Robert S. McNamara: War Criminal of the Pre-Coalition of the Willing Age or LBJ's Shoe-Scraper?

That's right Mr. Garrison, the Vietnam War was sticky and icky.

--Mr. Hat, South Park

Enragingly, liberals talk about Vietnam as if it proves something about the use of force generally rather than the Democrats' own bungling incompetence in military affairs. Historical accounts of the Vietnam war are incomprehensible because liberals refuse to admit the failure of their own national security strategy. The only important lesson from the Vietnam War is this: Democrats lose wars.

Ann Coulter, Treason

That Ann is a stitch. She may be a bleached blonde, stick figure, talking head whack job, but she sure has the Vietnam War pegged. Just don't stand too close to her or those shoulder blades might get you cut. Had we repeated LBJ's same conciliatory, negotiation-over-victory Democrat war policies in Iraq, which Murtha and Obama championed as an alternative to the surge, we'd have never controlled sectarian violence or driven out foreign fighters.

As you know, Daily Affirmations seldom dwells on politics. As one of those Republican white men whom Maureen Dowd observes is afraid of extinction, living in the heart of liberal darkness here on Planet Austin, I'm pretty much the Skip Bayless of Austin political thought. Always disagreeing with everyone and everything. Its easier and more fun to write about Dirty Dancing, or donuts, or the Top Gun volleyball scene, or how to behave at parties, or dignified, gentlemanly ways of scoring with smokin' hot chicks.

But liberal, effete snob really crossed the line with the recent passing of Robert McNamara (relatively recent-sorry, pesky responsibilities have kept me away from the blog lately). The chattering classes' take wasn't so much about whether McNamara was a "war criminal," but just how culpable of a war criminal. Years of this tripe, like a slow Chinese water torture, apparently convinced even McNamara to concede his "guilt," having expressed that he was a war criminal in the biographical film, Fog of War. Left-wing publications and web sites casually tossed the term into their obituaries. The Guardian UK pondered whether one could rationally have some grudging admiration for a war criminal who'd reformed, along the lines of a George Wallace, I guess, beloved by Alabama blacks 20 years after staunchly defending segregation. Having nailed him in The Best and the Brightest, Halberstam previously had allowed that while McNamara may not have been a war criminal as such, he was a charlatan guilty of a greater crime of "silence." Well, one thing's for sure. He did sort of look like a captured Nazi rocket scientist. Not a good look.

This business of McNamara being a war criminal is all rubbish. Now, all of what follows could fill a book (for which I'd have more documentation, but this is a blog and I'm just a crank that drinks too much caffeine so step back), but a "war criminal" is someone who violates the international laws of war as defined by treaties and conventions and commits "war crimes." An official who implements and directs the conduct of a war his country has declared (or is defending) is not, without more, a "war criminal." War crimes are established by treaties, such as various Hague and Geneva Conventions ratified by signatory nations. Attacking soldiers flying a truce flag or non-combatants, or abusing prisoners of war, would be examples of a war crime. Advising a President to send more troops to Vietnam, or counseling increases in bombing to further war strategy, or asking for more troops are not war crimes. They are either examples of bad military advice to two Presidents or good advice poorly executed.

McNamara's "crime" was that he advised two US Presidents to take an aggressive stand against Communist intervention in South Vietnam, advice which both Presidents eagerly accepted and implemented. That is not a "war crime," despite our now living in an era when the Western Democracies feel themselves unable to defend their security interests militarily without United Nations "authorization." Winston Churchill didn't go get a UN resolution when Germany invaded Poland. And was McNamara the only one "pushing" United States military escalation in Vietnam? Of course not. Eager not to let another "China" take place on their watch and suffer the career nose-dives that their early 1950s predecessors suffered as a result, virtually the entire defense and security establishment backed escalation. Had McNamara urged capitulation in 1964 or 1965, he'd have been cashiered, as were "softies" like George Ball. JFK, wanting to show his (alleged) mettle after a string of humiliations (Bay of Pigs, Vienna, building of the Berlin Wall, and the now-revealed pledge not to invade Cuba), saw Vietnam as the place to make his mark. LBJ was eager to continue the Vietnam buildup, initially as a means of asserting his authority after the assassination and later to convey American strength to the Russians and the world at large in response to Barry Goldwater's charges that the Democrats were "soft on communism." McNamara may have urged escalation, but he was hardly alone, and his bosses needed little prompting to go in.

McNamara and the generals were no doubt guilty of poorly managing the war and failing to recognize the enemy's true motivations (they were just as much nationalists as communists) and alliances (it was a Russian show; the Chinese had nothing to do with it). Like countless other bureaucrats implementing policies of their preference who withhold information from public scrutiny, they were less than candid about Viet Cong/NVA strength and movements. They and the CIA and State failed to recognize and pursue the critical need to establish a real South Vietnamese government. None of these failings make any of them "war criminals." It makes them failures at carrying out their nation's policies as decided by the President and the Congress.
But since we're in a mood to turn back the clock and assign guilt for actions during that war, we rightly should look at everyone's conduct.

Let's start with asking who were the real criminals in that war? I nominate the North Vietnamese animals who ran the Hanoi Hilton and other POW camps. Particularly in the beginning stages of the war, they starved our soldiers, kept them in solitary confinement cells with no water or bathroom facilities, forbade human contact, routinely practiced savage torture, marched them through Hanoi streets where civilians were incited to beat them and hurl objects at them, withheld needed medical care, and forced under threat of death to give statements condemning American activities. All of this was flagrantly in violation of Geneva conventions on the treatment of POWs. By contrast, when abuses on a far lesser scale happened at Abu Ghraib , we took action against the abusers and (to an inadequate degree) their superiors. Yet we never raised the subject of war crimes at the Paris peace talks, the peace accords made no mention of these brutalities, and the Carter administration was completely silent about such atrocities when it rushed to normalize relations with Vietnam (and pardon all draft dodgers).

How about the American public at large? If that war was such a criminal act against world peace, why did popular support for the war remain at high levels even as protests began to take hold in the 1966-67 time frame? Gallup Poll results showed that more Americans favored involvement in Vietnam than not until the first week of February 1968, which not coincidentally was exactly when the Tet Offensive occurred. No matter what the hippies and protesters claimed, the American public had no philosophical or moral problem with the Vietnam War until it became apparent that Johnson's strategy was failing. For example, in July 1966, McNamara made a major speech on Vietnam, televised on NBC and CBS. ABC, however, instead carried the debut of the Newlywed Game. The Newlywed Game's trounced McNamara in the ratings. So much for the nation's care and concern for its young men being sent to fight in Vietnam. Old Mac lucked out that it was just the Newlywed Game. What if it had been Match Game or the Hollywood Squares? No way anyone was going to watch McNamara drone on about body counts when they could watch Paul Lynde or Charles Nelson Reilley. I'll take Rose Marie to block.

Then how did America treat the veterans of that war? Contemptibly. Vietnam veterans never got a homecoming parade. Egged on by the protesters and liberal elites, Vietnam veterans were viewed as murdering psychopaths, bent on killing babies and attacking crowds. Employers were afraid to hire Vietnam vets, and people were afraid to associate with them. Seventies TV shows perpetrated this stereotype ad nauseum. How many Streets of San Francisco episodes involved Michael Douglas and his chin chasing down some heroin selling, homicidal Vietnam vet? Travis Bickel in Taxi Driver? Vietnam vet. Rambo? Vietnam vet. The Government denied psychological treatment and counseling for post-traumatic stress disorder, stonewalled investigations into Agent Orange medical problems, refused medical treatment, and turned its back on Vietnam vets. No wonder that the stereotype of the Vietnam veteran as criminal developed. Left without support when returning from that hell, what would you expect to happen? Not until the first Iraq War did this country truly acknowledge the contribution of our soldiers in Vietnam, and really welcome them home.

How about you, smug media type? Getting your news at the bar at the Hotel Caravelle instead of in country. Leaking strategically sensitive information. Walter Cronkite editorializing against the war based on his one and only trip to South Vietnam. The New York Times publishing the leaked Pentagon Papers despite warnings it included confidential information that could aid the enemy. TV reporters slanting stories to make the US tactical position seem dire (a favorite tactic was filming the reporter standing in front of the one and only bombed out jeep or chopper in the area, while claiming that the whole area suffered the same "devastation"). Failing to report any of the US or Australian "nation building" activities such as providing medical and dental care and education to civilians. They fixated on My Lai, ignoring countless other stories where American troops aided and protected South Vietnamese civilians. You know that famous photo of the ARVN officer who shot the "innocent civilian" in the head? That guy was a Viet Cong assassination squad leader, part of a broader VC effort to bring the war to the cities right after the Tet Offensive. The guy's squad had just attacked civilian targets, and the South Vietnamese police captured the guy at a ditch where 34 civilians and police officers had been buried. Now, all of that could have been easily found out, but our media wanted nothing to do with that story because it would conflict with the media's anti-war objectives. Persistent biased reporting against the war, under the guise of "impartiality" had much to do with our failure to seek a military victory rather than a negotiated stalemate. The media "establishment" tried the same thing in Iraq, but was less able to succeed due to competition from alternative sources. One more reason to be thankful for more, rather than less media in the internet and cable TV age--it has robbed the ABC/NBC/CBS/Washington Post/NYT oligarchy of its historic and inappropriate ability to shape policy.

Protester guy, you share blame too. I love how so many of the protest leaders felt it was perfectly alright to combat violence in Vietnam with violence at home. SDS, Weathermen, Chicago protest leaders, storming local draft board offices, occupying administration buildings, sabotaging defense contractors' offices, encircling the White House. The protesters' hypocrisy, particularly student protesters, was appalling. These were the draft-deferred children of privilege. Few of these people were going to Vietnam, nor any of their friends or family. They were staying in school, getting deferments, entering the National Guard, and pulling strings. That was a poor man's war (at least, on the ground). And were they motivated by some altruistic desire to save their fellow men from death in a foreign war? No, based on their treatment of returning veterans. They claimed the moral mantra of Ghandi-like civil disobedience against an unjust war, but howled like stuck pigs at the suggestion they might actually have to go to jail for their criminal acts. They flat out urged treason. Jane Fonda's despicable 1972 trip to Hanoi, who was holding hundreds of airmen in ghastly POW camps, was but the tip of the iceburg of protester solicitation of military disobedience. From the FTA movement, to "girls say yes to boys who say no," to draft-card burnings, the magnitude of soliciting soldiers to desertion or other treasonous acts was unprecedented. My favorite story about these clowns is about how in 1968, when the Columbia University branch of SDS took over the Administration Building, the male leaders immediately made work assignments. They assigned all the cleaning and cooking responsibilities to the women protesters. I'd have given anything to see the faces on these Hillary-types, in the full-on glory of their burgeoning women's movement euphoria, when the guys told them to grab a mop while they handled the negotiations and other "men's work." So much for the new utopian order of equality.

How about the draft dodgers? Others got drafted to take their place who would not otherwise have gone. Nearly every country in the world has at some point had a system of military conscription, so its not like the draft was some immoral institution. Certainly it was the law of the land. Maybe you could say Vietnam was an unjust war and they had some moral right to refuse to fight in it, but you'd be wrong. You can't live in a society and choose to accept the benefits you like but reject the obligations you dislike. Hey, I paid attention in philosophy class when we read Socrates. What if everyone got to decide which laws they wanted to obey? Soon there would be no law at all. Carter's pardon of these people essentially made conscription an impossibility in this country.

How about the coddled, ivory tower intellectuals? Coddling their precocious, Dr. Spock-raised baby boomer students, they eagerly leaped in front of the antiwar movement. Or at least tried to, mostly failing miserably because the protesters so distrusted the establishment generation they were naturally distrusting of anyone older. No doubt to impress the bevy of 20 year old coeds most of them spent their free time scamming on. As dirty, bearded university protester guy took over administration buildings in the name of "peace," Professor guy urged him on. At least the protesters were doing something. The professors mainly sat in their offices writing pithy letters to editors criticizing LBJ and Nixon and agonizing over whether to grow their sideburns longer to impress the kids.

So whatever anyone thinks about Robert McNamara, there's plenty of Vietnam guilt to go around.

Well, now that I've solved that ancient question for you, it'll be time to turn to other pressing questions in future posts. Like whether it was right to go to war with Spain after the USS Maine blew up. Or whether Whig agricultural policies were short-sighted. Stuff you need to know.

Actually, we'll be going back to Yasgur's Farm.