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McNamara's Apology - The Myth Continues
by Richard Stutsman, 4/15/95
Robert McNamara, the U.S. Secretary of Defense under Presidents Kennedy and Johnson and the architect of the U.S. war against Vietnam, has just published a book in which he says that it was very wrong to have pursued the war in Vietnam and that in restrospect he should have pulled U.S. forces out as early as 1963, before there had been much loss of life there.
The media is wringing its hands over whether McNamara's comments constitute an admission that the war was "morally wrong", as opposed to its being merely a "strategic mistake" or "too costly in terms of U.S. lives and money". The media, along with our political leaders, have never really questioned the morality of the war against Vietnam. All public criticism of the war has been of the nature that we should have either pulled all stops to win it or withdraw, rather than pursue a "limited", no-win strategy.
But the real questions are, "what were we fighting for?", and "was our goal morally defensible?". In various polls, the majority of U.S. citizens have indicated that they regarded the war as "morally wrong". Why is it that our political leaders and corporate media cannot bring themselves to echo this popular sentiment about U.S. intervention in Southeast Asia? Even our President, who protested the war in his youth and who "evaded" the draft, has refrained from energetically defending his youthful anti-war activities. Why?
The answer has to do with myth versus reality regarding U.S. foreign policy and regarding whose interests the U.S. government and military actually serves. It is a well-orchestrated myth that the United States of America stands for freedom and democracy throughout the world and that our foreign policy and military interventions serve to promote democratic institutions, movements, and governments in the Third World while defending them against the "tyranny" of Soviet-inspired communism.
The reality is that our government is very much influenced by the huge campaign contributions--soft and hard--made by defense contractors and by multi-national corporations and by their very well-financed lobbyists in Washington.
Our government, for the most part, serves its corporate clients while giving lip service to the democratic ideals that the electorate holds dear. Our political leaders promise to serve our interests during their campaigns while actually serving the interests of their corporate clients during their tenures in office. This is the corruption of which Ross Perot so eloquently spoke during his first campaign for President.
The Vietnam war very effectively illustrates the consequences of the corruption of government by business. Vietnam had been a French colony. France lost its control over Vietnam during World War II, and the Japanese began taking over until they were defeated at the end of the war. France, with U.S. help, attempted unsuccessfully to reinstate its colonial domination of Vietnam. It met with much resistance from the Vietnamese, who wanted their independence.
So France, the U.S., and representatives of Vietnam, including Ho Chi Minh, signed an accord in Geneva, Switzerland, in 1954 which would grant Vietnam its independence following unification elections. But it was obvious that the certain winner of that election, based on his popularity, would be Ho Chi Minh, who was known to be a "nationalist" and therefore not likely to cooperate with the desires of U.S. business planners to incorporate Vietnam into its "Grand Area" of capitalist exploitation.
So the U.S. set out almost immediately to sabotage the elections and prevent the unification of Vietnam under the guise that it was defending South Vietnam from the "tyranny" of Ho Chi Minh's "communism". The U.S. installed dictator after dictator in the South (reality), pretending that it was defending a "democratic" government from "communist insurgents" (myth). These "communist insurgents" (myth) were the local peasants fighting the tyranny of their U.S.-installed, U.S.-supported dictators (reality). They were fighting for their freedom and independence from the foreign domination they had repeatedly suffered for many generations.
The last thing on the minds of the Vietnamese, who were defending themselves against the escalating U.S. invasion of their country, was any desire to be dominated by another foreign country--the Soviet Union. Yet U.S. Cold War propaganda was based on the myth that the "communist insurgents" (local peasants) were puppets of the Soviet Union and that for us to allow the Soviets to dominate Vietnam would be to start a chain reaction--a "domino effect"--whereby other Third World countries would also enter the Soviet sphere of influence and threaten U.S. worldwide economic interests.
So to protect U.S. economic interests (myth)--the right of U.S.-based multinational corporations to impoverish and exploit Third World labor and resources (reality)--Presidents Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon waged a brutal war against a sovereign country on its own land 8000 miles from U.S. shores and convinced the American taxpayers to spend over $260,000,000,000 dollars and to waste the lives of nearly 70,000 U.S. conscripts and the lives of millions of Asians for the purpose of defending the potential interests of a few multi-national investors while enriching the stockholders of U.S.-based defense corporations.
Myth versus reality.
Myth: "We" were fighting for freedom and democracy in Southeast Asia and to prevent Third World countries from falling under the Soviet sphere of influence like dominos. Had "we" only pulled the stops and fought to win, "we" would have saved South Vietnam from the clutches of the "evil empire".
Reality: The U.S. "national security state", murdered millions of innocent people and destroyed three entire countries (Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos) in order to subvert their efforts to achieve self-determination and self-government, and thereby prevent them from setting an example for other U.S.-dominated Third World countries to follow. U.S. forces dropped 250 tons of explosives on Vietnam for each man, woman, and child living there. For every family slaughtered, for every village burned, for every rice field destroyed, "they" created hundreds of new highly-motivated enemies. In order to "win" the war "they" would have had to slaughter every man, woman, and child in the country. And if only "we" hadn't put a stop to the carnage, "they" might have done just that!
