Myths Of '68 (Thomas Sowell)

This 40th anniversary of the turbulent year 1968 is already starting to spawn nostalgic accounts of that year. We can look for more during this year in articles, books, and TV specials, featuring aging 1960s radicals seeking to relive their youth.

The events of 1968 have continuing implications for our times but not the implications drawn by those with romantic myths about 1968 and about themselves.

The first of the shocks of 1968 was the sudden eruption of violent attacks by Communist guerillas in the cities of South Vietnam, known as the "Tet offensive," after a local holiday.

That this sort of widespread urban guerilla warfare was still possible after the rosy claims made by American officials in Washington and Vietnam sent shock waves through the United States.

The conclusion that might have been drawn was that politicians and military commanders should not make rosy predictions. The conclusion that was in fact drawn was that the Vietnam war was unwinnable.

In reality, the Tet offensive was one in which the Communist guerilla movement was not only defeated in battle but was virtually annihilated as a major military force. From there on, the job of attacking South Vietnam was a job for the North Vietnam army.

Politically, however, the Tet offensive was an enormous victory for the Communists -- not in Vietnam, but in the United States.

The American media, led by Walter Cronkite, pictured the Tet offensive as a defeat for the United States and a sign that the Vietnam war was unwinnable.

That in turn led to the second shock of 1968, President Lyndon Johnson's announcement that he would not run for re-election. He knew that public support for the war was completely undermined -- and that is what in fact made the war politically unwinnable.

Think about it: More than 50,000 Americans gave their lives to win victories on the battlefields of Vietnam that were thrown away back in the United States by the media, by politicians and by rioters in the streets and on campuses.

Years later, Communist leaders in Vietnam admitted that they had not defeated the United States militarily in Vietnam but politically in the United States.

The next great shock of 1968 was the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. The after-shocks included riots that swept through black ghettos across the country.

These orgies of mass destruction, vandalism, looting and deaths have likewise been seen nostalgically as mass "uprisings" against "the system."

But "the system" did not kill Martin Luther King. An assassin did. And the biggest losers from the 1968 riots were the black communities in which they occurred.

Many of those communities have never recovered to this day from the massive loss of businesses and jobs.

Then came the next great shock of 1968: The assassination of Robert F. Kennedy. Deep thinkers tried to claim that somehow it was America that was in some way responsible for these assassinations. In reality, the assassin of Robert Kennedy was not an American, but an Iranian.

Dispersed among these national shocks were various local and regional shocks, as colleges and universities across the country were hit by student disruptions and violence of one sort or another over one issue or another.

Like the ghetto riots, campus riots flourished where the authorities failed to use their authority to preserve order. Instead, academics sought to cleverly finesse the issues with negotiations, concessions and mealy-mouthed expressions of "understanding" of the concerns raised by campus rioters.

Many academics congratulated themselves on the eventual restoration of calm to campuses in the 1970s. But it was the calm of surrender. The terms of surrender included creation of whole departments devoted to ideological indoctrination.

Members of such departments spearheaded the campus lynch mob atmosphere during the Duke University "rape" case, as they have poisoned other campuses in other ways, all across the country.

Thomas Sowell is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305. His Web site is www.tsowell.com.

This is rather long, but it certainly goes to the heart of the matter with regard to this thread:

>> Our boss was ADM McDonald.
>> We all thought of him as a 4.0 guy, always up to date on all things
>> under Air Warfare.
>>
>>> Date: 1/4/2008 12:07:58 PM
>>> Subject: Cheers and Tears
>>>
>>> Subject:
>>>
>>> The following is the INTRODUCTION to the book, “Cheers and Tears”
by Lt.
>> Gen. Charles Cooper, USMC (Ret.). This chapter was provided by Lt.
Gen.
>> Cooper
>>> for posting on MILINET.

>>> INTRODUCTION
>>>
>>> The Day It Became the Longest War
>>>
>>> The President will see you at two o’clock.
>>>
>>> It was a beautiful fall day in November of 1965, early in the
>>> Vietnam War
>> -
>>> too beautiful a day to be what many of us, anticipating it, had
been
>> calling the day of reckoning. We didn’t know how accurate that
>> label would be.
>>>
>>> The Pentagon is a busy place. Its workday starts early -
especially
>>> if,
>> asthe expression goes, there’s a war on. By seven o’clock, the
>> staff of
>>> Admiral David L. McDonald, the Navy’s senior admiral and Chief of
>>> Naval Operations, had started to work. Shortly after seven,
Admiral
>>> McDonald arrived and began making final preparations for a meeting
>>> with President Lyndon Baines Johnson.
>>>
>>> The Vietnam War was in its first year, and its uncertain direction
>> troubled Admiral McDonald and the other service chiefs. They’d had
a
>>number of disagreements with Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara

>>about strategy,and had finally requested a private meeting with the
>>Commander in Chief - a perfectly legitimate procedure. Now, after
>>many delays, the Joint Chiefs were finally to have that meeting.
>>They hoped it would determine whether the US military would continue

>>its seemingly directionless buildup to fight a protracted ground
war,
>>or take bold measures that would bring the war to an early and
>>victorious end. The bold measures they would propose were to apply
>>massive air power to the head of the enemy, Hanoi, and to close
>>North Vietnam’s harbors by mining them.
>>>
>> The situation was not a simple one, and for several reasons. The
>>most important reason was that North Vietnam’s neighbor to the north

>>was communist China. Only 12 years had passed since the Korean War
>>had ended in stalemate. The aggressors in that war had been the
North
Koreans.
>> When
>> the North Koreans’ defeat had appeared to be inevitable, communist
>>China had sent hundreds of thousands of its Peoples’ Liberation Army

>>volunteers to the rescue.
>>>
>> Now, in this new war, the North Vietnamese aggressor had the
logistic
>> support of the Soviet Union and, more to the point, of neighboring
>> communist China. Although we had the air and naval forces with
which
>> to paralyze North Vietnam, we had to consider the possible reactions

>> of the Chinese and the Russians.
>>>
>> Both China and the Soviet Union had pledged to support North Vietnam

>> in the war of national liberation it was fighting to reunite the
>> divided country, and both had the wherewithal to cause major
>> problems. An important unknown was what the Russians would do if
>> prevented from delivering goods to their communist protege in Hanoi.

>> A more important question concerned communist China, next-door
>> neighbor to North Vietnam. How would the Chinese react to a massive

>> pummeling of their ally? More specifically, would they enter the
war
>> as they had done in North Korea? Or would they let the Vietnamese,
>> for centuries a traditional enemy, fend for themselves? The service

>> chiefs had considered these and similar questions, and had also
asked
>> the Central Intelligence Agency for answers and estimates.
>>
>> The CIA was of little help, though it produced reams of text,
>> executive summaries of the texts, and briefs of the executive
>> summaries-all top secret, all extremely sensitive, and all of little

>> use. The principal conclusion was that it was impossible to predict

>> with any accuracy what the Chinese or Russians might do.
>>>
>> Despite the lack of a clear-cut intelligence estimate, Admiral
>> McDonald and the other Joint Chiefs did what they were paid to do
and
>> reached a conclusion. They decided unanimously that the risk of the

>> Chinese or Soviets reacting to massive US measures taken in North
>> Vietnam was acceptably low, but only if we acted without delay.
>> Unfortunately, the Secretary of Defense and his coterie of civilian
>> whiz kids did not agree with the Joint Chiefs, and McNamara and his
>> people were the ones who were actually steering military strategy.
>> In the view of the Joint Chiefs, the United States was piling on
>> forces in Vietnam without understanding the consequences. In the
>> view of McNamara and his civilian team, we were doing the right
>> thing. This was the fundamental dispute that had caused the
>>

> Chiefs to request the seldom-used private audience with the Commander

> in
>> Chief in order to present their military recommendations directly to
him.
>> McNamara had finally granted their request.
>>>
>>> The 1965 Joint Chiefs of Staff had ample combat experience. Each
>>> was serving in his third war. The Chairman was General Earle
>>> Wheeler, US
>> Army, highly regarded by the other members.
>>>
>>> General Harold Johnson was the Army Chief of Staff. A World War II
>> prisoner of the Japanese, he was a soft-spoken, even-tempered,
deeply
>> religious man.
>>>
>> General John P. McConnell, Air Force Chief of Staff, was a native of

>> Arkansas and a 1932 graduate of West Point.
>>
>> The Commandant of the Marine Corps was General Wallace M. Greene,
>> Jr., a slim, short, all-business Marine. General Greene was a Naval

>> Academy graduate and a zealous protector of the Marine Corps concept

>> of controlling its own air resources as part of an integrated
>> air-ground team.
>>>
>>Last and by no means least was Admiral McDonald, a Georgia minister’s

>>son, also a Naval Academy graduate, and a naval aviator. While
>>Admiral McDonald was a most capable leader, he was also a reluctant
>>warrior. He did not like what he saw emerging as a national
>>commitment. He did not really want the US to get involved with land

>>warfare, believing as he did that the Navy could apply sea power
>>against North Vietnam very effectively by mining, blockading, and
>>assisting in a bombing campaign, and in this way help to bring the
>>war to a swift and satisfactory conclusion.
>>>
>> The Joint Chiefs intended that the prime topics of the meeting with
>> the President would be naval matters-the mining and blockading of
the
>> port of Haiphong and naval support of a bombing campaign aimed at
>> Hanoi. For that reason, the Navy was to furnish a briefing map, and

>> that became my responsibility. We mounted a suitable map on a large

>> piece of plywood, then coated it with clear acetate so that the
>> chiefs could mark on it with grease pencils during the discussion.
>> The whole thing weighed about 30 pounds.
>>>
>> The Military Office at the White House agreed to set up an easel in
>> the Oval Office to hold the map. I would accompany Admiral McDonald

>> to the White House with the map, put the map in place when the
>> meeting started, then get out. There would be no strap-hangers at
>> the military summit meeting with Lyndon Johnson.
>>>
>> The map and I joined Admiral McDonald in his staff car for the short

>> drive to the White House, a drive that was memorable only because of

>> the silence.
>> My admiral was totally preoccupied.
>>
>> The chiefs’ appointment with the President was for two o’clock, and
>> Admiral McDonald and I arrived about 20 minutes early. The chiefs
>> were ushered into a fairly large room across the hall from the Oval
>> Office. I propped the map board on the arms of a fancy chair where
>> all could view it, left two of the grease pencils in the tray
>> attached to the bottom of the board, and stepped out into the
>> corridor. One of the chiefs shut the door, and they conferred in
>> private until someone on the White House staff interrupted them
about
>> fifteen minutes later. As they came out, I retrieved the map, then
>> joined them in the corridor outside the President’s office.
>>>
>>> Precisely at two o’clock President Johnson emerged from the Oval
>>> Office
>> and
>>> greeted the chiefs. He was all charm. He was also big: at three
>>> or more inches over six feet tall and something on the order of 250

>>> pounds, he was bigger than any of the chiefs. He personally
ushered
>>> them into his
>> office,
>>> all the while delivering gracious and solicitous comments with a
>>> Texas accent far more pronounced than the one that came through
when
>>> he spoke on television. Holding the map board as the chiefs
>>> entered, I peered between them, trying to find the easel. There
was
>>> none. The President looked at me, grasped the situation at once,
>>> and invited me in, adding, You can
>> stand
>>> right over here. I had become an easel-one with eyes and ears.
>>>
>>> To the right of the door, not far inside the office, large windows
>>> framed evergreen bushes growing in a nearby garden. The
President’s
>>> desk and several chairs were farther in, diagonally across the room

>>> from the
>> windows.
>>> The President positioned me near the windows, then arranged the
>>> chiefs in
>> a
>>> semicircle in front of the map and its human easel. He did not
>>> offer them
>>> seats: they stood, with those who were to speak - Wheeler,
>>> McDonald, and McConnell-standing nearest the President.
>>> Paradoxically, the two whose services were most affected by a
>>> continuation of the ground buildup in Vietnam - Generals Johnson
and
>>> Greene - stood farthest from the President.
>>> President Johnson stood nearest the door, about five feet from the
map.
>>>
>>> In retrospect, the setup - the failure to have an easel in place,
>>> the positioning of the chiefs on the outer fringe of the office,
the
>>> lack of seating - did not augur well. The chiefs had expected the
>>> meeting to be a short one, and it met that expectation. They also
>>> expected it to be of momentous import, and it met that expectation,

>>> too. Unfortunately, it
>> also
>>> proved to be a meeting that was critical to the proper pursuit of
>>> what was to become the longest, most divisive, and least conclusive

>>> war in our nation’s history - a war that almost tore the nation
>>> apart.
>>>
>>> As General Wheeler started talking, President Johnson peered at the
map.
>> In
>>> five minutes or so, the general summarized our entry into Vietnam,
>>> the current status of forces, and the purpose of the meeting. Then

>>> he thanked the President for having given his senior military
>>> advisers the
>> opportunity
>>> to present their opinions and recommendations. Finally, he noted
>>> that although Secretary McNamara did not subscribe to their views,
>>> he did agree that a presidential-level decision was required.
>>> President Johnson, arms crossed, seemed to be listening carefully.
>>>
>>> The essence of General Wheeler’s presentation was that we had come
>>> to an early moment of truth in our ever-increasing Vietnam
>>> involvement. We had
>> to
>>> start using our principal strengths - air and naval power -to
punish
>>> the North Vietnamese, or we would risk becoming involved in another

>>> protracted Asian ground war with no prospects of a satisfactory
>>> solution. Speaking
>> for
>>> the chiefs, General Wheeler offered a bold course of action that
>>> would
>> avoid
>>> protracted land warfare. He proposed that we isolate the major
port
>>> of Haiphong through naval mining, blockade the rest of the North
>>> Vietnamese coastline, and simultaneously start bombing Hanoi with
B-52s.
>>>
>>> General Wheeler then asked Admiral McDonald to describe how the
Navy
>>> and
>> Air
>>> Force would combine forces to mine the waters off Haiphong and
>>> establish a naval blockade. When Admiral McDonald finished,
General
>>> McConnell added that speed of execution would be essential, and
that
>>> we would have to make the North Vietnamese believe that we would
>>> increase the level of
>> punishment
>>> if they did not sue for peace.
>>>
>>> Normally, time dims our memories - but it hasn’t dimmed this one.
>>> My
>> memory
>>> of Lyndon Johnson on that day remains crystal clear. While General
>> Wheeler,
>>> Admiral McDonald, and General McConnell spoke, he seemed to be
>>> listening closely, communicating only with an occasional nod. When

>>> General
>> McConnell
>>> finished, General Wheeler asked the President if he had any
questions.
>>> Johnson waited a moment or so, then turned to Generals Johnson and
>>> Greene, who had remained silent during the briefing, and asked, Do
>>> you fully support these ideas? He followed with the thought that
>>> it was they who were providing the ground troops, in effect
>>> acknowledging that the Army
>> and
>>> the Marines were the services that had most to gain or lose as a
>>> result of this discussion. Both generals indicated their agreement

>>> with the
>> proposal.
>>> Seemingly deep in thought, President Johnson turned his back on
them
>>> for a minute or so, then suddenly discarding the calm, patient
>>> demeanor he had maintained throughout the meeting, whirled to face
>>> them and exploded.
>>>
>>> I almost dropped the map. He screamed obscenities, he cursed them
>>> personally, he ridiculed them for coming to his office with their
>> military
>>> advice. Noting that it was he who was carrying the weight of the
>>> free world on his shoulders, he called them filthy names-shitheads,

>>> dumb shits, pompous assholes-and used the F-word as an adjective
>>> more freely than a Marine in boot camp would use it. He then
>>> accused them of trying to pass the buck for World War III to him.
>>> It was unnerving, degrading.
>>>
>>> After the tantrum, he resumed the calm, relaxed manner he had
>>> displayed earlier and again folded his arms. It was as though he
>>> had punished them, cowed them, and would now control them. Using
>>> soft-spoken profanities, he said something to the effect that they
>>> all knew now that he did not care about their military advice.
>>> After disparaging their abilities, he added that he did expect
their
>>> help.
>>>
>>> He suggested that each one of them change places with him and
assume
>>> that five incompetents had just made these military
>>> recommendations. He told them that he was going to let them go
>>> through what he had to go through
>> when
>>> idiots gave him stupid advice, adding that he had the whole damn
>>> world to worry about, and it was time to see what kind of guts you
>>> have. He paused, as if to let it sink in. The silence was like a
>>> palpable solid,
>> the
>>> tension like that in a drumhead. After thirty or forty seconds of
>>> this,
>> he
>>> turned to General Wheeler and demanded that Wheeler say what he
>>> would do
>> if
>>> he were the President of the United States.
>>>
>>> General Wheeler took a deep breath before answering. He was not an

>>> easy
>> man
>>> to shake: his calm response set the tone for the others. He had
>>> known coming in, as had the others, that Lyndon Johnson was an
>>> exceptionally strong personality, and a venal and vindictive man as

>>> well. He had known that the stakes were high, and now realized
that
>>> McNamara had prepared Johnson carefully for this meeting, which had

>>> been a charade.
>>>
>>> Looking President Johnson squarely in the eye, General Wheeler told

>>> him
>> that
>>> he understood the tremendous pressure and sense of responsibility
>>> Johnson felt. He added that probably no other President in history

>>> had had to
>> make
>>> a decision of this importance, and further cushioned his remarks by

>>> saying that no matter how much about the presidency he did
>>> understand, there were many things about it that only one human
>>> being could ever understand.
>>> General Wheeler closed his remarks by saying something very close
to
>>> this:
>>> You, Mr. President, are that one human being. I cannot take your
>>> place, think your thoughts, know all you know, and tell you what I
>>> would do if I were you. I can’t do it, Mr. President. No man can
>>> honestly do it.
>>> Respectfully, sir, it is your decision and yours alone.
>>>
>>> Apparently unmoved, Johnson asked each of the other Chiefs the same

>>> question. One at a time, they supported General Wheeler and his
>> rationale.
>>> By now, my arms felt as though they were about to break. The map
>>> seemed
>> to
>>> weigh a ton, but the end appeared to be near. General Greene was
>>> the last to speak.
>>>
>>> When General Greene finished, President Johnson, who was nothing if

>>> not a skilled actor, looked sad for a moment, then suddenly erupted

>>> again,
>> yelling
>>> and cursing, again using language that even a Marine seldom hears.

>>> He
>> told
>>> them he was disgusted with their naive approach, and that he was
not
>>> going to let some military idiots talk him into World War III. He
>>> ended the conference by shouting, Get the hell out of my office!
>>>
>>> The Joint Chiefs of Staff had done their duty. They knew that the
>>> nation was making a strategic military error, and despite the
>>> rebuffs of their civilian masters in the Pentagon, they had
insisted
>>> on presenting the problem as they saw it to the highest authority
>>> and recommending
>> solutions.
>>> They had done so, and they had been rebuffed. That authority had
>>> not only rejected their solutions, but had also insulted and
>>> demeaned them. As Admiral McDonald and I drove back to the
>>> Pentagon, he turned to me and
>> said
>>> that he had known tough days in his life, and sad ones as well, but
. .

>>> .
>>> this has got to have been the worst experience I could ever
>>> imagine.
>>>
>>> The US involvement in Vietnam lasted another ten years. The irony
>>> is that it began to end only when President Richard Nixon, after
>>> some backstage maneuvering on the international scene, did
precisely
>>> what the Joint
>> Chiefs
>>> of Staff had recommended to President Johnson in 1965. Why had
>>> Johnson
>> not
>>> only dismissed their recommendations, but also ridiculed them? It
>>> must
>> have
>>> been that Johnson had lacked something. Maybe it was foresight or
>> boldness.
>>> Maybe it was the sophistication and understanding it took to deal
>>> with complex international issues. Or, since he was clearly a
>>> bully, maybe
>> what
>>> he lacked was courage. We will never know. But had General
Wheeler
>>> and
>> the
>>> others received a fair hearing, and had their recommendations
>>> received serious study, the United States may well have saved the
>>> lives of most of its more than 55,000 sons who died in a war that
>>> its major architect,
>> Robert
>>> Strange McNamara, now considers to have been a tragic mistake.
>>>
>>> ~nahkbin
>>> ***********************************************

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Cronkite lied, soldiers died.