Viet Nam: Lessons From a Lost War

(8 of 9)

Paradoxically, though, Johnson might well have been able to win public support for a bigger war than he was willing to fight. As late as February 1968, at the height of the Tet offensive, one poll found 53% favoring stronger U.S. military action, even at the risk of a clash with the Soviet Union or China, vs. only 24% opting to wind down the war. Rusk insists that the Administration was right not to capitalize on this sentiment. Says he: "We made a deliberate decision not to whip up war fever in this country. We did not have parades and movie stars selling war bonds, as we did in World War II. We thought that in a nuclear world it is dangerous for a country to become too angry too quickly. That is something people will have to think about in the future."

It certainly is. Viet Nam veterans argue passionately that Americans must never again be sent out to die in a war that "the politicians will not let them win." And by win they clearly mean something like a World War II-style triumph ending with unconditional surrender. One lesson of Viet Nam, observes George Christian, who was L.B.J.'s press secretary, is that "it is very tough for Americans to stick in long situations. We are always looking for a quick fix." But nuclear missiles make the unconditional-surrender kind of war an anachronism. Viet Nam raised, and left unsolved for the next conflict, the question posed by Lincoln Bloomfield, an M.I.T. professor of political science who once served on Jimmy Carter's National Security Council: "How is it that you can 'win' so that when you leave two years later you do not lose the country to those forces who have committed themselves to victory at any cost?"

It is a question that cannot be suppressed much longer. Americans have a deep ambiguity toward military power: they like to feel strong, but often shy away from actually using that strength. There is a growing recognition, however, that shunning all battles less easily winnable than Grenada would mean abandoning America's role as a world power, and that, in turn, is no way to assure the nation's survival as a free society. Americans, observes Secretary of State Shultz, "will always be reluctant to use force. It is the mark of our decency." But, he adds, "a great power cannot free itself so easily from the burden of choice. It must bear responsibility for the consequences of its inaction as well as for the consequences of its action."

QUOTE: "I want to rail against wind and tide, kill the whales in the ocean, sweep the whole country to save people from slavery."

--TRIEU AU,

VIET NAM'S

"JOAN OF ARC"

A.D. 248

QUOTE: "France has had the country for nearly 100 years, and the people are worse off than at

the beginning."

--FRANKLIN D.

ROOSEVELT

1944

QUOTE: "Kill ten of our men and we will kill one of yours. In the end, it is you who will tire."

--HO CHI MINH

1946

QUOTE: "Master fear and pain, overcome

obstacles, unite your efforts, fight to the very end, annihilate the enemy."

--GENERAL GIAP

1954

QUOTE: "I could conceive of no greater tragedy than for the U.S. to (fight) an all-out war

in Indochina."

--DWIGHT D.

EISENHOWER

1954