TheMillerCircle.org

This continues a dialog inspired by Geoffrey Perret’s book “Commander in Chief: How Truman, Johnson and Bush Turned a Presidential Power into a Threat to American’s Future.” Among these three disastrous presidents, Truman probably stands out, but only because the ideology that he established, by siding with the hardliners and refuting what FDR had tried to put in place, became the standard by which all other presidents would view the world and deal with conflict. Once a policy or point of view is put in place in our government, it assumes a momentum that cannot change without a very active process of unraveling, something that succeeding presidents are unlikely to do (that’s why the policies and empire grabbing of G.W. Bush will be so hard to reverse…even a Democrat will still want the power GW has put into his office). As an example of the forward momentum of history in the presidency, Kennedy did not prevent the Bay of Pigs from going forward because he feared, in his first months of office, a political backlash from “McCarthyites” who would hound him if he blocked it (the Bay of Pigs invasion was planned by Nixon together with CIA director Allen Dulles, without Eisenhower’s knowledge; Nixon thought he would pull the trigger and dispose of Castro when he was elected president. But Kennedy’s close victory in the 1960 election put him in the driver’s seat when trigger time came in early 1961. Kennedy was dubious about the plan and refused to offer support from the US Navy or Air Force and in so doing, in the face of the disastrous outcome, Kennedy might have unknowingly hatched the plot for his own assassination, as the hard right wing ideologues in the Cuban-American/mafia community and the CIA hated Kennedy for his lack of support and blamed him for the Bay of Pigs failure). The long reach of the Truman administration seeped into and through Kennedy’s foreign policy into the form of Vietnam and something as ill-conceived as the Bay of Pigs, though hardly sanctioned by the former president, was allowed to move forward, even though Kennedy was dubious about the outcome and its purpose.

Truman, with lots of help, viewed the Russians as the root of all evil and the source of all problems in the World. He viewed communism as a monolithic force in which Russia led the way and China followed like a puppet state. In the binary world he constructed, no one in his administration was sophisticated enough to see China and Mao for what they really were. The Russians and Stalin knew that Mao was not a communist, but a nationalist, someone who wanted to restore China to its past glory as a major center of power and culture in the world. After the Korean War got started, Mao sent a letter to Truman warning him of China’s commitment to prevent the U.S. from taking over North Korea. But Truman viewed Mao’s letter as bluster and fell victim to what almost every president in the postwar era as done…..underestimate the enemy. To Truman’s horror, after MacArthur’s victory in pushing North Korea out of South Korea and moving into North Korea, thousands of Chinese soldiers streamed across the border and forced the US troops back from their encroachment into North Korea and the Chinese boarder. Truman quickly realized that winning the war in Korea was impossible and he hoped to get a negotiated settlement. But that didn’t come until after Eisenhower was elected president. In the end, China got what it wanted; Russia did not want to see a military defeat for the US in Korea and the stalemate that exists in Korea today is one in which even the South Koreans object to our presence for fear of generating a wider war should trouble break out. The Chinese and Russians have used us and our hard-line tactics as an external enemy to reciprocally solidify hard-line regimes and unify their countries on a war footing. We could not have played more effectively into the hands of Stalin and Mao if we tried. Without the external threat we provided, including our permanent presence in Korea with a major troop deployment, it is highly doubtful that either Mao or Stalin could have retained their iron grip on their country until their death. Each of them was ultimately despised by the judgments of history in their own country. It all reflects the completely naive assumptions we derived from our mythological commitment to promote an America that is the last best hope for all of mankind, that “shining city on the hill.” Rather than try to understand the real world, as we were becoming the de facto leader of it, we created an ideological version of it that put communism in every corner and left no room for aspiring nationalism. And, saddest of all, this mythological elevation of our mission meant that no president would ever understand the enemy that we faced: our commander in chief could never be a competent commander. That is the tragic reality of our postwar history. In reality of course, it was not so much that we were fighting communism as we were making sure that pro-capitalist, American friendly governments, would remain in control throughout the world. But this ideology prevented us from grasping the true nature of most conflicts in the 20th century and certainly all those with nationalist objectives. We dealt with those issues by supporting despotic regimes to serve the interests of corporate America. There is not a single case in which we supported a democratic government in its efforts to overthrow a despotic regime. On the other hand we supported some of the most brutal groups and dictators of the last half of the 20th century and helped create them, including Pol Pot and the brutal Khmer Rouge in Cambodia and Augusto Pinochet in Chili. It’s that simple!

As one example of Lyndon Johnson’s naive approach to the Vietnam War, he pursued it with the unyielding belief that a monolithic communism was the root cause of the war with Russia leading and China following in lockstep; if Vietnam fell, then the domino process would start and where it would stop no one could tell. As Johnson began building up American troop levels in Vietnam, the war protest began in earnest. War protesters outside the White House would chant “Hey hey LBJ, how many kids di you kill today?” He assumed that the war protest movement was controlled by communists and he demanded that the FBI/CIA get the proof he needed to expose them. But when the reports came back indicating that the student protesters were not organized by an outside agency, he refused to accept the report. But, unlike Johnson, McNamara saw the writing on the wall and eventually believed the war was unwinnable, although he never told this directly to Johnson. During McNamara’s tenure as Secretary of Defense, a report came across his desk tabulating the global conflicts occurring at the time. He was shocked to learn that that the majority were not communist insurrections, but in fact, were conflicts related to nationalist aspirations, many of which had democratic objectives. He realized that the entire government had been wrong about communism as the all-consuming global threat, dominating every conflict. LBJ eventually took mercy on the troubled McNamara, whose loyalty to LBJ prevented him from turning in his resignation, and promoted him to president of the World Bank, thus giving him a kind out without a resignation.

Like Truman, LBJ also got a note from Mao, delivered this time through Chen Yi, who had a long intense conversation with a British Charge d’affaires in Beijing. Chen Yi was an old comrade of Mao’s and participated with him in the “long March.” He was a heroic Chinese military leader during the civil war and commanded great respect internationally. He spoke specifically to give the Americans a clear understanding of what China’s intentions were in the Vietnam conflict. His message was simple: China did not want a war with the United States, but if forced, they would open up an all out war against the U.S. that would have the widest possible front and the U.S. would no longer have the luxury of fighting a “limited war.” In essence the war that China threatened would occur across a 2000 mile front from North Korea to India. He pointed out that such a war will cause the Chinese to suffer greatly, with the loss of much of their industrial power, but in their mind the sacrifice would be worth it, to hold down the U.S. and ultimately win the war, which they predicted would be the unavoidable outcome of such a conflict. Put simply, America did not have the staying power of China, not even close. Chen Yi pointed out that if the U.S. pushed the war in Vietnam into China, the life and death struggle would begin. Behind his words stood the frightening prospect of an army of 4.5 million Chinese in the People’s Liberation Army and a growing nuclear arsenal. Yi went on in his communication to point out that when the war with the Americans broke out, North Vietnam wondered whether they should engage the powerful U.S. military. But Ho Chi Minh decided that they were poor enough that it really didn’t matter and the stakes to them seemed high: their promised national sovereignty was at stake. So they engaged the Americans not knowing what to expect. But in the early years of the Vietnam War with the Americans as their adversary, they had come to appreciate that they would eventually defeat the Americans: it was inevitable. The Vietnamese entered the war with the Americans, knowing that millions of their own country men would die (probably two to three million did). But, in the end, they expected to win their liberation from tyranny and gain independent control of their country. Chen Yi emphasized that China did not push the Vietnamese into the war with the Americans. It was their decision. But having made that decision, China was going to provide aid and insure that North Vietnam would not capitulate in the conflict. China was prepared to endure a struggle for however long it would take to win and for them winning was certain. With China offering a secure base at its rear and the Chinese army waiting in the wings, North Vietnam knew that they could not lose a conventional war. It would be a war of attrition with only one possible outcome. Yi’s communication also mentioned that if the U.S. pushed, the conflict in Southeast Asia could become a global war…take your pick.

Yi’s communication was tough stuff. The State Department, over their two-olive martini lunches, had argued that without the Russians to back them, the Chinese would wilt. But Yi’s letter said otherwise, and once again, it pointed to an inability of our leaders to grasp the intentions or character of the chosen enemy. LBJ read the letter with Dean Rusk, McNamara and McGeorge Bundy, the only four people who would ever read an unredacted version. The implications of the promises Mao had made to Ho Chi Minh were sudden and dramatic: it would be ultimate defeat for the U.S. which could not possibly engage a world level conflict on Asian soil, fighting the Chinese and their endless resources of manpower with guerilla tactics in a foreign jungle. Defeat was inevitable and at that moment Johnson and McNamara knew it, but never spoke the words between them. The Joint Chiefs of Staff had recommended that the U.S. nuke China, but McBundy and McNammra rejected that option. This letter was never revealed to the American public, although a heavily redacted form is available in Foreign Relations of the United States (it deserves to be public knowledge). From that moment on, Johnson was searching for a way to end his Vietnam nightmare with “dignity.” He didn’t want debate about the war, he wanted the loyalty of those around him and suggestions about how to find a way out. He eventually found his own way out by not seeking a second term in 1968 and passed the torch onto Nixon. Yet, until Vietnam fell several years after Johnson gave up the ship, thousands of lives were needlessly lost, all for the sake of finding a new national metaphor to sell the American people on the idea of a Vietnam Victory or at least a truce. In the end, during the Nixon administration, with Kissinger as the negotiator, the “peace settlement” was effectively a U.S. surrender and was only made possible when the Chinese and the North Vietnamese knew that they would get everything they wanted (and more). The one final condition that the U. S. wanted, to leave the South Vietnamese government intact, was a farce and was given up in an indirect way that fooled no one, since the North was allowed to leave their large army in South Vietnam. The government of South Vietnam quickly collapsed, LBJ was long gone, Nixon was chased from office by Watergate and after Carter, we got the ideologue of all time, Ronald Reagan, who was able to begin the cycle of restoring American mythology all over again. Reagan was able to restore America’s confidence that we had been after the right enemy all long…Russia…the evil empire; he renewed America’s ideological war with Russia and pursued another holy war through Iran Contra and intrigue in South America. The cycle of the American dilemma was complete. It went like this: our foolish ideological wars get us into trouble and engage us in conflicts we cannot win. This is followed by a state of national depression or “Carter Malaise” and then we need a former movie star to give us national psychotherapy and help prepare us once again for war and conflict, the inevitable outcome of our ideological, binary view of the world. We just have to find the next enemy. Bush has found one in Iraq, not any enemy that had anything to do with 9/11, but one that could bring his neocon vision of a stable Middle East, secure Israel and a solid new oil partner in the combined resources of Kuwait and Iraq: that combination might have more oil reserves than Saudi Arabia, whose reliability we can no longer count on since our Gulf War I, under Bush senior, created 9/11 with troop occupancy of Saudi Holy Land. “On and on, into the valley of death rode the six hundred (modified version of Tennyson’s poem) .”

Perret points out that the ultimate outcome of the wars that these three American Presidents pursued was predicted by Suntzu’s “The Art of War” in which the following advice was offered. “He who knows himself and knows his enemy, will win every battle. He who knows himself, but not his enemy will lose as many battles as he wins. And he who knows neither himself nor his enemy will lose every battle.” It is self-evident that neither Truman, nor Johnson nor Bush understood their enemy and it is doubtful that they truly understood their own country. In contrast, the experience of Stalin and Mao could not be matched by the Americans who continued to view the World and our place in it through the rose-colored glasses of an American ideology that continues to the present day and strives to create a binary world of good and bad or evil. Iraq is different from Vietnam and Korea because we are not fighting against a presumed communist ideology that threated capitalism. But, in many ways, Iraq is worse, because in this war we are fighting for oil and our continued struggle against the insurgency is a struggle to have an old fashioned colonialism put in place in Iraq, but Bush and the neocons know enough about the American public to paint the war as a war against terrorism. That’s the new mythology. Bush and others say over and over “if we don’t fight them over there, we will fight them over here.” Many of us know this is bullshit. If our shores are once again visited by al Qaeda, it will not be from Iraq, but from Pakistan that the orders and plans will be initiated. But, by repeating the message and having it continuously chanted on Fox news, enough of a constituency for this argument gets created, such that large numbers of Americans, many millions, swallow it and will vote accordingly in future elections. Bush still has a high approval rating among Republicans. Thus, the comparison between us and Rome comes back again to the following argument: the Iraq war is perhaps unique in that it represents us acting as a needful empire, in need of a large, reliable oil supply. The attack on 9/11 was an attack against our presence in Saudi Arabia following the Gulf war. We ended or reduced that occupation. But that left our Middle East oil resource in jeopardy, unguarded. The confluence of Iraqi and Kuwaiti oil will give us a huge, if unquantified source of oil to buffer us against the Chinese, who make deals and take oil off the open market. That is why we are fighting and that is why Bush will not give up and it is why we will see a long-term commitment from the U.S. to keep our oil supply in safe hands. Saddam’s real problem was that he had too much oil and he was ripe for picking, or so Bush and the neocons thought.

Johnson and Truman were terrible presidents, but they were good Americans and there are a lot more people like them out there who will try to become our political leaders and undoubtedly achieve success. These two presidents weren’t prepared for the world that was thrust upon them at the end of WW II. They really wanted to have a successful domestic program, but the conflicts they got us into prevented or unraveled all that. It is very hard to imagine that a Kennedy will come along again and get elected, although one had the impression that Kerry might have achieved the international sophistication necessary to help America achieve a more global vision of its mission, not just an American one. G.W. Bush has looked upon the presidency almost as a new car, something that, once you are elected President, you can drive it anywhere you want, especially with the Karl Rovites helping to pave the way for you. America is the land of the free and the home of the brave and the heavily mythologized. Unfortunately there is no medical therapy yet for the latter condition.

Perhaps Perret is correct. The Human Security Report, which lists and monitors the conflicts in the World has reported on the sharp decline in conflicts of all types beginning in the early 1990s. They have concluded that the World is turning away from warfare as a means of accomplishing state objectives. If so, you can bet the militarists in America will take credit for it by projecting American power, whether real or imagined, like the Roman empire who found that the threat of the Roman army was the best tool in their arsenal for preventing insurrections. If the World is turning away from military confrontation, will we be foolish enough to claim that victory and then assume we have to continue with a high state of militaristic readiness as the World depends on us like no other. That is the neocon objective. In the meantime, the great international peace maker through military supremacy, the country that cannot win even small wars of insurrection, the country that cannot provide health insurance for its citizens, the country that will dismantle its public education system, the country that is turning away from science, not knowing its value, the country whose citizens place near dead last in their knowledge and acceptance of evolution as a valid theory, that country, our country, thank God, will still be the new Roman Empire. Hail Caesar! Who’s next on the list for invasion?

We will continue to have ideological leaders who cannot grasp the real world unless we become a country of citizens who can grasp the real world and force that vision on our politicians. The first step towards achieving that objective is opening up our own history to our citizens. Reveal to all of us what the CIA and military have done in our name and begin the process of educating our citizens in multicultural knowledge of the world. As disastrous as Truman, Johnson and Bush have been for America, there are nevertheless us and waiting in the wings for the next generation of political leadership are more like them and perhaps worse, as a decidedly less favorable trend is evident when one views the transition from LBJ to GWB. The Bush/Cheney team have more than a year to go and they have promised new conflicts beginning with Iran. Buckle up America!

From Human Security Report, Part 1.