Fredrik Logevall, Choosing War: The Lost Chance for Peace and the Escalation of War in Vietnam (Berkeley, Los Angeles, & London: U. of California Press, 1999) ("And there is this, finally, to say about America's avoidable debacle in Vietnam: something very much like it could happen again. Not in the same place, assuredly, and not in the same way, but potentially with equally destructive results. This is the central lesson of the war. The continued primacy of the executive branch in foreign affairs--and within that branch of a few individuals, to the exclusion of the bureaucracy--together with the eternal temptation of politicians to emphasize short-term personal advantage over long-term national interests, ensures that the potential will exist. For it cannot be forgotten that, given their priorities, the decision by Lyndon Johnson and his closest advisers for major war in Vietnam made a horrible kind of sense. They were not evil individuals, but individuals who are not evil enact policies that have evil consequences. A leader will assuredly come along who, like Johnson, will take the path of immediate resistance and in the process produce disastrous policy--provided there is a permissive content that allows it. Lyndon Johnson's War was also America's War; the circle of responsibility was wide. If future Vietnams are to be prevented, the American people and their representatives in Congress will have to meet the responsibilities no less than those who make the ultimate decisions. Otherwise, American soldier will again be asked to kill and be killed, and the compatriots will again determine, afterward, that there was no good reason why." Id. at 412-413. The American War in Afghanistan (or, Bush War I). The American War in Iraq (or, Bush War II). We really did not learn the "central lesson" of Vietnam in time to avoid those two mistakes on the part of George W. Bush, his circle of advisers, and the American people.).
Fredrik Logevall, Embers of War: The Fall of an Empire and The Making of America's Vietnam (New York: Random House, 2012) ("Contrary to common wisdom, it was Diem, not the United States, who possessed the dominant voice in South Vietnamese politics. Washington never had as much influence over Vietnamese affairs after 1954 as France had had before." Id. at xix. "Successful American presidents project a populist image. They do not place themselves above their compatriots but strive whenever possible to show qualities of 'average' Americans. If they have an intellectual bent, they do their best to hide it. To be likable, smiling, and unpretentious is all-important; to express the values of middle America an essential prerequisite to greatness." Id. at 45. "And certainly this much seems clear: A decision by the Truman administration to support Vietnamese independence in the late summer and fall of 1945 would have gone a long way toward averting the mass bloodshed and destruction that was to follow." Id. at 107. "To try to improve the quality of the humint [human intelligence], French officers sometimes resorted to coercive interrogation methods, including torture.... Just how often they did so remains impossible to know in the absence of methodologically reliable studies of the issue, but Vietnamese memoirs and histories of the war leave no doubt that the army and the security services used torture from an early point in the fighting and at various points thereafter. As for the efficacy of the practice, a postwar internal study by the Deuxieme Bureau was unambiguous: The use of torture during interrogations of Viet Minh prisoners did not improve the quality of the intelligence provided." Id. at 177. "One detects subtle but important differences here in how the French and British on the one hand and the Americans on the other approached the matter of diplomacy with Communist adversaries. Partly the divergence can be chalked up to Washington's hegemonic position--top dogs are seldom much interested in compromise. But other factors were at work as well. European governments, operating in physical proximity to rival powers of comparable strength, had long since determined that the resultant pressures placed a premium on negotiation and give-and-take. Only too familiar with imperfect outcomes, with solutions that were neither black nor white but various shades of gray, most European statesmen in the post-World War II era presumed that national interests were destined to conflict and saw diplomacy as a means of reconciling them. They were prepared to make the best of a bad bargain, to accept the inevitability of failures as well as successes in international affairs." "Americans, on the other hand, shielded from predatory powers for much of their history by two vast oceans, and possessing a very different historical tradition, tended to see things in much less equivocal terms. For them, Old World diplomacy, with its ignoble and complex political choices, had to be rejected, and decisions made on the definite plane of moral principle. The United States, that principle taught, represented the ultimate form of civilization, the source of inspiration for humankind. Her policies were uniquely altruistic, her institutions worthy of special emulation. Any hostility to America was, by definition, hostility to progress and righteousness and therefore was, again by definition, illegitimate." Id. at 316-317. "It is highly revealing in this regard that each time French policy makers inquired to Washington about exploring the possibilities for a diplomatic agreement, they were rebuffed." Id. at 318. "A major U.S. policy document, NSC-124, approved by Truman on June 25 [1952], summarized the administration's position. The United States, it declared, would oppose negotiations leading to a French withdrawal. Should Paris nevertheless prefer such a course, the United States would seek maximum support from her allies for collective action, including the possibility of air and naval support for the defense of Indochina. Should China intervene, her lines of communication should be interdicted and a naval blockade of the Chinese coast imposed. If these 'minimum' measures proved insufficient, the United States should launch 'air and naval action in conjunction with at least France and the U.K against all suitable military targets in China.' If France and Britain refuse, Washington should consider taking unilateral action." Id. at 319. Arrogant pricks, that we Americans are!! "As a U.S. undersecretary of state would say years later, in arguing vainly against making Vietnam a large-scale American war: 'No great captain has ever been blamed for a successful tactical withdrawal.'" Id. at 410. "The Battle of Dien Bien Phu was over. The Viet Minh had won. Vo Nguyen Giap had overturned history, had accomplished the unprecedented, had beaten the West at it own game. For the first time in the annals of colonial warfare, Asian troops had defeated a European army in fixed battle." Id. at 534. "And America's intentions were already clear. As we have seen, the Eisenhower administration refused to identify itself with the Geneva Accords, and it resolved, even before the agreement was reached, to take responsibility for 'saving' southern Vietnam without 'the taint if French colonialism' and making it a 'bastion of the free world.' After the conference, the administration moved energetically to implement this vision, trying now to do alone what it had previously sought to do in association with France: Create and sustain an anti-Communist government in Vietnam. This government, freed from the encumbrance of the old colonial presence and possessing genuine nationalist legitimacy, could, U.S. official believed, compete effectively with Ho Chi Minh's North Vietnam--provided it received proper guidance and support from the United States." Id. at 623-624. "A cartoon by Daniel Fitzpatrick in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, meanwhile, showed Uncle Sam gazing into a dark swamp labeled 'French Mistakes in Indochina.' The caption asked, 'How would another mistake help?'" Id. at 629. "As the Viet Cong attacks increased in frequency and intensity, Eisenhower indeed deepened U.S. military involvement in a way that has extremely important implications for the future. In mid-1959, the White House authorized American advisers to accompany South Vietnamese Army battalions on operational missions to offer combat guidance. Though the advisers were still forbidden to enter 'actual combat,' the change was highly significant--hitherto they had been confined to corps and division headquarters, training commands, and logistic agencies and had been obligated to remain behind whenever their units were on patrol. Now they would be in the field, in harm's way, their 'advising' duties greatly expanded." Id. at 698. And the rest is history. More than 58,000 Americans dead in the American War in Vietnam.).
