Jan

26

Stefan Jovanovich on Viet-Nam

January 26, 2007 |

The most persistent fiction about the war in Viet-Nam is that "our military leaders had their hands tied behind their backs." The reality is quite different. Our military leaders wanted to have their options limited in Viet-Nam. They chose the tactics, the weapons and the objectives and were happy to allow the political leaders to take the heat for the subsequent failures. The Air Force generals wanted to spend their money on missiles, the Navy on submarines and the Army on anything technical that would get it a larger share of the military-industrial pie. The actual soldiers did the best they could, but the draftees were not trained and the sergeants and career officers pulled every string possible to get their tickets punched and rotated home. I suspect that Senator Hagel's nearly incoherent rage against the present war in Iraq and the military in general is based on his understandable resentment at the way the U.S. treated his brother and him and so many other draftees. My own training as a volunteer in the Navy was much better but terribly spotty. The damage control training at the Philadelphia naval base was first-rate; to this day I can talk to civilian and military firefighters and understand what they are doing based solely on what the Navy taught me. On the other hand, the lessons in amphibious tactics consisted of watching films from WW II, including lessons on how not to catch a venereal disease. Apart from his good character and extraordinary personal courage, Creighton Abrams deserves to be honored for putting an end to all this crap and beginning the restoration of the U.S. combat forces. What is going on in Iraq has a great deal to do with Abrams' legacy but it has almost nothing to do with what happened in Viet-Nam before 1970.

I disagree about keeping out the press. Let the press spend as much time as they want with the troops in the field and at the bases, but shut down the luxury accommodations in the Green Zone. I have only one continuing resentment from my time in Viet-Nam and that is watching all the "experts" from the press holding down mahogany ridge at the Hotel Caravelle and talking absolute nonsense about places they had never been to. It is the reason I cannot take Thomas Ricks seriously; he is the current generation's REMF know-it-all.

As for the cost of the "war," it is less than the increased revenues to the treasury from the capital gains tax cut. Nearly half of what is treated in the Pentagon's accounts as "war" cost is upgrading of the equipment based on the battlefield and tactical lessons of the war. The war in Iraq is no more expensive as a part of the national budget than the Marines' excursions in China and Central America and the Caribbean in the 1920s.

I urge Roger Arnold to spend some time with the current Marines. I think he would be disabused of the notion that the Corps has gone soft. What it has done is learn that its soldiers have to be tough and smart. That is the reason they have embraced Colonel Boyd as their hero, even though he was an Air Force pilot. For the same reason, they are not embarrassed to have women in their ranks and they no longer tolerate physical abuse from their DIs. Sledge's memoirs make this point very well. The "Old Breed" never tolerated frat boy bullying; and there is no reason for the Corps to expect anything less from its current Marines.


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  1. Ken Larson on January 26, 2007 12:31 pm

    Your post has some excellent points. Here’s some additional data:

    The Department of Defense, headquartered in the Pentagon, is one of the most massive organizations on the planet, with net annual operating costs of $635 billion, assets worth $1.3 trillion, liabilities of $1.9 trillion and more that 2.9 million military and civilian personnel as of fiscal year 2005.

    I am a 2 tour Vietnam Veteran who recently retired after 36 years of working in the Defense Industrial Complex on many of the weapons systems being used by our forces as we speak.

    It is difficult to convey the complexity of the way DOD works to someone who has not experienced it. This is a massive machine with so many departments and so much beaurocracy that no president, including Bush totally understands it.

    Presidents, Congressmen, Cabinet Members and Appointees project a knowledgeable demeanor but they are spouting what they are told by career people who never go away and who train their replacements carefully. These are military and civil servants with enormous collective power, armed with the Federal Acquisition Regulation, Defense Industrial Security Manuals, compartmentalized classification structures and “Rice Bowls” which are never mixed.

    Our society has slowly given this power structure its momentum which is constant and extraordinarily tough to bend. The cost to the average American is exhorbitant in terms of real dollars and bad decisions. Every major power structure member in the Pentagon’s many Washington Offices and Field locations in the US and Overseas has a counterpart in Defense Industry Corporate America. That collective body has undergone major consolidation in the last 10 years.

    What used to be a broad base of competitive firms is now a few huge monoliths, such as Lockheed Martin, General Dynamics, Northrop Grumman, Raytheon and Boeing.

    Government oversight committees are carefully stroked. Sam Nunn and others who were around for years in military and policy oversight roles have been cajoled, given into on occasion but kept in the dark about the real status of things until it is too late to do anything but what the establishment wants. This still continues - with increasing high technology and potential for abuse.

    Please examine the following link to testimony given by Franklin C. Spinney before Congress in 2002. It provides very specific information from a whistle blower who is still blowing his whistle (Look him up in your browser and you get lots of feedback) Frank spent the same amount of time as I did in the Military Industrial Complex (MIC) but in government quarters. His job in government was a similar role to mine in defense companies. Frank’s emphasis in this testimony is on the money the machine costs us. It is compelling and it is noteworthy that he was still a staff analyst at the Pentagon when he gave this speech. I still can’t figure out how he got his superior’s permission to say such blunt things. He was extremely highly respected and is now retired.

    http://www.d-n-i.net/fcs/spinney_testimony_060402.htm

    The brick wall I often refer to is the Pentagon’s own arrogance. It will implode by it’s own volition, go broke, or so drastically let down the American people that it will fall in shambles. Rest assured the day of the implosion is coming. The machine is out of control.

    If you are interested in a view of the inside of the Pentagon procurement process from Vietnam to Iraq please check the posting on this blog entitled, “Odyssey of Armaments”

    http://rosecoveredglasses.blogspot.com/2006/11/odyssey-of-armaments.html

    On the same subject, you may also be interested in the following sites from the “Project On Government Oversight”, observing it’s 25th Anniversary and “Defense In the National Interest”, insired by Franklin Spinney and contributed to by active/reserve, former, or retired military personnel.

    http://pogo.org/

    http://www.d-n-i.net/top_level/about_us.htm

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