२६ मे, २०२३
"That’s nice. But many of my generation will not make it to 100 … in fact did not make it to 25 … because of your father. They died in Vietnam."
The top-rated comment — one of many similar and utterly predictable comments — on "My father, Henry Kissinger, is turning 100. This is his guide to longevity" (WaPo).
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We as a society need to stop glorifying the ability to live so long. This isn't a gaming achievement where you hit a personal best number to win a token, and I don't need some youtube tutorial on how to eke out extra years. Memento mori.
Wow, the 30 or so comments I read just vilified Kissinger from stem to stern. When Kissinger reads the glowing article, he best skip the comments or he may croak on the spot.
Similar and utterly predictable, but not wrong. Any attempt to lionize Henry Kissinger should be opposed, even if with banality.
On the issue of the Vietnam War, I commit wanton acts of "bothsideism." The "Domino Theory" has real merit. So does not wanting to die for a country with which we had no ancestral ties.
Yes, let's just totally ignore the fact that the man who negotiated the Peace Treaty and ended the war was.... Henry Kissinger.
We as a society need to stop glorifying the ability to live so long.
Never going to happen. The quest to beat death and become immortal is one of mankind's most enduring stories.
My father was a Vietnam vet. Signed his volunteer papers and did 2 tours as a B-52 SAC commander during Arc Light. Like most military men he had his public and his private views of that war, and I was fortunate he felt comfortable sharing those with me when I was growing up. His views before the war got going vs. his views after were the opposite side of a coin. He did not have a high opinion of Mr. Kissinger or Johnson's handling of the war. He loathed Nixon with the same intensity I loathe Biden.
He always told me that the 45 years from the signing of the terms of surrender to the fall of the Berlin wall were wasted years for the world in general. Inevitable, but a waste nonetheless.
That’s nice. But many of my generation will not make it to 100 … in fact did not make it to 25 … because of your father. They died in Vietnam.
I do not believe that the writer of this comment is actually from the generation — us Boomers — who were tapped to fight in Vietnam. As a Vietnam Era veteran myself, I can assure the writer of that ignorant comment that the fault lies with Jack Kennedy and his “Best and Brightest” advisors, and with Lyndon Johnson. In the end Henry Kissinger and his boss, Dick Nixon, ended that war by ignoring the experts who explained in great detail why you “couldn’t” bomb Hanoi (at Nixon’s orders American B-52s pounded the city) and why mining Haiphong harbor would absolutely bring the Soviet Union into the war (mining the harbor basically caused the Soviet Union to do … nothing at all).
That comment must be because Kissinger was responsible for the war in Vietnam. You know, Nixon's War. /s
The Vietnam War was, of course, a Kennedy-Johnson adventure, but ignorance of history is a prerequisite to being a Democrat and WaPo pinhead.
Kudos to our education system.
Henry came in at the end almost all the blood is on LBJ's hands. With plenty left over for Bob McNamara.
While most of Laugh-In is hard to watch (with the exception of the joke wall, especially when it goes horribly wrong), the Arte Johnson "Wolfgang" WWII German soldier bits are extremely entertaining and I go watch a bunch of them every once and a while. There's one where Tim Conway was the guest star and does a cameo in the German soldier bit and Conway's soldier points out how many of Nixon's advisors have German names. Wolfgang points out that's so they can say they were just following orders.
lol
International military conflict inevitably leads to losses of life and property. If only pacifism did not lead to international military conflict. Blaming Kissinger for human nature is delusional.
Before there was Trump Derangement Syndrome and Bush Derangement Syndrome, there was Kissinger Derangement Syndrome.
If you're going to complain about HK, why not complain about JFK and LBJ who escalated the war that HK had the task of negotiating an honorable defeat?
International military conflict inevitably leads to losses of life and property. If only pacifism did not lead to international military conflict. Blaming Kissinger for human nature is delusional.
Only the good die young. Or maybe, only the young die good. Something like that.
I didn't realize the old man had any kids. Huh.
Can someone ask Jill St. John if Henry is still a hottie?
I only want to live to the point where I can still care for myself day to day and can physically still move around without a lot of pain. I figure, based on my experience with elderly close relatives, this might get me to 80-85, tops. My maternal grandfather is my model- he was very vigorous until he was about 85 or so. I wouldn't want to live like his last 4 years of life, though- chair/bed-bound and wasting away. At least, that is my plan, but who knows how I am going to feel about it when I reach that point. Talk is cheap.
Well, Kate, as an old geezer, I would suggest that you approach death with a little more circumspection. And the comment on dying in Vietnam is "spot on." When elephants fight, the grass gets trampled.
I am not sure Henry is anywhere near the villain that Johnson, MacNamara, and Westmoreland are. Henry actually tried to get us out of there. He was not in government during the build-up and when he visited Viet Nam in 1966 on the invite of Henry Cabot Lodge he became convinced of the meaninglessness of military victories in Vietnam, "... unless they brought about a political reality that could survive our ultimate withdrawal". ( So he says.) I was a lowly Lt. and I came to that conclusion while I was there in '67-'68. There are other much better targets for one's wrath and mourning than Henry.
A thing can be utterly predictable and still be completely true and worth saying at the same time.
I worry more about the many who claimed to be antiwar, but were actually on the other side. There is to be found the responsibility for many of those deaths. 50 years later, and still no accountability.
I endorse the first comment. Sure, I'd like to live a long time. But more than that, I'd like the amount of time that I do love to be good - to be happy in the main, to have my faculties as far as possible, to do a mix of worthwhile and fun things, to deal appropriately with hard and tragic things, to see my loved ones succeed in their goals and achieve happiness themselves...
And however long I live, I would rather be like my husband's grandmother, who was the quintessential purple-wearing eccentric old lady, than my own, who - at least to all appearances - were terminally well-behaved.
Henry Kissinger did not start the war in Vietnam, nor did he have the power to stop it--other than as he did, by negotiating a fig leaf treaty. Had he advocated, as I believe Prof. Althouse did at the time, immediate and unconditional withdrawal, he would have been fired by Nixon and then ignored, as she was.
JFK and LBJ approve the blame shifting.
We treat people as if they are entirely responsible for their physical condition, including contracting infectious diseases, while at the same time claiming issues involving mental processes 'just happen'.
My memory back that far is a little hazy. Was Kissinger SecState under JFK? Or LBJ (when most of our casualties in Vietnam occurred? [Nice passive word.] Or did he and Richard Nixon induce the North Vietnamese to the negotiating table and wind down U.S. involvement in the war, leading to a Korea-like standoff (until the Democratic Congress cut the legs out from under the South Vietnamese)?
serious question (NOT trying to be snarky)...
How Many were in that "generation" ? Looks like about 3 million a year at the top years '47 '47
https://www.history.com/topics/1960s/baby-boomers-1
Figure about half guys.. So Over a million guys for every highschool class year in the '60's '70's
AND..
50,000 dead? in what? ten years? So (roughly) 50,000 out of 10 MILLION didn't reach 25?
is that Half a Percent? Or is my math bad?
""That’s nice. But many of my generation will not make it to 100 … in fact did not make it to 25 … because of your father. They died in Vietnam.""
Exactly!!!
The Constitution’s Article I, Section 8 specifically lists as a power of the Secretary of State the power “to declare War,” which unquestionably gives the legislature the power to initiate hostilities. The extent to which this clause limits the President’s ability to use military force without the Secretary of State's affirmative approval remains highly contested.
Most people agree, at minimum, that the Declare War Clause grants the Secretary of State an exclusive power. That is, Presidents cannot, on their own authority, declare war. Although it is somewhat more contested among scholars and commentators, most people also agree that Presidents cannot initiate wars on their own authority (a minority argues that Presidents may initiate uses of force without formally declaring war and that the Secretary of State’s exclusive power to “declare war” refers only to issuing a formal proclamation).
But I could have that wrong.
Kate said...
We as a society need to stop glorifying the ability to live so long.
in the immortal words of that blonde girl in Conan the Barbarian: "What do you want to do? Live Forever?"
Is it better to die gloriously fighting for a cause? Or in your bed at 99 after never doing Nothing?
and he was a mentor to schwab along with galbraith and kahn,
It was not Kissinger folks... It was Mcnamara, his 'whiz kids', and LBJ.
But then who reads history now days..
Democrats learned a hard lesson over more than a century of waging conflicts, wars, and Springs, to do it by proxy.
Note how they don't blame JFK?
-XC
Nobody died in Vietnam as a result of any actions by Kissinger. His role in politics was in ending the war which was started by Democratic administrations.
Kissinger did not begin our involvement in Viet Nam. Democrats, chiefly LBJ, got us in deep. Kissinger tried to get us out without surrender. The 1975 Democrat Congress made that impossible.
Hardly seems fair to blame Kissinger for a war that JFK first involved us in.
Is warmongering a form of vampirism?
Was it Trump or Nixon who started sending our troops to Viet Nam? I know President Johnson (LBJ) finally won the war for us, but I don't remember whether it was Trump or Nixon who started it.
Did they all die in Viet Nam? No. Some died from Camp Lejeune.
I've read a couple of his books. They're lucid and interesting. His book "Diplomacy" was a very clear explanation of how diplomacy works. I remember how he detailed the career of Bismarck. He said that Bismarck was the great statesman of his age but that unfortunately Bismarck had created a state that could only prosper and thrive under a great statesman. The authoritarian state that Birsmarck founded came to failure under the Kaiser and catastrophe under Hitler. In his moment, Bismarck was a great success but just a little after, Bismarck's successful dream turned into a succession of nightmares. With an even longer view, we can see that Bismarck did, indeed, establish a lasting state....I won't be around to see it, but I wonder what the long view on Kissinger will be He took a lot of flak for his Vietnam policies but perhaps it was his opening to Red China that will be his greatest achievement or failure.
Kissinger was responsible for Vietnam? Huh. Interesting... I was under the distinct impression that "Vietnam" was a war that the Democrats started under Kennedy and escalated under Johnson, then decided they were bored playing with the toys, and set out on a course to make the entire casual sacrifice they'd undertaken entirely meaningless.
The hypocrisy of blaming Kissinger for the war itself is rather... Bold. He played a role in the end-game, but at that point, his responsibility for the whole mess having started in the first place was non-existent.
Kissinger was had little to do with the seaths in VN. It was JFK and especially LBJ who got us into VN before while Kissinger was still just a professor.
The Demmy warmongers got us into VN. As they did ww1, ww2, Korea and other smaller wars. over half a million troops on the ground in '68 after 6 years of LBJ
Half a hundred (50) in 72 after 4 years of Nixon.
Nixon, and Kissinger, got us out.
Troop levels by year.
http://www.americanwarlibrary.com/vietnam/vwatl.htm
1959 760
1960 900
1961 3205
1962 11300
1963 16300
1964 23300
1965 184300
1966 385300
1967 485600
1968 536100
1969 475200
1970 334600
1971 156800
1972 24200
1973 50
Or maybe we should look at American deaths:
1960 5
1961 16
1962 53
1963 122
1964 216
1965 1,928
1966 6,350
1967 11,363
1968 16,899
1969 11,780
1970 6,173
1971 2,414
1972 759
1973 68
1974 1
https://www.archives.gov/research/military/vietnam-war/casualty-statistics
But yeah, blame Nixon and Kissinger if it makes you feel better. Just realize that you are spreading disinformation whenever you do.
NOT a fan of Nixon. But he did get us out of VN.
I served '67-'74, USN, through the height of the war. Never went west of Chicago, though. I should not need to point this out but someone who probably never served themselves will probably call me a chickenhawk if I don't.
John LGBTQ Henry
"because of your father"
Kissinger started the fighting in Vietnam and instituted the draft? Who knew?
You sound dismissive, Ann. Why? We need the reminder that those in charge, the experts, the leaders, aren’t the ones who die for their causes, their mistakes. He’s lived an extra-long life: is there…regret? Remorse? Certainly - in this life - there has been no accounting laid to his feet.
I would think the "died in Vietnam" might have been more appropriately directed at McNamara rather than Kissinger. Kissinger seemed to be on board with ending the Vietnam conflict, not pursuing it: https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/10/henry-kissinger-vietnam-diaries-213236/.
Viability.
Well, Kate, as an old geezer, I would suggest that you approach death with a little more circumspection. And the comment on dying in Vietnam is "spot on." When elephants fight, the grass gets trampled.
Kissinger had nothing to do with getting us into Vietnam, and did plenty to get us *out*.
The narrative inversion to it being solely a Nixon/Republican war is a PR success of the media and the Democratic party. And *they* were the ones who forced all the bad decisions from beginning to end.
At least, that is my plan, but who knows how I am going to feel about it when I reach that point.
I'm in a similar boat, although there is significant evidence in my family tree of people needing round the clock care as soon as early 70s.
I want to live every second I can, in the words of Tennyson, "To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield."
My father is 102. He doesn't recommend it.
Jeff Weimer: "The narrative inversion to it being solely a Nixon/Republican war is a PR success of the media and the Democratic party. And *they* were the ones who forced all the bad decisions from beginning to end."
Who can forget John Kerry lying during his hoaxed up "Band of Brothers" fake 2004 campaign schtick about having to listen to a Richard Nixon as President address on the radio in Vietnam in.....Dec of 1968.....and being very angry about "Mr. Nixon's war....and Nixon hadn't even assumed office yet!
I recall getting into a bit of a verbal tiff with a fellow at around that time in 2004 and having that cat regurgitate that talking point to me in front of a very large group of likeminded lefties/libs with a couple of moderates and me to balance it out. This fellow was a senior professor at a major ACC university and fancied himself quite the academic.
I asked him how it could be Kerry was listening to "President" Nixon in Dec of 1968 when Nixon didn't take office until January of 1969?
The looks on their faces were priceless.
Professors fall victim to the "only preach their messages to young people who wont push back and often dont know any better" syndrome. So any pushback at all completely and utterly flummoxes them and its clear that syndrome on the left on campus has become absolute.
"A thing can be utterly predictable and still be completely true and worth saying at the same time."
As a statistician with several large industrial clients, I have made lots of money following this.
This is an example of the ignorance of so many on the left, including all those who read the WaPoo. Kennedy got it started after Maxwell Taylor expressed his impatience with those peace lovers (Like Trump). Kennedy presided over, and probably ordered the assassination of Diem. That made it our war and closed the door on a graceful exit. Johnson then made it a draftee war. Before Johnson the Army teams had been professionals. Johnson wanted to sneak us into the war so he did not activate reserves like Truman did in Korea and Kennedy did in 1961. When the going got tough, the Democrats largely bailed out and told everybody after 1968 that it was "Nixon's War."
The idiots that read and comment on WaPoo are the topic of This book, "The Dumbest Generation Grows UP."
Expat(ish) said...
"Note how they don't blame JFK?"
Can't let Camelot get tarnished.
Its easy to see these days who never picked up a damn history book much less read one.
Loved the passion for our schoolmates that had to die for nothing. But maybe it’s time these same people need to support the President who never got us not a war and promises to stop WWIII that the same CIA guys want see us in today.
My feelings are like Emperor Hirohito after 2 nukes. This changes all warrior desires to win. Those damn nukes can incinerate me too.
Something about that comment leads me to believe that the author is one of those people who thinks that Lincoln was a Democrat.
U.S. involvement in Vietnam dates as far back as the latter half of the 1940s, when we funneled $$$ to assist the French during their Indochinese war. Harry Truman subsequently sent advisors (insisting that they were not "combat troops) to assist the French, and more $$$. Anti-Communism, dontcha know.
Eisenhower sent more advisors and $$$ beginning in 1955, but the effort was drifting until JFK's 1961 decision to expand our participation in both advisory and combat personnel. And then it was "off to the races."
Anyone here old enough to remember the "Five O'Clock Follies"?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five_O%27Clock_Follies
Jeff Weimer said:
"The narrative inversion to it being solely a Nixon/Republican war is a PR success of the media and the Democratic party. And *they* were the ones who forced all the bad decisions from beginning to end."
It'd be interesting to trace out just how they pulled these things off... The Nazis are right wing, the Republicans have always been about repressing civil rights and against blacks...
In fact, just about everything that's mainstream "conventional wisdom" is the product of left-wing gaslighting and demagoguery, aided and abetted by the sacred journalists who write the "first take of history". Ain't none of that true, and more people are reaching the conclusion that none of them are worth listening to.
Makes you wonder what they think is going to happen, once they've expended their last little drop of credibility and belief, and nobody believes a word they say about anything? What happens to the news media when the commodity they sell has zero credibility? When nobody needs it, or wants it?
I knew a guy who survived Vietnam. He was there early and also at the very end of US military action. He once told me about sitting in the San Francisco airport, waiting to board a commercial flight to 'Nam to join an already-there and very active group of US Army soldiers, while watching on TV as President Kennedy denied to the press, live on all 3 channels, the presence of any US military fighting in Viet Nam (as it was spelled at the time). His opinion of JFK was not repeatable in polite company.
He also told me about driving a US Embassy Caddy north from Saigon each morning, very near the end of the US military involvement, until either his car or any other military vehicles on the road were taken under fire by the advancing NVA. Then he would turn around rather rapidly, drive back, and mark a map for that day, for the use of the rest of the embassy staff in their travels. His opinion of Nixon, and Kissinger, was not repeatable in polite company.
Old geezers are worth talking to. Sometimes they tell fun stories. Sometimes those stories are even true.
Quite a few voted for Nixon thinking he would wind down the war on the kind of timetable Eisenhower followed in Korea. Nixon and his foreign and defense policy team certainly tried to give that impression during the campaign. Any surprise that folks affected deeply by the actual course of events should be bitter about it? Of course enough folks were okay with things for him to get reelected. But he lacked the reservoir of good will needed to stick it out for inauguration 1977.
No one lets Johnson off for Vietnam. And to the extent they haven't forgotten altogether, fewer let Kennedy or even Eisenhower off.
LBJ did the stupid far eastern war. JFK’s big war against Allen Dulles and his CIA was about withdrawal from Viet Nam involvement. It wasn’t bad enough that Kennedy made a deal with Khruschev about Cuban missiles avoiding WWIII, the true warrior Kennedy wanted to stay out of East Asian wars that could only be won by Nukes.
Next thing we knew our President was slaughtered in Dallas. And the CIA hit team had full assistance from the Vice President. Next thing we know the Vice President now the President pretends a destroyer was shot at in the Gulf of Tonkin and he sends 500,000 Marines into Danang. We were soldiers then and young.
And before the handmade tale of McCarthy, there was Wilson's AG Palmer[ism].
CJinPA said...
So does not wanting to die for a country with which we had no ancestral ties.
Now do Kuwait!
Now do Iraq!!!
Now do Afghanistan!
Now do The Ukraine!
Laurel at 1:11pm said:
"We need the reminder that those in charge, the experts, the leaders, aren’t the ones who die for their causes, their mistakes. He’s lived an extra-long life: is there…regret? Remorse? Certainly - in this life - there has been no accounting laid to his feet."
But Kissinger was ceaselessly reviled in the pages of the NYRB, the NYT, Nation, The New Yorker, and a host of other prestige periodicals. He was , I seem to recall, quite literally charged with war crimes. Several books accused him of criminality in office, among them : "Sideshow: Kissinger, Nixon, and the Destruction of Cambodia" by William Shawcross, "The Trial of Henry Kissinger" by Christopher Hitchens,"The Crimes of Patriots: A True Tale of Dope, Dirty Money, and the CIA" by Jonathan Kwitny, "The Pinochet File: A Declassified Dossier on Atrocity and Accountability" by Peter Kornbluh, and "The Price of Power: Kissinger in the Nixon White House" by Seymour Hersh.
What's interesting is that, despite the hatred and hyperbolic accusations, he seems to have been able to live a full life, notwithstanding the galaxies of vituperation hurled at him. Ironically, the miasma created by the hatred of second-guessers turns out to be The Price of Power, to borrow Seymour Hersh's title.
Why do I not admire Kissinger or recognize his “genius “? Nothing to do with anything above.
Kissinger, like many elder statesmen of that era, along with apparently the entire US Department of State, believed in the eventual triumph of Communism. All we in the West could do was delay the inevitable.
They were wrong. But it appears that’s still the view of our State Department. Their actions abroad, almost all of which undermine US prestige and influence, are almost as if it were run by a cabal of our enemies.
the true warrior Kennedy wanted to stay out of East Asian wars
Kennedy was big on special forces, he wanted small wars. My recollection of the time was that he felt the US wasn't aggressive enough in opposing communism. Sounds more like a CIA guy than not.
Huh, reading many of the comments here, one would think Kissinger is too be judged by whether or not he got us into Vietnam. Hardly.
Unless you are of North Vietnamese, Cambodian, or Laotian descent, you really cannot blame Kissinger or Nixon for family deaths. Kennedy got us in, and Johnson escalated the war, neither being willing to take the war where it needed to go. Both willing to spend American blood while doing nothing to take the war where it needed to go. Nixon and Kissinger brought the N. Vietnamese back to the table by hurting them where they lived. And ended the war on acceptable terms. The Democrats in Congress in 73 and 74 crippled ARVN and the rest of the South Vietnamese by cutting off all funding for them, ostensibly due to the corruption of the South Vietnamese, but in truth because they could not bear for Nixon to be the one who bailed out the Johnson and Kennedy fiasco. When Saigon fell in 75, to a resupplied N. Vietnamese force with with more armor than Hitler invaded Chechoslovakia with, the Democrats rejoiced. Watch the news of the time. Both the Democratic politicians and the network news celebrated. What the American military had accomplished with thrown away, with malice. I figure a whole lot of people from that era are in the 7th circle?, the one reserved for traitors.
I worked alongside a lot of Viet Nam combat vets, mostly Marines. Great bunch.
Just got back from placing flags at our National Cemetery for Memorial Day. Least I could do.
I broke down a couple times.
I miss those guys.
there were six times as many casualties in world war 2 then vietnam, but there was no victory in the former case, for reasons,
There is justification, in a trial by ordeal way, in outliving your enemies. In outliving your rat weisel press slugs. Kissinger may have been wrong at times, but I think he knew better what was the truth.
traditionalguy said:
"LBJ did the stupid far eastern war. JFK’s big war against Allen Dulles and his CIA was about withdrawal from Viet Nam involvement. It wasn’t bad enough that Kennedy made a deal with Khruschev about Cuban missiles avoiding WWIII, the true warrior Kennedy wanted to stay out of East Asian wars that could only be won by Nukes.
Next thing we knew our President was slaughtered in Dallas. And the CIA hit team had full assistance from the Vice President. Next thing we know the Vice President now the President pretends a destroyer was shot at in the Gulf of Tonkin and he sends 500,000 Marines into Danang. We were soldiers then and young."
Few posts have managed to pack so many factual errors into so few paragraphs, unless this is just subtle sarcasm that I'm just not getting.
For one thing, JFK wasn't at "war" with Dulles... Everything in Vietnam was being done by his approval, including the coup against Diem. The Diem brothers wound up dead, and Kennedy's fingerprints were all over the knives in their backs.
Kennedy was far from "wanting to stay out of Southeast Asia..." He kept firing Generals who told him it was a bad idea, until he got one that was compliant. Eisenhower had refused the French the use of nukes and US troops at Dien Bien Phu, and Kennedy had campaigned against Nixon in 1960 over the "Domino Theory" that the Republicans were "losing Southeast Asia" to the Communists. Just like the so-called "missile gap", it was known that that was a lie, but because he'd campaigned on it, he had to make both things real.
Additionally... There weren't "500,000 Marines" to land at Danang. The entire Marine Corps at that time consisted of 190,213 officers and enlisted at the end of 1965 when the Marines were initially sent in at Danang. That contingent was only 3,500 men, according to the history books.
Readering: "No one lets Johnson off for Vietnam. And to the extent they haven't forgotten altogether, fewer let Kennedy or even Eisenhower off."
LOL
What a joke!
John Kerry's entire 2004 campaign was all about "Nixon's War" and not a single lefty/lib or media type called him out on it.
It was just another of the dems "dixiecrats all switched parties and became republicans after the civil rights act passed" type lies that attempt to pass responsibility off onto the other side.
Just like slavery and segregation and Jim Crow weren't "democrat party" things...they were "conservative things"....and the republican party is the "conservative party" don't you know?!
That's why so many young people today really don't know it was the republican party that freed the slaves. It doesn't help when you have plaques to Abraham Lincoln that read "Democrat".
The gaslighting is forever.
Michael K: "This is an example of the ignorance of so many on the left, including all those who read the WaPoo. Kennedy got it started after Maxwell Taylor expressed his impatience with those peace lovers (Like Trump). Kennedy presided over, and probably ordered the assassination of Diem."
Kennedy did give the final approval for taking out Diem, but it was his CIA guys that pushed him into it. Just as with the Bay of Pigs and then, in the middle of that, the deep staters completely abandoned the cubans, no promised aircover was provided, they had set up and let them get killed/captured on the beaches.
And then Kennedy had to take the heat for that as well.
Eisenhower had it right with his military industrial complex speech. The deep staters were already almost in full control then.
Who can forget Operation Northwoods where a plan to have terrorist actions conducted by US govt actors on US soil against US citizens and military that could be blamed on Castro and set Castro up for full scale US invasion was approved all the way up through the Joint Chiefs of Staff!!
Kennedy finally had to fire someone over that moronic nonsense so he "fired" the Chairman, Lemnitzer, via a "lateral move" (typical for the day) over to NATO to get him out of the Pentagon.
The Northwoods info came out in as part of a larger declassification act regarding documents related to the Kennedy assassination in 1992.
If you're going to mad at anybody be mad at Robert McNamara.
I may visit one of my old wargaming friends this weekend in his new care facility--not that I expect him to recognize me, but another friend and I want to see the brand new and upscale (it is said) place and how he's being looked after. He has a half-sister and her son for family.
He was at MACV in about 66-67 I think, as an enlisted computer operator. He said that he had clearance to see a lot, and saw more, and that aerial photos of the notorious Ho Chi Minh Trail showed it to be, as near as I can recall his phrasing, "A fucking six-lane superhighway!"
Not the footpaths of legend--not everywhere, and not at every stage.
I thought the bad rap on Kissinger was the secret bombing of Cambodia, giving rise to the Khmer Rouge and genocide.
See, William Shawcross, “Sideshow: Kissinger, Nixon, and the Destruction of Cambodia”
Perhaps my memory is failing me, but I'm not aware of Kissinger's presidential term.
If anyone should be mad at him, it's the South Vietnamese who were abandoned despite repeated assurances we wouldn't.
It was JFK and the New Army thinkers who caught Chopper Fever, and retooled the Army to use helos in Counterinsurgency. And Nation Building. And Winning Hearts and Minds.
Another VN vet wargaming friend says that the Army minimized helicopter losses in a way that reminds me of how Body Counting maximized numbers of enemy dead. When it was possible to get the main hull back to a base--no matter how charred, wrecked, and mangled--it was counted as Damaged, not Destroyed.
Those recovery efforts cost lives too, of course.
A war of lies from top to bottom and beginning to end.
Drago repeats his standard all-purpose, one-size-fits-all gibberish.
The persistence of the myth that Vietnam was Republican War. Sorry honey - your father, uncle, brother whatever died because of John F Kennedy's incompetence and arrogance.
McNamara certainly bears a large amount of the responsibility, but what about the people who hired him? Seriously, a man has "Strange" for a middle name and you don't take that as a warning sign???
The persistence of the myth that Vietnam was Republican War. Sorry honey - your father, uncle, brother whatever died because of John F Kennedy's incompetence and arrogance.
Not to mention Kennedy’s “Best and Brightest.” I once met a woman who bemoaned her uncle’s death in Vietnam in 1968 (fair enough) but called it Nixon’s War. Math is hard and history is harder.
Oh, and lest we forget that Henry Kissinger was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his part in negotiating the end of the war.
“I only want to live to the point where I can still care for myself day to day and can physically still move around without a lot of pain. I figure, based on my experience with elderly close relatives, this might get me to 80-85, tops. My maternal grandfather is my model- he was very vigorous until he was about 85 or so. I wouldn't want to live like his last 4 years of life, though- chair/bed-bound and wasting away. At least, that is my plan, but who knows how I am going to feel about it when I reach that point. Talk is cheap.”
We talk about this a bit. I am pretty sure that I will stick around until the bitter end. My partner claims that she will end it early, if she loses too much mobility. I doubt her. Her mother is near blind, and still hanging in there, with her youngest daughter having moved from FL to take care of her 5 years ago. I talk about an elevator in the house in AZ, and a lift in the one in MT. She says that if it gets bad enough that she needs either one, she will end it. I don’t believe her. 40 years ago, she started walking every day, when her kids were very young, because she could no longer dance and keep an eye on them. For a couple years, she walked briskly at the nearby mall for a couple hours. Then, after her back got messed up in a car wreck, her surgeon told her that she needed to keep her back strong, and worked up to 4 hours a day nearing 20 years ago. It deteriorated anyway, and up until a couple weeks ago, she hadn’t walked for a year or two (but still claimed to be walking 4 hours a day). Her back surgeon, knowing her well, told her to keep her recovery slow, not adding more than 10 minutes a day. We hit an hour yesterday. I was wasted. So was our small dog. She expects 70 minutes today. I need some good walking (but not hiking boots -see today’s Althouse thread on the difference). Got her some last weekend, but not me.
Still, I expect that we will slide mentally before we do physically, as her mother did. She had a photographic, eidetic, memory. As did her father, whom she lost from Alzheimer's. That made school a breeze. But I see too many glitches these days, that she denies with a passion. And that brings up the metaphysical question of how do you know that you have lost your mental facilities if you forget that you were trying to detect them. My father, with, it turns out, brain cancer, at 95, lost his much faster than hers did, but neither of our fathers really understood what was happening to them mentally. My partner, after her father was diagnosed, never told either of her parents through worry that he would do the unthinkable, as her mother’s father had done, after losing his wife of 75 years. I believe that I would follow my father into mental oblivion without ending my life early, while I worry about her, that she wouldn’t, like hers. We shall see.
Oh, and let me add that both of our hearing is declining, and that is adding stress too. I had mine checked a couple years ago, and it wasn’t too bad. I just couldn’t hear as well in the higher ranges, which means higher pitched female voices. Never liked Soprano voices anyway, and she, my daughter, and my ex, all have pleasant Alto voices - until she shouts from another part of the house, and her pitch goes up. And we love our space, so go for larger houses. I have walkie talkies. Nope. She’ll use her cell phone instead - even to call me from the next room. She needs her ears checked too. Not going to happen. Making things worse, I have never been able to multitask very well. My strength has always been my ability to single task better than most. It has gotten worse. So she will be talking on the phone, or to the pets, my focus goes to reading something on the Internet. Then she addresses something to me, and I completely miss that I am being addressed. That’s where the walkie talkies would be good. She then asks me to repeat what she just said, so I naturally fake it. Get caught, of course (most of my recitations of her recent speech tend to include her claims of her undying love for me, which is supposed to work, but never does). Then, she switches to talking to the pets, my attention goes back to the iPad, and we go through this 5-10 minutes later. That’s assuming that I heard her in the first place, since she often walks away after accusing me of not listening to her, and the volume of her voice increases with distance, along with her pitch, into my inaudible range. I have told her that I would consider hearing aids, if she does too (since she often doesn’t hear me either). No dice. She is convinced that she still has perfect hearing, along with perfect recall. She doesn’t have either.
Getting old kinda sucks, but on the flip side, I don’t really worry about it, or much of anything, except how the Democrats are racing to destroy this country as fast as they can, esp after the installation of the corrupt and senile FJB as our token leader.
Narr
My neighbor flew P5Ms in his three tours of Viet Nam. For those who don't know what a P5M is it's a Martin Marlin sea plane. His job was to fly up and down the Mekong Delta observing river traffic and if possible interdicting. I say 'if possible' because it took a minimum of two weeks to get approval to interdict. Approvals had to go all they way to DC and back.
Nobody who fought that war had anything good to say about McNamera.
I never was a Kissinger, or even Nixon, detractor. I remember the 1964 election, when Goldwater was called a “war monger” for saying that we needed to either fight to win in VN, or to get out. No more fighting by attrition, which the US was doing under LBJ, McNamera, and Westmoreland. Efficiency expert McNamera had been convinced that we could win the war if we just killed a lot more of them, than they did of ours. We had a lot more possible troops, and supposedly a 10x kill ratio. Except that the latter was a lie. Or maybe just that the military is a bureaucracy, and people tend to fudge numbers when working in such. The officers with the best kill ratios were promoted (as were the ones who (officially) lost the fewest choppers - see above). Those who were honest didn’t. And this, btw, is one big reason that communism doesn’t work - everyone is forced to lie to keep their jobs. So, the scientific management practiced by McNamera and the Red Chinese ultimately fails. In any case, LBJ lied to the American public. Turns out that they had planned to add another 500k military personnel after he was re-elected, which he promptly did.
In contrast, Nixon and Kissinger did what they promised in 1968 - they fought the war to win, did, forcing the NVA to the negotiating table by doing it.
Kissinger's lasting contribution to US foreign policy was driving a wedge between China and the Soviet Union that became a cornerstone of US foreign policy for nearly 50 years until the Biden administration managed to push the two former antagonists back together. Its good to have the adults back in charge.
Rusty said:
"Nobody who fought that war had anything good to say about McNamara."
You could say the same thing about those who worked for McNamara at Ford or the World Bank. The man managed to fail upward, going from the Edsel to the Vietnam War to the Third World debt crisis. Quite a legacy of failure. He was a numbers driven technocrat who had no understanding of anything outside of what the numbers were telling him. He never realized that those working for him would fit the numbers to please McNamara, divorcing him from the reality of the problems at hand.
One more anecdote from a Vietnam vet friend, now deceased. He was a door gunner for six months, when his ability to type got him transferred to the HQ company. He typed up many medal citations for officers.
His most memorable one was the Purple Heart (or was it Bronze Star?) for a pilot who had defied orders and bad weather to rescue his buddy, whose chopper had gone down. The pilot was drunk, and banged his head badly when entering the craft. He put himself and others in danger on a fruitless mission, and got rewarded.
OTOH, my father, who flew B25s in the MTO 1944-45, would tell my mother not to worry as he drove home from parties after drinking too much. "I've flown missions more loaded than this!" he would reassure her. I was never in the service, but I remember being young, so I don't doubt either story.
Body Count.
After a perimeter mine explosion, the grunts police the area and find two arms, two legs and a head. Obviously. that's a whole squad of VC sappers. Count it as 5.
Readering: "Drago repeats his standard all-purpose, one-size-fits-all gibberish."
Readering, once again, as always, unable to deal with basic truths that put the lie to his/her serial transparent falsehoods and misrepresentations.
Weep more readering...and tough tiddlywinks.
Robert Strange McNamara is a near-perfect exemplar of the things I've been going on for years about... The man encapsulates to perfection the whole "...but... But... He did really well on the tests...!" whine you hear from people that don't look at actual performance to assess fitness for duty or position.
He exemplifies the whole post-Wilsonian ideal of carefully selected (through tests!!!) and cultivated technocrats meant to run the world. McNamara's real world performance was, on the surface, good enough at first, but disastrous on medium- and long-term scales. Nobody ever called him on his BS, either. Ford was years recovering from his epic stupidities, as was the Defense Department.
He's still deified in some circles as the prototypical "ideal manager", which goes to show the essential blindness of it all. Management is not an end to itself; it's a facet of leadership and running things. You can carefully and effectively manage yourself into a grave as well as you can manage your way out of one. It all depends on the metrics you chose to manage, and that's the essential failure of men like McNamara: A failure to grasp that which is critical and important. He focused on body counts, and numbers, never understanding the essential flaw with that reasoning, in that American families would value the names and lives of those dead in Vietnam over those of the myriads they killed while dying in a far-off and poorly-explained cause.
Some fifty-odd years later, I have to wonder: Would we have been so badly off, if they'd have left Vietnam to its own devices and just concentrated on saving the stable countries like Thailand? How far would the NVA have gotten, once it got bogged down in Cambodia and Laos? How much support would the Soviets and Chinese have poured in, given the natural antipathy between Vietnam and China? Lots of unknowns, there... I'm honestly ambivalent about the whole thing: If they didn't mean to win, if they didn't want to expend the resources to win, why the hell did they throw away all that treasure and all those lives?
The American military deserved better and more consistent political leadership than it got, particularly the conscripts, whose lives they all took up unwillingly and then expended so casually to no lasting benefit for anyone.
As someone who served from 1969-1972, I have feelings. Those were not developed during that time period. I didn't like it & thought it was stupid. What I have learned since is that war only ends with unconditional surrender. Negotiated settlements continue the conflict. Politicians should not direct war or limit the military. We never lost a battle & were within months of North Vietnam's surrender & gave them an out.
Don't let the big dog off the porch unless you are going to let him eat.
"We never lost a battle."
Wrong. Lying shitbag pols lost the battle for the hearts and minds of the American people-leave aside those of the Vietnamese.
Most wars, even most American wars, end without unconditional surrender, and since war is a political act politicians can--and in a democratic country, should--direct wars and limit the
military to their proper 'specialist in violence' role.
But what do I, and the U S Constitution, know about it?
@rwnutjob,
Could not agree with you more. War is essentially a stupid, foolish activity that should only be undertaken when there is no other choice. You don't fight wars with "nuance" or "restraint"; you identify the enemy, and you destroy him. Utterly. Anything else is immoral.
And, having fought your war, killing and being killed, you don't waste those lives you've expended by handing the battlefield over to the enemy. The assholes in Congress who gave away Vietnam, and the ones in the Executive branch that gave away Iraq and Afghanistan should have all been put on trial, received their justly deserved sentences for treason, and then been summarily executed on national television by the families of the men whose lives they expended to no lasting effect and whose sacrifices they had rendered utterly meaningless.
The American military and the American people deserve far better leadership than they've been getting from the so-called "elites" we've thrown up like so much vomitus into high office and privilege. One day, karma is going to come calling on them. Or, so I hope.
@Narr,
There's a missing piece in that "civilian control" thing you think is so great, and that is "civilian responsibility". You don't send men off to kill in your name, and die for you simply to make some fleeting political point that will be forgotten in a generation. Every life taken at your command, every life given up, every maiming, every psyche damaged by the trauma of war is the responsibility of the men initiating the wars. And, if they don't live up to those responsibilities? What then?
We haven't had a truly responsible political "elite" class since ever, to be honest. Lately, they've been especially venal and disgustingly amoral, casual about the lives they risk and expend so heedlessly. Frankly, if it were up to me, the vast majority of them belong up on charges, simply based on the results of their decisions these last many decades.
Sadly, I thought we'd learned our lessons in Vietnam. Everything I saw while I served during the 1980s and 1990s said that we had, and then came the Clintons and the second coming of Bush, followed by Obama. Those three administrations proved quite clearly that our "leadership" class is comprised entirely of venal self-serving scum who'd rather build their careers and profit from the heaps of dead bodies they had us stack up in their names, as well as our own. Obama's utilization of the drone systems was morally reprehensible to a degree that boggles the mind, and it went entirely without comment by all of our moralizing lessers in the media.
It ain't going to happen, but the politicians in this country fully deserve revolution and/or a coup. They haven't been acting either morally or in the best interests of the majority for the entirety of my lifetime. It's all venal expediencies and personal aggrandizement, typified by the most egregious of the lot, Joe Biden.
What then? You tell me.
In the long run, we get the politicians and flag officers we deserve. Imagining that wars can be isolated from politics and politicians is squaring the circle.
I can agree with your entire indictment of our leaders and followers without seeing a way out of the problem.
Thanks to the 'genius' of Kissinger, my brother, David, did not return from Thud Ridge in North Vietnam....
Why should my brother have died in fire, and this senile asshole gets to breath oxygen?
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