America’s Wars and Failures

Sixty years ago, in 1962, the United States made the decision to go to war in Vietnam, deploying major ground and air forces to the battle for the first time. This was a fraction of the men and aircraft that would serve there over the years to come. It was a line that the Kennedy administration realized it was crossing. It saw U.S. involvement as a minor, even experimental, move. But when a nation sends its soldiers to war, a logic takes hold. As men die, the nation assumes it is for a vital interest. Leaders cannot declare the experiment a failure because they cannot admit they experimented with the lives of soldiers. A death requires a worthy reason, and establishing that the death was not in vain is incompatible with “cutting and running,” in Lyndon B. Johnson’s words. Intervention is difficult. Withdrawal under fire is agony.

To understand American strategy between 1962 and now, we have to understand what John F. Kennedy was seeing and thinking when he made the first major commitment. Kennedy was crafted by World War II, and the senior military men were as well. In World War II, America understood its enemy. Germany was ruled by Hitler, and Hitler and his subordinates were clever, ruthless and like us in that they fought a war of engines and industry. We understood that Hitler was an unprincipled tyrant. Japan was an empire ruled by a brutal government and, as we saw in China, merciless fighters. We also knew that like the Germans and Americans, they were fighting an industrial war. We knew the enemy, we never underestimated its strength, and we timed our war to coincide with industrial production. We knew the value of allies, the uses of aircraft carriers and tanks, and how to train men for war. We mastered this and more. And we would fight to the end, no quarter asked nor given.

The United States outstripped North Vietnam and the Viet Cong in every measure that won World War II. We did not realize that we didn’t understand our enemy. They were not industrial, nor were they divided between communists and a range of factions. Clearly the non-communists in the south hated the tyranny of the north. The anti-communist population had to be mobilized and armed with the best equipment, and the U.S. flag, along with the Vietnamese, would fly over Hanoi. Crowds in the south would line the roads welcoming the Americans even if the United States didn’t take Hanoi. The purpose of intelligence is to predict what others will do, and just as the CIA failed to understand the consequence of the Bay of Pigs, it didn’t understand Vietnam. It, too, was stuck in World War II.

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