Holmes: Vietnam's lessons unlearned

[unhappycamper]

http://weymouth.wickedlocal.com/article/20160203/NEWS/160209302

After a U.S.-led coalition defeated Saddam Hussein’s army in Kuwait in 1991, then-President George H.W. Bush declared "By God, we've kicked the Vietnam syndrome once and for all." He turned out to be wrong. By the time Bush’s son led the nation into not one, but two wars very much like Vietnam, amnesia had struck a generation of policy-makers in Washington.

Holmes: Vietnam's lessons unlearned
By Rick Holmes
Opinions/Mass. Political Editor

~snip~

Consider a few of the hard-earned lessons of Vietnam that America’s leaders never learned or soon forgot:

American puppets don’t succeed. In Vietnam, the CIA installed, then deposed, Ngo Dinh Diem. He was followed by a parade of strongmen, none of whom had the support of the populace. With billions of American dollars flowing in, corruption and incompetence flourished. The same thing has happened with U.S.-installed leaders in Baghdad and Kabul. Iraq and Afghanistan are ranked among the world’s most corrupt countries, and neither government could stand without continuing American support.

You can’t win people’s hearts and minds by dropping bombs on their heads. The U.S. dropped 4 million tons of bombs on South Vietnam, four times as much as the Allies dropped on Germany in World War II. And that was the part of Vietnam we were allegedly protecting from North Vietnamese aggression. To “save” the Vietnamese people, U.S. troops forced them into internment camps and burned their villages. Those who didn’t leave were subject to being shot on sight by “search and destroy” missions in “free-fire zones.” Under Operation Phoenix, U.S. troops systematically assassinated South Vietnamese believed to be sympathetic to the insurgents. (Actually, we dropped twice the total amount of bombs on Vietnam than we did on the entire world in WW II.)

~snip~

Counter-insurgency doesn’t work. After it failed in Vietnam, the term went out of favor in the Pentagon. Gen. David Petraeus revived it, preaching cultural awareness and winning “hearts and minds.” But Petraeus learned in Iraq that Sunni warlords can only be rented, not bought. In Afghanistan, as in Vietnam, villagers have learned to smile at foreign soldiers during the day, but know that real cooperation will be punished when the insurgents return at night.

[thucythucy]

1. I don't think we EVER learned the lessons of Vietnam,

not as a national culture anyway. To me the whole Rambo series was the proof of that--"Are you going to let us win this time?"--as if the antiwar movement or craven politicians were to blame for "losing" Vietnam (just like leftists in the forties were somehow responsible for "losing" China--as if these places were ever ours "to lose&quot .

The record of American foreign policy failures in the last half century is a long and discouraging one--Central America, Chile, Guyana, Iran, Vietnam and Cambodia, Iraq... It seems we NEVER learn.

[unhappycamper]

2. Pete Seeger wrote a tune about learning:

Where have all the flowers gone
Long time passing
Where have all the flowers gone
Long time ago
Where have all the flowers gone
Young girls picked them, every one
When will they ever learn?
When will they ever learn?

Where have all the young girls gone
Long time passing
Where have all the young girls gone
Long time ago
Where have all the young girls gone
Gone to young men, every one
When will they ever learn?
When will they ever learn?

Where have all the young men gone
Long time passing
Where have all the young men gone
Long time ago
Where have all the young men gone
Gone to soldiers, every one
When will they ever learn?
When will they ever learn?

Where have all the soldiers gone
Long time passing
Where have all the soldiers gone
A long, long time ago
Where have all the soldiers gone
Gone to graveyards, every one
When will they ever learn?
When will they ever learn?

--

You are correct: we NEVER learn.