This piece was reprinted by OpEd News with permission or license. It may not be reproduced in any form without permission or license from the source.
Under severe pressure from the Joint Chiefs and other senior military, President Lyndon Johnson ordered Defense Secretary Robert "we-were-wrong-terribly-wrong" McNamara to use the faux-incident to deceive Congress into approving the fateful Tonkin Gulf resolution to "justify" seven years of additional war against the Vietnamese Communists.
William Fulbright, then chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said later that one of his greatest regrets was that he let himself be snowed by the White House and the military into pushing for approval of the Tonkin Gulf resolution. And George Ball added: "There's no question that many of the people who were associated with the war were looking for any excuse to initiate bombing [North Vietnam] " [T]he sending of a destroyer up the Tonkin Gulf was primarily for provocation."
Could Have Been
Worse
In a talk on the 30th anniversary of the publication of the Pentagon Papers, Ellsberg said he was convinced that Johnson and McNamara came to see their main task as protecting the country from the outlandish proposals urged on them by senior U.S. military officials, proposals fraught with the danger of widened war with China, perhaps even involving the use of nuclear weapons.
According to Ellsberg, Johnson saw a need to give the JCS just enough to satisfy them to the point where they would not resign and go public with their proposals for escalating -- and "winning" -- the war.
It was a difficult tightrope to walk. Johnson and McNamara lived in fear that the majority of Americans could be persuaded by arguments the administration knew to be dangerously crazy.
More sober and experienced advisers like George Ball, Vice President Hubert Humphrey, and Assistant Secretary of State William Bundy were advising the President simply to get out of Vietnam. Ellsberg indicated that this option was not even seriously considered by Johnson at the time. Rather, priority was given to a middle course, giving into the military just enough to keep them quiet.
And Today?
Am I suggesting that Barack Obama now faces a similar situation with
respect to Afghanistan? I am. And I would cite the fawning adulation given Gen. David Petraeus, head of the Central Command, last week during his congressional testimony as, well, testimony to that.
Obama's Afghan dilemma is this: Although the escalation that McChrystal demanded is in shambles, the general cannot be expected to leave quietly, nor with any graceful acknowledgement that he was wrong.
If he should agree to quit -- and he and Petraeus blame the U.S. defeat on everyone but themselves -- there will be considerable resonance. As the mid-term elections loom in November, the last thing Obama and his timid political colleagues want to confront is the charge of being soft on Communism -- sorry, I mean terrorism.
It's the same dynamic Johnson and Humphrey faced and were foiled by.
So hold onto your hats. McChrystal, however inadvertently, has given the President the unexpected opportunity to change course and leave behind the fool's errand called Afghanistan. But the general has also thrown down the gauntlet.
I wish I could be more confident that Obama has enough backbone to face into this critical challenge. Until now, at least, one looks in vain for a profile in courage. So far, at least, Obama is no Jack Kennedy.
This article appeared first on Consortiumnews.com
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
3
3
2
