Matt Yglesias

32 Responses to “Holbrooke on Bundy”

1. raft Says:
   November 30th, 2008 at 10:57 pm

   that’s a good review.

   can’t say too much more since i don’t know anything about Bundy, but didn’t Holbrooke himself support the invasion of Iraq? i note he carefully avoids anything but a cursory mention of that war in his review–perhaps telling, and also chastening.

2. Greg Says:
   November 30th, 2008 at 11:36 pm

   succeed in Afghanistan, the lessons of Vietnam are still relevant

   Between Iraq and Afghanistan, the latter has always been the more likely candidate for South Vietnam: The Sequel.

   I’d say that if you can’t understand that, then you don’t really understand the lessons of Vietnam at all.

   At least not if we’re talking about the lessons gleaned from, among others, Halberstam and Vann. Or the memoirs of the NVA themselves.

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4. John Henninger Says:
   December 1st, 2008 at 5:16 am

   One of the lessons of Goldstein’s book is that there needs to a strategic defintion of victory and Bundy failed to propose what “victory,” in Vietnam exactly meant. The United States faces the same problems in Iraq and Afghanistan since ther problems of these two countries need to be solved politically and not militarily.

5. McGeorge Bundy Says:
   December 1st, 2008 at 6:14 am

   Yep.

6. bob h Says:
   December 1st, 2008 at 7:12 am

   The Best and the Brightest of that time were undone by their colossal arrogance. In the team Obama is putting together I do not see that arrogance.

7. raylward Says:
   December 1st, 2008 at 7:21 am

   That JFK would seek talent from all quarters (Bundy and many of JFK’s other advisors who supported an aggressive military policy toward Viet Nam were Republicans) was not surprising, but isn’t this also a lesson to be learned from our experience in Viet Nam. When the outliers become the loudest voices, whose foreign policy is it? Even today we continue to debate whether JFK, had he lived, would have escalated the war in Viet Nam. Holbrooke makes the point in his review that Bundy, when he visited Viet Nam, seemed detached from the war and its consequences. Sound familiar?

8. Don Williams Says:
   December 1st, 2008 at 8:28 am

   Re Henninger’s comment “One of the lessons of Goldstein’s book is that there needs to a strategic defintion of victory and Bundy failed to propose what “victory,” in Vietnam exactly meant. ”
   ————–
   1) Well, one of the strategic ooals is that you would prefer to NOT DEPEND upon China to supply 95 percent of the nickel you need to make steel alloys –as we do today.

   In the early Cold War, the only nickel reserves we had of much consequence were small mines in Thailand and South Korea. When those played out, there wasn’t much point to continuing the war, but Johnston was willing to kill 30,000 or so US soldiers so that he wouldn’t be the President who “lost Vietnam”.

   2) Nixon going to China wasn’t a “brilliant flanking move around the Soviet Union ” — it was throwing in the towel.

   3) Americans are the stupidest fucking people on the planet — our $Trillion+ educational system is expressly designed to ensure that outcome.

9. windshouter Says:
   December 1st, 2008 at 11:01 am

   Bundy was correct to be opposed to negotiation with North Vietnam. In 1965, we had nothing to negotiate with them about.
   Their position was that Vietnam was going to be reunited as a communist dictatorship. The only thing to negotiate about was the timetable. The reason to be involved in Vietnam at all was to insure survival of South Vietnam. We could not get that in negotiations and our choice was either to not get involved or go to war. We spent 58,000 American lives, uncounted numbers of Vietnamese lives and billions of dollars to move the North Vietnam negotiating position and failed utterly. The point is that we need to be careful of analogies. Most of the time, negotiations find the middle way, but sometimes, one side will not budge off an unacceptable position. Negotiations are not a panacea.

10. Trevor Says:
    December 1st, 2008 at 2:55 pm

    Holbrooke, a Jewish neocon-lite favors no negotiations with Hamas, or the Iranians. Who cares what this feckless hasbara schtoonk has to say about Bundy or any of the other hidebound liberal Cold Warriors.

11. Hector Says:
    December 1st, 2008 at 5:24 pm

    Windshouter,

    Well, the right thing to do would have been not to get involved, and leave the Vietnamese to sort out their own affairs. But even if we chose to be involved, it doesn’t mean that there was no room for negotiations. Once it was clear that Vietnam was going to be a socialist state, we could have tried to persuade them to be another Yugoslavia (i.e. neutralist communist) rather than allying closely with Russia. That would have been a much better fate for all parties, except of course the decadent oligarchy in the South and the US military-industrial complex.

12. Trevor Says:
    December 1st, 2008 at 5:48 pm

    Is there any Jewish neocon Democrat who’ll you’ll not cite as some kind of sage? If Holbrooke’s a George Kennan-esque thinker – why isn’t Cheney? What lessons from Vietnam did Holbrooke draw that eluded Cheney? Is the only difference ethnicity and party affiliation? Is that why he gets a pass and gets to be presented as some kind of foreign policy sage? Holbrooke and his ilk are only marginally less culpable for Iraq, Abu Gharib, The Patriot Act, Gitmo, ad nauseum than Perle, Wolfowitz, Rummy, Abrams and the rest. They have an agenda and it’s “Securing The Realm”: Allowing Israel to continue its genocidal ethnic cleansing campaign against the Palestinians. They are Enemies of everything good and patriotic Americans believe in and they should be permanently purged from our government.

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