Could you write more about this? Vietnam is really remote to someone like me. I guess Iraq would be the closest experience for most people, but it seems different.
I would describe Iraq as a very costly Type II error. Let us stipulate that Iraq did not have Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD), but we could not be sure of that prior to invading. All that we knew was that Iraq was defying the UN resolution requiring the government to submit to international inspections.
A Type I error would have occurred if we had not gone to war and they in fact had obtained and subsequently used WMD. Policy makers assumed that this would be a costly error.
A Type II error occurred when we went to war and they had not obtained WMD. Policy makers assumed that this sort of error would have low cost. In fact, some thought that it was not an error at all. A neocon I know who was never an official in the Bush Administration gave me this rationale early on. Not long after Saddam was killed, this fellow told me that soon Iran would be surrounded on two sides by working democracies–in Afghanistan and Iraq. I thought to myself, “Oh, dear [euphemism], if Bush believes that, we’re in trouble.” It was the cost of the attempt at nation-building, and the consequences of the failure of that attempt, that make the outcome of the Iraq war so ugly.
I believe that the fundamental reason for the bad outcome in Vietnam also was our doomed attempt at nation-building. None of the governments that we supported in South Vietnam had a strong popular base, so that the enthusiasm for fighting the war came from us, not from the South Vietnamese.
In hindsight, the big puzzle about Vietnam is why we fought a war there in the first place. President Eisenhower was offered a war in Vietnam in 1954, when the French were defeated there, and he declined. In hindsight, Ike seems to me to have been one of our great Presidents.
There was nothing strategically or economically valuable about Vietnam. Rather, the Kennedy Administration foreign policy team talked themselves into seeing it as a test of their determination and tactical dexterity in containing Communism in the Third World. They managed to show a fair amount of determination. Tactical dexterity, not so much.
The consequences for us? Eventually, the United States gave up on the war. The Communists took over, and that had zero cost to us strategically. But before that, we had lost tens of thousands of Americans killed, and many others wounded physically and psychologically.
I think that if you want to understand how badly the war wounded American culture and where today’s Left came from, it would help to delve into some of the history of the campus activism of the 1960s.
So how should you do that? Hmmm. Maybe for starters look up people like Jerry Rubin and Tom Hayden on Wikipedia, and also click on links there that look interesting.
There are some movies that reflect the period. Easy Rider; The Strawberry Statement; Zabriskie Point; Alice’s Restaurant
If you prefer reading, The Strawberry Statement was originally a book. Also The Whole World is Watching (not the newer book of that title by a different author). Norman Mailer’s The Armies of the Night is recommended. I avidly read and re-read it when it came out.
Vietnam created political divisions that have still not healed. The war either fostered or brought to the surface a sentiment of anti-Americanism on the left, and that sentiment continues to be a major factor in polarization. It explains why “make America great again” was such a potent and divisive slogan. Since Vietnam, the left has decreed that America never has been great. Incidentally, many libertarians are on the left on this issue, and I believe that you can trace this to Murray Rothbard during the Vietnam era.
Patriotism has become something that President Trump’s supporters believe in and something that the left abhors. [UPDATE: Let me clarify. If you ask Trump supporters, “Are you patriotic?” they will answer “Of course!” If you ask people on the left, they are likely to look at you suspiciously and say, “Define patriotism.” They might be happy to call themselves patriotic if you are willing to define patriotism as support for social justice, but they will abhor the patriotism of the Trump supporter.] For the left, America can only be great when it helps the oppressed. President Trump’s order on refugees went against that, and you can see the reaction. But I think that the order went down well with people who are more traditionally patriotic, and I have seen some stories giving polling data that bears bear me out.
As economists, we tell the story of the end of the draft as a triumph for Milton Friedman and economic efficiency. But it is significant that the draft ended during the Vietnam War. As a political matter, it allowed the left to opt out of military service, which reinforced the division over patriotism.
In high school and college, I soaked up the anti-American view of the Vietnam war. You can still see the anti-American, anti-capitalist view expressed in this more recent review of Mailer’s book, but I came to discard the Chomsky “blame the capitalists” thesis.
I gradually went from being anti-American and anti-capitalist. Instead, I became anti-elitist. As I have pointed out often, a major turning point for me was reading David Halberstam’s The Best and the Brightest. I cannot recommend this book highly enough. Even apart from the historical context, it offers many insights into bureaucratic infighting and organizational dysfunction. And the lesson that smart people can do something monumentally stupid is terribly important.
I often sense that my temperament is similar to that of David Brooks, but his sympathy for elites creates fundamental differences in our political views. He is younger than I am, and the Vietnam War and the protest movement were less salient to him. Perhaps if our ages were reversed, our attitudes toward elites would be reversed, also.
My distrust of elites continues to color my views. I see many events in Vietnam terms. For me, 2008 was a financial Vietnam, for both bankers and regulators. I tend to think of Obamacare as a domestic policy Vietnam, with its architects showing the same overconfidence and the same inability to listen to dissenting voices. And, for that matter, the same denial of the need for fundamental re-thinking (during Vietnam, the Administration was constantly saying that there was “light at the end of the tunnel,” and they were constantly putting out statistics that said that the policy was working).
“Incidentally, many libertarians are on the left on this issue, and I believe that you can trace this to Murray Rothbard during the Vietnam era”
I don’t think I’ve ever heard libertarians say this except in these very specific examples. Conservatives seem to think you have to choose America always right and if not you are in America always wrong.
The analogy today is that neither ISIS nor communism will take over the world, but it seems we have now run the experiment twice and found that military intervention makes resistance worse.
Patriotism has become something that President Trump’s supporters believe in and something that the left abhors.
That is an simplified POV of the left! Believing in Civil Rights and our refugee program is Patriotism and thinking Steve Bannon/Trumpism is not good road. I still say you underestimate Trump’ risks on the free movement of good and people and given his Hawkish views of Iran, Mexico and China this may not end well. Maybe the left POV against Iraq and Vietnam was simply it was not strategic national security and not necessary for our nation to waste resources. I would note that our two post-war Recessionary periods (74 -82 & 07 – 15) came at the tail end of an extended needless war.
My view of Vietnam was it was a giant Mission Creep and the nation was still over-confident of winning every war. For all the questions about why we fought, Vietnam was very popular in 1964 and the polls still supported a Victory into the Nixon administration. The Greatest Generation could not believe we could lose a war after their WW2 victory. (And the Right including Reagan seem to have the Rambo 2 belief that only if we let the good soldiers free then we would have won.)
In terms of Iraq War being a Type 2 error, assumes the government had evidence of WMD programs. They had no evidence and I did not agree with the invasion. The WMD claims was the merely the best way to sell the war as the population was split in early 2002.
I would note that our two post-war Recessionary periods (74 -82 & 07 – 15) came at the tail end of an extended needless war.
I always simplified Trump’s Presidential Run as Make America Great Again like 1960 with a little bit of 1985 mixed in. He won with voters in the Midwest that were Democrats Grand-Children in the manufacturing/community system of the early 1960s.
Their evidence was the result of a fundamental misunderstanding of geopolitics. Their evidence amounted to: Iraq had weapons programs, Sadam claimed to have them, Iraq was cagey and trying to hide them, and Iraq was hostile towards the USA.
What they miscalculated is that if Sadam did not do all those things his power would be destabilized.
I suspect foreign leaders are shocked and surprised at our leaders’ naivete.
When they say they hate us, we take it as genuine hostility. Our job is to play the heel for leaders we think are better in control than not.
Yes, the leaders miscalculated but they still made the leap of faith on WMDs which was the primary way the administration sold the war in 2002. And WMDs was often confused with chemical weapons in which we knew about because we (or Europe mostly) had the receipts. I was against the war because I felt the administration fundamentally did not prove any real significant evidence that there were WMD or program of any kind. It was lots of hearsay evidence and I did not make the leap of faith.
A fine post even by the high standards of this blog. One person omitted: Richard Nixon. I wonder how Arnold sees that figure still seen as evil or the epitome of corruption? Flawed he was but does the competence at foreign affairs outweigh the overdoing it on the politics and the price controls?
I feel like the elite vs anti-elite paradigm (axis?) is one way of explaining Vietnam, 2008, Obama etc, and I agree elites in general are certainly more likely to be more sure of themselves and intervene with unfortunate consequences.
But that doesn’t explain Trump, who is very anti elite, and (IMO) — despite many good cabinet appointments — looking like a disaster so far. Maybe a simpler paradigm is related to the proper role of government: Obama and today’s left believe in a very activist government who should be trying to solve everyone’s problems. Halberstam’s Best and the Brightest is an example of how that mindset/view often doesn’t work out. But what about Trump? He doesn’t appear to be in favor of a limited, “set the scaffolding/rules up and let people thrive” type government, instead he appears to be all about using power of government to… what? I’d say, “make himself look good”, where “good” is being (1) the good dealmaker he views himself as, and (2) someone who does what he says. Carrier, the car deals, bashing NAFTA and TPP, the immigration ban are all consistent with this.
So I guess be careful what you wish for Arnold. Maybe it’s not “elite vs non-elite” but views on “proper role of government” instead.
instead he appears to be all about using power of government to… what? I’d say, “make himself look good”
And that makes him different from 99.44% of politicians how?
Seriously, all politicians want to be seen as doing what is in the best interest of the [city][state][country] and doing what they say they will do.
I get what you’re saying, but Trump is certainly different from 99.4% of politicians in a lot of ways, and I think there is some space between Trump and most politicians we’ve seen recently.
Think about the illegal voter fraud thing. Trump lost the popular vote by 3 ish million, and so claims 3-5 million people voted illegally. He directed his team to “lie” (maybe he believed it) about his inauguration crowd sizes, and can’t help bringing up his election win at the CIA, republican retreat, black caucus meeting, and on calls with foreign leaders, among other places.
He’s maximizing *something* subject to some constraint, and I think that something is different from what we’ve seen in a while. I’m sure it’s also that his constraints (respect for democratic institutions, telling easily disprovable falsehoods, etc) are different too.
Trump is certainly different …
I am glad that the media are giving him a hard time about his “easily disprovable falsehoods.” I was always annoyed by the way media people would let Obama and people like him get away with more subtle falsehoods. E.g. “women make 72 cent (or 81 cents or whatever the current figure is) for every dollar a man makes.” As if those two people in adjacent cubicles doing the same work are making $100,000 and $72,000 because the first is a man and the second is a woman. But they aren’t. The difference seems to pretty much be different jobs and different longevity. Or just passing along that some Republican opposes a proposed equal pay act without mentioning that equal pay for equal work has been federal law since 1963 (the Equal Pay Act of 1963).
There’s subtle lying and there’s subtle–but powerful–[dis]”respect for democratic institutions.” E.g., the Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibits sex discrimination in education. The Obama Department of Education took that provision and turned it into a requirement that colleges deny due process to men accused of sexual misconduct. Moreover, this was done not through the normal rule-making process, which involves a chance for public comment beforehand, but through a Dear Colleague letter from the head of the Office of Civil Rights.
Just about no respectable person screamed about that. But those sorts of things are extremely dangerous. Maybe more dangerous because they seem like just normal everyday grinding of the bureaucratic gears.
My sense is that Trump/Bannon would like to ‘flex American muscle’ in a variety of ways… on trade and immigration. I think they see most elites as ‘weak’ and unwilling to fight for American interests. Some of it is just talk and bargaining to ‘get a better deal’ – but where this could lead in terms of use of the U.S. military might is a concern.
Excellent post, Arnold!
In the bell curve of things accomplished with societal impact, the monumentally great things and the monumentally stupid things are pretty much 100% done by smart people.
It can also be said that the worst things are usually done by smart people. You need smart people to design atomic bombs. The elites if the Nazi regime were generally smarter and better educated than average, and I expect almost all brutal dictators have significantly higher than average IQs.
Even leading neocon architects of Bush’s foreign policy were pretty intelligent as far as most conventional metrics go. I think it takes a certain measure of intelligence to craft a convincing (to the public or to other elites) case for a really bad idea.
Thanks for the thoughtful response Arnold.
Do you think the Vietnam war was central or secondary to the divisions of the 60s and their long run implications? In a world with no Vietnam war, what do you think would be different?
Do you think you would have come to the conclusion that, “smart people can do something monumentally stupid” some other way?
Also, do you think Iraq was different simply because there was no draft and most middle class people didn’t serve? Or were there other reasons it wasn’t as central as Vietnam.
It seems hard to believe people talking about Iraq 50 years from now the way people talk about Vietnam even those it was 50 years ago.
I didn’t live through the ‘Nam Era, but one key difference between that and Iraq War 2: a portion of the left (how big or how small, I couldn’t say) sympathized with the North Koreans, either as out and out communists or at least as ideological fellow travelers. Nobody in the US sympathized with Saddam Hussein’s government.
And by North Koreans, I of course mean North Vietnamese.
What would have had happened if we avoided Vietnam:
1) The US would have bickering about the Argentina or El Salvador or Bolivan War decades later. (Or pick any South or Latin America nation really.) After the China, Cuban Revolution and Missile Crisis, the US was primed for fight somebody to slow down the growth of communism. I think the Post-War boom does breakdown with a war, Promise/Failure Of Civil Rights, the huge bubble of young adults and inflationary 1970s. Anyway, I still say the 1970s had a lot more creative destruction than we give it credit for.
2) I suspect we fell into Iraq much like Vietnam…Both happened during an long term economic boom and the nation was over-confident both wars (1964 & 2003 although there was dotcom slowdown). Additionally past events (Iraq…9/11, Iraq War 1) helped rationalize the decision.
3) I still think we should technically call Iraq War 2 a Victory! The USA disposed of Saddam Hussein, Iraq is democracy and we ended any WMD program Iraq had. The war goals were met. I think calling Iraq 2 a Victory is more empty than saying Vietnam is a loss. (Where we can analyze what went wrong.)
Without the Vietnam War, the sixties would have been very different. The US Army was drafting young people and sending them to Vietnam. In a very important sense, for many of them (and their girlfriends and family members) the US Army was an enemy–and so perhaps was everyone who supported the Army and the War. There was a big potential audience for people who said America was basically bad. Also, there was a feeling, rarely articulated but often there that “the enemy of my enemy is my friend.” There wouldn’t have been nearly the “generation gap” and the mainstreaming of the left that there actually was.
(One data point: with the War still going on, when the draft ended, the amount of public protest went way down.)
On the other hand, the music would still have been there, the “sexual revolution” still would have happened, and the Civil Rights Movement still would have overcome.
Patriotism has become something that President Trump’s supporters believe in….
Aren’t the Koch Brothers Patriotic? And I can’t imagine they support Trump’s treatment of Mexico right now but it plays well with a lot of his supporters.
Posts like this are why I continue to read this blog. Great work Arnold!
I used to think both sides were patriotic. The last eight years and the election of Trump cleared me of that delusion. Yes, the right likes to clothe itself in the wrappings and persuade themselves that what is good for them is good for the country, but now I see they are just another greedy power hungry special interest who will do or say anything to maintain their grip on power. They are a disgrace. To call them patriotic is to shame the word.
Best and theBrightest, a great book!
As to 1960’s: Read Ferguson Kissenger book
Since you’re taking requests….
You’ve mentioned many times that Montgomery is owned part and parcel by the teacher’s unions. I lived in Montgomery county years ago (Takoma Park) before I had kids, so I didn’t have any contact with the school system at all. I wonder if you could expand on that a bit – what aspects of county government do they control, and how?
This is a very weak presentation of the pro-America anti-Democrat view.
In 1973, the USA ‘won’ the war in Vietnam against communism (under Nixon), and created a prosperous S. Vietnam with a not-so-popular democratic gov’t. Look at stories of Saigon thru 1974.
In the ’74 post Watergate elections, Democrats won and after Nixon resigned (after Agnew had already resigned due to corruption), the elevated congressman Ford became Pres.
When the Soviet backed N. Viet army attacked in 1975, the Dem controlled Congress refused to let Ford order the US to protect the South.
The Democrats lost the peace they were unwilling to fight for — and enabled the genocide in Cambodia and the boat people, and thousands of S. Viet people being killed or cruelly treated.
In Iraq, Bush’s 2007 surge created a democratic Iraq. This was so good that Biden claimed in 2011 that Iraq would be a highlight of Obama’s legacy. But instead, with the Americans running away from Iraq and leaving a power vacuum, ISIS grew and the killing hugely increased and the refugee problems got worse.
Again, Democrats lost the peace.
Note that the US occupations of Germany, Japan, and Korea both continue and have resulted in excellent capitalist economies with high material wealth.
Nation-building requires a commitment of troops for decades. We shouldn’t fight for liberation if we’re not going to stay a long time.
It should be noted that US airpower, in support of S Vietnamese grounds troops, would have been sufficient to save S. Vietnam. No “boots on the ground” would have been necessary.
The Democrats simply decided that they wanted the Communist North to win. And that is what happened.
I’m pretty sure air power would have been enough, plus telling the S. Viet folk that they needed to fight close to the border, not give up so much land before making a stand.
On the other hand, I think claiming the Democrats did NOT want US capitalism to win, and thus allowed the commies to win, seems more accurate and likely better phrasing to get the point across. The Dems refused to fight – our capitalist human rights respecting S. Viet allies lost.
Those who supported NOT fighting, like most US professors now, should be asked what they expected to happen. Possibly even what they wanted to happen.
They will deny wanting the commies to win, altho that’s the obvious outcome of not fighting.
They will deny wanting ISIS (or ISIL) to win, to commit genocide against Christians and Yezidis and others, and to sell young women into sex slavery, but that’s the obvious likely outcome of running away from Iraq before the 2012 election. They DID enable the bad outcomes.
Nation building worked in Germany, Japan, and Korea because they are high IQ civilized people. It failed in Iraq because they are a low IQ uncivilized people. Had I known Iraqi’s lacked the genetic capacity for modern civilization I would have felt very differently about the war, but I didn’t know about HBD then.
Vietnamese don’t like outsiders running things. One of my best friends is from Vietnam and as he put it, “we were going to get rid of you foreigners one way or another, very unfortunate for us it happened to be the communists that did it.”
What’s the basis for saying that, in 1975, the US was “running things” in South Vietnam? Based on the immediate reaction to the conquest, I don’t think the South Vietnamese were particularly eager to be ruled by the North (who were themselves vassals of the Soviets at the time).
Of course, the Vietnamese communists have now had more than 40 years to impart their self-serving “anti-colonial” version of the country’s history to residents of the former South Vietnam, so it is not too surprising that contemporary Vietnamese see the imposition of the North’s despotism on the South as some sort of “liberation,” even if suboptimal.
None of the foregoing is a defense of the US decision to commit to defending S Vietnam in the 60s. We certainly did not have sufficient interests there to warrant expending 50,000 lives on it. But once we had won the war, there was no reason to throw South Vietnam away when all they needed at that point was air support – unless, of course, you wanted the communists to win and to humiliate your own country.
Best blog post you ever written, IMO. Here’s a prescient clip of Jerry Rubin on Phil Donahue from the early 70s:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=He3LhsE0sEk
Another vote for The Best and Brightest. By far one of the best books I’ve read.
I believe the Bush team made an unforced error when they decided to sell the war on the grounds of WMD’s. We had won the first Gulf War, and Saddam, by throwing out the UN inspectors among other things, had violated the terms of surrender. From my point of view, that simply meant Gulf War 2 was the continuation of GW1, just as WW2 was the continuation of WW1 when Germany broke the peace treaty and rearmed.
The American people would have then seen GW2 as a war of choice, however, as the Americans saw WW2 until Pearl Harbor. So it was instead sold as a “have to” on the basis of suspected WMD’s.
If you feel oppressed by groceries then blowing up a man’s groceries is a sensible plan. But did the audience for Zabriskie Point in 1970 cheer through that scene? For the entire length of that scene?
Blowing up the Death Star is unambiguously good. What the audience for Zabriskie Point ought to feel, at the end, is some distance and disillusionment about violence, revolution and war. Whereas the Ewoks are unambiguously good. They’re the North Vietnamese Army if you empty out every specific fact and detail of the actual war.
Zabriskie Point belongs on a list with Badlands, Bonnie and Clyde, Days of Heaven and The Sugarland Express. Plus Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. There was a lot of failure to go round. Taxi Driver ends differently, but that’s because it ends in Bickle’s delusion or fantasy that he gets out with his life.
You could track the embitterment and cynicism through Star Trek alone, from John Kennedy’s Democrats down to John Kerry’s today. The sub-Ibsen sub-plot of Jaws is the Hillary Clinton idea of government.
In government, a Samantha Power turns into a Susan Rice. The lesson for the elites is that Hannibal Lecter gets out of his cage, the velociraptors get through the kitchen door.
It’s amazing that America went to war in Iraq when you consider that there had been three Jurassic Parks before then.
The key line from the three Godfathers is, “Who’s being naive?” Chinatown, Close Encounters, The Parallax View, Three Days of the Condor. The same in E.T. too. Your government is lying to you. All the Bourne films, X-Men, the Captain America movie that Robert Redford was in.
The Taking of Pelham One Two Three, Death Wish, Escape From New York. And yet in real life somehow the New York of Klute was made over into the New York of How To Be Single. So is it only in foreign policy that America is utterly lacking in hope?
The problem seems to be the failure of Trumpists to define WHEN America was great to begin with and why it is not anymore. Was it when Blacks had to give their seats to White folks? Was it when lynchings were a honored way to deal with Blacks? Was it when Americans were murdering Filipinos because they wanted independence? And evidently Leftists would be brought to task by the far-right every time they dared to say the USA are not the greatest, bestest nation in the world, believing that was what patriotism was all about until 2016.
Good question. For the last few years, I kept hearing from the left how great the 1950s were. So less unequal. No “hollowed-out middle class.” Maybe that’s what they’re both thinking of 🙂
Interesting enough, I keep reading the right wing bloggers and pundists yelling about how awesome the 50’s were before all those pesky Civil Rights and Beatles came into being. The standard Left narrative seems to be that 1933-1980 was, both under Republicans (less, although Ike is probably much to the left of today’s GOP) and Democrats (more), an ascending march where economic, social, civil rights problems were being given fair and efficient solutions until the iceberg Reagan sank a system who was, on average, working well.
As simplistic and, at some points, plain wrong the Left narrative may be, at least it makes some sense: America is a work in progress that needs some reforms and changes. But now we hear right wing types yelling about America not being great anymore and the point remains: where America stopped being great? Under Reagan (it is the first person most leftists would blame for the bad changes in America)? Carter? Johnson? Kennedy? Roosevelt? Seriously, where were Republicans while America was becoming not-great?
America was never perfect, and the Democrat Jim Crow laws were a disaster, which Reps lightly and over a long time opposed.
For most post WW II whites, and their children, “progress” means that the kids will have better lives than the parents.
Starting with the globalization and outsourcing of manufacturing jobs, slightly reducing “America’s” wealth, but greatly increasing the wealth of other countries, for a large number of non-college educated people, they think their kids will have tougher lives than the parents.
America can only be great if in the general society, the parents and grandparents think their kids will be better off. For a metric, this is perhaps especially the non-criminal HS grad only, less skilled folk who need to feel this way.
Looking for a “year”, with its good and bad realities, is a silly way to ask about defining when America was great in the past — since it’s obvious you don’t really want to hear about what made America great in that year, but you want to dispute that America was great because it wasn’t perfect.
This silly attitude that America was never great, when a majority (plurality?) of voters think it was, is the attitude of future losers.
Whether or not America was ever great IS NOT as important as discussing how to make it better, today and in the future.
Are you seriously trying to say that gay people were better off before Reagan? That black people were better off before Reagan? That women were better off before Reagan? No, that narrative does not make sense.
There never was a golden age. As you say, “America is a work in progress.” To try to locate one in the ’50s or the ’70s is silly.