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The question posed in our title rings
historical and true, and nine out of ten readers might surmise
it refers to the Marines at Khe Sanh, or perhaps the boys of
Pointe du Hoc, or possibly the lost battalion almost 90 summers
ago in the fields of France.
But it is artifice, a quote from a movie based on James Michener's
novel, The
Bridges of Toko-ri. It rings true because we think it
ought to be true: because it tidies up the sordid and disjointed
reality of violence in the name of a cause.
This process is behind the confidence trick of how the state
mystifies and glorifies its underhanded acts. In war, we are
supposed to think of Audie Murphy, or Alvin York, or Joshua Lawrence
Chamberlain as typical exemplars. We should indeed think of such
men, and honor their deeds. But due diligence requires we think
of other men, whose acts in the name of the state, the state
that acts in your name, were more important--meaning more consequential
for our history.
Men like John Buchanan Floyd, Secretary of War in 1860, whose
arguably treasonable acts armed an insurrection against the Constitution
he had sworn to protect. Or Woodrow Wilson, possessed of messianic
ego and pathological dishonesty, who fed American youth into
the furnace of a senseless war even as he rammed through a supine
Congress a law making criticism of himself punishable for up
to ten years. Or Donald Rumsfeld, a disastrously incompetent
successor to John Floyd Buchanan's portfolio: a man who arrogantly
and inflexibly defends the quagmire in Iraq because it got rid
of the supposed Devil Incarnate Saddam Hussein, even as he feigns
amnesia regarding his 1980s diplomatic mission to assure Saddam
of U.S. support.
Where, indeed, do we get such men? Why do they always seem to
choke the upper levels of government like kudzu on a Georgia
hillside? What is the structural morphology of human society
that ordains such creatures shall insert themselves into the
body politic and determine its fate?
The latest example of such men--that is, men whose relation to
their country is that of a tapeworm to the large intestine--comes
to us courtesy of a conference on the Vietnam War held by the
John F. Kennedy Library on 11 March 2006.
Among the array of self-justifying participants, the choicest
quote was offered by former Chief of Staff to President Nixon
and later Secretary of State Alexander Haig. He said that military
leaders in Iraq are repeating a mistake made in Vietnam bynot applying the full force of the military to win the war.
"Every asset of the nation must be applied to the conflict
to bring about a quick and successful outcome, or don't do it,"
he said. "We're in the midst of another struggle where it
appears to me we haven't learned very much."
Haig, whose swansong in public office was a borderline hysterical
(and unconstitutional) statement that he was "in charge"
after the attempted assassination of President Reagan, made a
sententious declaration at the Kennedy Library that sounded reasonable--until
one subjects it to a moment's analysis. Notice that once the
decision for war is made according to the Haig formula, every
asset of the nation should be brought to bear. But who makes
the decision for war? Is it a wise one? Is it even an honest
one? A skeptic would suggest that the August 1964 Gulf of Tonkin
Incident was a fraud, as was the declaration that Iraq possessed
weapons of mass destruction.
With his silence, Haig implies that Americans are supposed to
give a pass to "leaders" who lie the country into war,
so long as those leaders direct it like berserkers. Is it the
duty of Americans only to make every sacrifice necessary (and
with a GDP of over $13 trillion, there are a lot of assets to
be sacrificed; unfortunately they involve our children's standard
of living), and never to question the rationale and the principle
behind the war?
Haig does not expatiate on that question. Neither does he expound
on precisely what it means to apply every asset. Would that mean
fire-bombing? Nuclear weapons? Poison gas? These have been military
means from time to time. Apparently the 57,000 U.S. military
and up to two million Vietnamese deaths were not, in Haig's mind,
a sign of serious warmaking.
Really? The United States dropped more bombs on Southeast Asia
than in all the theaters of war in World War II. The basso profundo
roar of a B-52 arc light mission shook the earth as it rent eardrums
and pulped the internal organs of those military or civilians
unfortunate enough to be in the immediate vicinity. Quang Tri
Province may have been the most blasted and bombed real estate
in the history of war.
Millions of acres of coastal mangrove forest (protecting the
shore from typhoons and anchoring the way of life of the local
peasantry) were wiped out. The Agent Orange defoliation campaign
was a lasting success, as the Vietnamese population's scientifically
interesting genetic mutations can attest even unto the present
day. [2]
For an impressionistic portrait of a mere sideshow of the Vietnam
War, we quote at length Simon Jenkins in the Times of London
[3]:
"The bombing of Laos ranks
among the most obscene acts of war. It was wanton destruction,
power without restraint divorced from the purpose of battle,
which is to take and hold territory. . . . Like medieval armies
salting fields and poisoning wells, modern air forces leave behind
them weapons which they know will sprout death for decades to
come.
"By the time Nixon and
Kissinger sent the Air Force's 'strategic' B52s to the Plain
of Jars in 1970--against the pleading of local commanders--the
Vietnam War was lost. But punitive bombing exacted a terrible
revenge on Laos, as on Cambodia to the south. Laos suffered a
monsoon of destruction, with a peak of 500 sorties a day. The
B52s used napalm, defoliants and weapons which, on any definition,
were 'chemical.' They bombed the plain's neolithic jars, like
bombing Stonehenge. At night they hosed anything that moved with
cannon."
What was the physical effect
of the bombing?
"The beautiful plain,
in reality a long valley flanked by high karst mountains, is
still a morass of craters, each containing unknown horrors. Its
settlements were more blasted than the Somme, more flattened
than Dresden. The 500-year-old provincial capital of Xiang Khouang
saw its temples reduced to dustclouds by B52s, described afterwards
as 'looking like Hiroshima.' Nobody knows how many people died.
The only memorial I saw was to the 320 villagers of Tham Piu,
forced from their homes into a cave, where a direct hit from
a T28 rocket incinerated them."
And more than three decades on, the dying persists:
"Still the war continues,
killing and maiming hundreds. Every other day, someone treads
on a bomb, plays with it or hits it with a hoe or a fishing line.
Instantly the years roll back and blood and guts are everywhere.
There are far too many bombs ever to be cleared."
This is the war Al Haig thinks
the government, which succored his bank account, fought with
one arm tied behind its back. This is the war our resident wise
man says the government conducted with a blameworthy excess of
moral scruple.
Where indeed, in which circle of hell, do we get such men?
Werther is the pen name of a Northern Virginia-based defense
analyst
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