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- From: jaske@abacus.bates.edu (Jon Aske)
- Subject: Chomsky (Z-9/92): Vain hopes, part 5/7
- Message-ID: <1992Sep3.213440.24077@mont.cs.missouri.edu>
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- Date: Thu, 3 Sep 1992 21:34:40 GMT
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-
- ------------------------------------------------------
- The following article by Noam Chomsky appeared in:
- Z Magazine, September 1992
- and is reprinted here with the magazine's permission.
- ------------------------------------------------------
-
- Vain Hopes, False Dreams (Part 5 of 7, 18KB)
- ========================
-
- 5. Interpretations: the early version
- -------------------------------------
-
- The final source of evidence on JFK's plans is the memoirs and
- other comments of his advisers. These come in two versions:
- before and after the Tet offensive. We review these in the next
- two sections, then turning to the 1991-2 revival and revisions.
- This survey only adds conviction to what we have already found.
-
- Kennedy's commitment to stay the course was clear to those
- closest to him. As noted, Arthur Schlesinger shared JFK's
- perception of the enormous stakes and his optimism that the
- military escalation had reversed the "aggression" of the
- indigenous guerrillas in 1962. There is not a word in
- Schlesinger's chronicle of the Kennedy years (1965, reprinted
- 1967) that hints of any intention to withdraw without victory.
- In fact, Schlesinger gives no indication that JFK thought about
- withdrawal at all. The withdrawal plans receive one sentence in
- his voluminous text, attributed to McNamara in the context of the
- debate over pressuring the Diem regime. There is nothing else in
- this 940-page virtual day-by-day record of the Kennedy
- Administration by its quasi-official historian. Far more detail
- had appeared in the press in October-December 1963.
-
- These facts leave only three possible conclusions: (1) the
- historian was keeping the President's intentions secret; (2) this
- close JFK confidant had no inkling of his intentions; (3) there
- were no such intentions.
-
- By 1966, it was becoming clear that things were not going well in
- Vietnam. In his _Bitter Heritage_ (1966), Arthur Schlesinger
- expressed concern that the US military effort had dubious
- prospects, though "we may all be saluting the wisdom and
- statesmanship of the American government" if it succeeds.
- Referring to Joseph Alsop's predictions of victory, Schlesinger
- writes that "we all pray that Mr. Alsop will be right," though he
- doubts it. The only qualms are tactical: what will be the cost
- to us? Schlesinger describes himself as holding high the spirit
- of JFK. He flatly opposes withdrawal, which "would have ominous
- reverberations throughout Asia," and again gives no hint that
- Kennedy ever considered such a possibility.
-
- Another close associate, Theodore Sorenson, also published a
- history of the Administration in 1965. Sorenson was Kennedy's
- first appointed official, served as his special counsel and
- attended all NSC meetings. He makes no mention of withdrawal
- plans. Quite the contrary. Kennedy's "essential contribution,"
- he writes, was to avoid the extremes advocated "by those
- impatient to win or withdraw. His strategy essentially was to
- avoid escalation, retreat or a choice limited to these two, while
- seeking to buy time..." He opposed withdrawal or "bargain[ing]
- away Vietnam's security at the conference table." Sorenson's
- conclusion is that JFK "was simply going to weather it out, a
- nasty, untidy mess to which there was no other acceptable
- solution. Talk of abandoning so unstable an ally and so costly a
- commitment `only makes it easy for the Communists,' said the
- President. `I think we should stay'." So his account ends.
- Again, we may choose among the same three conclusions.
-
- No one was closer to JFK than his brother Robert. He had
- expressed his position in 1962: "The solution lies in our winning
- it. This is what the President intends to do... We will remain
- here [in Saigon] until we do." In 1964 oral history, RFK said
- that the Administration had never faced the possibilities of
- either withdrawal or escalation. Asked what JFK would have done
- if the South Vietnamese appeared doomed, he said: "We'd face that
- when we came to it." "Robert's own understanding of his brother's
- position," his biographer Arthur Schlesinger reports, was that
- "we should win the war" because of the domino effect. The
- problem with Diem, RFK added, was that we need "somebody that can
- win the war," and he wasn't the man for it. Accordingly, it is
- no surprise that RFK fully supported Johnson's continuation of
- what he understood to be his brother's policies through the 1965
- escalation.
-
- The last of the early accounts of the Kennedy Administration was
- written by Roger Hilsman in late 1967, shortly before the Tet
- offensive and well after severe doubts about the war were raised
- at the highest levels. He takes it for granted that the goal
- throughout was "to defeat the Communist guerrillas." He writes
- that had JFK lived, "he might well have introduced United States
- ground forces into South Vietnam -- though I believe he would not
- have ordered them to take over the war effort from the Vietnamese
- but would have limited their mission to the task of occupying
- ports, airfields, and military bases to demonstrate to the North
- Vietnamese that _they_ could not win the struggle by escalation
- either" -- the enclave strategy that had been advocated by Ball
- and Taylor in early 1965, then by others. The question of how to
- respond to a collapse of the Saigon regime was delayed, he
- writes, in the hope that it would not arise. Hilsman feels that
- LBJ "sincerely even desperately wanted to make the existing
- policy work," without US combat forces, citing his statement of
- Sept. 25, 1964 that "We don't want our American boys to do the
- fighting for Asian boys." He cites the White House statement
- announcing the adoption of the McNamara-Taylor October 1963
- recommendations, adding nothing of substance to what was
- published in the press at the time. His only comment is that the
- optimistic predictions on which withdrawal was predicated would
- come "to haunt Secretary McNamara and the whole history of
- American involvement in Vietnam."
-
- The internal record of 1964 shows that Kennedy doves saw matters
- much as described in the 1964-67 memoirs, and therefore continued
- to support Johnson's policies, some pressing for further
- escalation, others (Ball, Mansfield) praising Johnson for
- choosing the middle course between escalation and withdrawal.
-
- We have now reviewed all the crucial evidence: the events
- themselves, the public statements, the record of internal
- deliberations and planning, the opinions of the military, the
- attitudes of the Kennedy doves, and the pre-Tet memoirs and
- commentary. The conclusions are unambiguous, surprisingly so on
- a matter of current history: President Kennedy was firmly
- committed to the policy of victory that he inherited and
- transmitted to his successor, and to the doctrinal framework that
- assigned enormous significance to that outcome; he had no plan or
- intention to withdraw without victory; he had apparently given
- little thought to the matter altogether, and it was regarded as
- of marginal interest by those closest to him. Furthermore, the
- basic facts were prominently published at the time, with more
- detail than is provided by the early memoirs.
-
- 6. The Record Revised
- ---------------------
-
- After the Tet Offensive, major domestic power sectors concluded
- that the enterprise was becoming too costly to them and called
- for it to be terminated. President Johnson was, in effect,
- dismissed from office, and policy was set towards disengagement.
- The effect on the ideological system was dramatic. The liberal
- intelligentsia felt the "need to insulate JFK from the disastrous
- consequences of the American venture in Southeast Asia," Thomas
- Brown observes in his study of Camelot imagery. "Kennedy's role
- in the Vietnam war is unsurprisingly...the aspect [of his public
- image and record] that has been subjected to the greatest number
- of revisions by Kennedy's admirers... The important thing was
- that JFK be absolved of responsibility for the Vietnam debacle;
- when the need for exculpation is so urgent, no obstacles --
- including morality and the truth -- should stand in the way"
- (_JFK: History of an Image_, 1988).
-
- The latter comment relates specifically to one of the earliest
- post-Tet efforts to revise the image, the 1972 memoir by White
- House aide Kenneth O'Donnell, whose stories have assumed center
- stage in the post-Tet reconstruction. He writes that Kennedy had
- informed Senator Mansfield that he agreed with him "on the need
- for a complete military withdrawal from Vietnam," adding that he
- had to delay announcement of "a withdrawal of American military
- personnel" until after the November 1964 election to avoid
- "another Joe McCarthy scare." In 1975, Mansfield told columnist
- Jack Anderson that Kennedy "was going to order a gradual
- withdrawal" but "never had the chance to put the plan into
- effect," though he had "definitely and unequivocally" made that
- decision; in 1978, Mansfield said further that Kennedy had
- informed him that troop withdrawal would begin in January 1964
- (which does not fit smoothly with the O'Donnell story).
-
- Noting Mansfield's (partial) confirmation of O'Donnell's report,
- Brown points out that "one need not reject this story out of
- hand...to doubt that it was a firm statement of Kennedy's
- intentions in Vietnam. Like many politicians, JFK was inclined
- to tell people what they wanted to hear." Every authentic
- historian discounts such reports for the same reason: "Kennedy
- probably told [Mansfield] what he wanted to hear," Thomas
- Paterson observes. The same holds for other recollections,
- authentic or not, by political figures and journalists.
-
- Whatever else he may have been, Kennedy was a political animal,
- and knew enough to tell the Senate Majority Leader and other
- influential people what they wanted to hear. He was also keenly
- sensitive to the opposition to his policies among powerful
- Senators, who saw them as harmful to US interests. He also was
- aware that public support for the war was thin, as was McNamara
- and others. But JFK never saw the general discontent among the
- public, press, and Congress as an opportunity to construct a
- popular base for withdrawal; rather, he sought to counter it with
- extremist rhetoric about the grand stakes. He hoped to bring the
- war to a successful end before discontent interfered with this
- plan. Had he intended to withdraw, he would also have leaped at
- the opportunity provided by the GVN call for reduction of forces
- (even outright withdrawal), and its moves toward political
- settlement. As for the right-wing, a President intent on
- withdrawal would have called upon the most highly-respected
- military figures for support, as already noted. There is no
- indication that this reasonable course was ever considered, again
- confirming that withdrawal was never an option.
-
- The O'Donnell-Mansfield story is hardly credible on other
- grounds. Nothing would have been better calculated to fan
- right-wing hysteria than inflammatory rhetoric about the cosmic
- issues at stake, public commitment to stay the course, election
- on the solemn promise to stand firm come what may, and then
- withdrawal and betrayal. Furthermore, Mansfield's actual
- positions differed from the retrospective version, as noted. Far
- more credible, if one takes such reconstructions seriously, is
- General Wheeler's recollection in 1964 (not years later) that
- Kennedy was interested in extending the war to North Vietnam.
-
- Despite such obvious flaws as these, the O'Donnell-Mansfield
- stories are taken very seriously by Kennedy hagiographers.
-
- The Camelot memoirists proceeded to revise their earlier versions
- after Tet, separating JFK (and by implication, themselves) from
- what had happened. Sorenson was the first. In the earlier
- version, Kennedy was preparing for the introduction of combat
- troops if necessary and intended to "weather it out" come what
- may, not abandoning his ally, who would have collapsed without
- large-scale US intervention. Withdrawal is not discussed.
- Diplomacy is considered a threat, successfully overcome by the
- overthrow of the Diem government. But post-Tet, Sorenson is
- "convinced" that JFK would have sought diplomatic alternatives in
- 1965 -- with the client regime in still worse straits, as he
- notes. The October 1963 withdrawal plan, unmentioned in the old
- version, assumes great significance in the post-Tet revision,
- with significant omissions: notably, the precondition of military
- success.
-
- Arthur Schlesinger entered the lists in 1978 with his biography
- of Robert Kennedy. Unlike Sorenson, he does not confine himself
- to speculation about JFK's intent. Rather, he constructs a new
- history, radically revising his earlier account. Thus, while the
- pre-Tet versions gave no hint of any intent to withdraw without
- victory, in the post-Tet biography of Robert Kennedy, JFK's
- alleged withdrawal plans merit a full chapter, though RFK's
- "involvement in Vietnam had been strictly limited before Dallas,"
- Schlesinger observes. This startling difference between the pre-
- and Post-Tet versions is not attributed to any significant new
- information, indeed is not mentioned at all. In 1992, in a
- review of Newman's book, Schlesinger went a step further,
- claiming that he had put forth the JFK withdrawal thesis all
- along.
-
- Post-Tet, the October 1963 decisions, emerging from their earlier
- obscurity, become "the first application of Kennedy's phased
- withdrawal plan." Unmentioned before, this plan now serves as
- prime evidence that Kennedy had separated himself from the two
- main "schools": the advocates of counterinsurgency and of
- military victory. The plan shows that JFK was opposed to "both
- win-the-war factions,...vaguely searching for a nonmilitary
- solution." His public call for winning the war is apparently to
- be understood as a ploy to deflect the right-wing.
-
- Pre-Tet, it was JFK and Arthur Schlesinger who rejoiced over the
- defeat of "aggression" in Vietnam in 1962. Post-Tet, it is the
- _New York Times_ that absurdly denounces "Communist
- `aggression' in Vietnam," while "Kennedy was determined to
- stall." And though RFK did call for victory over the aggressors
- in 1962, he was deluded by "the party line as imparted to him by
- McNamara and Taylor," failing to understand the huge gap between
- the President's views and the McNamara-Taylor party line -- which
- Schlesinger had attributed to the President, with his own
- endorsement, in the pre-Tet version. In the post-Tet version,
- the Joint Chiefs join the _New York Times_, McNamara, and
- Taylor as extremists undermining the President's moderate
- policies. Commenting on JCS Chairman General Lyman Lemnitzer's
- invocation of the "well-known commitment to take a forthright
- stand against Communism in Southeast Asia," Schlesinger writes
- sardonically that it may have been "well-known" to the Chiefs,
- but they "failed in their effort to force it on the President" --
- who regularly voiced it in still more strident terms, including
- several cases that Schlesinger had cited, pre-Tet: e.g., JFK's
- fears of upsetting "the whole world balance" if the US were to
- retreat in Vietnam. Or, we may add his summer 1963 statement
- that "for us to withdraw from that effort [to secure the GVN]
- would mean a collapse not only of South Vietnam but Southeast
- Asia," which Schlesinger quoted and praised as "temperate,"
- pre-Tet (902-3).
-
- This book and later Schlesinger efforts are so replete with
- misrepresentation and error as to defy brief comment. I will
- return to them elsewhere. They illustrate the seriousness of the
- post-Tet endeavor, and its dim prospects.
-
- The third early Kennedy memoirist, Roger Hilsman, has written
- letters to the press responding to critics of the withdrawal
- thesis in which he takes a stronger stand on JFK's intent to
- withdraw than in his highly qualified 1967 comments. His factual
- references are misleading, but a close reading shows that Hilsman
- is careful to evade the crucial questions: in particular, the
- precondition of victory. He cites Kennedy's statement that "it
- is their war" to win or lose as proof of his plan to withdraw,
- claiming without evidence that Johnson at once reversed that
- intent. He had said nothing of the sort pre-Tet; quite the
- contrary, as we have seen (including the internal record).
- Furthermore, if JFK's statement demonstrates his intent to
- withdraw, we would have to draw the same conclusions about
- McGarr, Taylor, Westmoreland, and LBJ. That, of course, is
- precisely why Hilsman makes no such claim in his 1967 memoir, in
- which he emphasizes LBJ's statement that "We don't want our
- American boys to do the fighting for Asian boys" to show his
- "sincere" and "desperate" effort to carry out JFK's plans. The
- same holds of efforts by Schlesinger and others to read great
- significance into JFK statements that were conventional and mean
- little.
-
- However informative they may be with regard to the duties and
- responsibilities of cultural management, the post-Tet revisions
- by leading Kennedy intellectuals have no value as history.
- Rather, they _constitute_ a chapter of cultural history, one
- that is of no slight interest, I believe.
-
-
-
-
-