Cartoon by Robert Ariail
A few weeks ago, Bill Moyers Journal had a whole show that centered around actual phone-call recordings made by President Johnson regarding Vietnam, which was a subject that deeply troubled him from the inception of his untimely assumption of the Presidency.
full video - Bill Moyer's Journal - LBJ's Path to War - Nov 20th, 2009
full transcript - Bill Moyer's Journal - LBJ's Path to War - Nov 20th, 2009
What's interesting is that President Johnson did not agree with the geopolitical strategists who thought Southeast Asia was important enough to warrant war. He didn't want to escalate, but he felt that we couldn't pull out now because (in his own words) "if you start running from the Communists, they may just chase you right into your own kitchen."
About two months after assuming the Presidency, Johnson calls an old friend, the newspaper publisher John Knight:
LYNDON B. JOHNSON: What do you think we ought to do in Vietnam?
JOHN S. KNIGHT: I never thought we belonged there. Now that's a real tough one now, and I think President Kennedy thought at one time we should never, that we were overcommitted in that area.
LYNDON B. JOHNSON: Well, I opposed it in '54. But we're there now, and there's only one of three things you can do. One is run and let the dominoes start falling over. And God Almighty, what they said about us leaving China would just be warming up, compared to what they'd say now. I see Nixon is raising hell about it today. Goldwater too. You can run or you can fight, as we are doing. Or you can sit down and agree to neutralize all of it.
It's fascinating how many people he asked about Vietnam, how much he agonized over what to do, and how it worried him greatly just as soon as he became President. The idea of leaving Vietnam was never taken seriously by the President, even though in hindsight that would have been the best choice.
Here's another phone call with his friend Richard Russel, the Senate Armed Services Chairmen. (This is about six months into his Presidency.)
LYNDON B. JOHNSON: What do you think about this Vietnam thing? What, what, I'd like to hear you talk a little bit.
...
RICHARD RUSSELL: It's a, it's a, it's the damn worst mess I ever saw, and I don't like to brag. I never have been right many times in my life. But I knew we were going to get into this sort of mess when we went in there. And I don't see how we're going ever to get out without fighting a major war with the Chinese and all of them down there in those rice paddies and jungles [...] I just don't know what to do.
LYNDON B. JOHNSON: Well, that's the way that I've been feeling for six months.
On the same day that he made the previous phone call (i.e., with Richard Russel), he calls his National Security Adviser:
LYNDON B. JOHNSON: What the hell is Vietnam worth to me? What is Laos worth to me? What is it worth to this country?
MCGEORGE BUNDY: Now we have to get [...]
LYNDON B. JOHNSON: Now, we've got a treaty but, hell, everybody else's got a treaty out there and they're not doing anything about it. Now, of course if you start running from the Communists, they may just chase you right into your own kitchen.
MCGEORGE BUNDY: Yeah, that's the trouble. And that is what the rest of the, that half of the world is going to think if this thing comes apart on us. That's the dilemma. That's exactly the dilemma [...]
LYNDON B. JOHNSON: What action do we take though?
There were voices for pulling out, but Johnson did not feel they made a complete case. (This is also about six months into his Presidency.)
LYNDON B. JOHNSON: Mansfield is just-you know, he's for pulling out. Humphrey said, "Well, we're not doing any good." The Frank Churches said, "We don't want any part of it." The Dick Russells and the twenty-odd in that group say, "We ought never to have ever been in there. And let's- The French found that out, and we didn't go along with the '54 accords. And what the hell are we doing in there anyway? And Dulles and Eisenhower got us in there and we oughtn't have stayed." Yet when you go to reason with 'em and say, "Well how in the world you gonna get out?" They'll say, "God, if some government would ask us to get out, it'd be wonderful." But it's saddening to talk to 'em about it [...] I think it's most-hottest thing we got on our hands and the most potentially dangerous.
At the end of the show, Bill Moyers summarizes the situation:
BILL MOYERS: Now in a different world, at a different time, and with a different president, we face the prospect of enlarging a different war. But once again we're fighting in remote provinces against an enemy who can bleed us slowly and wait us out, because he will still be there when we are gone.
Once again, we are caught between warring factions in a country where other foreign powers fail before us. Once again, every setback brings a call for more troops, although no one can say how long they will be there or what it means to win. Once again, the government we are trying to help is hopelessly corrupt and incompetent.
And once again, a President pushing for critical change at home is being pressured to stop dithering, be tough, show he's got the guts, by sending young people seven thousand miles from home to fight and die, while their own country is coming apart.
And once again, the loudest case for enlarging the war is being made by those who will not have to fight it, who will be safely in their beds while the war grinds on. And once again, a small circle of advisers debates the course of action, but one man will make the decision.
We will never know what would have happened if Lyndon Johnson had said no to more war. We know what happened because he said yes.
Jon Stewart had a segment that touched on Afghanistan in the context of the 20th anniversary of the falling of the Berlin Wall. (It begins at minute 9:03 in the video):
link to the video
(This transcript is for the part of the above video that begins on minute 9:03.)
Jon Stewart: Let's talk about the historical significance of not just covering the falling of the Wall, but the Wall itself falling:
John Oliver: OK, that's a fresh angle. The wall falling represented the fall of the Soviet Empire, a superpower literally crumbling in front of us.
Jon Stewart: It was an incredible moment. Do you think something like that could happen again?
John Oliver: No, this was a unique set of circumstances, a perfect storm not likely to be repeated. You have to remember their economy was in tatters, and looking abroad they had very few real friends left.
Jon Stewart: They had behaved incredibly arrogantly on the world stage, and there's no question the world had turned their back on them.
John Oliver: And together Jon, those wouldn't have amounted to much, if it not for their disastrous decision to try to invade and occupy Afghanistan.
Jon Stewart: That's right. That's uh... But of course our situation is not analogous.
John Oliver: It's totally different.
Jon Stewart: Yes, the economy's in tatters, we were a little arrogant on the world stage, and we've been in Afghanistan about 8 years and it doesn't look like we're ever going to get out. But the Soviet Union at that time had an inexperienced, charismatic leader, promised change and reform ...
John Oliver: He even won the Nobel Peace Prize, that guy.
Jon Stewart: (pause) John, when your empire falls does it hurt?
John Oliver: A little bit at first, it pinches a little bit, but it's just like getting circumcised ...
Jon Stewart: Well, that's not so bad.
John Oliver: ... if you happen to be 90% foreskin.
Stephen Colbert interviewed Lara Logan, who made the case that Afghanistan is fundamentally different from Vietnam for the reason that if we leave this war, the enemy will certainly follow us home.
link to the video
Stephen Colbert: My guest tonight is here to talk about Afghanistan. Then, I assume she'll go to Afghanistan to talk about here. Please welcome CBS chief foreign affairs correspondent Lara Logan.
...
Stephen Colbert: Now having been over there for so many years, there's a lot of talk now that Afghanistan is Obama's Vietnam. OK, we thought Iraq was Bush's Vietnam. It turned out to be Bush's Korea. OK. What other war will Afghanistan turn out to be, because we can't ever call any war it's own war. It has to look like another war from the past. Will it be the Spanish-American War?
Lara Logan: You know the ridiculous thing about all these comparisons. It's the graveyard of empires. It's Obama's Vietnam. It's all that crap, right.
Stephen Colbert: This is a family show.
Lara Logan: The truth is that when the Vietnam War ended, the Vietcong didn't follow the U.S. back home. And that's the big difference here. Don't have to listen to one President or another President. It's not political. Listen to Bin Ladin. Go read what he has said. We will follow the United States. We will attack the homeland again. We will use nuclear weapons. We will use biological warfare. I mean, it's very simple. Everything Al-Qaeda ever said they were going to do before, they've done. There's no reason to doubt his intentions.
I haven't listened to or read anything from Bin Ladin recently, but I thought that originally the reason for the 9/11 attack was our military occupation of Saudi Arabia which was ended a few years ago. Though Afghanistan is not Vietnam, one lesson we can learn from the experience is not to assume that the enemy will follow us home, as many people including President Johnson thought. Sometimes, it seems that our foreign policy exaggerates the threats to the country. How else is the military-industrial complex (that Eisenhower warned about) going to justify a $700 billion annual military budget (nearly half the world's military spending)?
Though the President has spent much time deliberating and discussing what to do about Afghanistan, so did President Johnson. Also, to the extent, the President is trying to gather as much information as possible, that may actually negatively impact decision-making.
Minyanville - Five Things
There's a truism about information that has long withstood the test of time and fortunes large and small, from the racetrack to the futures pit, and it is this: The more information you gather under conditions of uncertainty, the worse your decision making will be. It's unorthodox, counter-intuitive, and difficult to accept, which is what makes it a truism in the first place.
Introduction to Decision Making
Too much information can actually reduce the quality of a decision.