The Best and the Brightest

Just finished reading David Halberstam's The Best and the Brightest. This piece of work gives an incredible amount of detail about the beginnings of the Vietnam War. Halberstam discusses how events from 15-20 years prior to major combat troops being sent to Vietnam influenced the involvement of the US in Vietnam. One such event was the fall of China to communism in 1949. Since it happened under a Democratic president, the Republicans in Congress held them (the Democrats) responsible. This ushered in McCarthyism where if you weren't an ardent foe of or fear communism you were treated as either a communist or unpatriotic. This had a considerable affect on the democrats in the 1950's as they were forced to believe in the "domino theory"; whereas if one state fell to communism the countries in near proximity would follow. Because of this as President Kennedy came into office in 1961 several members of his administration were scarred by McCarthyism and vowed not to be soft on defense and continued to believe in the domino theory. Although Kennedy never sent troops to Vietnam (rather increased the amount of military advisers) he did have misgivings on American occupation of Southern Vietnam and therefore, encouraged dissent on the prospects of war and was skeptical of the political climate in the south. After Kennedy's assassination, unfortunately, President Johnson did not encourage the same type of dissent and everyone within the administration were forced to stay on message.

One could draw great parallels of The Vietnam War with today's Iraq War. Similarly to the Bush Administration and the Iraq War, the Johnson administration wasn't forthcoming with the American public on the true costs of the war - fiscally, the amount of troops or the duration of the war. Furthermore, as with the Iraq War, the Vietnam War had its own false WMD and Iraq-Al Qaeda claims. In 1964 the Gulf of Tonkin incident seemed to show North Vietnamese aggression against US Naval ships. As was suspected at the time and was confirmed some 40 years later with unclassified documents, the aggression was provoked by the US and South Vietnamese forces and no second attack on the US Naval ships ever occurred. The Johnson administration was able to use this "aggression" to pass a bill through congress (the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution) with little or no debate, which gave the president the power to use force and send troops into war.

As with the Iraq War, the true problem with the Vietnam War was a political one and the enemy was being fought in its backyard. Although the military claimed otherwise the bombing campaign made very little progress; and in fact, many claimed it only encouraged the enemy (the Vietcong) further as they were able to continue to send more men down the trails.

To not get bogged down in another quagmire, I will end by saying the book is a good read, although long; and a good history lesson. Unfortunately our leaders of today did not learn this lesson.