Posted on 04/30/2025 3:55:01 AM PDT by MtnClimber
If you are old enough to remember the Vietnam War or to have studied it in school, this will sound familiar.
The Fake Narrative
The political leadership of the United States, President Lyndon Johnson and Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, wanted to prosecute the Vietnam War with as limited a force as possible. The “military,” knowing that a large force would be necessary, attempted to build the force through incremental, ever increasing troop requests. Ultimately, the never-ending requests and the growing quagmire disillusioned McNamara.
The origin of this narrative can be traced to a book titled The Pentagon Papers. The Secret History of the Vietnam War as Published by the New York Times. This book was not the complete study stolen by Daniel Ellsberg. It included some of the Papers, but four reporters (Neil Sheehan, Hedrick Smith, E.W. Kenworth, and Fox Butterfield) took turns explaining to the rest of us what various portions of the Papers meant. The beginning of McNamara’s so-called disillusionment came at the end of 1965. The Times story was that at the end of 1965 U.S. commander General William Westmoreland “suddenly found it necessary to request a vast increase in troops for Phase II of his plan. The General said he would need 154,000 more men.”
The Actual Plan
Here is the actual account from the complete 12-volume Government Printing Office Pentagon Papers that the above story purports to summarize. By early 1965 the Johnson administration concluded that direct involvement of U.S. ground forces would be necessary to win the war. During the first half of the year the administration worked out a three-phase plan that should result in victory in early 1968. Phase I would raise troop strength to 175,000 by the end of the year. The goal was to “stop losing.”
(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com ...
This is true. Guy was still a jerk.
“Didn’t McNamara express regret, before he died, for his whole approach to the VietNam conflict? I think he wrote a book about it iirc.”
I honestly don’t know if he wrote about it or not. But in the conversation we had he made it a point to agree with me that it was all wrong and it was a tragedy.
The strange thing was we had the conversation before I actually knew who he was. I didn’t know until I ran his Credit Card and saw his name on it. Then I asked him if he was “The Robert McNamara? Vietnam McNamara?” and said that he was indeed. After I shook his hand and they left was when the full scope of the meeting hit me considering his position on it after the fact...
If the goal was to keep Vietnam capitalist, then looking at it today - it sure worked. But we took a much longer and harder road than necessary.
Luckily Ho Chi Minh perished before the end of the war. That gave the government a chance to see that Communism didn’t work, by the mid-80s.
Excellent overview of the events of the time.
That conversation was an unexpected privilege. A real “Forest Gump Moment” (a brush with a historical figure).
“That conversation was an unexpected privilege. A real “Forest Gump Moment” (a brush with a historical figure).”
It absolutely was for sure and I realized it. I have been fortunate to have met a lot of important figures over the years who broke down because I was the only repair shop across a hundred mile stretch of interstate. Mostly tire trouble. Everyone gets a flat or breaks down sooner or later even important figures... We actually become good friends with some who would drop by and say Hi every time they went through. I treat folks right and they appreciated it I guess...
If you've been paying attention to the Ukraine war, this will sound familiar...
Oh, sure. Did Russia and China send over 500,000 troops to fight on the ground, as we did?
Vietnam was just another proxy war that we lost, like most of the others since and before (excluding WWII). We lost at the cost of hundreds of thousands of our own flesh and blood that had their lives destroyed or ended!
Oh sure. It's always them commies or some other boogyman that brought all this on. Just another story. Right?
I know the story well; my best friends went there, and even if they came back with all their parts, their lives were changed forever. I served and watched the whole thing from a US Navy submarine. So, I know and saw it with my own eyes.
Not a pretty picture! And another major boondoggle by our so-called leaders that we repeat over and over.
Russia and China were far more committed to communist North Vietnam than we are to Ukraine and they had troops in combat, and of course for communist North Korea during the Korean War as well.
Mr. Twain, you seem like a smart guy. But maybe I'm wrong.
Don't you see the pattern? First, we create a boogy-man, demeanize him, and then either go directly to war or convince some other poor fools to do our fighting while we send over our money and stuff.
So, here's a short list....
-Commies in Vietnam
-WMDs in Iraq
-Lefteist in Granda
-Drugs in Panama
-Libya instability
-The Taliban in Afganastain
By the way, can you explain why we should worry about communism in another country? Don't they have a right to make their own decisions -- like us? If they want to be commies, then go for it. That works out really well. Right?
How much longer can we attempt to cure the world's problems, and fail most every time, and ignore our own? We've spent our way into bankruptcy with $37 trillion in debt, and growing every day, and no way to pay it off because of these crazy wars that turn out to be disasters. In the meantime, countries like China and Russia spend on infrastructure and their own people. Please explain how we can continue this illusion/disillusion we're practicing.? Inquiring minds want to know.
Good points!
“”””The strange thing was we had the conversation before I actually knew who he was. I didn’t know until I ran his Credit Card and saw his name on it. Then I asked him if he was “The Robert McNamara? Vietnam McNamara?” and said that he was indeed.””””
Similar to when I was in a guys study talking to him and looking at his wall of books, I noticed he had a lot of Dr. Seuss books which was weird fit with the rest, it turned out he was Dr. Seuss.
“Similar to when I was in a guys study talking to him and looking at his wall of books, I noticed he had a lot of Dr. Seuss books which was weird fit with the rest, it turned out he was Dr. Seuss.”
That is a cool experience too! What I have found is that when you do not immediately put them on a pedestal and become star struck most have a “just another average person” attitude. I think they appreciate that you really do not know who they actually are and treat them as just normal and equal.
I think our basic problem in Vietnam is that we were foreigners and most of the South Vietnamese did not understand what Communism would mean for them (other than those who had fled from the North after the peace settlement in 1954).
Today Vietnam and Laos have Communist governments but Cambodia and Thailand do not. So the other dominoes did not fall. Of course Cambodia had the Khmer Rouge regime for a few years until the Vietnamese ousted it, but would Thailand have become Communist if the US had not fought in Vietnam? Maybe the Khmer Rouge would not have been able to conquer Cambodia if the US-Vietnam War had not happened.
I think our basic problem in Vietnam is that we were foreigners and most of the South Vietnamese did not understand what Communism would mean for them (other than those who had fled from the North after the peace settlement in 1954).
Diem was a Catholic. His sister-in-law, Madame Nhu, had a knack for saying outrageous things. Maybe the dumbest wife of a political leader since Marie Antoinette.
Don’t you see the pattern? First, we create a boogy-man, demeanize him, and then either go directly to war or convince some other poor fools to do our fighting while we send over our money and stuff.
The “boogy-men” you list are/were all real, with the exception of Libya. In Panama, it wasn’t so much the drugs as it was Noriega not willing to play ball with us and protect the Canal.
You probably understand there was/is a huge difference between the previous administrations and the Obama/Biden administrations.
Libya was under the Obama administration, which destroyed the relatively stable situation we had won in Iraq, and set the whole region on fire with the “Arab Spring”. It was entirely designed to destroy U.S. influence and accomplishment in the area and to put the Iranians, staunch enemies of the USA in charge of the region.
We have not “failed every time”. We succeeded most times. The whole world has prospered as never before under Pax Americana. Before Pax American it was Pax Britannica which did a lot to create the modern world.
What we have is a leftist establishment continually sabotaging what successes we have had.
This was clear in Vietnam. It was clear in Iraq. It was clear in Libya. It is clear with the debacle in Afghanistan, where President Trump had a clear way out of the mess, but kept us in a strategic and easily defended position at Bagram. The Biden administration destroyed that plan.
There was a real Communist threat, at least until after Reagan won the Cold war.
There were actual weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Saddam was actually in contact with Islamic terrorists. They existed in Iraq.
There really were Cuban communists in Granada, who were creating and maintaining a military runway there. The Grenada government really did put Americans there in jeopardy.
President Trump is the first President since WWII to directly confront the enemy within, and has a clear way to defeat them. Reagan did great things in winning the Cold War in spite of the Progressive/communist infestation of the Deep State.
But Reagan was ultimately defeated by the Deep State/Communists. They lied to him and promised to contain immigration after the amnesty, then they reneged on their promises.
Don’t buy into the Leftist propaganda that the world will leave us alone, as long as we do nothing and allow our enemies to dominate everywhere except the United States.
The world does not work that way. We have never worked that way since 1801 - 1815 with the Islamic pirate wars in the Mediterranean. Both President Thomas Jefferson and President James Madison recognized that fact.
Today Vietnam and Laos have Communist governments but Cambodia and Thailand do not.
But all of that is hindsight. As you mention, at the time, Communism seemed monolithic.
I think, if we had supported Ho Chi Min as a possibile nationalist after the French, it might have been a workable strategy. Hindsight is pretty good. It is easy to see why Communism was such an enormous threat in 1954.
An election to reunify Vietnam was supposed to happen in 1956. Eisenhower believed that if it had taken place, Ho would have won and the country would have been reunified then.
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