The Militant(logo) 
    Vol.59/No.23           June 12, 1995 
 
 
Mcnamara Hopes To Bury Vietnam Syndrome  

BY PETER SEIDMAN
Robert McNamara wrote In Retrospect more with an eye on the future than the past. McNamara, who was secretary of defense under presidents John Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson from 1960-67, explains he has "grown sick at heart witnessing the cynicism and even contempt with which so many people view our political institutions and leaders.- It is cynicism that makes Americans reluctant to support their leaders in the actions necessary to confront and solve our problems at home and abroad."

Far from being an apology for U.S. imperialism's war in Indochina - a war resulting in the deaths of more than 3 million Vietnamese as well as 58,000 U.S. combat troops - McNamara hopes to diminish the continuing political limitations on Washington's ability to engage in future wars. The skepticism of the government's justifications for interventions and wars, and the distrust of the officer corps came to be known as the Vietnam syndrome, and the many negative reactions to McNamara's book are one indication that it has not been overcome.

McNamara, who served until 1981 as president of the World Bank after leaving the Johnson administration, foresees not a stable "New World Order," but a future of "conflict, between disparate groups within nations and extending across national borders."

He goes on, "Racial, religious, and ethnic tensions will remain. Nationalism will be a powerful force across the globe. Political revolutions will erupt as societies advance. Historic disputes over political boundaries will endure. And economic disparities among nations will increase as technology and education spread unevenly around the world. The underlying causes of Third World conflict that existed long before the Cold War began remain now that it has ended. They will be compounded by potential strife among states of the former Soviet Union and by continuing tensions in the Middle East."

U.S. errors in Vietnam
For McNamara, the Vietnam War was wrong because the U.S. government lost. He writes to better prepare his successors to prevail where he and his cohorts in war crimes failed:

"We both overestimated the effect of South Vietnam's loss on the security of the West and failed to adhere to the fundamental principle that, in the final analysis, if the South Vietnamese were to be saved they had to win the war themselves. Straying from this central truth," McNamara counsels, "we built a progressively more massive effort on an inherently unstable foundation. External military force cannot substitute for the political order and stability that must be forged by a people for themselves."

There was no U.S. strategy that could transform the reactionary, corrupt puppet government Washington imposed on one half of Vietnam into a force capable of winning the "hearts and minds" of the people. The Saigon regime in the south, based as it was on the wealthy hangers on of imperialism and the landlords in the countryside, was incapable of meeting popular demands for land reform and democracy.

From their starting point of "stopping Communism," McNamara, Kennedy, Johnson, and Richard Nixon had no choice but to fill the resultant political vacuum with U.S. troops and firepower.

And so they did, dropping more bombs on Vietnam than were dropped anywhere in the world in all previous wars combined. Massive U.S. bombing continued almost up to the very end of the war, even after formal peace talks opened up in 1971.

But the people of Vietnam, in the north and the south, never let up their heroic resistance.

McNamara goes
McNamara's generals repeatedly proclaimed that with just a few thousand more troops, "victory would be just around the corner." He never denied them.

But he did become increasingly skeptical.
He was consistently confounded by the ability of the liberation forces to maintain supply lines through the heavily bombed Ho Chi Minh trail, as well as their ability to "recruit" in numbers far exceeding the casualties inflicted by U.S. forces. One of the key lessons of Vietnam, he writes, is that, "We failed-to recognize the limitations of modern, high-technology military equipment, forces, and doctrine in confronting unconventional, highly motivated people's movements."

In November 1967, McNamara submitted a memo to Johnson outlining his misgivings along these lines. He was obviously also alarmed by the growth of antiwar mobilizations and sentiment among the American people. No doubt the peaceful march of more than 30,000 people on the Pentagon the month before had made its mark on him. "I watched the whole thing from the roof of the building," his version goes. "Of course I was scared: an uncontrolled mob is a frightening thing."

He wrote Johnson: "-the American public, frustrated by the slow rate of progress, fearing continued escalation, and doubting that all approaches to peace have been sincerely probed, does not give the appearance of having the will to persist. As the months go by, there will be both increasing pressure for widening the war and continued loss of support for American participation in the struggle. There will be increasing calls for American withdrawal.

"There is, in my opinion, a very real question whether under these circumstances it will be possible to maintain our efforts in South Vietnam for the time necessary to accomplish our objectives there."

Johnson and the majority of his advisers rejected McNamara's hesitations. One quipped that, "the author of the memo had probably seen too many protest marches." A month later, McNamara learned he would be starting a new job at the World Bank.

Fear of new Cubas
McNamara explains what the rulers feared "that underlay our involvement in Vietnam."

"At the time," he states, "Communism still seemed on the march. Mao Zedong and his followers had controlled China since 1949 and had fought with North Korea against the West; Nikita Khrushchev had predicted Communist victory through `wars of national liberation' in the Third World.-And now Castro had transformed Cuba into a Communist beachhead in our hemisphere. We felt beset and at risk-"

What left the Camelot crowd feeling so "beset" was the post-World War II rise of popular struggles for national liberation during the 1950s and 60s that swept countries from Asia to Africa as oppressed peoples fought to throw off colonial domination.

McNamara explains the Cuban revolution especially set off alarm bells in the new administration. He describes the deliberateness with which Kennedy decided on the 1961 invasion of the island at the Bay of Pigs.

As it turned out, McNamara says, the attempted invasion was a "perfect failure." The strength of the Cuban revolution and the extent of international solidarity it had earned clearly surprised Washington. McNamara noted that, "contrary to CIA predictions, the Cuban people did not rally in support of the invasion; Castro marshaled forces in the area more quickly and in greater numbers than anticipated.- Washington's hand in the operation, once exposed, aroused global indignation.-"

`National unity'
McNamara peddles the idea that if only the president had taken the need to pursue the carnage in Vietnam to Congress for a debate then they could have created the conditions needed to unify the country behind the war.

Such a debate, "must be done - even if a divisive vote risks giving aid and comfort to our adversary," he insists. "We did not do it, and we would learn the hard way that a government must accept that risk in order to lead a united country into war and maintain support. Instead of working toward unity, we chose to sweep the debate under the Oval Office carpet. Are we wiser today?"

McNamara seems to think so, applauding the campaign orchestrated by the Bush administration prior to Washington's war against Iraq: "Before President Bush began combat operations against Iraq, he sought - and obtained - Congress's support (as well as that of the U.N. Security Council).

"President Bush was right. President Johnson, and those of us who served him, were wrong."

U.S. forces slaughtered more than 150,000 Iraqis during the Persian Gulf war. Washington did this to tighten its grip on Mideast oil - at the expense of its imperialist rivals in Germany and Japan. McNamara boasts of this brutal slaughter as an example of a well-managed war, blessed by the charade of congressional debate.

But the superficial unity orchestrated by Washington prior to the Persian Gulf war would not have lasted had the fighting gone on for a greater length of time. In such a situation, Bush knew, U.S. casualties would have quickly mounted. The antiwar actions that had flared up on the eve of the war could again have caught fire.

Despite their boasts of achieving "national (and even international) unity," U.S. rulers knew they had only postponed a debate on the war with the congressional and United Nations charades, strict media censorship, and yellow ribbons.

McNamara also misstates the case when he claims Johnson was able to "sweep the debate under the Oval Office carpet" during Vietnam. Despite the administration's best efforts to avoid it, or at least contain it within a housebroken Congress, there was a deep going national debate during the war in Vietnam. The war makers' problem was that they not only couldn't prevent this debate, but they lost it!

A massive antiwar movement developed that successfully reached out to soldiers and accelerated the crumbling of military morale that actually threatened the ability of the Pentagon to continue fighting the war.

But this is the story McNamara hopes to hide and the impact of the movement is what he aims to help fade away. The real history of the war is a lesson in the horrors the war makers in Washington are capable of unleashing to defend their system, but it is also a lesson in the powerful impact a movement of working people the world over can have.

The 20th anniversary of the victory of the Vietnamese people is a good opportunity to spend some time studying those lessons. While McNamara's book won't help much, there is a book that does give a real account of Washington's policies in the war and of the role of the Vietnamese and the masses of antiwar protesters who helped bring an end to the carnage. Pick up Out Now! A Participant's Account of the Movement In the United States Against the Vietnam War by Fred Halstead, published by Pathfinder Press.

 
 
 
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