I read substantial parts of David Halberstam's magisterial book, The Best and the Brightest, as part of a college course (that would be quite a few years ago; I turned 35 this past Friday, thankyouverymuch).
I remember being gobsmacked by the book: as a young person with a typical American education, I knew little about Vietnam (American history courses, sadly, rarely getting past the 19th century), and what I did know, or thought I knew, was mostly mythology. Halberstam's book was an eye-opener, changing my whole perspective on a host of issues-- one of many such books I've read over the years. I went on to read several other Halberstam books on my own (I especially recommend The Fifties) but never went back and completed TBATB (as I'll abbreviate the title).
Until last week. Needing a good solid (long) book to keep me busy during a weeklong vacation without television or Internets, I picked up a copy.
My thoughts below the fold....
[If you don't know about this book, here's the Cliffs Notes summary: JFK's team of advisors and Cabinet members was widely trumpeted as being the best minds of their generation, men of great intellect and rationality who would put their stamp on all the nation's problems. Instead, these very intelligent and capable (though not so wise) men got us involved in Vietnam. Halberstam investigates how this could have happened: what were the key decisions, what were the mindsets, that led to the disaster of Vietnam? The book traces US policy and the policymakers from the 40s through the 70s, but focusing on the early and middle 60s, the Kennedy years and the early Johnson years. It contains in-depth profiles of McNamara, Rusk, Bundy, as well as Kennedy and Johnson (and many others). It is 700+ pages, but if you haven't read it, you really should.]
The definitive book on how we got into Iraq is unlikely to be called "The Best and the Brightest." But as I read the book, with Iraq of course very much on my mind, I was struck by certain similarities. I also thought about some of the key differences.
Similarities:
~the role of lies. Both fiascos were based on a big unexamined assumption (Iraq: WMDs, Vietnam: domino theory) which in retrospect (and to some at the time) seemed flimsy in the extreme. But even more than that, both featured slanting of intelligence, and biased reporting of the situation on the ground. In Vietnam, Halberstam writes, the only ones who were telling the truth and being heard were the journalists, who were of course then attacked for being negative. All other realistic voices from Vietnam were silenced before they could get out to the public. So we should not be surprised when the official word out of Iraq is that things are going great, success is just around the corner. Rather, we should be surprised when any negative assessments make it through-- they are likely to be the tip of the iceberg.
~the stalemate. After a while in Vietnam, it became clear that the US goal was simply not to lose. We were not prepared to make the kind of commitment that "winning" (whatever that would mean in Vietnam, which is not at all clear) would require, so we fought a war of attrition, a type of war which the other side was much better suited to. "Not losing" is a tough goal to deal with: when this is the goal, there is really no point at which success or failure can be assessed. In 1965 we were "not losing," in the sense that we had not entirely lost-- our troops were there, fighting, killing, being killed. Same in 1966 or 1967. Same in Iraq now-- except that the Bush Administration has been much more careful (at least recently) about proclaiming that total victory is around the corner. There will always be some future possibility of success for them to point to (the government in Iraq is making progress on achieving xxx benchmark and we think they'll get there in a month or two), and the failures will likely never be sufficiently catastrophic to indicate that we've definitively "lost" (though in any real sense we long ago lost).
Differences:
The biggest thing that jumped out at me was the role of active choices. One of the main theses of the book is that the Kennedy and Johnson Administrations never really made a big choice about Vietnam: they never sat down and decided that Vietnam was important enough to US interests to fight a major war there. Instead, they made a series of little choices, choices which inexorably led to escalation after escalation and eventually, a big war. Not that this exonerates them: there were many people who warned that this was exactly what would happen, and they ignored them. It was a sort of Greek tragedy, with the participants insisting that they could control events, but finding that they were in fact controlled by them.
In Iraq, the Bush Administration made a very conscious choice to fight an unnecessary war on false premises. They ignored very good indications that the fight would be much harder than they thought, and they neglected to do any decent amount of planning for the post-invasion situation. Their culpability is much, much higher.
Reading a book on Vietnam right now was a very interesting experience. I gained many insights into our current situation, a few of which I've discussed here. But I highly recommend reading this book or another good one on the last disastrous war. Thanks for reading this far.