Ron is right, and the facts back him up. We dropped more tonnage of bombs
on tiny
Vietnam than we did on Nazi Germany -- a larger, more industrialized, and
more populated country. We had total superiority in the air and the sea. We
outgunned them, we bombed ruthlessly and recklessly with bombs, napalm, and
agent orange. We destroyed the ecology of their country. The only thing we
did not do was bomb dikes, which would have flooded population centers, and
nuke Hanoi. Had we had done either of these things, we would have lost our
Western allies, there would have anti-American rioting in every country in
the world, and there would have been civil war at home. But to say the
anti-war caused the loss or that LBJ did not have the will to win is
military nonsense. We lost because our allies were corrupt and wouldn't
fight, because the northerners (right or wrong) saw this as a war of
national liberation -- a continuation of the war in which they defeated the
french), because American military leadership was inept, and because after
67 large sectors of the draftee army (much to their credit and honor) lost
the will to fight except for their self-protection.
The interesting question (a real difficult one), as I wrote in an earlier
post, (lost in the DH furor) was whether the anti-war movement made a
strategic mistake by taking a revolutionary turn in 1968 just when the
mainstream population was opposing the war. I didn't understand then, but
I do now, but had Humphrey become President (a sure thing with only token
movement support), he would have been compelled to end the war on
essentially the same terms Kissinger got a few years later. To continue the
war would have destroyed his presidency and with it the Democratic Party.
As Paul Joseph in his fine South End Press book, Cracks in the Empire,
documents, the major elements of the Democratic Party, including its
corporate financial backers, were ready to quit the war in 1968. The
so-called "wise men" (that's a yuk) organized by Clark Clifford told LBJ
the game was up. That's why he resigned. The anti-war movement, in my
opinion, was about to achieve its goal of ending the war after the 68
election when it took a revolutionary (violent and nonviolent) path. We
bear some responsibility for electing Nixon President and for the war's
continuation. I don't think we are morally to blame. We didn't order
strategic bombing, Operation Phoenix, destroying villages to save them and
other actions which, I believe, represent war crimes. But in our
inexperience, enthusiasm, and misguided politics, we let an opportunity for
peace to pass. Of course if Humphrey had had the courage to do what LBJ was
too much of a coward to do and say the war had to be ended, he would have
had our support and been elected. Then he would have had to produce if only
to save his party. (As for the defense industry and it's support for the
war, spending would have been high even without the war -- high defense
spending in a stable domestic political situation is better for them than
higher spending in a situation of political turmoil -- a point Paul Goodman
and others made in 68. Ending the war would have been unpopular on the
right, but the defense industry wouldn't have been desperate and many
corporations, craving domestic stability, would have been happy to can it).
Marty Jezer
At 04:54 PM 6/14/2000 -0400, you wrote:
>Regarding the "arguments" Horowitz makes concerning Vietnam: the reason
>(as Ted M. stated) 2.5 million Vietnamese people died was not becasue the
>antiwar movement demanded a withdrawal, it was becasue the war machinery
>of the United Staes and its allies killed them, plain and simple. If our
>call for a withdrawal had been heeded in 1967 or 1968 (even 1969) several
>hundred thousand Vietnamese (and arguably Cambodians) would not have
>died. The myth that it was the media and the antiwar movement which
>caused the US defeat is exactly that-a myth. A major fact remains that
>the
>ruling elites in the US could not agree on how to run the war without
>nuclear weapons and, although NIxon/Kissinger seriously considered doing
>so, cooler heads prevailed in the wake of the major protests in Fall
>1969. The primary evil power in the world (if one is to get
>moralistic) should be measured by the number of evil acts undertaken by
>its political and military machinery and, while the 20th century certainly
>had more than its share of contenders for this title, it's seems pretty
>certain that the US (especially in the post WW II era) will get quite a
>few votes, probably a third place finish after Stalin's USSR and Hitler's
>Reich (although some might give third to Mao's China in sheer tems of its
>apparent barbarity. (The US system of empire is much more insidious and
>consequently seems less sadistic to the casual observe).
>Blaming the antiwar movement for the blodbath in Vietnam is a bit like
>blaming those who opposed HItler's Reich in the 19030s in Germany for the
>camps and slaughter that occurred therein. Or like Ronald reagan laying a
>wreath at the SS cemetery in Bitburg and telling the worl that the members
>of the SS were "victims" too......
>-ron jacobs
-- Marty Jezer * 22 Prospect St. * Brattleboro, VT 05301 * p/f 802 257-5644Author: Stuttering: A Life Bound Up in Words (Basic Books) Abbie Hoffman: American Rebel (Rutgers University Press) The Dark Ages: Life in the USA, 1945-1960 (South End Press) Rachel Carson [American Women of Achievement Series] (Chelsea House) Check out my web page: http://www.sover.net/~mjez To subscribe to my Friday commentary, simply request to be put on my mailing list. It's free!
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