin, utilizing de-classified NSA documents 

* * * *
By way of contrast, Consider the USS Liberty
I first read about the USS Liberty incident in Alfred Lilienthal's 1978 book The Zionist Connection: What Price Peace. Wikipedia supplies this succinct account in its opening paragraph:

Damaged USS Liberty, post attack. 34 dead, 171 wounded.

The USS Liberty incident was an attack on a United States Navy technical research ship, USS Liberty, by Israeli Air Force jet fighter aircraft and Israeli Navy motor torpedo boats, on 8 June 1967, during the Six-Day War. The combined air and sea attack killed 34 crew members (naval officers, seamen, two marines, and one civilian), wounded 171 crew members, and severely damaged the ship. At the time, the ship was in international waters north of the Sinai Peninsula, about 25.5 nmi (29.3 mi; 47.2 km) northwest from the Egyptian city of Arish.

The incident was brought to mind again while reading Seymour Hersh's The Samson Option, an account of how Israel came to have a nuclear weapons program. This history of the development of a nuclear facility parallels Israel's emergence as a power in the Middle East. Chapter 12 is about the U.S. ambassador  to Israel, Walwourth Barbour. According to Hersh, Ambassador Barbour was actually present in the Israeli war room during the Six Day War.

A portion of the damage. Public domain photo.

Even though the naval intelligence ship was flying the stars and stripes, the Israeli Air Force fired rockets and strafed the Liberty mercilessly, despite its being in international waters. Israel didn't want to even acknowledge what it had done. Barbour wasn't even angry, Hersh writes, but a lot of people inside Washington were none too happy at how the president downplayed it.

The whole purpose of the ship's existence in these waters was to monitor communications taking place during the Six-Day War. It would have been easy to know that the Israeli pilots bombing and strafing the Liberty were fully aware that this was a U.S. ship.

The many survivors of this horrendous assault are still dealing with their agitation and frustration today. The "official story" is that the attack was a case of mistaken identity. According to Hersh, Israel didn't even want to acknowledge that it was they who attacked and disabled the ship.

Eventually they did apologize, calling it a case of mistaken identity. According to this Chicago Tribune story, "for those who lost their sons and husbands, neither the Israelis' apology nor the passing of time has lessened their grief." And every single one of the survivors interviewed for the Trib story rejected Israel's explanation that it had been "a case of mistaken identity."

Likewise, documents released in 2007 show that very few inside the NSA and U.S. leadership believed "the official story."

Transcripts show that even some of the Israeli pilots were reluctant to attack because it was clearly an American vessel. Read the full Trib story. 

* * * * 

So how is it that a muffed torpedo shot by a North Vietnamese gunboat that hurt no one can be used to justify the murder of thousands of civilians through bombing raids and deployment of tens of thousands of American youth to do even more damage in that corner of the world, while this particular atrocity is totally buried, ignored and unaddressed?

As it is written in Ecclesiastes 1: 18
For with much wisdom comes much sorrow; the more knowledge, the more grief.

Related Links
USS Liberty Veterans banned forever from Am Legion Nat’l Convention

In a Crisis, It's All About Spin Control

After cutting his teeth as a journalist in Chicago, Seymour Hersh moved to Washington to cover the big game. To his surprise, the hard-working Hersh was shocked at the somewhat lazy journalism taking place in D.C. The Pentagon would have press briefings about what was going on in Viet Nam, and the journalists seemed to swallow it all without any serious questioning, turning it into tomorrow's news. 

Now throughout this time, the Pentagon was spinning. And the press went along with it. Hersh didn't, but even when he uncovered explosive stories, the editors at the Associated Press would water them down. 

Frustrated, he broke free and wrote independently, focused primarily on the war. When he learned of a story about an incident in My Lai that the Pentagon was burying, he used his bloodhound instincts to track down Lt. Calley, who was hidden away at the time. When the news broke, it not only shocked Americans but it also  alerted other journalists to stop sleeping. There were stories to be told that the American people needed to hear. The My Lai Massacre story earned Hersh a Pulitzer Prize in 1970.

* * * 

While going through some old files this week I came across a lengthy 1993 article from CFO magazine titled Spin Control. The article is primarily written for C-suite executives to improve the way they work with the media during a crisis. 

The author, Anne Monroe, interviewed three industry veterans with regard to the "fine art of communicating bad news." Although CEOs are certainly on the firing line in a crisis, it's CFOs who interface with the financial community who must sell the spin on Wall Street. 

The article proceeds to tell a tale of three companies that faced different issues and how they handled them. Tim Metz, who had experience on both sides of the desk, stated that "you have only two things to sell: your competence in framing an effective message and your integrity. In all, you must make sure you remain firmly rooted in the facts."

* * * 

What happens when there are no facts, only perceptions? This seems to be the current status of life within the Beltway. You can hardly turn around without running into another crisis. 

The article closes with a series of statements regarding how crises are mismanaged. 

HOW TO MISMANAGE A CRISIS

1. Ignore or deny the problem.
(Isn't this what's happening at the border right now?)

2. Compartmentalize
(Another form of denial in which the blame is laid elsewhere. "Not my fault.")

3. Lie, or Tell Misleading Half-Truths
(Lying is unacceptable, but maybe we can downplay the problem by revealing only part of what's really happening or its consequences.)

4. Dribble Out Bad News
(One way to ensure that the story continues instead of making a clean breast of things so you can move on.)

5. Assign Blame
(That's the name of the game in D.C., isn't it?) 

6. Panic and Paralysis
("Looks like we'll have to order a few more pizzas. It's gonna be a late one.")

7. Overreact
(It happens. "We have to take action!" 
"Yes, sir, but we don't have the facts."
"Who cares about facts? It's time for action. I have to look like I've got things under control."

* * * 

This week was President Biden's first summit with international leaders. The spin doctors were busy scripting long before the events of this week began. What really happened is hard to say. If you read a cross-section of media outlets you'll find find every shade of spin. Perceptions are quite malleable. Here's some commentary extracted from the Twitterverse.

Biden comes out stronger from this summit. Look how much smaller Putin seems today than in Helsinki in 2018.

The big summit. Biden shows up with cue cards. Putin shows up with brains.

Did Biden make us proud or what! So much stronger & smarter than the last guy!

Biden is dominating Putin in this summit, and both men know it.

Pres. Biden declared the summit a success at his solo press conference, saying "I did what I came to do."

Biden blew the summit as soon as he sat down

Schiff: The Biden-Putin summit "marked a new turn in America’s relationship with Russia – one defined by a strong and forceful rejection of Putin's authoritarianism, adherence to our values, support for human rights around the world, and the advancement of American interests."

NY Post: Biden bumbles and Putin preens at summit.

Who knows? It was an event, and the really important things that came out of this may not be known for 20 years. 

Meantime, life goes on....

Related Link
He Who Controls the Narrative Controls the People

Lawrence Roberts' Mayday 1971 Takes Readers Behind the Scenes at the Biggest Mass Arrest in U.S. History

How much do we really comprehend of what we experience in our lives? How much do we understand the forces at work that are forming our attitudes, provoking our actions, influencing our decisions?  

I don't know how many people attended the Mayday rally of 1971 on the National Mall in which perhaps a couple hundred thousand people gathered to show their solidarity against the war. What I do know is that there was so much more going on than I was aware of, even though I was in the middle of it. How much more? That is where Lawrence Roberts' book, Mayday 1971,  comes in, to shed light on this tumultuous period of history, and especially the events surrounding the first days of May 1971. 

The full title of Roberts' book is Mayday 1971: A White House at War, a Revolt in the Streets, and the Untold History of America’s Biggest Mass Arrest.

I'm certain that many--if not most--of the young people like myself who travelled to Washington for that weekend demonstration were unaware of all the variables that were at play. Nor were we aware of the amount of tension in high places that preceded our arrival. There's a sense, though, in which I did comprehend that something big was happening, because as I hitchhiked from Ohio to DC I readily got rides the entire way by curious people who wanted to know more about it or wanted to show support. It was almost as if, to some of these people, I were a hero for going.

It wasn't until I read this book that I realized why they were so interested. I mean, I was a college student inside my campus bubble. I did not watch TV or read newspapers. We didn't have Internet. Therefore, I did not know that just weeks before someone blew up a bomb inside the Capitol. Nor did I now about the Vietnam Veterans who marched to the Capitol and threw away their medals, John Kerry being one of their spokespersons. Nor did I know that the Mayday Tribe and others had been planning this weekend's orchestrated events for more than two years. Nor did we know how much Richard Nixon and his top officials had also been actively coordinating a counter-response. 

IF YOU WERE THERE you probably wondered why so little was written about this afterwards. It seemed incomprehensible to me that more than 10,000 people could be arrested in this country (7,000 the first day) and hardly anyone even remembers it. If you were there, then you really must read this book.

Each person who had been part of it--whether police, National Guard, students, demonstrators--knows their own story. Roberts' book provides a line of sight to the activities of that week from multiple angles, including the chief of police who had to balance conflicting agendas, and the justice system that Nixon strove to hamstring.   

How ironic that the same issues we dealt with then have re-emerged in this most recent year. What are the limits of peaceful assembly? What is due process when it comes to the collision of ideals and the need for preserve law and order? What is the legitimate and illegitimate use of force? 

There have been some significant contrasts between last year's protests and Mayday 1971. The book cites a few broken windows but there was no looting, no burning of buildings and, to my knowledge, no shootings. 

A similarity, though, is this. When I hitch-hiked back to Ohio U from DC, I was picked up by two students from Antioch and an older guy who said their whole purpose in attending was not to peacefully protest, but to "get pigs." Out of the tens of thousands, I am certain they were not the only persons there who were so inclined to use the opportunity to do violence.

Ever since then, as I observed protests on television and the Internet over the years, I was always aware that there are bad actors mixed in with the masses, and anyone who thinks otherwise is naive, or disingenuous. 

* * *

The book begins with a Table of Contents, which is then followed by one of the most helpful features of the book for me personally: A Map of Washington DC. Though I'd stayed at Georgetown University when we were cleared from the Capitol Mall early Sunday morning and through Sunday night, I did not have a clue as regards how far it was or its relationship to the Capitol Mall and the Teddy Roosevelt Bridge, which the Ohio contingent had been assigned to blockade on Monday morning. 

Next, the author devotes several pages to the key organizations, key people and key events leading up to the Mayday event. In so doing he highlights the names of the people whose narratives helped shape the content of this book. These people were Egil "Bud" Krogh, Jr. from inside the White House, Rennie Davis and David Dellinger from the People's Coalition for Peace and Justice, Stew Albert and Judy Gumbo from the Mayday Tribe/Yippies, John O'Conner from the Vietnam Vets Against the War, Chief of Police Jerry V. Wilson from the D.C. Police, and Barbara A. Bowman, a lawyer from the Public Defenders Service.

It was intended as the final act in the orchestrated Spring Offensive. Their aim was to attract a large crowd for the Saturday rally, and hopefully retain (persuade) as many as possible for the subsequent Monday May 3 action, which had as its objective shutting down the government for a day by blocking traffic on all the main arteries into the city. The traffic was to be blocked peacefully by human bodies. 

The Mayday rally organizers seemed earnest in trying to produce a peaceful protest. If the people were non-violent and peaceful, then the violence of police would stand out in stark contrast. A public opinion win for the protesters. Unfortunately, there are the rotten apples like the three who picked me up heading back to Ohio. I also witnessed protesters jump on officers' backs and rip their gas masks off, among other things. You can read a more complete account of my experience here.

The objective for the White House, utilizing the police and National Guard, was to not allow the protest to succeed in its objective. 

* * *

The book details much that most of us were unaware of. One quote especially stood out for me. After it was over, Richard Nixon heard that a bomb had been placed under one of the bridges. As it turns out there was no bomb, but Nixon's response to the initial intel was, "I wish it had gone off and blown up the bridge. Then public opinion would be more on our side." 

In other words, lots of death and destruction would have been good PR for Nixon because it would help them spin the narrative in their favor. 

This was precisely the problem with Nixon's approach to the prolonged war in Vietnam. He couldn't afford to lose the war because it would be bad for his image. The U.S. does not lose wars. We have to go out looking like a winner.

Nevertheless, little more than a month after these events took place the Pentagon Papers were published in the New York Times, whereupon the nation learned that as early as 1965 the Washington elite knew that the war was a lost cause. Even so, Johnson and Nixon continued to send young Americans into the bloodshed, unconcerned about casualties, death and destruction. In Nixon's case, he was once again only concerned with the image it would project, that the U.S. was weak. Image was everything. 

* * * *  

Much more can be said and Lawrence Roberts presents a lot of it. You can purchase a copy of his book here. 

Related Links

Here is a website dedicated to gathering first hand stories from others who were there during that week. If you were there, you can share your own experience. 

Other related stories that I've written:

The Bent Penny Brigade – Another MayDay Story

He Who Controls the Narrative Controls the People 

Galbraith's How to Control the Military, Still Relevant Today In Many Ways

At the end of his second term President Dwight D. Eisenhower shared, in his parting address to the nation, a word of warning about "the military industrial complex."

Just under a decade later, the Paul M. Warburg Professor of Economics Emeritus at Harvard University and past president of the American Academy of Arts and Letters John Kenneth Galbraith wrote a short volume titled How to Control the Military, a succinct 65 page book aimed at underscoring the same theme.

Galbraith was the author of thirty-one books over a period of three decades, including The Affluent Society, The Good Society, and The Great Crash. According to his Wikipedia bio, "He has been awarded honorary degrees from Harvard, Oxford, the University of Paris, and Moscow University, and in 1997 he was inducted into the Order of Canada and received the Robert F. Kennedy Book Award for Lifetime Achievement. In 2000, at a White House ceremony, he was given the Presidential Medal of Freedom. He lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts."

* * * *
The author's purpose in writing this book was to warn us that when the Vietnam War ends, the cost of peace will be even greater than this war because the Pentagon bureaucracy has a vested interest in growth. On page 16 he writes that the actions of the bureaucracy seldom are done in the best interest of the public, but "to serve the goals of the bureaucracy itself." This is why so many actions that the government takes seem to make no sense to the public at large.

This, of course, was spectacularly played out in Vietnam. He notes that when we try to understand how we got into that quagmire, "It was the result of a long series of steps taken in response to a bureaucratic view of the world--a view to which a President willingly or unwillingly yielded and which, until much too late, was unchecked by any legislative or public opposition."

A little further on he states, "What was essentially a civil war between the Vietnamese was converted into an international conflict with rich ideological portent for all mankind."

Alas, we told ourselves we were trying to. save the world. And who wouldn't want to be the good guys in that objective? "Most of the men responsibly involved accepted the myth in which they lived a part."

A couple pages later he writes, "But Vietnam was not the first time men were so captured--and the country suffered. Within the same decade there was the Bay of Pigs, now a textbook case of bureaucratic self-deception." (i.e. idiocy)

On page 57 Galbraith shared this insight as to why LBJ back down from going after a second term in office. "Suspicion of the military power in 1968 was the most important factor uniting the followers of Senators Kennedy, McCarthy and McGovern. Along with the specific and more important opposition to the Vietnam conflict, it helped to generate the opposition that persuaded Lyndon Johnson not to run.

He went on to state that it wasn't just Leftists and barefoot kids wearing flowers who were concerned about these things. Even right wingers like George Wallace were ringing alarm bells.

* * * *

Galbraith as a young man in 1944.

At another point in the book the author states that our democratic nation has deviated significantly from its Founders' vision of being a government "of the people." This notion, Galbraith says, is a myth. Now that the country is even larger, the bureaucratic systems are even more bloated. All efforts to trim the fat are met with such screams that you'd think we were torturing babies.

The current debacle in regards to the U.S. response to COVID-19 is not simply a matter of lack of preparedness. These massive inefficiency is simply the way bloated bureaucratic systems operate. IN THIS CASE, it's exacerbated by the fractured and somewhat hysterical political discourse generated by partisan politics and power games, misinformation, media manipulation and the unrestrained megaphone of social media.

* * * *
"Politics is not the art of the possible. It consists in choosing between the disastrous and the unpalatable."--Letter to John F. Kennedy

Well, if anything, our new war on coronavirus seems to be bearing this out. Everyone seems to say the same thing. "Don't blame me, blame them."

* * * *
Much more could be said about our current "empire" that includes colonies and military bases in 800 locations around the world. And why--if our presidents keep running on the platform promise to get us out of Afghanistan--are we still in Afghanistan. Who is really in control here?

That's enough for today. I have work to do.

* * * *
Do not be alarmed by simplification, complexity is often a device for claiming sophistication, or for evading simple truths.
--The Age of Uncertainty

The Significance of Martin Luther King's Speech at Riverside Church

Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. (Wikimedia Commons)

"True peace is not merely the absence of tension: it is the presence of justice."
--Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

On April 4, 1967 Dr. King gave a major speech at the Riverside Church in New York. One year later to the day the Baptist minister and civil rights leader was assassinated.

At what point did Martin Luther King know that he was a marked man? He saw what happened to JFK, to Bobby, to Medgar Evers, to Malcolm X. It must have weighed on him heavily that one day he would leave his wife and family for the cause that burdened his heart.

As with all his major speeches, it is delivered with power and authority. The new feature here is that he is critical of our government's involvement in Viet Nam, accusing our leaders--and with good cause--of being a great purveyor of violence.

* * * *
I come to this great magnificent house of worship tonight because my conscience leaves me no other choice. I join you in this meeting because I am in deepest agreement with the aims and work of the organization that brought us together, Clergy and Laymen Concerned About Vietnam. The recent statements of your executive committee are the sentiments of my own heart, and I found myself in full accord when I read its opening lines: “A time comes when silence is betrayal.” That time has come for us in relation to Vietnam.

Why was Dr. King now addressing the war? People were telling him that civil rights issues were different from the anti-war movement. He disagreed, and he spells out his reasons. First, it became apparent to him that the war was an enemy to the poor.

Riverside 1967. (Photo: Public domain)

Perhaps a more tragic recognition of reality took place when it became clear to me that the war was doing far more than devastating the hopes of the poor at home. It was sending their sons and their brothers and their husbands to fight and to die in extraordinarily high proportions relative to the rest of the population. We were taking the black young men who had been crippled by our society and sending them eight thousand miles away to guarantee liberties in Southeast Asia which they had not found in southwest Georgia and East Harlem. So we have been repeatedly faced with the cruel irony of watching Negro and white boys on TV screens as they kill and die together for a nation that has been unable to seat them together in the same schools. 

Another reason he had come to make this speech was because he saw how blacks were arming themselves, many believing that violence was the only way to set things right. When he said it was not, they would point to Viet Nam and say how our government believed violence was the way to resolve issues.

This latter led Dr. King to become more vocal about the wrongness of the war.

Now it should be incandescently clear that no one who has any concern for the integrity and life of America today can ignore the present war. If America’s soul becomes totally poisoned, part of the autopsy must read “Vietnam.”

His career as a minister required him to preach peace to the nation and take up the cause of the needy.

We are called to speak for the weak, for the voiceless, for the victims of our nation, for those it calls “enemy,” for no document from human hands can make these humans any less our brothers.

The next section of his speech details the history of Viet Nam after the end of World War II, and our part in the then-present devastation.

We have destroyed their two most cherished institutions: the family and the village. We have destroyed their land and their crops. We have cooperated in the crushing of the nation’s only noncommunist revolutionary political force, the unified Buddhist Church.

He follows this section now with concern for our own troops and what we are doing to them.

I am as deeply concerned about our own troops there as anything else. For it occurs to me that what we are submitting them to in Vietnam is not simply the brutalizing process that goes on in any war where armies face each other and seek to destroy. We are adding cynicism to the process of death, for they must know after a short period there that none of the things we claim to be fighting for are really involved.

How do you un-see once you've seen it so plainly?

He goes on to make a statement that is expounded upon more fully in more recent book The Cold War's Killing Fields by Paul Thomas Chamberlin, that the U.S. misinterpreted all national ambitions for self-rule through a Cold War lens. He stated, "In 1957 a sensitive American official overseas said that it seemed to him that our nation was on the wrong side of a world revolution," and then elaborated on this.

It is a sad fact that because of comfort, complacency, a morbid fear of communism, and our proneness to adjust to injustice, the Western nations that initiated so much of the revolutionary spirit of the modern world have now become the arch antirevolutionaries.

Sadly, this next paragraph could have been written yesterday:

We can no longer afford to worship the god of hate or bow before the altar of retaliation. The oceans of history are made turbulent by the ever-rising tides of hate. History is cluttered with the wreckage of nations and individuals that pursued this self-defeating path of hate. As Arnold Toynbee says: “Love is the ultimate force that makes for the saving choice of life and good against the damning choice of death and evil. Therefore the first hope in our inventory must be the hope that love is going to have the last word.”

And finally:

Now let us begin. Now let us rededicate ourselves to the long and bitter, but beautiful, struggle for a new world. This is the calling of the sons of God, and our brothers wait eagerly for our response. Shall we say the odds are too great? Shall we tell them the struggle is too hard? Will our message be that the forces of American life militate against their arrival as full men, and we send our deepest regrets? Or will there be another message—of longing, of hope, of solidarity with their yearnings, of commitment to their cause, whatever the cost? The choice is ours, and though we might prefer it otherwise, we must choose in this crucial moment of human history.

* * * *

Why I Am Writing About This

Nearly every point in his "Beyond Vietnam" speech is something many of us had thought about at one time or another growing up in the Sixties, or so I thought. We hadn't articulated it so clearly, but were uncomfortable with what we were hearing, seeing in the news, reading in the papers. 

Simultaneously, Dr. King was being slammed as becoming a Communist now, taking the side of our enemies. As you can plainly see, this speech is in harmony with the Gospel, for we are all brothers and sisters in the human family, and have responsibilities to one another. It has been cited as the moment he was perceived as a real threat to out nation's Machiavellian war efforts, a voice that had to be silenced. 

Related Links
Background on the speech Beyond Vietnam 
The full speech, Beyond Vietnam
Coretta Scott King's Statement at the Conclusion of the Conspiracy Trial  regarding the assassination of her husband on e year later.

May Day 1971: Correcting the Narrative

For more than three decades Ken Burns has provided a remarkable look at American history by means of themed documentary film series. Some of his best known work includes The Civil War, Baseball, Jazz, Prohibition and The Vietnam War. The remarkable achievement of these histories, in my opinion, is the manner in which the American Negro experience is woven into the narratives.

It would have been so easy to tell the "white" story. Ken Burns' inclusiveness is wonderful, and completes these significantly American narratives.

In 2017 Burns released a ten-hour documentary about one of the most divisive events in our history, The Vietnam War. This series covered every aspect of the war, from the withdrawal of French colonialists to the abandonment of South Vietnam by American troops from Saigon.

I believe it was the 7th segment of this series that dealt with the anti-war movement, which included footage and details about the May Day protests of 1971 in Washington D.C., an event that I experienced first hand. I have spent decades desiring to write about this, not entirely sure how to approach it.

According to the documentary there were more people arrested in a single day than in any day in U.S. history, more than 7000. Though I was aware that there were more arrests that day than any other, the number of arrests that I recalled was over 14,000. This discrepancy interested me, and as I began researching, to write about what I saw and heard and felt, I discovered a whole range of discrepancies in some of these stories, many of which I found most bizarre, some of which were useful, though, correcting a narrative in my head based on rumors.

What surprised me was how little was written about the event in the aftermath. A few articles but little else. Did the government put the kibosh on the media lest there be a national uprising? Was the press ordered to downplay what they saw?

I plan to write my story, but here wished to pick apart one article that I found online while researching for my own narrative. The photos are accurate, and you should follow the link at the end to check them out. The HannahBHist390 Wordpress story has a useful opening quote by Jim Morrison: "Whoever controls the Media controls the mind."

My responses are in maroon.

1971 MAY DAY PROTESTS (RIOT) AGAINST THE VIETNAM WAR

The 1971 May Day Protests took place in Washington D.C and the Georgetown area. The people who took part in this three-day protest from May 1st through 3rd were members of the MayDay Tribe which were made up of “yippies” (radical youth-orientated anti-war individuals) .

I went because it was an anti-war protest. I was not part of any "tribe" or organization. To my knowledge the 64+ students from Ohio University were not members of this tribe and I am guessing that the majority of protesters were citizens and students who came out of a groundswell of interest in representing their viewpoints about the war. 

It is useful to keep in mind that the Kent State shooting had been just the previous spring. Many of us who went to college at Ohio U were aware that the 1970 school year ended early due to protests that erupted after that dark event. Several times during the following couple years I experienced a tense vibe from the campus police, stories for another time.

Starting on May 1st, 35,000 protestors camped out and gathered in West Potomac Park to listen to rock music and plan the protests.

This is a hilariously bogus number. When I was there my guess was 300,000 people were gathered in that park. The entire Washington Mall from the Lincoln Memorial to the Washington monument was full of people. Wikipedia repeats this same absurdly low number. A New York times story stated that there were 200,000, which is probably closer to the truth. 

As for the "rock music and plan" ... There was indeed rock music. The Beach Boys were playing on stage when I arrived, perhaps around noon or shortly after noon. The Jefferson Airplane were slated to perform, but were a no show. (Rumor was that they were pressured to withdraw.) Phil Ochs did a set sometime after midnight. There were speeches, but I do not recall any planning. How do you "plan" with 200,000 people facing a stage? The planning took place on Sunday.

These protests aimed to shut down the nation’s capital to show that they were against the war in Vietnam.

OK, so we have two groups of people in this crowd. A portion of the crowd did indeed have this larger mission in mind, to shut down the government. The May Day organizers had actually orchestrated this over a period of two years. But many, if not most of us, were sheep. We were there on Saturday, May 1, to stand in alliance with the mission of letting our government know that there were citizens who did not approve of the war. 

On May second the U.S Park Police and Washington Metropolitan Police raided the park and fired tear gas to drive the protestors away.

Really? Total bunko. Here is what happened. As the speakers droned on into the wee hours, many if not most were falling asleep under the stars. At 4:00 a.m. there was an announcement made from the stage, followed by bullhorns from police, that we did not have a permit to remain in the park and we had to leave. 

I woke from my slumber to see the entire park surrounded by police, as many as four or five thousand, spaced to completely surround Washington Green/Potomac Park. Half awake we rolled up our sleeping bags and trudged through the dark following whoever was around us to wherever they were going. I ended up at Georgetown University. Some buildings were opened and I found a section of floor space to unroll my sleeping bag and return to my slumbers.

There was no tear gas required. I saw no tear gas and no pushback. It was a parade of half awake sleepwalkers who headed to three university campuses that welcomed the tired masses.

This stirred up violence and started a riot which caused many protestors to abandon this demonstration of civil disobedience.

Huh? I saw no riots. I smelled no tear gas. Not at this point in time. That would come later, on May 3 when there would be more than enough to tear gas go around, both on the streets of D.C. and on the Georgetown campus.

Those individuals that stayed took refuge at various churches and more specifically at Georgetown University, setting up tents on its athletic field.

It was a big crowd, and there were other places people went because I know they did not all go to Georgetown U.  

By Monday, May 3rd troops and police were prepared, filling up every traffic circle, park, monument and street in the DC area.

What I remember from Saturday May 1 were several speakers who late in the day were saying, "You didn't come here just for a party. You came to shut down the government." Those were pretty incendiary words, which on Sunday were presented in this manner: "We are shutting down the government for one day by blocking off the city. Government employees are on our side and will go home for the day." Well, hardy har har.

Sunday May 2 was a training day. We were trained in the rules of engagement for non-violent civil disobedience. Monday May 3 was to be the action day.

The training went down like this. The leaders broke us up into groups of 100. An instructor with a bullhorn would present the rules of non-violent protest. During the Q&A period, one question

that was asked had to do with "how do we respond if the cops start beating us." The bullhorn leader, for our group a young woman with dark har in her 20s, said, "Don't worry. This is a non-violent protest. They won't hit you."

To which someone else replied, "Yes, but what if they do start hitting us?" And the training seemed to fall apart at that point because she didn't give a satisfying answer.

What we were unaware of was how many National Guard troops were being flown into D.C. that day, a plane-load every three minutes at one point.

Another piece of this action included knowing where to go. All the key intersections and bridges were to be blocked so that there could be no traffic flow into D.C on Monday. The organizers had divided us up based on what state we were from. Everyone from Ohio was to block the Teddy Roosevelt Bridge.

On Monday morning, May 3, the day of the civil action, I overslept. I fell asleep on the basement floor of a room with more than 100 people. I woke by myself, hastily rolled up my sleeping bag and threw it in the corner. As I left the Georgetown campus I headed in the direction of the Mall and noticed that on all four corners of every single intersection there were four uniformed police standing, talking to one another or watching. I asked the first officer I encountered which way was the Teddy Roosevelt Bridge. He smiled and pointed. A few blocks later I asked another. I think they got a good laugh at my expense. Eventually I neared the bridge...  

When the protestors entered, the police attacked and started to arrest anyone and everyone that was protesting.

This sentence is confusing. "When the protesters entered..." Entered what? As I drew near, standing about a half block away, the bridge traffic was stopped because of the protesters seated and standing at the end of the bridge. In the distance I could hear sirens approaching. 36 squad cars came flying across the bridge at what looked like 60 miles per hour, coming in on the outbound lanes. As they approached the protesters they never slowed down. The hippies, students and others scattered.

The protesters rushed back into their positions, continuing to block traffic. Some were handing out leaflets to the cars backed up on the bridge. Meanwhile, the squad cars must have made a circular return because they were now coming back from the other way, once again dispersing the crowd by not slowing down. On their third passage the cop cars all stopped and began the engagement, striking protesters with clubs. Buses arrived and the rest of this morning would be officers clubbing people and throwing them onto buses, transporting them to a makeshift concentration camp at RFK Stadium because the jails were so quickly filled.

It was at this point tear gas began to fly. Helicopters flew about, shooting tear gas down into any crowd larger than 100 people.

The yippies engaged in hit and run tactics, causing more chaos in the streets. Tear gas was being fired everywhere and the riot continued to build. The city’s prisons were full and an emergency detention center had to be set up next to the RFK stadium.

This part is accurate, though disconcerting. Seeing protesters attacking police, and protesters throwing barricades in front of moving vehicles (See the Ling video below) so as to cause accidents seemed contrary to the purported intentions of the civil action. This is why to this day when I hear of a protest being organized somewhere I totally anticipate that there will also be violence or vandalism while some of the media interviews the naive in order to paint a totally innocent picture.

As the afternoon of the third day approached, many were drawn away from protesting. This was the largest mass arrest in US history, with arrests close to 12,614 people. Later the conspiracy charges against the MayDay tribe leaders were dismissed. Overall, this act of civil disobedience that led to a chaotic riot and mass arrests got the anti-war message across very clearly to Nixon and his administration.

It's hard to say what message was actually communicated. It's my understanding that the bombing in Southeast Asia accelerated, that tens of thousands of innocent civilians continued to become the "collateral damage" of our misguided policies.

Here is the link to the origin of the above account.

Here are a pair of YouTube videos with footage that captures a sense of the times. The sound track is odd on this first one but the footage is real. Looks like a lot more than 35,000 people to me. At 3:30 into this first one there is a guy with a red and black checked jacket that may have been me. That was the jacket I had worn as I hitchhiked to D.C. for the long weekend.

William Ling film (below)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0dTEzIBcHfo

No sound? Don't worry. The pictures tell the story.

https://hannahbhist390.wordpress.com/2014/09/13/1971-may-day-protests-riot-against-the-vietnam-war/