The Foreign Service Journal, November 2015

12 NOVEMBER 2015 | THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL erning Board consider taking some oral history from those of us who served dur- ing that period? Robert H. Stern FSO, retired Former AFSA State representative (1978-1980) Chantilly, Virginia Lessons of Vietnam As a former FSO now retired from the Defense Intelligence Agency—with seven years of military, airline and church service in Vietnam and two degrees in East Asian studies before join- ing the Foreign Service—I read “Lessons of Vietnam” in the July-August Journal with obvious interest. In the “Lessons Learned” memo from the State Depart- ment, David Lambertson says that U.S. involve- ment started during the Eisenhower years, in the mid-1950s. Actually it started in 1945, when FDR’s three-power high commis- sion plan, including eventual independence for Indochina, was discarded, and Presi- dent Truman began aiding the French, because anti-communism trumped anti- colonialism in U.S. policy. But Mr. Lambertson was quite cor- rect when he said 1968 was “probably a better time” for a settlement in Vietnam than 1972. Unfortunately, President Nixon scuttled that possibility as part of his election campaign (see the 2014 book Chasing Shadows: The Nixon Tapes, the Chennault Affair, and the Origins of Watergate by Ken Hughes). Mr. Lambertson hit it out of the park when he said: “We were never able to escape being the inheritors of the French colonization.” From 1945 forward, ent with Civil Service principles. Inter alia, it would have taken away rank-in- person, changed the retirement system and, in general, eliminated virtually all those provisions which made and continue to make the Foreign Service a distinct entity. When the Governing Board first weighed in, State management told us that legislation was not a bargaining item; an administration had the right to seek legislation, and AFSA had no right to contest it. Essentially, shut up, kid, and go home. Unwilling to take no for an answer, senior board members met with senior management officials and pointed out that while we had no legal standing, our input would provide Congress with a unified State Department position as opposed to our testifying against the proposed act. They agreed, and for the next two years, we met informally and unoffi- cially on evenings and weekends with management, going over the proposed language line by line. At the same time, we cultivated staff- ers on the key committees and testified before the Senate, outlining why we should be considered closer to the mili- tary than to the Civil Service and how changing our status would be detrimen- tal to the department’s mission. We gave up our evenings, weekends and annual leave for two years to work this issue, and while we certainly did not win every battle, we did win the war: The Foreign Service remains a distinct and excepted Service with an entrance exam and annual promotion boards. I should note, as well, that all of this took place while AFSA was going through the turmoil of recalling its elected presi- dent (Hemenway). May I suggest that the current Gov- besides anti-communism, keeping France in the Western alliance was a prime concern. Mr. Kissinger said in his memo that the United States entered the war during the 1960s, and he spoke of “our decision to save South Vietnam in 1965,” omitting mention of the 1954 Geneva agreements but citing U.S. reports that “for a long time were excessively optimistic.” I would refer readers to The Pentagon Papers , where the only “secrets” revealed were that U.S. policymakers made small incremental escalations of the war, des- perately hoping each one would negate the need for another and wishing the nightmare would disappear. Mr. Kissinger also noted that enter- ing the war in the 1960s “may have done serious damage to the American economy.” Indeed, the United States had just finished rebuilding Japan and Europe, and we should have been rebuilding our own industrial economy. Had the money spent on Vietnam been spent at home, we would be living in a much different country today. The overall les- son of the VietnamWar is that Vietnam’s independence was inevitable for a num- ber of reasons—whatever anyone may think of how it happened—and thus the war was lost before an American soldier ever set foot there. Fred Donner Former FSO Falls Church, Virginia n Share your thoughts about this month’s issue. Submit letters to the editor: journal@afsa.org