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Opposing the Vietnam War

By Noam Chomsky at May 24, 2005

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It's not physics, so one has to put together a circumstantial case. I've written about the way it looks to me. In brief, the war was always unpopular, even when Kennedy launched it in 1962. That's why he hoped that US forces could withdraw -- AFTER victory, as he continually and forcefully emphasized, to the day of the assassination. Unpopularity turned to serious opposition to the war by about 1967. It was sufficient to prevent the government from declaring a national emergency, which would probably have been good for the economy, as it was during WW II. Instead, they had to fight a "guns-and-butter" war -- to buy off the population to quell dissent. That's definitely bad for the economy, and combined with other world events, was leading to stagflation. The Tet offensive in Jan 1968 convinced business elites that the costs were mounting too high -- and the more sophisticated understood that the major war aims had already been achieved anyway. By then opposition was so strong that the Joint Chiefs were unwilling to send more troops because they were concerned that they might need them for civil disorder control in the US. LBJ was effectively instructed to move towards "Vietnamization," troop withdrawal, shifting of the (very visible) bombing of the North to bombing of Laos (easier to keep "invisible"), negotiations, etc., and not to run for re-election. And it suddenly turned out that intellectuals and political figures had always been (secret) "long-time opponents of the war": their strong support for the war was sent down the memory hole. One of the most interesting features -- but unmentionable, though well documented -- is the radical rewriting of memoirs of the Kennedy administration to "prove" that he was really a dove all along, and "memories" about the early opposition of elites (particularly JFK) to the war, refuted by overwhelming evidence at the time, but taken seriously. The anti-war movement played a crucial role, by creating circumstances under which elites turned against further escalation, and limits were placed on the extent of destruction possible -- leaving a monstrous horror story, but it could have been a lot worse. …The uproar set up conditions in which business and intellectual elites became tepid opponents of the war, never on principled grounds. The public, in contrast, opposed the war as "fundamentally wrong and immoral," not "a mistake"; about 70% by 1969.

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50

By Peterson, David at Nov 05, 2005 03:34 AM
Paranoia (as posted here on May 24, at 02:47 PM): For a nice little piece on the virtues of openness, common spaces, and a public domain (as opposed to the vices to be found in the proprietary, in uptightness, and in wrought-iron fences über alles):
"Web's never-to-be-repeated revolution," James Boyle, Financial Times, November 2, 2005
"Improvement makes strait roads," as the poet wrote, "but the crooked roads without Improvement are roads of Genius." Amen.

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Re: Opposing the Vietnam War

By Cranch, James at Jul 20, 2005 22:04 PM
Graeme - Sure, but I couldn't be bothered to construct a detailed case, given the frankly silly nature of what I was responding to. I was just trying to summon up a figure, then point at it and laugh, if you get my meaning.

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Re: Opposing the Vietnam War

By The, Roger at Jul 20, 2005 21:29 PM
Also, much more important, the trouble makers in the US caused domestic disruption despite the US winning most of the battles. Often enough, these protests were led by Communists and other radicals. In fact, General Westmoreland himself cited that while we were winning the war in Vietnam, the enemy was hoping for a political victory in the US: “Despite repeated military defeats -- the Vietnamese Communist enemy was able to continue the anti-U.S. struggle encouraged by...popular opposition to our efforts in Vietnam.” Even the usually liberal commentator Chris Wallace observed that: : “It's become almost a truism by now that you didn't lose the Vietnam War so much in the jungles there as you did in the streets in the United States." He said this back in 91. And it's true now just like it was back then. And there is nothing with most US high school history textbooks. They give a factual account of US history with a slight tendency to be sympathetic towards US actions, like all national histories are, it certainly should not be the ONLY thing one reads, but it undoubtedly makes for a stellar overview of US history. The Abyss wrote: "Did this make any sense to you?" It made perfect sense to me. The United States is hardly perfect, but it does indeed spread democracy, freedom, is a world leader in humanitarian aid and is a nation we should all be proud of.

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Re: Opposing the Vietnam War

By Cranch, James at Jul 20, 2005 21:13 PM
(sorry about the dud formatting in my last post) Part Two So that means that Iraq's oil is worth just a little less than $6 trillion right now (more if oil prices rise, as one might eventually expect them to). Although it's not necessary, I tried to do a similar analysis for the gas. So far as I can determine, the price of gas is $7.50 per million British thermal units, one million British thermal units is about one thousand cubic feet of gas, so Iraq's reserves are worth about $825 billion dollars. I could conceivably have messed that one up. The largest estimate I can find of the total cost of the Iraq war is $180 billion. That was produced by an anti-war site. Some republican figures are much less. That means, according to my possibly flawed analysis, the oil in Iraq would pay the current total costs of the war more than thirty-three times over, and the gas would pay for it more than four times over. In the absence of any hard facts, Roger, why do you need to make up lies?

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Re: Opposing the Vietnam War

By Cranch, James at Jul 20, 2005 20:12 PM
{Part One:} Roger said, i{It never made sense economically for the US to attack Vietnam just like it didn't make sense for the war in Iraq. The cost of the war far exceeds the oil reserves of the country.} Well, let's check that out. I found a page about Iraq's energy reserves on the US government webspace. It says, i{Iraq is estimated to hold 115 billion barrels of proven oil reserves, and possibly much more undiscovered oil in unexplored areas of the country. Iraq also is estimated to contain at least 110 trillion cubic feet of natural gas. The country is a focal point for regional and oil security issues.} You could have easily found this out by searching the net. OK. Let's be conservative and assume there's no undiscovered oil or gas. The price of one barrel of OPEC crude is currently $51.90 (as you could have again easily found out, this time by searching the net for OPEC's webpage).

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Re: Opposing the Vietnam War

By The, Roger at Jul 20, 2005 18:24 PM
Excellent points RealPC. I concur completely. It never made sense economically for the US to attack Vietnam just like it didn't make sense for the war in Iraq. The cost of the war far exceeds the oil reserves of the country. The US could have won the war anytime they wanted to: a couple nuclear bombs would have destroyed North Vietnam and forced them to surrender. Furthermore, the army was limited in what in could do by the politicians in Washington which were constantly under pressure by leftist reporters who were consistently negative and pessimistic about the war effort to liberate the Vietnamese people. When the war ended, millions of poor South Vietnamese begged to leave with the US army back to America; they knew the terrible fate that awaited them under Communist tyranny. They risked death, swam across shark-infested waters, smuggled into boats illegally, and did whatever they could to escape Communism. The Abyss - On US spreading freedom and democracy all over the world: Is Western Europe controlled by Nazis? Oh no? You can thank Uncle Sam for that. Is the Far East controlled by Japan? Ditto. Since I found no other way of doing so here, let me just quickly and quietly say a few words of rememberance to a great American that past away a couple days ago - General William Westmoreland. A patriot, a hero, a man who loved his country and who fought and put his life on the line for it. You will be missed sir. God bless you.

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Re: Opposing the Vietnam War

By Ralston, John at Jun 01, 2005 04:08 AM
Point well taken. The media is guilty of every form of intellectual dishonesty one can conceive of.

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Re: Opposing the Vietnam War

By Ralston, John at Jun 01, 2005 01:40 AM
The media is merely a tool of the economic elite. A tool cannot be to blame seriously for any problems that it may create. I can use matches to start a forest fire. The matches are not at fault, I am.

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Re: Opposing the Vietnam War

By Ralston, John at May 31, 2005 23:41 PM
The United States economic wealth is derived from its ability to protect its overseas assets through military intervention, covert subversion of foreign affairs and clout it uses on countries where the US has adjacent military presence. The Vietnam war had two goals as far as I was concerned. The first being to wage a war of example against an enemy that was initially perceived to be extremely weak, thus gaining a foothold in the then fiscally emerging Asia. Losing would mean allowing the United States competitors to have the prize. The second was to fuel the military industrial complex, which demanded conflict in order to survive. The arms industry in the United States was vital to the United States economy, and is and was a vital aspect of the culture of the Pentagon. Subsequent to the Vietnam war, people like Rumsfeld manufactured the threat of a "Soviet Invasion" in order to justify what amounted to massive subsidies to the arms and high technology industry under the auspices of security.

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Re: Opposing the Vietnam War

By The-abyss, The-abyss at May 31, 2005 22:47 PM
Bush is back on the bottle; this time it's wine he's using as a crutch. Drunks are usually incoherent, and so was Bush when he heard about an Amnesty International report condemning conditions in Guantanamo Bay: "It's absurd. It's an absurd allegation. The United States is a country that promotes freedom around the world." http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/8046041/ Did any of that make sense to you? For the lunatics on here who will try to support this hollow rebuttal, please post evidence that America promotes freedom around the world. You can start with the recent massacre in Uzbekistan, because Bush and Blair have been arming Islam Karimov - the tyrant in control of this country - for years. And now it looks like the U.S. is sending prisoners there to be tortured. It stretches credulity to say, as some Chomsky readers do, that the media is entirely to blame for the ignorance of the American people. The ball is now firmly in the public's court. Are Americans going to believe Bush, who presents no evidence to back up his assertions, or are they going to investigate Amnesty International's claims and, from there, go on to discover the rest of the sordid truth? Time will tell.

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Re: Opposing the Vietnam War

By Ralston, John at May 29, 2005 21:25 PM
Americans ideological reasoning is based on serving the economic elite.

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Re: Opposing the Vietnam War

By Yurallnuts, Realpc at May 29, 2005 05:33 AM
"when it no longer made sense economically for the war to go forward." The Vietnam war never made sense economically. Our motivation for being there was ideological.

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Re: Opposing the Vietnam War

By Ralston, John at May 27, 2005 13:00 PM
I believe Chomsky was looking for the reader to draw the parallel between the current situation in Iraq and the Vietnam war. Two very different situations with many converging characteristics. In this and the previous posting Chomsky talks about how the elite in the United States only became anti war when it no longer made sense economically for the war to go forward. Further, he states the sophisticated knew that the goals that the administration saught to acheive, did not neccesarily involve a stable democratic state, rather the permanent installation of a military perimeter in line with its wider aspirations in the region and the geo political realities of the day. In Iraq, as long as the cost of the war is not absolutly crippling the US economy (which it may or may not be) the political and economic elite will still stand at least partially behind the war effort. Meanwhile, if the United States administration has already attained its goal of middle east military dominance, with its line of control extending from the horn of Africa, all the way up into Caucasus. Complete stabalization of Iraq is not neccesarily desirable if it means having a government that will not be its shill anymore. The constant state of emergency in Iraq allows the United States to maintain its massive military presence, thus altering the balance of geo political power in the region significantly.

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Re: Opposing the Vietnam War

By K, Mr at May 27, 2005 06:37 AM
the 'masses' are too brainwashed to care. War has been desensitized to the point that i'm willing to join up just to see my 'score'. The socializers have succeeded. Were all sheep being led to the slaughter. Where's our messiah? My 'atom' of consumption ain't paying for the neo-con wargames for oil anymore. Time for a revolution. I'm sure the brainwashed public would pause the x-box long enough to look out the window and wake up to the 'reality' on the street. Corporate tyranny will rule this planet and everyone is a atom contributing to it's rise. God save the planet he's the only one now who has the power to change things! I'm waiting for his call on my child labored cellphone while i eat my mic junk food and watch another episode of brainwashing 101 on the corporate controlled airwaves. management problem on the macro level. This planet is doomed.

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Re: Opposing the Vietnam War

By Mikefrancismclaughlin, Hafiz at May 25, 2005 22:52 PM
I find it amusing that the media is given the blame(in the media!) for 'losing' the Vietnam war considering all the cheerleading they have been doing for this new war against the Iraqis. The reason why so many people have opposed the Iraq war so soon is that the traditional corporate media no longer have a total monopoly over information, although on every high school building and on public transportation (like in Boston)one can read 'United We Stand' (which was taken from Hitler's speeches in the Nurenburg rallies of 1934).The term 'media' is also quite propagandistic.

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Re: Opposing the Vietnam War

By Peterson, David at May 25, 2005 07:54 AM
Friends: Not by way of answering this query for NC. But here is the link to a recently published study of the relative weights within the political culture of several different "channels" of communication (the study's term, not mine), including the news media, what the study calls "citizen chatter" (or Internet message boards), and, last but not least, blogging:
Buzz, Blogs and Beyond: The Internet and the National Discourse in the Fall of 2004, Michael Cornfield et al., Pew Internet and American Life Project, May, 2005
I myself hope to get around to blogging this topic some day soon. As I believe the study linked here has some merit as an investigation into a relatively new phenomenon. But also because I find most assessments of the phenomenon to be terribly misleading. The present one included. But, in the meantime........

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Re: Opposing the Vietnam War

By Cranch, James at May 25, 2005 01:18 AM
It is, I believe, on record that Chomsky does not read or respond to comments left here.

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Re: Opposing the Vietnam War

By Saffari_siavash, Paranoia at May 24, 2005 23:47 PM
Dr. Chomsky. Totally unrelated to this topic, I really like to know what your thoughts are on the American blogosphere. Especially now that new studies indicate that bloggers often follow the lead of the politicians and journalists rather than producing new discourses.

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Re: Opposing the Vietnam War

By Yurallnuts, Realpc at May 24, 2005 21:00 PM
Kennedy started the war as a liberal who wanted to fight communism. But the war turned out to be expensive and hard to win. Americans began to question our need to fight communism in a distant land that did not threaten us directly. The sacrifice of American lives no longer seemed worthwhile, considering the doubts regarding the war's original purpose. The US had an over-simplified and distorted notion of communism during the cold war, as well as a greatly exaggerated perception of the threat of a world communist revolution. The US government gave in and responded to the will of the American public.

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