In both ways, what readers of Tuathail's article may expect is: (1) a discourse driven by the ‘capital G, lower case g' concept ---where this treatise had been structured to discuss a review of McNamara's contribution to the field. (2) The opening of an intellectual black box, where what most critics would dub as his "eleven lessons of war" were found debatable and selective.
Concurring with Tuathail, it was incorrect to perceive Vietnam in the context of the Cold War map. Conspiracy theorists consider this move as an action of the United States in suggesting a sense of machismo, in its world-wide competition with the Soviet Union. The nature of the argument is paranoia, where both geographic and historical knowledge were ignored and or suppressed.
It must therefore be raised, if a certain body is labeled as such, would it automatically mean that it supports entirely the current state of the Cause? To answer affirmatively is to be guilty of a grand narrative. In other words, one may be a Communist on his own terms, provided that the subject is the scope to which the line of thought applies. One may practice communism in a political subdivision, and not necessarily fight for, what Colin Flint [2006] conceptualizes as ‘world-space'. Policy makers mistakenly deemed world Communism a monolith, with the Vietnam War as one of its facets. It is therefore contrary to the intent of the Containment Policy's author, George Kennan --- there was the want of stand against Communism everywhere [Ford: 2007].
It was admitted by Kennan, in an interview conducted by David Gergen for PBS Newshour in 1996, that article "X" of the treatise was misinterpreted by his own government. The then all-out war against Communism is best seen as a Pyrrhic victory.
Further, Kennan shares information regarding Ho Chi Minh's affiliations. While he wrote his book entitled At a Century's Ending, it paved the way for his colleagueship with China affairs expert John Davies who zealously negated Minh's Communist practice. Davies repeatedly asserted that Communists will attempt to use Minh to advance their causes, but his intelligence will prevent them from even proposing. Minh's purely nationalist profile confirms the theory advanced in the PBS special, The Televised War, that despite China's occupation of Vietnam, there were still Vietnamese citizens who did not conform to the cultural practices of China (inclusive of which is Communist ideals).
Of the entire review of critiques collected by Tuathail, Vietnamese affairs analyst, Louis Sarris [1960] had made the most significant remark. There was not the lack of knowledge, but a multiplicity of references accessible. Sarris was highly agreeable in stating that the problem was the unwillingness on the part of McNamara and other policy makers to accept the relevance of information with which they personally disagreed. Tuathail also cites available materials which decision makers may have referred to. These were a set of individual reports written by the CIA which were later collectively called the Pentagon Papers, a commissioned compilation of independent, candid analyses of the wars progress. McNamara's consideration of the reports only came into effect in 1967, where he had found himself unable to make a solid, rational decision [Ford: 2007].
It is all the more confounding to include Ford's perspective. According to Ford, if there be at all, the lack of information, it would pertain to inadequacy in relaying the story of progress in Vietnam to the people. In terms of the policy and planning process, there was the division of counsels among top decision makers over how to prosecute the war [ibid]. There was the high-level interagency confidential presentation of the Rostow Thesis, which was deliberated, debunked, and yet despite Rejection by the Robert Johnson team was considered through the assistance of Secretary Rusk. Although the team included military officers, there is the lack of clarity on the issue as to whether Secretary McNamara was aware at the time of the skepticism of the said group's judgments [Ford: 2007]. The situation is illustrative of another of the weaknesses in judgment on the part of McNamara, where the issue was not the lack of expert decision makers, rather, error on party consultation. A copy of the Robert Johnson team's report had found its way to State's principal senior dissenter, under Secretary George Ball, who in turn used the material as reference for his own searing, across-the-board criticism of the Johnson Administration's continuing confidence on the war [Ford: 2007]. According to historian Stanley Karnow, when Ball's memo was given to the Secretary of Defense, McNamara had discussed the material with Dean Rusk and McGeorge Bundy, and only later did he admit regret of not having immediately discussed the memo with the President, and the submission of the memo to experts from the State Department, the CIA, the Department of Defense and the NSC for evaluation and analysis [Karnow, cited by Ford: 2007].
The next question was ‘how'. What McNamara did not write in his book was how the feasibility of this plan was tested through SIGMA. This double-phased simulation required the participation of the CIA, State, and Military Officers, with the Second phase played by command-rank officers. Even with knowledge of the results being unfavorable to the US in both Phase I and II of the simulation, it did not affect the senior policy makers. It is also interesting to note the high accuracy of the results in the war game simulation.
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R E F E R E N C E S
Ford, Harold P., Thoughts Engendered by Robert McNamara's In Retrospect, Electronic Article. http://www.cia.gov/, ACCESSED: 04 July 2009 at 0035 HRS.
Newshour, Public Broadcasting Station [PBS] Online, Interview with George Kennan [Transcript], 18 April
1996. http://www.pbs.org/newshour/gergen/kennan.html ACCESSED: 08 July 2009 at 0356HRS.
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