Why didn’t America win in Vietnam? As I understand it, we killed about 3,000,000 Vietnamese in that war, and the Vietnamese killed about 60,000 American troops. So we killed roughly 50 Vietnamese for every 1 American soldier killed. And yet, the Vietnamese kept fighting, and eventually the American public was forced to recognize that we had “lost” the war.
In my view, we lost because our strategy was flawed — our strategy was based on the idea that we could force the North Vietnamese to accept defeat. Ultimately, it was up to the North Vietnamese to decide whether or not to accept defeat — and so we could never win until they conceded. Our goal was to break their will to continue fighting, and it was a goal we were incapable of achieving, no matter how many Vietnamese we killed, no matter how many bombs we dropped.
Consider the following from an article about released audiotaped recordings of President Lyndon Johnson’s conversations, including a conversation with Defense Secretary Robert S. McNamara:
Johnson asked McNamara about the defense budget and supply shortages. McNamara told him there were shortages of a “new rifle” called the M-16, and shortages of some ammunition and rounds used to illuminate areas for night fighting. But McNamara said there were plenty of bombs — 265,000 tons of them, either in Southeast Asia or on the way.
“Frankly, we’re going to just snow the place under with bombs,” McNamara said. “And I’m doing it purposely to make them cry, `Stop.’”
You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make him drink. (Please forgive the cliche.) Similarly, you can lead an enemy to the point where you believe they will feel compelled to accept defeat — but if they don’t, then what have you accomplished? McNamara thought he could “make them cry, ’stop,’” but he couldn’t. And so 3,000,000 Vietnamese and 50,000 Americans were killed without any benefit to the United States.
In a roundtable discussion of the current Israeli-Palestinian war in the Gaza strip on the NPR program, On Point with Tom Ashbrook, Washington Post columnist and editor David Ignatius outlined a similarly flawed strategy, this time being implemented by the Israelis.
IGNATIUS: To me, the Gaza episode has illustrated, again, the essentials of the impasse in the Middle East. The Israelis faced a real security problem in the rockets that were being fired from Gaza. Hamas had agreed to cease fire that expired Dec. 19 and refused to renew it. The rockets began to launch again into Israel, and the Israelis decided to take very decisive action. The problem is, once you begin these things — and this is what we saw in Lebanon in 2006, what I saw in Beirut in 1982, long ago, when I was a correspondent there — once you start these things, how do you stop them? What are the terms under which you end them? And the Israelis are seeing in this instance, as in the past, that a decisive resolution to this kind of fight is almost impossible, because of international opinion, because of the danger of civilian casualties, a whole series of reasons. So you end up, looking for, at the end of the day, a cease-fire. And that’s where we are now. And the dickering is over when the cease fire should come, and can the Israelis get inclusion of some tough measures to reduce the flow of weapons into Gaza.
ASHBROOK: But Israel went in here saying, clearly indicating that its goal was more than, you know, some churning around and then a cease-fire –
IGNATIUS: Yes, it said that, Tom, but I think the point I want to make is that, that kind of decisive resolution that people talk about is not realistically possible. The Israeli Interior Minister, Meir Sheetrit, in the first days of this, said something that I found haunting. He said, “We’re going to continue this until we break the will of the Palestinians to continue to target us.” If there’s one thing that we’ve learned in this conflict, it’s that breaking the will of the other side just doesn’t work. People keep talking in those terms, but it doesn’t happen. So you end up having to settle for halfway things that patch together a new version of the status quo ante. That doesn’t make Israelis happy. Certainly, the fighting has not made Palestinians happy. I think, for Obama, the events of the last two weeks show that a decisive, new American approach to these things — I’m talking about a new approach to the Middle East, it sounds like a hopeless task — but somehow, breaking out of the lanes in which everybody is stuck, is crucial.
Setting aside the issue of whether the war in Gaza is moral or justified, there remains the crucially important question of whether the war can achieve anything for the security of the Israeli people. Do Israelis seriously believe they can accomplish the goal of “breaking the will” of the Palestinians? Is this what the Israeli people are waiting for? Are they not concerned that a new round of horrible violence in Gaza will only harden the will of a new generation of Palestinians to fight the Israelis?
If so, the Israelis are destined to lose, and this loss will leave them in a weaker position than before the war began.