Symposium: Was the Vietnam War a mistake or fatal flaw in the system?
It's been 50 years since the Fall of Saigon and we still haven't reckoned with the biggest question of them all. Until today.

The photographs, television images and newspaper stories make it perfectly clear: there was an urgency, a frenzy even, as the U.S. Embassy in Saigon shuttered and its diplomats and staff were evacuated, along with other military, journalists, and foreigners, as well as thousands of Vietnamese civilians, who all wanted out of the country as the North Vietnamese victors rolled into the city center.

It was April 30, 1975 — 50 years ago today — yet the nightmare left behind that day only accentuated the failure of the United States, along with the South Vietnamese army, to resist a takeover by the communists under the leadership of the North. It was not only an extraordinarily bloody chapter for Vietnam (well over 1.5 million military and civilian deaths, depending on estimates, from 1965 to 1975), but a dark episode for America, too.

Beyond the failure of Washington’s Cold War policy — that intervening in Vietnam’s post-Colonial struggles for independence was necessary to prevent the “dominoes” of communism from tumbling across Southeast Asia — more than 55,000 Americans were killed. An untold number who returned suffered lifelong injuries, impacts of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and illnesses and other symptoms due to Agent Orange and other toxic exposures.

The nation had been ruptured politically and socially over the war, a divide that one could say has never really healed.

Yet ironically, Washington’s proclivity to intervene in other countries’ affairs and to use military power as the first resort has only grown. It would seem the true lessons of Vietnam were left on that iconic rooftop from which the last helicopter left Saigon 50 years ago.

Some say after WWII, U.S. power and intervention has maintained the global liberal order and that Vietnam was a “mistake” — a one-off. Others say it was a sign that the pretense of America as the "indispensable nation” was folly from the beginning, that the Cold War had blinded us to the realities of the world and the limits of military intervention.

So we asked experts, both in geopolitics and history, what they think:

Was the failure of Vietnam a feature or a bug of U.S. foreign policy after WWII?

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The fix is in for new Air Force F-47 — and so is the failure
Just wait for the unstoppable lobby preventing any future effort to strangle this boondoggle in the cradle.

If and when it finally comes to be written decades from now, an honest history of the F-47 “fighter” recently unveiled by President Trump will doubtless have much to say about the heroic lobbying campaign that garnered the $20 billion development contract for Boeing, the corporation that has become a byword for program disasters (see the KC-46 tanker, the Starliner spacecraft, the 737 MAX airliner, not to mention the T-7 trainer.)

Boeing, which is due to face trial in June on well-merited federal charges of criminal fraud, was clearly in line for a bailout. But such succor was by no means inevitable given recent doubts from Air Force officials about proceeding with another manned fighter program at all.

“You’ve never seen anything like this,” said Trump in the March Oval Office ceremony announcing the contract award.

Well, of course we have, most obviously in recent times with the ill-starred F-35. Recall that in 2001 the Pentagon announced that the F-35 program would cost $200 billion and would enter service in 2008. Almost a quarter century later, acquisition costs have doubled, the total program price is nudging $2 trillion, and engineers are still struggling to make the thing work properly.

Thus, succeeding chapters of the F-47’s history will likely have to cover the galloping cost overruns, unfulfilled technological promises, ever-lengthening schedule shortfalls, and ultimate production cancellation when only a portion of the force had been built. (...)

The Violence Prerogative
All oppressive, criminal, and genocidal governments cloak their atrocities in the language of virtue.
Noam Chomsky, Nathan J. Robinson

Every ruling power tells itself stories to justify its rule. Nobody is the villain in their own history. Professed good intentions and humane principles are a constant. Even Heinrich Himmler, in describing the extermination of the Jews, claimed that the Nazis only “carried out this most difficult task for the love of our people” and thereby “suffered no defect within us, in our soul, or in our character.” Hitler himself said that in occupying Czechoslovakia, he was only trying to “further the peace and social welfare of all” by eliminating ethnic conflicts and letting everyone live in harmony under civilized Germany’s benevolent tutelage. The worst of history’s criminals have often proclaimed themselves to be among humankind’s greatest heroes.

Murderous imperial conquests are consistently characterized as civilizing missions, conducted out of concern for the interests of the indigenous population. During Japan’s invasion of China in the 1930s, even as Japanese forces were carrying out the Nanjing Massacre, Japanese leaders were claiming they were on a mission to create an “earthly paradise” for the people of China and to protect them from Chinese “bandits” (i.e., those resisting Japan’s invasion). Emperor Hirohito, in his 1945 surrender address, insisted that “we declared war on America and Britain out of our sincere desire to ensure Japan’s self-preservation and the stabilization of East Asia, it being far from our thought either to infringe upon the sovereignty of other nations or to embark upon territorial aggrandizement.” As the late Palestinian American scholar Edward Said noted, there is always a class of people ready to produce specious intellectual arguments in defense of domination: “Every single empire in its official discourse has said that it is not like all the others, that its circumstances are special, that it has a mission to enlighten, civilize, bring order and democracy, and that it uses force only as a last resort.”

Virtually any act of mass murder or criminal aggression can be rationalized by appeals to high moral principle. Maximilien Robespierre justified the French Reign of Terror in 1794 by claiming that “terror is nothing other than justice, prompt, severe, inflexible; it is therefore an emanation of virtue.” Those in power generally present themselves as altruistic, disinterested, and generous. The late leftist journalist Andrew Kopkind pointed to “the universal desire of statesmen to make their most monstrous missions seem like acts of mercy.” It is hard to take actions one believes to be actively immoral, so people have to convince themselves that what they’re doing is right, that their violence is justified. When anyone wields power over someone else (whether a colonist, a dictator, a bureaucrat, a spouse, or a boss), they need an ideology, and that ideology usually comes down to the belief that their domination is for the good of the dominated. (...)

 R_P wrote:
Either he still doesn't know how tariffs work or he just thinks that repeating the fairy tale of exporting nations paying tariffs (instead of domestic importing companies and ultimately consumers) will eventually get more and more believers.  I'm sure many of his minions already believe that anyhow, but he's lied about it over and over so I guess those in the media and elsewhere, who know the truth, are getting tired of correcting him or his press secretary.

Obama/Trump
How the US bankrolled Duterte's alleged crimes against humanity
The former Philippine president awaits trial for his brutal war on drugs. He waged it with our help

Less than a month after Duterte took office, then- Secretary of State John Kerry announced a $32 million weapons and training package specifically to support the Philippine National Police. He made no mention of Duterte’s numerous threats to weaponize law enforcement on the campaign trail, or the fact that 239 suspected drug users had already been killed by police without due process at that point.

Obama’s administration authorized $90 million in military aid to the Philippines in 2016 and roughly $1 billion during the 8 years he was in office. As a growing chorus of human rights advocates criticized the United States for supporting Duterte’s atrocities, the Obama administration suspended some security assistance for the Philippine National Police in November of 2016, but kept military funding at normal levels.

These suspensions were swiftly reversed when Donald Trump took office in 2017. “I just want to congratulate you because I am hearing of the unbelievable job (you’re doing) on the drug problem,” he told Duterte in a phone call shortly after being inaugurated.

In 2018, the Trump administration provided $55 million to the Philippine National Police in aid and arm sales and $193.5 million in military aid to the Philippines overall. This aid package enabled Duterte’s regime on two fronts.

“The war on drugs was primarily implemented by the Philippine National Police, but the attacks on human rights defenders and activists were mainly done by the military,” said Philippine-based human rights activist Judy Pasimio in an interview with Responsible Statecraft. (...)

Might need a patriotic distraction soon-ish

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 R_P wrote:
Well, you can't really expect her to know very much about world history.  I wonder what her boss's pal Vlad thinks about her assertion that "it's only because of the United States of America that the French are not speaking German right now".

The evergreen, revisionist knee-slapper...

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