The Foreign Service Journal, July-August 2015

THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL | JULY-AUGUST 2015 59 were supported not only among the people at large but among the political elements and among the journalists who later came to oppose the war. The American people generally supported and applauded President Eisenhower for a decision to partition Vietnam and to support an anti-Communist government in the South. The American people, and particularly the American media, supported President Kennedy’s decision to go beyond the restrictions on American involvement that President Eisenhower had set and they also supported his decision to permit American involvement in the removal of President Diem—although the extent of that involvement was not clear at the time. Many who were later to be labeled as “doves” on Vietnam then insisted that South Vietnam had to be saved and that President Diem’s removal was essential to save it. You, yourself, will remember the strong support that the Tonkin Gulf resolution won on the Hill and the general support for President Johnson’s decision to send troops. President Nixon won an outpouring of support for the decision to withdraw American forces at a gradual pace, as well as for the Paris Peace Agreement. If one could offer any guidelines for the future about the lessons to be drawn regarding domestic support for foreign policy, it would be that American political groups will not long remain comfortable in positions that go against their traditional attitudes. The liberal Democrats could not long support a war against a revolutionary movement, no matter how reactionary the domestic tactics of that movement. They had accepted the heavy commitment to Vietnam because of President Kennedy, whom they regarded as their leader, but they withdrew from it under President Johnson. Focus on Essentials One clear lesson that can be drawn, however, is the importance of absolute honesty and objectivity in all reporting, within and from the government, as well as from the press. U.S. official reports tended for a long time to be excessively optimistic, with the result that official statements did not make clear to the American people how long and how tough the conflict might turn out to be. After a while the pessimistic reports from journalists began to gain greater credence because such positive trends as did emerge came too slowly to justify optimistic Washington assessments. In Vietnam, the situation was generally worse than some reported and better than others reported. But the pessimistic reports, even if they were inaccurate, began to look closer to the mark until almost any government statement could be rejected as biased, not only by the opposition but by an increasingly skeptical public. Another lesson would be the absolute importance of focusing our own remarks and the public debate on essentials—even if those essentials are not clearly visible every night on the television screen. The Vietnam debate often turned into a fascination with issues that were, at best, peripheral. The “tiger cages” were seen as a symbol of South Vietnamese government oppression, although that government was facing an enemy who had assassinated, tortured and jailed an infinitely greater number; the “Phoenix” program became a subject of attack although North Vietnamese and Viet Cong tactics were infinitely more brutal. The My Lai incident tarnished the image of an American army that had generally—though not always—been compas- sionate in dealing with the civilian population. Even at the end, much of the public discussion focused on President Thieu’s alleged failure to gain political support, but it was the com- munists who rejected free elections and who brought in their reserve divisions because they did not have popular support. And at home, it was argued that your aid request meant Ameri- can reinvolvement when nothing was further from your mind. Of equal importance may be a dedication to consistency. When the United States entered the war during the 1960s, it did so with excesses that not only ended the career and the life of an allied leader but that may have done serious damage to the American economy and that poured over half a million soldiers into a country where we never had more than 100,000 who were actually fighting. At the end, the excesses in the other direction made it impossible to get from the Congress only about 2 or 3 percent as much money as it had earlier appropriated every year. When we entered, many did so in the name of morality. But nobody spoke of the morality of consistency, or of this virtue of seeing something through once its cost had been reduced to manageable proportions. In terms of military tactics, we cannot help [but] draw the conclusion that our armed forces are not suited to this kind of war. Even the Special Forces who had been designed for it could Vietnam represented a unique situation, geographically, ethnically, politically, militarily and diplomatically.