The Foreign Service Journal, February 2008

W e all need to go to the C Street entrance of the Department of State. We need to look again at the Memorial Plaques on the east and west sides of the lobby and review the names associated with our gener- ation-ago venture in Vietnam (33 on the east side; seven on the west). They range from the still-renowned John Paul Vann, made famous as one of David Halberstam’s “best and brightest,” to those who were known only to family and friends. In so doing, we need to appreciate again that taking the “king’s shilling” sometimes incurs personal liability, requiring us to go places we would not otherwise serve. For a period in the late 1960s, every unmarried entering Foreign Service officer who had not already undertaken military service was assigned to Vietnam. These officers were primarily detailed to the Civil Operations and Revolu- tionary Development Support pro- gram. CORDS operated in the pro- vinces to support local officials in their campaign to win hearts and minds. Perhaps today one might call them Provincial Reconstruction Teams. By 1971 or 1972, it was clear that the war was lost. Even those who believed in the effort to defeat com- munism and feared the prospect of toppling dominoes throughout the region sensed that was the case. The inspiration taken from John F. Ken- nedy and reinforced by his assassin- ation, to “bear any burden” and “pay any price,” had dissipated. National elections had rendered a clear verdict that the price was now too high, the burden too heavy. And while the consequences of defeat were unknow- able, they were deemed endurable. Globally, U.S. prestige was at a low ebb. We were excoriated in the global media and denounced at the United Nations; our support for Israel during and after the 1973 war resulted in an Arab oil embargo and rupture of relations with most Arab/Muslim states. This animosity was somewhat tempered by the reality that, at least within NATO’s realm, U.S. forces remained vitally necessary to shield Western Europeans’ national inde- pendence and even survival from Soviet/Warsaw Pact hostility. But the French were sardonically amused at the Americans’ inability to do any better in Indochina than they had, while most “neutrals” leaned left toward socialism and viewed free markets as archaic or corrupt. Domestically, President Johnson was reviled (“Hey, hey, LBJ; how many babies did you kill today?”), and President Nixon fared little better. The Department of State was hardly a snake pit of dissent over Vietnam policy, but senior officials largely ig- nored the dissent that was voiced or paid no more than lip service to dissenters’ demurs. Does any of the foregoing sound familiar? Yet even though they knew, or at least believed, that the U.S. effort in Vietnam was futile, those assigned there continued to take up the cudgels. By April 1975, when helicopters were rescuing the last desperate refugees from the top of Embassy Saigon, some 58,000 members of the U.S. Armed Forces and 40 Foreign Service personnel had died over the course of the Vietnam War. The societal results of that defeat are still echoing within the persistent divi- sions of the boomer generation. The dominoes didn’t (all) fall, but the genocidal massacres within Southeast Asia and vast population dislocations were abiding results of our parti- cipation and the nature of our with- drawal. Bitter Parallels Iraq is not Vietnam, to be sure. Not even forgotten history is doomed to repetition, but one can readily identify some parallels that already are bitter in the foretaste. Our ration- ale for invading Iraq in 2003 (unless you are into conspiracy theories) was Taking the King’s Shilling B Y D AVID T. J ONES S PEAKING O UT Taking the “king’s shilling” sometimes incurs personal liability, requiring us to go places we would not otherwise serve. 12 F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L / F E B R U A R Y 2 0 0 8