last night I offered you a brief biography of a lifetime friend and although I thought it would be safely inferred as to what my purpose was I want to make that explicit the Vietnam War has never been an abstraction to me it has been a highly personal matter so important is the Vietnam War that I never wanted it to be turned over to those who wish to use it for some political purpose or to advance some political agenda whether it be on the left of the spectrum on the right of the spectrum indeed the Vietnam War has invited a kind of polemical scholarship that stands as the bane of serious-minded historians not only is there a great deal of writing on the Vietnam War that one has to just wade through but as one might expect in a matter of time Hollywood got into the act and Hollywood his best understood and I'm not a person of strong opinions best understood as a purveyor of nonsense and we have had a lot of nonsense pervade what I'd like to do at least how I see the charge that Rob gave to me today is to sketch out what I consider to be the ten most important questions that we're going to wrestle with this week the 10 questions that will give us armor a defense against the polemicists and those whose ulterior motive is to promote a political agenda historians generally are not viewed kindly by people who prefer bumper stickers and sloganeering and complexity simplified but it is a complex subject so the ten central questions I'm going to sketch today amount to how we how I think we ought to think about the Vietnam War and I do not and I know George does not speak ex cathedra on these matters the highest priority I think this week is your curiosity and your questions and your readiness to cross-examine our thirty years of experience our thirty years of researching a 30 years of fielding questions from students in the classroom where do we begin we begin in the most improbable places with Otto von Bismarck and you can rightly scratch your head what he'll Bismarck the master of 19th century German statecraft is supposed to have said that fools learn from their own experience while wise men learn from the experience of others it's a good rule of thumb it's a good yardstick to measure Architects of our foreign policy back then and today accordingly the first key question around which this week's presentation presentations will be developed is what did the French war with the Viet men teach American policymakers the Americans have this weakness just Achilles heel they think history began yesterday or maybe this morning when you got up that they cut in on a historical process thousands of years long and assume a way that antecedents have any relevance by the way it's a it's a blessing to as it is a curse that complexity again because without that attitude all the virtue that comes from a can-do mentality gets undercut see history is a great encumbrance it's also a great illuminator and it takes human beings to figure out when it's illuminating and when it's encumbering secondly what were the major strategies and tactics adopted by America's civilian and military leaders in their own war with the Viet Cong and the North Vietnamese and were those decisions wise in the light of history we can't begin when the first American advisors arrive in Southeast Asia an important collateral and controversial aspect is what was the role and impact of airpower and I just provide you with a single quote for you to mull over and to chew on and to keep in mind at the outset of the Americanization of the Vietnam War as we escalated our combat role general Curtis LeMay said claimed quote air power could win the war without the introduction of army troops or Marines into South Vietnam it was by the way of view advanced by the proponents of airpower on the eve of World War two and we must throughout this course factor in the power like an extraordinary magnet that air power as a decisive instrument of war has had for the American people it pulls us it inclines us to simplify great complexities that come with having to put boots on the ground George herring gratefully will bring his expertise to bear on all of these important matters thirdly since the Vietnam War was the first televised war it seems reasonable to ask and we have how was the war reported and did the media coverage reshape public opinion to the benefit of the anti-war movement can the press be this is a cluster question can the press be regarded as a decisive factor in the wars outcome by the way does anybody have any idea how many journalists were in Vietnam covering the war at the peak of press coverage anybody six or 700 do I have a higher or lower fee 200 seemingly an innocuous question but it's pregnant with significance five thousand a thousand journalists were covering the war a thousand journalists do you really think they spoke with one voice doesn't this suggest the difficulty about the press as a useful analytical concept are there limitations when we talk about the press what we not to use the concept cautiously and carefully but if your purpose is to use words as if they don't have descriptive power but that they have a motive power let us say use words like their flags you run them up to steer up emotions then maybe we don't do we aren't faithful to the historical record ask yourself as we get prepared for a discussion on the role of the media how useful this discontent the press the media when you have a thousand different journalists covering that war all the way from Henry Lucis time life to who had the military like to call the communist Broadcasting System CBS Washington Post which was belittled as the Pravda on the Potomac so you have a whole range of journalists coming at it with different political axes to grind and some of them generally objective Stanley Carnot who wrote a an extraordinarily good book a journalist historian who had extensive first-hand experience in Southeast Asia has written that quote the press was behind the public this obviously contradicts conventional wisdom the press was behind the public not in front of the public so we will consider at some point I hope the question is the power has the power of the press been greatly exaggerated upon this subject Bob DeMaria will shed light on Wednesday fourthly Ted Delaney will address the issue of how the Selective Service System functioned during the war and what its consequences were last night excuse me I mentioned just two consequences but there are vastly more about this I have a little to say by way of editorializing this morning a fifth question one that I will consider on Wednesday is how did their backgrounds and personalities and sense of history shape LBJ's and Richard Nixon's conduct of the war I look forward to that in light of Hanoi official tally of 1 million military dead and 2 million civilians killed these are debatable figures but those are the official ones along with 600,000 military wounded we will also explore as we must the experiences of the Vietnamese themselves both America's allies and its enemies during as well as after the fighting is there I wonder truth in the observation that the French and the Americans destroyed Vietnam in order to save it while the victorious communist government and Hanoi saved the country in order to destroy it for the next two decades it is one of those ironies sublime of sort that characterized the Vietnam War we are fortunate to have Turing knocked dang with us to discuss this subject we externally grateful that he has traveled from Hanoi a closely related question that I will explore tomorrow is who was that man Ho Chi Minh or as it is pronounced in some parts of Vietnam as I discovered Ho Chi Minh America's principal nemesis throughout the war a seventh question that American history and popular culture especially it's remarkably potent and enduring myths Mol's significantly the public's response to events in Southeast Asia an eighth topic to be examined by George herring and Pam Simpson is who comprised the anti-war movement them and what was its effect on the war and American culture David Roberge has come to us from the Central Intelligence Agency to examine the role of intelligence in the war a matter of vital importance and finally what are the legacies and lessons to be drawn from the Vietnam War that will be the capstone of the week's sustained inquiry in Bismarck's judgment in other words have recent architects of American foreign policy been fool fools or wise men have they learned from their own experience or have they learned from the experience of others did they study the Vietnam War and distill its essence or did they become selectively amnesiacs and choose only to study that which they thought was worthy of study George herring and I will tackle that assignment in our wrap-up session on Friday these are the roughly 10 central questions that our speakers will be covering our plate in other words is going to be full no one's going to skimp this week your portions will be as large as what you get in Evans dining hall question I start with today what did you do in the war Gramps what a painful question question used to be what did you do in the war dad and now with four grandchildren I have to deal with Horace Gramps what did you do we know that the word Vietnam is embedded in our national psyche and you know for all the reasons why it would be crashing through an open door to itemize those for you and I know you wouldn't want me to do that with a little gout in my left foot I couldn't do it anyway that shooting war in Asia was the longest and fourth bloodiest 58,000 American names inscribed on that sacred place in Washington called the Vietnam Memorial Veterans Memorial given the accounting profession that we've been dealing with in the last ten years it's no surprise that we don't really know how much we spent somewhere between 150 and 200 billion dollars fighting the war on the homefront there was another war that war in Southeast Asia said fathers and sons as well as generations against each other though I must tell you at the outset I have found in my own research that we have a problem which is always a challenge and then we have what for political or personal or psychological reasons is muted is morphed into an issue and what I wish to do today among other things is to debunk some myths about what went on at the homefront and then return to the war in Southeast Asia and see if I can debunk a few more there was a remarkable split going on in America the family is most famously split by the war with the McNamara's and the Rusk can you imagine that the very people to top prosecuting the war overseeing its escalation and Americanizing it had to go home every night and face sons who were dramatically anti-war the Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara and Secretary of State Dean Rusk presided over the escalation and at home were their anti-war peace activists sons Craig and Richard the long-haired bearded war protester at Stanford Craig Craig McNamara had a picture of Ho Chi Minh up on his wall in the American flag upside down in his bedroom he would drop out of college become an expatriate leave the country and work romantically in the fields of Mexico and Chile and Mexico he hooked up with the great pedagogical reformer the time Yvan Ilic and worked the growing whatever they grew in villages feels the war abroad and what LBJ belittled is that quote damned little pissant country and vintage LBJ jargon was something that ignited a domestic upheaval a lot of that protest and unrest had to do with the military draft and the widespread resistance and evasion that are provoked it opened up a divide in American culture for the next 40 years between Vietnam veterans and those who never did military service during the war those who went and those who didn't and different historians give greater weight or greater emphasis to this divide my take is that the width of the divide has been a function of one's politics as is so often the case with trying to come to grips with the Vietnam War Robert timbering for example the a marine combat veteran who wrote an extraordinarily compelling book called the nightingale song that I will make reference to later gives great play to this divide to him it's like the green Kanyon it's something that perhaps will never be bridged and for many combat veterans according to Tim Burak that is how they perceive the rest of the culture it is a divide that has often been magnified at election time for partisan advantage and I think it also has been overstated for dramatic effect I never found in my relationship with Peter Barbera that the war in any way because he fought it and I didn't skewed or distorted or perverted our relationship and so I asked those who see that kind of unbridgeable divide I asked them to consider the evidence which suggests that it might not be as great as they contend most young Americans in the 1960s and of course this is not what the conventional wisdom permits most young Americans in 1960s neither fought the war nor demonstrated against it it does that this this doesn't have the dramatic quality of Hawks and dogs at each other rather than the simplicity of hawks and doves most Americans of the Vietnam generation were what I would dub to keep the aviary metaphor going Powell's they simply didn't know they were puzzled by what was happening they neither were against nor were they for they neither rushed to the colors no volunteered for service some did some were drafted but the truly shocking feature of the 1960s is how many Americans of that generation simply didn't get involved they dated they played sports they married they pursued careers and most avoided the passions and the turmoil of that decade and of all the facts about that so-called SiC tumultuous sixties period is that in 1968 and 1972 a majority of young Americans voted for Richard Nixon factor that into this bipolar perception of the 60s pitting hawks and doves against one another history is a messy place you look for this wonderful symmetry the way it ought to be and then you get poleaxed with reality poll Lex I think George knows of what I say to turn over enough documents and after a while you begin to hate journalists sorry Bob the war manages in Washington presided over a fundamentally unfair system a world of deferments and exemptions meant quite literally Selective Service I don't think that's what general Lewis her she had in mind selective service the system heavily favored the upper middle class and a college educated that it produced people who had fathers who had doctors and lawyers who understood how to navigate a system that those who had factory workers for a father could barely comprehend as Christian Appy has so aptly described the war it was a poor man's war and after early disproportionate losses by african-americans who are killed in action disproportionately to their numbers in the population which severed LBJ through the roof the numbers of african-americans who had killed subsided dramatically and those who died 58,000 were disproportionately poor Americans class trumped race in this instance and then of course there was Robert McNamara is the road to hell not often paved with good intentions is not the yellow brick road the road to the humbug Robert McNamara's Pentagon lowered standards during his time or admission to the military and by doing so the Pentagon played into the hands of the college educated who were eager to pursue loopholes and deferments between 1966 and 1971 under the auspices of project 100,000 the military services were compelled even the Marine Corps to get 20% of their recruits from the bottom rung of the test scores it was felt that this would be a socially leveling instrument you would move up via the military you would achieve a social mobility through the military by the way these tended to be future infantrymen and they were largely from poor families in a sense the loopholes went combined with project 100,000 open the door to the William rusty Kali's of the war William rusty Kelly of Miami Florida who became an officer despite lacking the mental and moral equipment required of officer hood who allegedly could not even read a map when he was in Vietnam became a leader of men after having done the impossible flunking out of Palm Beach Junior College in his first year utterly impossible in World War two college graduates were actually over-represented in combat and the frontlines and and one of the challenges of studying the Vietnam War as you constantly have World War two as your reference point what did they do in a good war how did we go to war after the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor Harvard and West Point during world war ii lost comparable a comparable number of graduates does that boggle your mind when one speeds up the reel of history and gets into the Vietnam War Harvard and West Point lost comparable numbers of graduates the Harvard classes of 1941 1942 and 1946 each lost twice as many men as Harvard did in the entire Vietnam War which was nineteen the poster boy of elite sacrifice of course was George Bush Senior a graduate of Phillips Andover Academy laded to be a Yale graduate class of 1948 who left prep school despite his family's long tailed miss and pedigree and became the youngest combat pilot in the US Navy one could not say the same of his son of the 11 million Americans who join the armed forces during the Vietnam War years as either volunteers or draftees approximately 2.5 million did military service in Vietnam this is why I eluded last night to the possibility that there are two point five million experiences that need to be reckoned with that was less than 25% of all servicemen and less than 10% of the draft age population the great majority of Americans the 16 million out of those 27 million or 60% who came of draft age that is between the ages of 19 and 26 between 1964 and 1973 thought no military service no military service whatsoever they neither rush to the colors and listed were conscripted nor burn their draft cards there were many however in that generation who gamed the system one future President of the United States Bill Clinton and I'd like to say a few words if you printed me about Slick Willy Bill Clinton epitomized his generation he was part of the mainstream experience in which only 10% of the draft age population served in Vietnam I'll get into how many actually saw count combat the number was so minuscule that we salute those who bore such a disproportionate burden for the rest of us if you think the burden is heavily born in Iraq today what went on in Vietnam I think causes what goes on today the pale bill with Bill Clinton dissembled for a while never telling the truth the whole truth and nothing but the truth but this is the truth I think about President Clinton and not he actually received his draft notice in April 1969 when he was in his first year at Oxford on a road scholarship and just like Dan Quayle I'll have more to say about the pro-war people but just like Dan Quayle bill searched around for a place in the National Guard and the Army Reserve because as everybody knew at the time though by the way as time goes by memory dolls and and it's easy to rationalize and say other things but everybody knew who lived through the 1960s that given that LBJ wanted to keep a low profile in the war and that LBJ didn't want to jeopardize his is a domestic reform program to grow society he would not activate the National Guard or the Army Reserve except in some small rare exceptions but in those days it was understood that if you could get into the National Guard or the Army Reserve it was a reprieve from Vietnam fun like Quayle Clinton failed throughout the summer of 69 so Clinton promised to join ROTC at the University of Arkansas after completing his second year at Oxford this was a contract that he signed with the professor of military science at at the univers Arkansas and then President Clinton changed his mind and he did send a letter saying I I will not join ROTC but he was saved from induction rather fortuitously with the introduction of the lottery system in late 1969 which was announced in November and went into effect on December 1st 1969 and it is true that between the time the summer of 69 when he announced he was not going to join ROTC and the lottery he was vulnerable to being inducted and he and he wasn't on December 1st 1969 he drew the number 311 I know about these high numbers I get 365 it was high enough to give him a pass on Vietnam but Bill Clinton is much static as he has received on his run-up to the presidency was no lone wolf and what equally boggles the mind is how many politicians who were for the Vietnam War and who claimed that it was unwinnable and that the politicians would have blamed for the Vietnam wars failure also found loopholes through which they could escape the war to wit Dan Quayle who went into the National Guard David Stockman who used that last resort of last resorts who used Divinity School which was the last exemption available the people had no intention of becoming a minister but he would then become head of the Office of Management budget management budget in the Reagan years Phil Gramm Phil where were you where were you Gramps in the Vietnam War he received a string of deferments as a professor of economics at Texas A&M and felt that that was the equal of an mo s11 b11 Bush infantry linemen in Quang Tri province in Vietnam Dick Cheney who flits across the pages of David Maraniss s book if you've read it closely they marched the sunlight visualize them head down walking across the university wisconsin-madison campus campus was IBM punch cards trying to find out what is to be discovered from all those holes indifference to the war and indifferent to war protesters where were you Gramps dick during the Vietnam War Newt Gingrich where were you Gramps during the Vietnam War it goes on and on and all it does to me is to bring me back to the biblical injunction let he who would be without sin cast the first stone why are we a culture so saturated in hypocrisy why do the very people who are guilty of what they charge others to be hurled all of these charges and allegations oh yes this week we'll be looking in the mirror and the reflection that we see may not always be very pretty one important fact about the Vietnam War should be established at the outset of any week-long discussion unlike World War two sacrifice with anything but universal and it is a source of shame and remains a source of shame my hero in the twentieth century they're not shared by many of the students I once taught at VMI my hero is George C Marshall and at the end of World War two George C Marshall offered a piece of extraordinary wisdom he said in a democratic society the only way to handle the shield of the Republic was universal military training that way we are fair we are even-handed nobody in Congress wanted to go along with the prophets Corinth in the late 1940s it is still the only just system it seems to me in a democracy unlike World War two when 70% of draft age men were in uniform the vast majority in other words the typical draft age American did not serve in the military during the Vietnam War let alone in Vietnam itself unlike World War two except for segregated African Americans Vietnam was not a culturally unifying war it did fracture us it did rend our social fabric it did undermine the social contract it did make a mockery of Montesquieu and Locke unlike World War two America's elite left the fighting and dying to their less privileged countrymen and there are exceptions of course many exceptions as I told you my friend Peter doesn't fit the profile he's the statistical anomaly college graduate with an advanced degree who ends up an enlisted man fighting and quandary province but there were enough of them to command our respect in 1969 draftees accounted for 88 percent of infantry rifleman in Vietnam indeed by the late 1960s and early 1970s it was generally understood that lifers were in the rear and draftees were in the front and that of course is not what you would call leadership by example another crisis in the American military so in one striking way the Vietnam veterans experience was certainly exceptional it was exceptional it was exceptional in other ways as well in 1968 American Pete well give or take five or six thousand it peaked at about five hundred fifty thousand men they were overwhelmingly young men their average age between nineteen and twenty which contrasted markedly with the average age of 26 in world war ii world war two was fought by a more mature american so 426 had to have a lot of people in their late 20s - he also had a lot of Marines who have been listing at 17 the military they fought in had also changed in other equally dramatic ways for example given the US Army's huge tail to tooth ratio an important feature the war which most people seem oblivious to the tooth to tail ratio the fighting spearhead against the big buttocks it's going to give support and provide maintenance to the Warriors who are doing the fighting that tail to tooth ratio is conservatively given at 8 to 1 there are some who put it at 10 and 12 to 1 and of course all of these figures go out the window during Tet because at that time when the enemy brought the war right into the base camps just about everybody the cooks the people running the bowling alleys they all got a got an m16 and participated in the combat but barring that dramatic exception the number of combat troops in 1967 in 1968 never exceeded 15 percent of all American troops in Vietnam this was not a lean mean fighting machine at most 80,000 of the 550,000 were actually fighting the war for each grunt aniline company or boonie rat in a maneuver battalion who was outside the concertina wire a helicopter pilot or a member of medevac unit there were 8 Remington Raiders in the rear and this is not a term of endearment we're in an age of computers Remington's we're the type right as a choice among the clerks and those who fought the war spoke pejoratively about the remington raiders the magnitude of the tail is best captured by long been who knows about long been let me let me take you back in time like this long bit up in the corner what's important about long been well it was the biggest US military base in the world long dead just outside of saigon north of Saigon a supply base outside of Saigon it was more than a supply base I'll get into all of its facets in a minute this phenomenon at long Binh could also be appreciated at the Nang Cam Ranh Bay Dong Tam in the Mekong Delta or at any divisional headquarters during the war long been the rear support complex that it was house 30,000 soldiers and civilian contractors they lived in a world of offices food services P X's motor pools NCO clubs warehouses bars bowling alleys swimming pools the most famous stockade in Nam and some of the 40 ice cream plants that the US Army operated around the country okay thank you air conditioning air conditioner anyway luxuries were commonplace luxuries were commonplace some war correspondents like John Lawrence calculated that 10 to 15 Americans in uniform were needed to support each infantryman in the field in Vietnam this is a big but this is a big tale the bloated size of the tail had a great deal to do with the Pentagon's commitment to a high standard of living for American serviceman man once again the road to hell paved with good intentions it was as well a way for Americans to wage what they had considered to be appropriate modern warfare because they went to war with the heaviest emphasis excuse me on technology and firepower and many who observed Americans in Vietnam referred to them as firepower freaks they decided that technology and firepower took precedence over military guile and finesse and this created one of the wars many paradoxes a poor man's war in terms of personnel but a rich man's war in terms of comforts at the base camp some might say military self-indulgence at the base camp and in terms of lavish firepower that approached at times profligacy mad minutes H&I the amount of firepower that was expended in Vietnam staggers the imagination with this what this signified was that the Vietnam experience meant profoundly different things to returning veterans and I suggested last night just how fragile generalizations can be sometimes simply collapse under careful examination and sometimes they're just like soap bubbles that go poof when you get too close to them an unfair draft was matched by an unfair prosecution of the war a small percentage of servicemen were asked to assume an inordinately heavy burden and again I take you back to one of the sign readings the David Maraniss is unforgettable you are their account of the black lions a regiment being led by Colonel Terry Allen jr. that goes off to battle with two of its companies that have strength captain Jim George's company and Clark Welch's Delta Company they're at half strength is supposed to have a hundred 85 to 200 men I've got half that compliment when they go out to battle was this the price of 40 I scream plants or of college grads gaming a system by the end of the week I hope you're able to answer that in a in a compelling way seldom have so few sacrificed so much for so many in 1969 to 1919 67 in 1969 the chances of an infantry rifleman in a line unit with an MOS of 11 b11 bush or its marine equivalent that the chance of that person being killed or wounded was 50/50 or even this was what Sherman called war it was hell for those people if you were in a an Hwa Valley where Jim Webb was leading a Marine platoon it was ceaseless combat with the North Vietnamese if you were a case on it was constant bombardment from the North Vietnamese if you were in the you drain in October of 1965 with Colonel Hal Moore and Joe Galloway who have done as an enormous service by writing the book we were sold as once in young and it followed up with we are soldiers still but not young if you were in the ID ring oh yeah drain it was something one never wanted to talk about again in Saigon Danang and its elaborate network of rear base camps scattered across the country the US military had its own world of Selective Service its own world of deferments its own world of exemptions for historians what did you do in Vietnam remains a valid question as valid a question is what did you do during the Vietnam War that's why when people tell me they went to Vietnam I'm not much impressed I want to hear what was your mo SLB 11b what we doing in the war don't try to pull the wool over my eyes likewise there were very different Wars at very different times that were fought in the war zone of Vietnam it mattered a great deal if you were there in 65 64 then if you were there in 69 70 and 71 mattered a great deal whether you were in the Mekong which was a very generally peaceful place compared to say Ike or Kwan tree Sanwa so why oh why did we fail I've got five minutes to do that justice and since this is a question we'll all be wrestling with for the rest of the week I only touch it a glancing blow there to this day is no consensus among historians about why we failed if you thought that the case Virginia there is no Santa Claus either a debate persists to this day and this is not surprising since history is really an argument without end you know like that history's messy we don't have the satisfaction that the scientists have of repeating an experiment in laboratory and getting it right there are irreconcilable versions of the past that still contend for followers there historians regard the wars unwinnable Stan Lee car no George herring among others there are historians who believe the war was winnable and that for example a recent book by Mark Moyer triumph forsaken which Cambridge University Press published in 2006 basically says it seemed and Westmoreland were heroes Halberstam and Sheehan were villains strategic Hamlet's was inspired operation so that the battle among historians continues it's a disagreement that has extraordinary tap roots in our culture where we're we cannot come to consensus on it it began probably with Colonel Harry summers who insisted we never lost to the enemy on the battlefield well that would be a surprise to the enemy and certainly at the platoon squad and company level he must re-examine that position so as we come to the end and they will later do a more careful autopsy on Hollywood or maybe I could do it in the question answer period I must shave a few minutes off because we have our picture horrors today and I want to end with a suggestion and it's a suggestion it comes from the most unlikely source at this very outset our alumni college as we dig more deeply into the subject of Vietnam and we do so I hope with a fair mindedness and without polemic I'm reminded of the wit and wisdom of Charlie Chan who once lectured number one son that quote mind like parachutes in order to function must be open keep your parachutes open
