this program is a presentation of uctv for educational and non-commercial use only I've been asked to speak today on the subject of my book in retrospect the subtitle of which is the tragedy and lessons of Vietnam and I don't have to tell you that the book has caused immense I was gonna say controversial perhaps discussion is a less political term immense discussion has raised a host of questions I want to focus in my opening remarks on four of those and then during the question period I can address those that that you wish to put particular emphasis on before that that I'll begin to discuss her first why after a silence of thirty years and why now chosen to address the subject and secondly what hindsight did the US activities in Indochina Vietnam in particular contributed to the security the west as we who were responsible for them believe they did at the time or were they a costly failure and thirdly if they were a failure how can one account for the errors of judgment that caused it and finally most importantly are there lessons which can be drawn from the Vietnam experience which the US and the world can apply to avoid repetitions of similar tragedies in the 21st century so first why now there's several reasons why I chosen to speak out of Vietnam the most compelling one I stayed in the preface and there I write we have the Kennedy and Johnson administration's who participated in the decisions on Vietnam acted according to what we thought were the principles and values of this nation we made our decisions in the light of those values and yet today with hindsight I believe we were wrong terribly wrong and therefore I believe that we owe it to future generations to explain why so that's a major reason I'm speaking out now but another factor has also greatly influenced my decision and this may appear to be able to Gresham to discuss it but it is important to me and it did influence the writing the book in recent years I've come to understand how examinations of past confrontations between nations and among nations particularly with respect to conflict can help avoid conflict in the future and this lesson was brought out to me in particular by five extraordinary meetings that participants in the Cuban Missile Crisis participant from the Soviet Union Cuba in the u.s. held during the five years 1987 to 1992 I think it's generally recognized now that our three nations the Soviet Union Cuba and the US came very close to nuclear war during that period much much closer than I think most of you in this room understand and we should perhaps discuss that as well and they give in a question period none of the leaders of those nations intended that that would be the result of their actions our meetings with the Cubans in the Soviets therefore with their leaders Castro Gromyko from the long for a long period of time was a foreign minister and later the Deputy Prime Minister to bring in the longtime ambassador to the u.s. senior military officials of both Cuba and the Soviet Union our meetings were focusing therefore on the misunderstandings misjudgments miscalculations the lessons that we could draw from the near confrontation with disaster and I think these retrospective reviews can indeed provide guidance on how to avoid and better manage similar confrontations in the future if you haven't read it I would urge you to consult the the transcripts and the published materials on those meetings I very much hope that my book in retrospect will do the same with respect to to the Vietnam conflict I've suggested to the Council on Foreign Relations that we should probe the degree to which the Vietnamese today would be willing to engage in discussion similar to those we carried out with the Soviets and Cubans to draw it try to draw a similar lessons another digression because the Joint Chiefs of Staff on several occasions during the seven years I was associated with operations in Vietnam because they on several occasions referred to the use of nuclear weapons and because nuclear weapons remain in our arsenal today and their use remains an important part of our Canadian contingency war plans I've dealt with the risk of nuclear war in an appendix to the book if you buy the book please read the appendix normally we don't this is very important the risk of nuclear war today is far greater than I think most people in the room realize it is of course low but it's the low risk of utter catastrophe and it's far greater than we should accept that's the message in the appendix I suggest ways of reducing them here I want don't want to say any more on the risk of nuclear war the experience we've had with nuclear weapons other than to repeat what I said a moment ago that we still most of us don't understand the degree of risk we faced 33 years ago during the Missile Crisis it's only recently you know we've come to see the extent of that risk two years ago the Soviets published remarkable articles in the Moscow press they were written by senior military officials of the Soviet Union who had participated crisis and they reported that at the height of the crisis at a time when the CIA said there were no nuclear weapons behind the cube where they were actually 162 there including about a hundred tactical weapons and moreover a particular moment of greatest crisis Thursday October 25th 1962 the Soviet commander in Cuba general plio instructed his officers to move nuclear warheads from their storage sites closer to the launch vehicles in anticipation of what they believed whether you would be a US attack within 48 to 72 hours and plea off at that time sent a cable to the Soviet defense minister malinovski informing him of that action the movement of the warheads closer to the launch vehicles malinovski sent it in to Khrushchev Khrushchev scrawled approved across and sent it back to mother now ski now had not Khrushchev on Sunday two days after the cable was sent Sunday the 28th of October had not Khrushchev on that day announced their withdrawal almost certainly on the following day Monday the 29th the majority of President Kennedy's military and civilian advisers would have recommended him that he launched the attack which had for which contingency plans have been developed launch the attack on Cuba the first days air strike was planned for ten hundred and eighty sorties that would have been a huge strength it was to be followed immediately by a sea and land invasion which included 180,000 combat troops the entire operation was to be commanded by cinclant the commander of all US forces in the Atlantic admin Dennison and Admiral Dennison had asked the president of me to authorize that his troops be equipped with nuclear warheads we'd refused that request because as I've said the CIA at the time reported there were no nuclear warheads in Cuba but nobody should believe that had US troops been confronted by nuclear weapons in Cuba that we would not have responded they would not have had warheads with them but we would launch aircraft warheads from the southeastern US where would have ended in utter disaster we came that close and that risk you're living with today please read the appendix to understand the extent of it and the kind of actions we can take to reduce it now let me turn back to Vietnam into the second question with hindsight did US actions in Indochina contribute to the security of the West or were they a costly failure for me my involvement in Vietnam began I should say ended the day after I left the Pentagon and that was February 28 1968 at that time US fatalities totaled 17,000 but the war didn't end for the u.s. until five years later by that time the fatalities had increased to 58,000 in addition and we shouldn't forget this 3,200,000 beat nummies died this figure was released only three or four weeks ago by an AI which had been carrying on an extended study of it I'm not at all sure that it includes the fatalities of the South Vietnamese military I think it probably does not so almost surely the total would be greater than that but it's a tremendous number and we and day together were responsible for that and we shouldn't forget it more than that by the end of the war our economy had been damaged by years of improperly financed wartime expenditures and the political unity of our society had been shattered it wasn't to be restored for decades our sights high cost Deckman justified dean rusk young behind loved and admired a great patriot in peace and war dean rusk died these december 20th of last year until a day he died he believed yes indeed the intervention was justified and the costs while high were a necessary cost of protecting this nation he wasn't alone he isn't alone there are others who believe that to this day won't rust on President Johnson's night security advisory whom I was with a week or two ago believes that Lee Kuan Yew the great prime minister of Singapore believes it and they conclude that without use US intervention in Vietnam that communist hegemony both Soviet and Chinese would have spread further through South and East Asia to include include control of Laos Cambodia Thailand Malaysia Indonesia and perhaps India and some would go further and say that emboldened by by that extension of the Communist fear of influence that the Soviet Union would have taken greater risks to bring additional pressure to bear against Western Europe and against the United States and perhaps would have gone so far as to seek to control the oil fields in the Middle East now I don't share those judgments the danger of continents aggression during the four decades of the Cold War the nineteen fifties sixties seventies and eighties was indeed real and perhaps we should talk some about that as I mentioned we in the Kennedy and Johnson administration's came very very close to war with the Soviet Union on three occasions they sought to take West Berlin in August of 1981 the supreme Allied commander in Europe at that time general Larry North dad told me that under certain circumstances we'd have to use nuclear weapons to respond to that pressure we have waited we came close in a year later as I've suggested there was an inner nuclear war over Cuba in June of 1967 the Soviets back Egypt in their stated attempt to wipe Israel off the map it was the first time the hotline was used the tension between the US and Soviet Union became so great the message the cacique and sent to Johnson over the hotline said if you want where you'll get it in any event we we avoided war in those occasions but they illustrate the point I make that the the danger to the West during those four decades 5060 70s and 80s was real and to have failed to defend ourselves against it would have been foolhardy and irresponsible but that said I questioned today whether Soviet or Chinese influence in the 70s and 80s would have been greater would have more seriously endangered our nation or the nations of the West had we never entered Vietnam with combat forces or had we withdrawn on any one of several occasions between 1963 and 1973 and moreover by the early nineteen sixty min 1960s it should have been apparent to American leaders that the two conditions which underlay President Kennedy's initial movement of u.s. military personnel into Vietnam as advisors by the time he died there were 16,000 they're the two conditions that underlay his decisions join to take that action we're not being met political stability which he thought was absolutely essential to affect the operation of u.s. military in Vietnam was not being maintained and he had said over and over again that the war was the South Vietnamese war could only be won by South me it means troops and it was clear that that condition was not being met now given those facts and they are indeed facts I believe today that we could ensure that withdrawing from Vietnam on any one of several occasions between 1963 and 73 with hindsight I don't believe that US would draw it at any one of those times if it had been properly explained to the American people and properly explained to our allies I don't believe that US withdrawal on any one of those occasions would have led West Europeans to question our our guarantees of their security through NATO or would have led the Japanese to question the credibility of our guarantee of their security but we didn't withdraw now why didn't my associates in the Kennedy and Johnson administration's were indeed an exceptional group of individuals they were highly intelligent they were well educated they were hard-working there were dedicated servants of the nation and our people how did this group pejoratively termed the best and the brightest how did this group go wrong what lessons can we draw and draw from that experience lessons which I believe will be applicable to today and tomorrow that's the story I tell the story begins the day after President Kennedy's inauguration when I and my nine cabinet colleagues were sworn in as cabinet members by Chief Justice Warren I was then the eighth and the youngest ever and ultimately to be the longest-serving Secretary of Defense as I said I was immensely proud to have been appointed to that office but at the same time at the moment of swearing and I couldn't help but feel a deep sense of foreboding because two days before on January 19 which was President Eisenhower's last full day in office President Eisenhower and President Kennedy had met along with their senior cabinet members the secretaries of treasury state defense of each administration and President Eisenhower's military assistant and a civilian associate of President Kennedy Clark Clifford and we met for the purpose of of hearing from General Eisenhower President Eisenhower his views on the major problems that we would face and we covered an immense number of subjects that afternoon but the emphasis was on into China and several of the participants including me following the meeting prepared memorandum for the record and these and subsequent memoirs of the present quite different views of what Eisenhower advised Kennedy about the crucial issue of US military intervention in Southeast Asia Eisenhower's focus during the discussion was largely on Laos rather than Vietnam Laos was the most crucial problem at that time here's what Clark Clifford wrote of the meeting and I quote his words President Eisenhower stated Laos is the president key to the entire area of Southeast Asia if flouse were lost to the Communists it would bring an unbelievable pressure to bear on Thailand Cambodia South Vietnam and he concluded therefore that in his opinion Laos was of such importance that if it reached the stage a state where we could not persuade others to act with us then he would be willing as a last desperate hope to see the u.s. intervene militarily alone Dean Rusk remember the meaning largely as Clark Clifford snow reported it but my memorandum which I prepared at President Kennedy's request based on notes I'd taken at the meaning suggested Eisenhower was actually giving a very different message a mixed message I have the impression he was deeply uncertain about the proper course and I wrote President Eisenhower advised against unilateral military action by the United States I did note that he ended by saying that if Laos has lost of the free world in the long run we'll lose all of Southeast Asia Dugdale and President Kennedy's Secretary of the Treasury told a scholar that his memory and his recollection of the meeting jived with mine and he went further and said it was his impression that Eisenhower murdered his poison our Secretary of State got a certain inner satisfaction from laying a potentially intractable problem in Kennedy's lap I think Doug's impression was absolutely correct Eisenhower didn't know what to do in Southeast Asia and he was indeed glad to leave it to the Democrats but I can't fault him for handing us a problem with no solution because the Indochina problem was intractable the way both the Republicans and the Democrats at the time were defining it and just how intractable it was we would learn to our sorrow to during the following ten years I think there's other evidence that Eisenhower was stumped at the time three weeks before our meeting we learned later he had said to his people and this is in the record quote we must not allow Laos to fall to the Communists even if it involves war unquote but that statement of course contrasts starkly with his actions some six years earlier when he stood aside at the time of the French defeat it didn't been food a perhaps he had changed his views in those interviews in those intervening six years but I can't reconcile it to wood Eisenhower government they have gone to war as we did in Vietnam I don't know I think it's an irrelevant question the decision wasn't his it was ours and we were wrong now to demonstrate how and why we were wrong I review in detail the key decisions we made during the seven years I was secretary the pros and cons of alternatives the views of the different participants in the decision-making process and the action that resulted and it's from that review that I identify our failures and draw from the draw from them the lessons which I believe will be applicable to today and tomorrow the last chapter the book focuses on the lessons I'm going to condense it very very quickly and in a sense very superficially just to put before you my final conclusions and we if you wish we can go into any one or all of these further during the discussion period there were I think 11 major causes for the disaster our disaster in Vietnam first we misjudge then and I think we're continuing to misjudge the geopolitical attentions of our adversaries in that case North Vietnam calm China in the Soviet Union and we vastly exaggerated not intentionally perhaps exaggerated the wrong word we vastly overestimated the dangers to the United States of the actions of our adversaries secondly we viewed the people and leaders of South Vietnam in terms of Arlen experience we saw in them a thirst for and a determination to fight for freedom and democracy and I think we totally misjudged the political forces that work in that society thirdly we underestimated the power nationalism to motivate a people and that case the North Vietnamese and the Viet Cong to motivate of people to fight and die for their cause I think we're continuing to underestimate the power of nationalism in various parts of the world we can talk more of that if you wish fourthly our misjudgments of friend and foe alike reflected our profound ignorance of the history the culture the politics of the countries we were dealing with and the personalities and habits of their leaders we might have made similar misjudgments on those three occasions I mentioned to you when we came very close to war with the Soviet Union had we not had at our elbow three individuals tommy Thompson chip Boland George Kennan who throughout their life had studied the history culture politics and the personalities of the leaders of the Soviet Union they were the heroes of our successful avoidance of war with the Soviet Union during those seven years we had no counterparts with respect to Southeast Asia fit we failed then as we have since to recognize and we're doing this today in server places we failed then as we have since to recognize the limitations of modern high-technology military doctrine equipment to deal with highly highly motivated people's movements six and this perhaps was the most important single failure I'm not sure we've yet learned the lesson that could be derived from it we failed to draw Congress and the American people into a full and frank discussion and debate the pros and cons of a large-scale US military involvement in Southeast Asia we failed to do that before we initiated the action it wasn't that we didn't have formal Authority we did the Tonkin Gulf Resolution passed by the Senate in August 1964 say says without any qualification the president under this resolution has authority to take the United States to war in China and southeast in Indochina in Southeast Asia the problem wasn't with the formalities the problem was with the substance neither the Congress nor the president intended that those words would be used as we use them we should have gone back we talked of it we discussed it with with the majority leader and the Minority Leader of the Senate the majority leader was Senator Mansfield ad of the Minority Leader senator Dirksen a hawk they said for God's sakes don't reopen that question it'll tear us apart and it would add but that's the price we must pay in this society if we expect two people to be united by a military action that were engaged in we didn't do that then I said to you that I don't think we've learned the lesson yet before the Gulf War a senior official the government said the president had no need to go to the Congress for authority to initiate the action in the Gulf the constitution of gave him power as commander-in-chief to take the nation to war I was asked to testify on that point senator sarbanes said surely mr. secretary you disagree with that it's contrary to the Constitution he said look senator I'm not a constitutional lawyer but he said you'll answered I said I won't action and I certainly won't answer it on a legal basis beside I demand that you do he said I'm totally unqualified to I said I'll tell you something it's not a legal question we shouldn't think of it as a legal question it's a political question this nation should never be taking a war by a president without the authority of the people as acted upon in the Congress that's the issue and I said I don't believe President Bush will would he didn't it was a pretty narrow decision as a matter of fact but he ultimately didn't he didn't we did he was right and we were wrong as I suggest that's one of the most fundamental lessons I'm not sure we've learned it yet seventh act of the action got underway in Indochina and unanticipated events forced us off our plan course because we had debated the issues fully with the American people they weren't prepared for the changes that had to be made they didn't support many of the actions that would have been required to minimize the casualties and ultimately withdraw at a much lower cost a nation's deepest strength lies not in its military force and we sometimes forget this it lies not in US military force but in the unity of its people and we didn't maintain eight we didn't recognize that neither our people nor our leaders are omniscient I'm not sure we recognize that today we're our own security is not directly at stake because we're not commissioned we should never act unilaterally militarily we should insist that the decision for the u.s. to be involved militarily in these cases were our own security narrowly defined it's not directly at stake we should insist these actions be debated fully with our allies and with other nations with similar interests we didn't do that in Vietnam tonight we didn't hold to the principle that US military action other than in response direct response to our attack on our own security should never be unilateral we came very close to acting unilaterally in connection with the gut in the Gulf had the casualty estimates of the Joint Chiefs of Staff turned into into fact there would have been a huge blood loss there 90% of the blood loss would have been ours there's no excuse for the u.s. acting as policemen of the world there's no excuse for us accepting those risks and yet today our defense strategy our defense forces our defense budgets is based on the stated premise that we will act alone in dealing with major conflicts across the world I don't think we'd get learned the lesson I just pointed to tenth we failed to recognize that in international affairs as in other aspects of life at times there were problems which have no solutions that's particularly hard for me to say my life has been spent identifying problems developing solutions to them I am prepared to say today there are some problems that sometimes and have no solutions particularly not military solutions I'm not at all sure we wanted that there are many today who say we should intervene militarily in Bosnia to do so today I think would be a disaster we're gonna have to learn at times to live with an imperfect untidy world and finally 11th underlying many of these errors lay our failure to organize the top of edge lines of the government to deal effectively with the wide range of problems we were facing ranging from cities burning in this country to racial unrest economic issues of tremendous complexity to global conflict across the globe we didn't organize ourselves to deal with it we did organize very effectively to deal with the Cuban Missile Crisis I think that's one of the reasons we succeeded it of course was quite a different crisis it extended over a very short period of time it was very simple in concept the act of the alternatives were refused but we devoted a hundred percent of our time to that and nothing else during the period and I think that was one of the major reasons we were successful in during the Vietnam period there wasn't a single senior person focusing solely on Vietnam at anytime in the seven years I was associated with it we didn't have what Churchill called a war cabinet we should have so these were our major failures and I believe that pointing them out today will allow us to map the lessons of Vietnam and places in a position to apply them to the post-cold war world and I want to say one word about the post-cold war world the world of the 21st century before I conclude but before I get to that let me digress a moment to say a few words about the feelings about my feelings toward the two presidents with whom I worked I expand on these somewhat more in the book of course the first point to make is that neither was perfect but I admired both immensely the deep feeling of respect and affection despite the stress tension of 12 and 14-hour days seven days a week addressing these crises domestically and across the globe I think this extraordinarily warm and affectionate relationship that existed between me and the two presidents was common among all of the senior members of the Kennedy and Johnson administration's I think it's unique if you think about this that you don't find any books that I'm aware of written by members of these administration's criticizing the others and tearing them apart personally and if you look at subsequent administration's I think you'll find that is me now one word about Kennedy he was a practical politician and sometimes the political practices particularly of his subordinates took nasty forums and I relate one or two instances that kind of the book but a far greater long-term importance Kennedy was a leader he had uncommon charisma and he had an enormous ability to inspire he moved the young and the old both at home and abroad and in this imperfect world he raised our sights to the Stars and I think that legacy endures four years after his death as president the World Bank marked my wife and I travel 'listen accordance the earth villages that had rarely have ever seen in American and frequently we'd find attacked on the to the thatch of a hut torn a footer a dog-eared photograph of President Kennedy Tata turned out the Sun newspaper was one of the owners most prized possessions I think people nude meet heroes and they certainly found one in Kennedy now Johnson was totally different you won't believe this but yesterday I spoken in Los Angeles to a huge audience and one of the members took me aside and said he wanted for years wanted to put a question to me and he expected an answer and he said in all seriousness don't you believe that Lyndon Johnson was mentally deranged well the answer is I don't believe that but he was indeed a towering powerful paradoxical figure and he reminded me and I think often of this he reminded me of a verse from Walt Whitman you may recall it I think was from Whitman's song of myself and what Ben wrote do i contradict myself very well then I contradict myself I'm large I contain multitudes now that was Lyndon Johnson and in the end the tension between us between two men who loved and respected each other the tension between us grew so strong and reached the breaking point and we parted and to this day I don't know whether I quit or was fake quitter was fired and I made that statement Kate Graham's home she had a large party about ten days or two weeks ago and I made that same and she interrupted he said Bob there's no person in this room that believes that said of course you were fired well I said Kay you're just totally wrong there's one person that believes it and that's me well she said you were fired yeah I don't think it's really important but it's a rather amusing incident and it what it shows is the degree attention that existed and this was an important point and when you if you buy the book and read it I think it's important to understand the views of each of us as it related to our involvement in Vietnam which we're trying to do and why we ultimately party I must say this probably go on that that if the President had wanted to fire me he would have done it exactly the way he did and I would never know what I fired was fired or quit now what I do know however is that when President Johnson awarded me the Medal of Freedom my last day in office and a glittering ceremony in the East Room of the White House attended by the diplomatic corps the Supreme Court justices the leaders of Congress press family friends and so on I was absolutely overwhelmed by by the praise he he directed at me and I was totally unable to respond I think that had I been able to do so this is what I might say today I am 1558 days of the most intimate association with most complex individual I've ever known many in this room believed Lyndon Johnson is crude mean vindictive scheming untruthful perhaps at times he's shown each of those characteristics but he's much much more and I believe that in the decades ahead history will judge him to have done more for example through the civil rights legislation the Voting Rights Act the Great Society legislation history will judge and doom Dunmore to alert us all to our responsibility toward the poor the disadvantaged and the victims of racial prejudice than any other political leader part had it not been for Vietnam the war which he inherited and which admittedly neither he nor we managed wisely we would have been much further along in solving those problems and I believe that Ben and I believe it today now in conclusion as I said I want to refer briefly to the future in relation to the past my earliest memories are of a city exploding with joy the date was November 11 1918 it was Armistice Day I was two years old the city with San Francisco and the people were celebrating not just the end of World War one which of course we'd won but they were celebrating the belief of many of them at least the belief of President Woodrow Wilson that would one award and all the works but how wrong we were this city this century the 20th century will go down in history as the bloodiest century in human history the human race if you can call them you will have killed 160 million people 160 million people but now as his bloody century comes to a close don't we have the opportunity to look ahead to something else the Cold War has ended George Kennan on his 90th birthday and a year to go the celebration we came from the Council on Foreign Relations said he didn't believe there would be war among great powers anytime soon and by what by soon letting me mean well perhaps 20 to 30 years and I very much share that view the Cold War has ended I don't think there's a great likelihood of war between the great powers assuming wherever we do have the lessons of Vietnam before us they can't be learned they can be applied we should see much more clearly the risks of nuclear war we can reduce those wages I'm suggested in the appendix we have a much better understanding although we don't seem willing to apply it of the capabilities of multilateral institutions particularly the United Nations a much greater understanding of the capabilities of the United Nations to prevent conflict and where conflict develops to end it so don't we have reason to view the future with much greater hope don't we have reason to establish as as our objective the objective of this nation that we will not permit the killing of another 160 million people in the 21st century now many of you will think that so naive so simplistic so idealistic has to be quick citing but we are a great nation we're the most powerful nation in the world today we'll continue our way they've done terrible domestic problems I'm well aware of that but even in spite of those we are the greatest nation in the world the most powerful nation the world we're continuing we will continue to be the most powerful nation in the world for decades to come don't we have both the responsibility and the capability to prevent the 21st century from being a repetition of the 20th can we be at peace with ourselves if we strive for less than that I don't think so and I hope you will agree thank you what event or what information changed your perception of the morality of the Vietnam War well I I don't want to talk about the morality of the war that was what changed I think morality is as an issue should be considered far more than we considered in relation to foreign policy and the application of military force there are many who say there's no room for morality in connection with foreign policy and and military operations I don't believe that and if you just take the this nuclear problem for a moment just think of the morality of that suppose we use d'harans whatever we have today 10,000 strategic warheads suppose we use them we must if we have them we must kind of play use under some circumstances now suppose we use them what would happen what would destroy remember we targeted them on and of course the presumption would be that we were targeting them on somebody who had them and they target theirs on us neither one of us could defend ourselves against the other so they destroy us but in the and there's a major moral issue there I would think but put that aside for the minute what would happen to the rest of the world you know you're all concerned about Chernobyl oh my god that was a leak of nothing and look what happened as a result what do you think would happen to the rest of the world if Russia and we exchanged a part of our existing arsenals would kill millions tens of millions of human beings that worked part of the conflict what's the morality of that I remember the first time it was early in 1961 I went to the sprinkler to the Strategic Air Command in Omaha and I went over what's called the sy up the single integrated operation plan which is our plan for using nuclear weapons I couldn't believe it we would have killed non-combatants in nations other than the Soviet Union in the US by the millions what's the morality of that now we've been living with that for years we're living with it today so the morality of the application of military power in many many forms I've chosen the easiest one to talk about nuclear but I can apply it with large firepower but centrality of using napalm what was the morality I was on Guam in March of 1945 they're in temporary duty one night and I sat in on the interrogation of our b-29 crews I was part of the 20th Air Force b-29s interrogation the crews when they came back from raid on Tokyo we had killed 100,000 civilians that night that's more I think than the direct modalities that resulted from the dropping of the bomb 50 years ago in Hiroshima what was the morality of that in in the case of Vietnam morale issues by the score and we tend to overlook those I think as we look ahead we should get far more attention to it thank you I want simply to testify as a trained nuclear scientist that you are absolutely correct in your statements about the effect on civilians and other cancers therefore I must be correct about the morality I agree with you that with you about that also the next one please comment on the use of the US military for humanitarian missions such as Somalia and Haiti well I think where the military is capable of carrying out a humanitarian mission as I think perhaps it did it he it's appropriate to use it in the case of Somalia I think was incapable of carrying out the mission at least the mission is signed to it I for one would have no objection to our military being trained to carry out such missions I think we lucked out Haiti it would have been a bloody battle had not President Carter intervened and thank God he did but that wasn't our initial intention and I would have seriously questioned whether we should have used the military had he not intervened perhaps we shouldn't living to more questions yes I was looking I must confess that this act with some dismay I think we are better or no one will get home tonight did you consider the effect your book might have on the veterans yes and if you're a bit nam veteran particularly if you're a relative the one who died what would you think the nation should do in relation to to that loss I would think that you would feel the most important thing that could be done would be to ensure that that veterans son and daughter are sons and daughters grandsons and granddaughters would never have to face a similar tragedy so that's what the book is oriented to to try to prevent in the future the tragedy that occurred in the past they think what I want to emphasize what I want to emphasize and leave me out of this group but what I want to emphasize is these were not evil people dean rusk didn't intend to kill people for no gain to the Peace of the world President Kennedy and Johnson didn't intend to do that the military chiefs didn't intend to do that errors were made I made errors I certainly didn't intend to kill people other than to advance the Peace of the world we had fought as I said Dana and President Kennedy and the Joint Chiefs and I had fought three for five years in World War two and at the end of that you may not recall but Churchill said we lost millions we the u.s. France Britain lost millions of men because we appeased Hill Hitler because we didn't stop him early enough we thought we were stopping China and the Soviet Union and preventing the loss of militants we were wrong you've got to read there's a I know it's on page 295 because I was so so startling a private memorandum I didn't even see it Dean and I were as close as brothers I didn't even see that memo that he sent President Johnson till my researcher dug it out of the Johnson library a few months ago when I was writing the text Dean said if we don't continue to do what we're doing in Vietnam we will bring on World War three and we'll lose millions now that's what he believed we were wrong and I think what we owe to the veterans particularly to the relatives of those who died his assurance that we're learning those lessons we're going to apply them for their future and as I suggest their sons daughters grandsons and granddaughters will not face the same tragedy now one further point on the healing process there isn't any veteran to whom we owe more in a sense of obligation than Ron Kovic paraplegic lost both legs the author of born on the fourth of July and he said the other day and a guy how many let me just find it and I'll read it to ya he said the other day over the long run McNamara's book and his comments will promote healing as Americans we must all embrace McNamara Colonel Hackworth who is the most decorated living Vietnam veteran 100 won medals four times wound in Vietnam ended an article in Newsweek two weeks ago by saying McNamara's book is an important step toward understanding what happened so it's devoid repetition that's the first objective I had and he goes on to say and it may help some of the walking wounded to move farther along the healing path of forgiveness and that's good for America America's collective soul that's the second objective well I think we've reached the point of no return here my apologies to to all the writers of good questions wish we had had time for them all I want to thank mr. McNamara on my own personal behalf and on behalf of all our organizations for a very exciting and you
Quick Note: If you haven't seen the Fog of War film (which is one of the greats -- typically in the top 3 or top 5 of all time over on /r/documentaries, my other fav sub), or you haven't see the book, here's two or tree quick bullets from McNamara, who, love him or hate him, is certainly one of the most important figures in history and a key member of Kennedy's "Whiz Kids", who were called the "best & brightest". According to him:
We were much closer to nuclear war during the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962 than most people realize. In fact, with over 100,000 troops massed in Florida and with the first day's airstrikes totaling at least 1,080 sorties, the invasion was within only 48-72 hours. ...To prevent the nukes from being stationed there... But, as McNamara notes we found out 30 yrs later, they were already there, and the warhead were installed.
In this talk however, he spends a bit more time to explain how (in his view), nearly everyone in the 1960's believed in what was called the Domino Theory, where if Vietnam fell to the communists, then Laos would go, then Thailand, and so on, until the "Super Domino" of Japan or India would go. ...Therefore, the thinking was that military force was required in Vietnam as the "keystone in the arch" (Kennedy's phrase).
Domino theory or not, he says, a major lesson of both events is that we have badly failed to understand our enemies and their interest in those conflicts and in many others leading up to today. We must do more to understand and engage in diplomacy if there is to be any hope for long-term survival in peace on this planet.
All of this is really valuable to think about, you know, since this week will be the 70th Anniversary of Hiroshima Day (8/6/1945).
Lastly, here's a link to the film, it's just fantastic (~1 hr 45 min.): https://archive.org/details/TheFogOfWarElevenLessonsFromTheLifeOfRobertS.Mcnamara
Wonderful.
Excellent, thanks.