War Begets War
By: Norton Nowlin
Even while U.S. Marines and soldiers were still dying by the thousands in Vietnam in 1970, a brutal undeclared war in Southeast Asia was continuing to ravage the socio-political climate of the United States. At that time, the Pentagon was noticeably pressuring Congress for an official declaration of war against the communist forces of Ho Chi Minh. With a declaration of war, the U.S military could have been viciously unleashed to commit unlimited troops and firepower to possibly win a war that was in its seventh harrowing year.
The result, however, would have been devastating to both North Vietnam and the United States in terms of casualties. Had this happened, most historians tend to agree that China and, possibly, the USSR would have come to the defense of Hanoi against the U.S. As the noted historian and writer, Barbara Tuchman, insightfully quipped, “war is the unfolding of serious miscalculations,” and as Oscar Wilde so cleverly said, “as long as war is regarded as wicked, it will always have its fascination. When it is looked upon as vulgar, it will cease to be popular.” Men and women of great political power are rarely constrained by reason and prudence in their egregious pursuits to control the lives of other lesser mortals. War, therefore, remains as an enigmatically pragmatic means of effecting this type of control.
These devious inculcators, who are actually responsible for war’s ensuing death and despair, are usually never personally endangered by, or held accountable for, their treacherous folly.
Morality was hardly a determining factor in the beginning and, later, the escalation of military operations in Vietnam. There was, instead, a seriously nearsighted pragmatism flourishing among the pundits of the Eisenhower Administration who, in the mid-1950’s, feared the erosion of American economic interests in Southeast Asia. As a result of the impending defeat of the French occupation by the Viet Minh, a few prominent American and European capitalists were expected lose their substantial investments in Vietnam. Prior to the fall of Dienbenphu, conservative war hawk Republicans, such as Richard M. Nixon, Vice-President to Eisenhower, advocated the use of nuclear weapons against the Southeast Asian communists in 1954.
In direct contradiction to his future actions as President, Lyndon B. Johnson, a Texas senator at that time, vehemently opposed sending U.S troops into Vietnam, contending that such would incite a contentious bloodletting spree. Most of the senior U.S. generals from the Korean War and WWII also concurred that a ground war in Vietnam would be disastrous and ultimately not winnable. Nevertheless, the voices of experience and reason failed to dissuade the Eisenhower Administration from entering into the conflict by attempting to mediate the acrimonious relations between what was French Indo-China and the communists in North Vietnam. A subsequent summit conference at Geneva produced a bifurcation of Vietnam in 1956, at the 17th Parallel, forming what became a de jure North and South Vietnam in what appeared as a de facto political setting. While the majority of the Vietnamese people in the North, under Ho Chi Minh, wanted a united Vietnam under a communist government, a minority of Vietnamese capitalist merchants and U.S./French land barons insisted that South Vietnam was the dominant democratic voice in Indo-China.
History reflects that moral issues had nothing at all to do with the surging number of U.S. troops and advisors sent to South Vietnam from 1956 to 1964. While the U.S. Government blatantly lied to the American people all through the fourteen year Vietnam debacle (1963-75), the Pentagon Papers, disclosed to the media in 1971 by Daniel Ellsberg, revealed that over 20,000 soldiers and an unconfirmed number of CIA paramilitary operatives had been sent to South Vietnam by the Kennedy Administration in early 1963. Dr. Terry Busson, presently a professor of government and political Science at Eastern Kentucky University, told me at the University of Texas at Tyler, while I was there as an undergraduate student, that he was among the many soldiers sent to Vietnam in ’63. If it hadn’t been for the Pentagon Papers, the majority of the American public would still believe that 1965 was the year that the first major military operations in Vietnam began.
The quotable Oscar Wilde was astute enough to denote the bold difference between political wickedness and vulgarity. How easy it was for an American President, John F. Kennedy, to summarily pick up where Dwight Eisenhower left off and lead the American nation down a road to social and military disaster. Without consulting the American electorate or the Congress, as to the will of the majority, Kennedy considered American lives expendable in an effort to keep American and European economic interests viable in a small sliver of jungle in Southeast Asia.
By using the domino theory to deliberately create illusions in the minds of American soldiers, marines, sailors, and airmen that a U.S. military presence in South Vietnam was essential to the national security of the American republic, there was a sudden public frenzy to save Vietnam from the communists. And the young patriots, at first, went willingly in droves, 1964-65, recruited by the military to be sent to die so that a miscalculated political agenda or, as Robert MacNamara put it, the fog of war could be justified. While the subtle wickedness of the Vietnam War was permitted and sustained by arrogant political pragmatism, the vulgarity of the ordeal was first noted when enough concerned Americans banded together to create a coalition of opposition. When the disclosure of covert government subversion and political manipulation throughout both the legislative and executive Branches was presented to the American public, the war became vulgar and distasteful only because the government had been caught in the act.
Some historians believe that John F. Kennedy’s hallmark moment as U.S. President was the resolution of the Cuban Missile Crisis, but I prefer to think that it was pure dumb luck that the Soviets backed down from the naval blockade he imposed in 1962. The probability that a Soviet nuclear strike was imminent was much greater than the likelihood that the USSR would remove its missiles from Cuba. Kennedy lucked out of a nuclear war to stupidly step into another conventional one. The arrogant miscalculations which led to Vietnam proved that, as long as political sophistry is effective in creating illusions that what is as wicked as sin is as pure as the driven snow, evil and avarice frequently go unnoticed and unknowingly permitted.
Though the facts are disputed by some, I believe that there is currently enough credible evidence on the judgment table for a reasonable person to conclude that the War in Iraq, and the deaths of over 1,800 American GI’s, were caused through the same types of deception and political manipulation which produced the Vietnam debacle, or even more so. President George W. Bush is presently realizing all of the delusional benefits of La-La Land, pretending that all is well in Iraq. As marines and soldiers continue to die on a daily basis (83 during August of 2005),” Dubya” plays silly games with his terrorist cards and holds Osama Bin Laden’s as his favorite trump. I remember reading once that on the Sunday morning that Pearl Harbor was attacked by the Japanese, Franklin D. Roosevelt continued playing contentedly with his stamp collection at his White House desk. I also recall that the Emperor Nero reportedly played his fiddle while Rome burned.
Could these accounts be similar to George W. Bush’s preoccupation with a child’s goat story while the WTC was being attacked on 9/11. History will eventually decide, sooner than later I hope, whether or not Mr. Bush will be portrayed as a “disaster” president, or as a “disaster” as a president.
The sad lessons which history provides for humanity’s illumination usually go unheeded by those individuals who don’t choose to see their relevance to the present. The only sure way of correcting a poignant historical mistake is by recognizing its awful significance and making a determination to never again pursue that course of action. Despite the intellectualism of supposedly learned scholars, the death and despair of countless wars have never been justified by the advancements in technology which have followed each conflict.
Most neo-conservatives wrongly believe that war is a proper means for achieving political and economic change. Discovering better ways to kill people has never been a boon to peaceful civilization. Hence, while it does determine adjustments in world population, war can never be termed a vital link to human progress. As Abraham Lincoln said in his Gettysburg Address, “. . .It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain. . .” Perhaps the great man was saying that the nation might learn from the American Civil War how to avoid future war. And, of course, Sir Lloyd George also quipped, in 1917, that WWI was the “war to end all wars.” Then came WWII, Korea, Vietnam, and a few American police actions which were tantamount to small wars.
I personally believe that, as long as a very few conniving politicians, posing as statesmen, are allowed by the majority of a republic to determine its destiny, there will continue to be needless and unjustified wars. It’s high time that a peaceful majority assumes its rightful place as the controlling voice of the American republic.
About the Author:
Norton R. Nowlin holds B.A. and M.A Degrees in political science and psychology from the University of Texas at Tyler. He also holds an advanced paralegal certification, with honors, from Edmonds Community College, in Lynnwood, Washington, and has completed one year of law school at Thomas Jefferson School of Law, in San Diego, California. In addition to the foregoing, Mr. Nowlin also has completed 70 semester hours in post-graduate work in history, sociology, economics, and management from the UT Tyler, Pepperdine University, and National University. Mr. Nowlin is an advanced paralegal, free-lance writer, and essayist residing with his wife, the physicist and professional tutor Diane C. Nowlin, and their two very intelligent cats in Mountlake Terrace, Washington.