The Vietnam of today

By Francesca Lo Basso
Collegian Editor
February 21, 2007

I hate age-old adages and axioms because, although time should have ripened them into cold hard facts, they’re often left rotting in the dust. Like that one philosopher George Santayana said, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” You would think that anyone in a position of power – like oh, I don’t know, the CEO of Enron or the president of the United States – would have enough sense to use history as a much needed lesson in hindsight. But alas, that would be giving Jeffrey Skilling and Dubya too much credit. Bush has not only ignored atrocities committed by America in the past, but by doing so, has allowed the same mistakes to be repeated again. And again.

On Aug. 7, 1964, both houses of Congress passed a bill that’s stated purpose, as relayed on Britannica.com, was to approve and support the determination of President Lyndon Johnson in taking all necessary measures to repel an armed attack against U.S. forces, to prevent further aggression and maintain peace in Southeast Asia. This bill was known as the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, named after the gulf off the coast of northern Vietnam in which North Vietnamese torpedo boats supposedly attacked two U.S. destroyers. This resolution is what officially started the Vietnam War.

However, as John Prados, a senior fellow with the National Security Archive in Washington, states – after studying the declassified Johnson White House tapes – the highly classified signals intercepted by the U.S. government that were cited as the attacks on the destroyers were in actuality only describing a naval clash held two days before the alleged Aug. 4 assault. What all this political jargon means is that the incident, which gave Johnson war powers and initiated the prolonged 10-year slaughter of civilians and troops on both sides of the conflict, was made up. The Gulf of Tonkin attack, as publicized, never happened.

My, this sounds suspiciously similar to the supposed weapons of mass destruction (WMD) Saddam Hussein was hording in Iraq. Since coming to power, Bush has been pushing for the return of United Nations inspectors to Iraq to check on so-called weapons-production facilities. In a speech given in Cincinnati Oct. 7, 2002, Bush said, “Tonight I want to take a few minutes to discuss a grave threat to peace, and America’s determination to lead the world in confronting that threat. The threat comes from Iraq.”

Hmm, this sounds frighteningly similar to President Johnson’s remarks about Vietnam’s menace to world peace. Bush went on to say that, “[The Iraqi Regime] possesses and produces chemical and biological weapons.” This is what he used as a spring board to bomb Baghdad in 2003, spawning the current war in Iraq.

And yet, as early as September 2003, reports were being compiled by 1,400 intelligence experts, stating that they found no evidence of WMD in Iraq. In an interview with BBC News that first aired Jan. 16, 2006, former Secretary of State Colin Powell confirmed that the administration’s claim that Iraq was stockpiling WMDs was wrong. So, in just 40 years, that makes two wars that our government initiated on false pretenses.

What eventually forced the turnaround in Vietnam was pressure from home by the American people and dissension within Johnson’s administration. We have all seen the footage and read the stories about the demonstrations, sit-ins and rallies that took place on college campuses and Congressional doorsteps across the nation in the 1960s.

There can be no doubt in anyone’s mind that the American people expressed extreme disenchantment with the Vietnam War, but few may be aware of the shift that took place within the government at the time.

According to an eight-part PBS documentary called Vietnam: A Television History, in the episode entitled “Tet,” the American military was left in a state of severe distress in early 1968. The communists in North Vietnam planned a bold strategy to be carried out during the lunar New Year festival, known as Tet, at the end of January. This uprising, known as the Tet Offensive, worked. In just two days of fighting, 232 American GIs were killed and 900 wounded; by the end of the 24-day siege, a combined 8,000 soldiers from both sides were left dead.

Johnson, running out of funds for a limited war, afraid of an extended war and facing strong opposition from the American people, had no idea what to do. So, he approved a request from the Commander of the American troops, General Westmoreland, to send an increase of 206,000 troops to Vietnam. Sounds familiar.

Luckily, the extra troops were never deployed because Johnson’s Secretary of Defense, Clark Clifford, sat down with the Joint Chiefs of Staff for two days and realized that the situation in Vietnam was dire, and would continue indefinitely with an indeterminate amount of casualties. Clifford, who had supported the war and Johnson from the start, shifted his position and worked from that point on to change Johnson’s mind.

From personal experience, I can attest to the level of dissatisfaction among the American public at the war in Iraq, and the lengths to which they are willing to go to make their voices heard. It’s rebellion in the ranks that we’re missing. I thought we were seeing the beginning of this after the sweeping Democratic victory in the recent elections, and Sen. Jim Webb’s, (D-Va.), response to the State of the Union, in which he stated, “We need a new direction.” But my hopes for withdrawal were dashed by the Senate’s refusal to back a non-binding resolution criticizing Bush’s new Iraq plan calling for a surge of troops. Or maybe not.

Miraculously, there may be a new Clifford at the end of this miserable tunnel. Just this Saturday, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer, “This war is a serious situation. It involves the worst foreign policy mistake in the history of this country.” When asked if he considered Iraq a worse mistake than Vietnam, Reid said, “Yes.” This is the first time since the war began that a top lawmaker has expressed such severe condemnation of the war. Here’s to hoping that the rest of Congress grabs their guitars and jumps onboard the peace train.

lobassof1@lasalle.edu