One of the things that I have been wondering about our involvement in the Vietnam War is how arrogant we were- at one point late in episode 2, Neil Sheehan mentions that “We thought we were the exceptions to history, the Americans. History didn’t apply to us.”
It makes me wonder- how did we get so arrogant so fast? We weren’t a global power until recently in the post WWII era. Or am I wrong about that? I never thought of the United States as a real global power until the 1950’s. I sort of thought of us as bit players throughout WW1 and up until the very end of WWII and our development of nukes. And we were damned near really humbled in Korea. How did we get the mentality that we can’t lose?
Or, again, am I just wrong about this?
The Dangerman
I’d propose the “arrogance” goes back to at least Manifest Destiny.
Adam L Silverman
Naive optimism rolled into what we call American exceptionalism. We have a high degree of ahistoricity to historic illiteracy as a society. It isn’t so much that history doesn’t apply to us. Rather we’ve decided there’s no such thing.
Omnes Omnibus
At the end of WWII, we were the global power. We tipped the balance in WWI. And in WWII, our material support (tanks, trucks, guns, etc.) made the difference. Our WWII troops did their part too.
Warren Terra
I think you underestimate Manifest Destiny, the Spanish-American War, Admiral Perry’s White Fleet, and the Monroe Doctrine. Sure, the US was at best a third-rate power circa 1914 by European standards – but only by European standards, not by American standards. Americans saw themselves conquering a continent, dominating a hemisphere, and opening up trade wth Asia. That the USA lacked a fleet of dreadnaughts to rival England’s, had stayed out of the Scramble For Africa and the Great Game, and lacked formal colonies for the most part was irrelevant, even a point of pride. The US wasn’t actually a dominant power until 1945, not militarily or even (to a large degree) economically, but it saw itself as one in 1899.
Fair Economist
The US as a global power goes back at least to the Spanish-American war, in 1898. Arguably it goes back to defeating the Barbary pirates in 1815.
? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?
@Omnes Omnibus:
Yup. Lend-Lease really helped the Soviets out on the Eastern front. It’s doubtful they or WAllies would have prevailed without it and our direct involvement in the European theatre.
Grover Gardner
I could be wrong, but by 1964 I think we had forgotten what a “guerilla war” was. Korea was a fairly conventional conflict, as wars go. But the Vietnamese were “gooks”–ignorant peasants who couldn’t possibly withstand the might of American military power.
D. Hyland
I don’t quite know how but I suspect it had something to do with the Cold War and it’s simplistic good vs evil hype. It really was scary though (I was born in 1950 and remember having a nightmare after Nikita banged his shoe on the table at the UN…. thought sure that the nukes were going to be dropped any minute.). Madison Ave., of course, helped out quite a bit. Also, I’m fairly certain that we saw every Hollywood war movie made; ‘we’ (and John Wayne) always won. There are almost certainly more sophisticated sociological explanations but… above my pay grade &/or cognitive horsepower.
Omnes Omnibus
@Warren Terra: The US was a potential world power since the Civil War. The Spanish-American War was the first flexing of muscles. WWI was the debut. WWII was the change from starlet to star.
Ruckus
@Warren Terra:
Rather arrogant wouldn’t you say? Especially for such a young nation. The difference was that in 1945 we really let it go to our heads. And all it’s done since is make those heads bigger, while the rest of the world recovered from WWII and rebuilt itself. Humility doesn’t seem to be trait of rugged individualism.
The Dangerman
@Omnes Omnibus:
I’d go a little later for actual world power; off the top of my head, I’d say Andrew Carnegie and the steel industry (1880’s?).
Omnes Omnibus
@Ruckus: In 1945, no other country was like we were.
? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?
What gets me about a lot of rightwingers, Trump supporters, etc, is how entitled they are to the US’ status as a superpower; That history has stopped and things will never change, and completely disregard science, expertise, and knowledge.
Mnemosyne
@Warren Terra:
This. We’ve always had a weird superiority complex when it comes to Europe, and our successful experiences with genocide in the American West and the Philippines primed us to think we could easily crush the Koreans and Vietnamese.
PJ
De Tocqueville (1835) talks about most Americans’ pride in their ignorance and their inability to accept any kind of real criticism about the country. This insecurity leads itself to a complete unwillingness to consider that what the country is doing, or has done, is wrong, no matter how obvious it is to an outside, or inside, observer. We tend to double down when we’re wrong, because obviously God is on our side. Since we are on the side of the angels, we will always prevail, and, on the rare occasion when we don’t, it’s because we were hamstrung by those liberals yammering about human rights and international law.
Mike in NC
By 1950 the Republicans had blamed Democrats for “losing” China and generally being “soft on Communism”, which put both JFK and LBJ on the defensive concerning foreign affairs.
Omnes Omnibus
@Mnemosyne: Sorry, that was simplistic.
Warren Terra
@Omnes Omnibus: Sure, but by European standards of power the US’s potential remained largely unrealized until WWII. The US didn’t display what European powers looked for in assessing strength (armies, navies, threats, confrontations in Africa and Central Asia), and the Europeans didn’t even bother to learn any lessons about trench warfare from our Civil War (to be fair, the Brits also failed spectacularly to learn anything from their own Boer War). My point is that it’s a mistake to look by European standards, that the American self-conception was one of overwhelming might and glorious destiny at least a good half-century before anyone else really took our strutting seriously.
proportionwheel
Somewhere on my bookshelves is a copy of “The Quiet American” and I think I’m going to find it and read it again.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
I was thinking religion had to have played a role. IIRC, Roosevelt was fairly secular as a pol, but Eisenhower was enthusiastic about a lot of the crap we’re still dealing with: National Prayer Days, In God We Trust, One Nation Under God, Billy Graham.
Mnemosyne
@PJ:
A fun supplement to De Tocqueville that was written around the same time: Frances Trollope’s Domestic Manners of the Americans. She has us dead to rights, in a way that would be called “snarky” today.
Omnes Omnibus
@Warren Terra: I do not disagree.
Mnemosyne
@proportionwheel:
Remember — Greene wrote that in 1955, about a decade before the American portion of the war really got started. The man was a prophet.
PJ
@Ruckus: Many of the architects of the international system following WWII were Americans, and I think they had been sufficiently humbled by the destruction they saw in both World Wars and in the Depression, even if the US escaped the some of the worst parts of those events. It wasn’t until the baby boomers grew up that you had a whole generation leading things who, on the whole, had no idea how bad things could get when society broke down. The reaction by the Truman Administration to the poverty, starvation, and dysfunction in Europe following WWII was the Marshall Plan; the reaction to the collapse of Communism by the Bush I and Clinton administrations (and Congress, of course) was sheer triumphalism and full speed ahead with predatory capitalism, leading to the state of Russia today (and much disillusionment in Central and Eastern Europe about what the West stands for.)
The Dangerman
@Warren Terra:
Yes and no. There was a reason the Japanese had to attack Pearl Harbor; without PH, isolationism would have continued. Recall, before WWII, Germany and the Axis Powers wasn’t the threat; the Soviet Union and Communism was the threat. Without PH, we’d have been happy to have Germany and the USSR duke it out for a while.
Mnemosyne
@Omnes Omnibus:
If you read the Frances Trollope book that I linked to above, you will be a little freaked out at how accurate she is in her picture of Americans and their attitudes towards Europeans, and she wrote it over 175 years ago.
Ruckus
@Omnes Omnibus:
Yes, I understand that. What I’m saying is that we were also full of ourselves and in many circles we haven’t lost that attitude or it’s gotten a lot worse. See drumpf, et al.
Felonius Monk
@proportionwheel: While you are at it, also read “The Ugly American”.
Omnes Omnibus
@Mnemosyne: Where is the link?
? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?
@PJ:
But isn’t that like every culture ever? Saying “God is on our side” is what everyone has ever said about their own.
hellslittlestangel
It makes me wonder- how did we get so arrogant so fast?
America is a young country. You know, immature and stupid.
PJ
@PJ: I should add that, a few years later, Grant, in his Memoirs regarding his experiences in the Mexican War, writes that he knew that it was an unjust and immoral war, as did many other Americans, but there was no overriding the general political feeling and will that all of this land was ours for the taking.
PJ
@? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?: Some countries (e.g., Germany, Japan) have had occasion to reconsider that notion. Despite our setbacks in Vietnam and Afghanistan and Iraq, we have not.
Paul Gottlieb
We were already a major industrial and agricultural power by the turn of the 20th century. and we had no real military rivals. Sure the European powers had a rich military tradition and better trained armies, but they were far away and no threat to us. Certainly by 1900 it was obvious that the US, with its enormous industrial capacity, was going to be a world power. And after the European countries ruined themselves with WW I, we were clearly the most powerful single country.And after the Second World War, we probably had 75% of the world’s productive capacity as well as the most powerful Navy and Air Force.
Bailey
@Warren Terra:
This is a good point. Add in the fact well before we were engaged in international conflict, America was the place people from all over came to for “opportunity” and you have a ready source for feeding the self-delusion of glorious destiny. Throw in some founding father mythology, some “god-given” righteousness, some rugged individualism and add an ample pinch of snake oil salesmen and it is not hard to see how the “exceptionalism” settled into the national consciousness.
One thing I learned from the Vietnam series that I had not previously grasped before absolutely stunned me: Nearly 60% of the American public thought the kids at Kent State were asking for it when they were fired upon by the National Guard. The majority of the country were on the side of the National Guard. WTF?!?
Ruckus
@PJ:
Have heard it said from the UK that they sent the criminals to Australia and the god botheres to America. I’ve always said that the Puritans didn’t come here because they were oppressed, they came here because they couldn’t oppress everyone else.
Gvg
Eh, we should critique ourselves, but I have heard other nations behave about the same. We consider North Korea to be hard to read and insane to be standing up to us and everyone else. Israel comes to mind. I have heard Iranians have a pretty arrogant outlook. Pretty much most of what I remember of England and France’s history. Rome and the Pope. Argentina. Japan.
So that means it’s not going to stop.
It would be less embarrassing to me though if more of us knew a little more history, especially if they are going to run for national office or be reporters. Looking at you Congress. The respecting of non expertise and worship of the common moron bothers me a lot, and it’s happened more recently in my lifetime. I guess it’s happened before but I hate it.
Another Scott
@Mike in NC: Yup.
Plus, I think an argument can be made that even in August 1945 we weren’t the global hegemon that the simplistic histories taught us in school. The USSR had tremendous power in Europe. We couldn’t keep Germany unified and democratic. The GDR was established in October 1949.
A reasonable argument can be made that The War of 1812 was another example of US hubris that didn’t work out too well. (E.g. invading Canada and expecting to be “greeted as liberators”.)
Cheers,
Scott.
Agorabum
“Shall we expect some transatlantic military giant to step the ocean and crush us at a blow? Never! All the armies of Europe, Asia, and Africa combined, with all the treasure of the earth (our own excepted) in their military chest, with a Bonaparte for a commander, could not by force take a drink from the Ohio or make a track on the Blue Ridge in a trial of a thousand years.” – Abraham Lincoln, 1838
We have always believed we are special and the rules don’t apply.
Warren Terra
@The Dangerman:
Yes, but then again Japan attacking the US is instructive as to how seriously the US was taken as a global power.
PJ
@Bailey: Of course they were asking for it, just like the anti-Nazi protestors in Charlottesville were asking to be run down by terrorists and were just as bad as the Nazis. That attitude in white America hasn’t changed in nearly 50 years.
Adam L Silverman
OT – I would have expected this to have happened in Florida.
? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?
@PJ:
Being completely invaded (and divided) and having two city-destroying bombs dropped on them helped that.
The US, in recent history, has never been seriously, immediately, threatened, let alone invaded or defeated to the point Japan or Germany were.
Redleg
I think our overconfidence in Vietnam had a lot to do with how much we under-estimated the capabilities and willpower of the North Vietnamese and the Viet Cong. We thought that our superior technology and firepower would win the day. I believe that our over-confidence in our superiority and mis-understanding of the enemy hampered our ability to adjust to the realities of guerilla warfare. Our overconfidence, perceptual blinders, and self-justification for the war and our actions ultimately led to the escalation of commitment where we continued to expend resources in a failing course of action.
Bailey
@PJ:
I’ve already skipped to the end and finished the Vietnam series. In the protest scenes (and especially the counter-protest, “pro America” scenes) it was quite easy to recognize the type of people who are still amongst us. It was actually very disheartening.
Ruckus
@Redleg:
With very few words changed that could be us again in this world that has changed in a lot of ways that a number of people currently in charge do not, will not, can not understand.
craigie
We were in Vietnam at the end of last year, and we were surprised to discover that this thing we call the “Vietnam War” is referred to there as the “American War.”
Makes sense if you think about it, but it also forces a complete change of perspective.
PJ
@? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?: Sure. But, say, the UK was not invaded in recent history, and they have had to reassess their role in the world, and in their own minds, a lot more than the US has. Obviously the US is still a global power, if not THE SUPERPOWER anymore, thanks to the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and this makes it hard to get our failures, and lack of wisdom in foreign policy, to get through to the average citizen. In this, we and the Russians are a lot alike – why shouldn’t they still be ruling half of Europe? After all, no one successfully invaded them. Etc. Our personal self-image is so wound up in our being Kings of the Hill, nation-state-wise, that we can’t let it go, no matter how many thousands of soldiers’ (and foreigners’) lives it costs to boost our self-esteem. (This is also why many Americans support Trump, because he talks as if America should rule the world like a bully.)
Bailey
@Redleg:
It’s not just that we underestimated their capabilities and resolve, but that we failed to recognize their issues and culture entirely and assumed they would see the wisdom of our version of “democracy.” The series talks about Vietnam but might as well have been screaming “Iraq!”. We also convinced ourselves that it was strictly a choice between Vietnamese “freedom” and the pervasiveness of the Domino Theory and disregarded intelligence analysis as early as 1945 that there was no way for us to “win” there. There wasn’t even a clear definition of what a win would look like.
seaboogie
@Adam L Silverman: Heh. If it helps, I had just moved to FL and my car had arrived via carrier from Canada. I was having it washed before going to my lover’s wake that evening – funeral the next day. A guy tried to pick me up while they were cleaning my car. I explained my situation, and he still persisted. Everybody kept their shirts on though.
dn
The US was always prone to a Whig view of history, and we were always sustained by the belief that our system of doing things was the wave of the future. It wasn’t so much that we believed that we were the “exception” as that we believed we would shortly become the rule. And a lot of people around the world thought we were right, too.
It’s continually underappreciated how late democracy was in coming to most of the rest of the world. Even in Britain and France, the former severely restricted the franchise throughout most of the 19th century (at the time of the US Civil War most of the British working class didn’t have the right to vote) and the latter alternated between republicanism and monarchy/empire. Most of the rest of Europe didn’t have much democracy until after WWI, when it briefly flared only to be just as quickly crushed by fascism. WWII and the Cold War not only made us the dominant power in the world, it also seemed to finally prove our view of history correct (and eventually the end of the Cold War made it seem so conclusive that we started declaring the End of History and all that bullshit).
Vietnam was supposed to be easy because we assumed the Vietnamese people would share this view of the superiority of American-style institutions and that this would overcome all other factors. Obviously, we were totally wrong.
? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?
@Bailey:
I’m sure if the shoe had been on the other foot (rah rah America, white silent majority types being taken out and shot), that support for the shooting would not be quite as high. Extremely disgusting.
PJ
@Bailey: I watched I Am Not Your Negro, the James Baldwin doc, last week, and the 1950’s and 60’s white supremacists harassing and beating black schoolchildren and civil rights protestors had the same utterly self-confident zeal and insane hatred that I saw in the footage of the Charlottesville white supremacists. The notion that there might not be a class of people permanently beneath them terrifies them.
Adam L Silverman
@seaboogie: Given how today went, I’ll allow it.
Major Major Major Major
What’s mister pie here up to tonight, anything worth peeking at?
seaboogie
@Adam L Silverman: Yep. Am sometimes grateful for such opportunities to bring up memories of how richly strange my life has been – my brief FL experience playing no small part in that.
Bailey
@? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?:
One of the killed was an ROTC student. Even his family received hate mail because the kid had the temerity of just being on campus that day. There’s really not much indication that any of the killed or injured were even protesters; many were just looking on or passing between classes.
? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?
@Major Major Major Major:
You mean Bayleef? They’re actually behaving themselves tonight.
Major Major Major Major
@? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?: Ah, good to know.
Gilles
Ta-Nehisi Coates has recently been discussing the answer to John Cole’s two closing questions…
Bailey
@Major Major Major Major:
Spineless, much?
Dmbeaster
@The Dangerman: No, it really does date to the Civil War. At that point in time, the US had a huge army and navy. There is a reason the British paid $15 million to the US for the Alabama claims post war (damages for building two warships for the Confederacy). The US did not maintain that force thereafter unlike the European powers, but I think everyone was aware of the US capability. WWII fundamentally changed the attitude about military might. Prior to WWII, only the navy got serious support (the US Navy was third behind UK and Germany in 1914), and the US just did not bother to arm itself. After WWII, and due to the threat of the USSR, we vastly expanded the size or our standing armed forces.
John Biles
The US has always been arrogant, from square one. If we weren’t, we wouldn’t have thought we could take the British in the War of Independence. After the War of 1812, the US won *every war* it fought until Korea. So of course we became very arrogant.
steve herl
@D. Hyland:
? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?
@Bailey:
Come on. Don’t be an ass
@Bailey:
Authoritarians, especially stupid ones, will always be with us, unfortunately. I know this country has never been perfect and the founding fathers were very much flawed and not of one mind on everything, but those kind of attitudes and beliefs run counter to anything this country is supposed to stand for. That they can blame innocent people (American citizens!) for being shot to death by soldiers and still consider themselves patriotic Americans is mind boggling. Goes to show that lots of people hold no true allegiance to higher ideals. Only to their tribe. Freedom for me and not for thee.
What freedoms are “the troops” supposedly fighting to protect when prisoners (Not even necessarily convicts either, just people awaiting trial) are kept in concentration camp conditions and the asshole who arranged all of that gets away scott-free? What kind of freedom or justice is that?
The Dead Kennedys were right: the law don’t mean shit if you’ve got the right friends. That’s how this country is (apparently) run.
Bailey
@? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?:
Sorry, but I’m not the jackass testing the conversational waters and trying to speak in code.
? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?
@Bailey: I’d hardly call it code. The pie filter is right down below. Explains it. “Mr. Pie” is obviously a reference to someone who has been “pied”. You’re a commenter who has a checkered past here and don’t comment often. Do the math.
Bailey
@? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?:
Okay, then it’s being a jackass without a code.
My commenting frequency is absolutely of no one’s interest or concern. The “checkeredness” of my comment history correlates entirely to how much one loves Hillary Clinton and behaves like a heather in a comment section.
cokane
tbh, the US had a crazy winning streak leading up to Vietnam — the two world wars, spanish-american, mexican-american, not to mention numerous other small conflicts. And even Korea had something to show for it, despite not really being a victory. I think it’s pretty easy to sympathize with the arrogance of the time.
? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?
@Bailey:
Calm down. I was just making an observation. It’s generally okay to disagree on policy. It’s not okay to hold someone to a double standard, etc. Not that I’m saying you did. I don’t remember that much. It was election year and emotions were running high. Add to that Clinton has also been savaged by RW propaganda for 30 years. Take that into consideration.
House
@D. Hyland: Like you I was born in 1951 and remember the Cold War. When I was 13 or 14 living in Topeka,Ks I was awaken by a nearby lightening strike with the associated flash and boom to south of our house. That was the general direction of Forbes Field which at the time was a Canberra bomber base and I was convinced that we had begun WWIII. Now when I hear about politicians wetting their pants over terrorist bombings or shootings and stirring up the populace with talk of existential threats to our country I have to laugh. ISIS, Al Quada and North Korea are about .001 per cent as dangerous to me as some gun nut living down the street and roughly equal to the moron in the White House.
Ladyraxterinok
77yo white woman. I lived thru this period; I cannot imagine watching a documentary about the war.
One of my brothers was in VN in 1968. My then husband was a grad student in physics with student deferments. All of the national engineering and science organizations (in 67-68?) started getting panicked calls from grad students close to getting their degrees but threatened with loss of their student deferment. (Each state had its own quota and could determine its own method of deciding who got deferred.)
Mrs. D. Ranged in AZ
@Adam L Silverman: can I up upvote this a thousand times?
ceabaird
Almost all the top brass had no clear policy or strategy for the damn war, except “WIN!”. That’s what the “wiser & cooler heads” at State Department were supposed to be providing, except they all were almost as batshit crazy – e.g. Henry Cabot Lodge, jr. That said, I think one of the lasting negative effects of the Viet Nam War was the elimination of the draft – this removed the real pain of war from all but a few families, and therefore real vigorous debate on measures to go to war, but also removes the “whistle-blower” from the field. A draftee doesn’t give a shit about their military “career”, and will gleefully tell everyone they know back home on how fcked up the force & officers are. What’s going to happen to them – get busted? Fine, and once their tour’s done, they’re back home & ready to talk. Vets do this now, but with draftees, the numbers were so high, they couldn’t be ignored.
mai naem mobile
I think a good part of this is because Americans don’t travel and live abroad a whole lot. Talk to Americans who’ve lived especially in other advanced countries will comment on how residents of other countries take a lot more vacations and have universal health care. Part of that lack of travelling abroad is because the US is so large you can travel around in this country and not run out of new places to go to. I have family in the UK and Germany and they’ve all traveled to at least 9 countries in Europe alone.
opiejeanne
@Ladyraxterinok: My husband’s 70. in 1969 he t went to the Air Force recruiters to see about enlisting before graduation. They promised him the sun and the moon and several stars. He came back to talk it over with me, went back a few days later all ready to sign, and the same two guys acted like they’d never seen him, told him they didn’t need to give him a thing because they had so many guys signing up. He fumed about it for about a week.
The lottery numbers were announced in December, just before our wedding, and his number was 293.
Those two recruiters called and called our apartment, begging him to sign up.
Kathleen
@Bailey: As my dad ruefully observed after the killings at Kent State and Jackson State, “It’s open season on college students”. (I was one at the time).
Kathleen
@PJ: As a side note, my cousin was head of a SW Ohio college food service at that time. Many of the students marched to Kent State to protest shootings. He prepared and distributed food to them for the march. He received death threats. “Same as it ever was”.
patrick II
The thing that struck Cole was the arrogance and exceptionalism, The thing that I most remember is the lying by our presidents, the military, and government officials (such as MacNamara). In the 1964 election VS Goldwater, Johnson lied and said that he wouldn’t let American boys fight and die and the Vietnamese should fight their own war. Nixon lied and said he had secret plan to end the war. Both times we elected a guy we thought would get us out of the war, both times the voters were thoroughly betrayed. And after people found the Gulf of Tonkin incident to be a sham distrust grew worse. All of those lies at the cost of thousands of dead set a baseline for the high level of distrust of government people have today.
Sherparick
@Omnes Omnibus: At the end of WW2 U.S. was 1/2 of total world GDP. We had the largest & most powerful Air Force & Navy. & The Bomb. The British Empire was broke & dissolving. Stalin’s Soviet Union had the largest Army, the best intelligence service, but a war wrecked economy & most of it’s subjects hating the regime. Then the Cold War started in Europe & anti-communism became the instrument of the business classes & Republican Party to beat back the New Deal & Democrats. The terrible motive of the Vietnam War is that Kennedy & Johnson’s chief fear was that if they did not intervene in Vietnam they would be accused of “letting another country go Communist” by Republicans.
qwerty42
@Warren Terra:
I believe the economic power shift began during WW1. To pay for munitions and other supplies the Allied Powers paid in gold (gold standard still ruled — none of yer filthy “fiat currency” — so would have been the Paulites dream). I gather much of it remains in the Federal Reserve in NYC. There was some mention of this at “http://greatwarblog.com/” (The Great War Blog), now gone.
AnonPhenom
The Civil War was the Europeans best chance of making sure we didn’t become ‘players’ on the world stage. Their insistence on a game of ‘winner takes all’ twice in a 25 year period left us the ‘last man standing’. And kudos to us, we managed that situation to our geo-political advantage without screwing the pooch.
History of the last 150 years: They fucked up. We didn’t. Then Trump happened.
john fremont
@Redleg: A movie released in 1976 called Go Tell the Spartans hit on all of these themes you bring up.The movie flopped in the theaters when it came out because nobody wanted to talk about Vietnam in the mid 70’s. The movie is set in the early 60’s with an Army advisory unit just arriving in Vietnam. Burt Lancaster plays the commanding officer. Also, the platoon sergeant is played by the actor now known as the Dos Equis guy, the Most Interesting Man in the World. The movie, acting, etc. was OK, but it definitely attempted for a realistic approach to the Vietnam War.
Spaniel
The Manifest Destiny has been disected a lot in the various posts above, but very little IMHO about how our society/civilization changed in the baby-boomer years, as well as the demise of former superpowers to influence the world (the British gunboat diplomacy).
The baby-boomer years saw the rise of suburbia, the influence. Of television and music, the might of 19th and 20th century companies like GM, Ford, steel, etc. There were a lot of signs that our fathers kicked butt 20-years earlier and these are the rewards; with a little effort by the boomers would mean more things.
bmoak
Also remember that the McCarthy-led attacks on the State Department in the 50s led to almost all experienced career diplomats and analysts being forced out (Those were the guys who lost China, dontcha know.), leaving the US gov’t with pretty much no one who knew anything about Vietnam.
evodevo
@Bailey: Yes. This. I was teaching HS in southern Ohio when Kent State went down, and that was the attitude of a majority of the teachers at the school, and a majority of the locals. The coastal “elites” were out of touch with the “moral majority” even back then. Most of Middle America, and the coastal working class, saw demonstrators as delusional left-wing/Commie unpatriotic types who deserved whatever abuse they got. Not until the war dragged on and THEIR kids started coming back in body bags in large numbers or suffering from PTSD and turning to drugs did the support for the war turn against. And even then they STILL didn’t like protests … too messy/noisy/disrespectful/whatever. They STILL (if my elderly conservative relatives are any guide) think we could have “won” the war if the hippies had been silenced.
brisket
I’ve been reading an interesting book published in about ’63, written by an Australian journalist about the situation in Vietnam.
If the higher-ups in the US military establishment had bothered to read it at the time, history might have been quite different. It explains the complexity of the situation in a way that makes it clear no intervention is likely to succeed. In other words, a very similar situation to Iraq. The phase of cultivating a local dictator, the phase of abandoning the local dictator, the phase of internecine chaos when he falls, then sending in the troops and bombs when you realise the situation is out of control. And the people in charge now are as stupid, if not stupider. America doesn’t learn a thing.
Kathleen
@evodevo: I remember how popular Nixon was with his dog whistling Southern Strategy and tough stance on the war. His supporters were rabid. Same as ot ever was.
jefft452
@Warren Terra: “That the USA lacked a fleet of dreadnaughts to rival England’s”
We did not lack a fleet to rival Britain. The Great White Fleet was built specifically to challenge the Royal Navy. As early as 1908 the Admiralty told Parliament that they could not guarantee control of the Atlantic in the event of war with the US
ljdramone
@dn: “Vietnam was supposed to be easy because we assumed the Vietnamese people would share this view of the superiority of American-style institutions and that this would overcome all other factors. Obviously, we were totally wrong.”
Yeah, whocouldanode that people might resent foreigners with guns coming to their country and ordering them around. I’m not saying that the Viet Cong or the NVA treated South Vietnamese peasants better than we did, but it seems unlikely that the Viet Cong could have survived for long without sympathy and support from some in the South.
NorthLeft12
Sorry, I went to bed just as this was being posted. I agree with Dangerman, Warren Terra, and anyone else who identified the idea of Manifest Destiny with the beginning of arrogance and adventurism…and that was at the start of the 1840s.
From Wiki;
This has been around a long time John. That you never really recognized it until recently kind of shows how ingrained it is in your society.
NorthLeft12
@Dmbeaster: One of the driving reasons for Canadian confederation in 1867 was the very real fear that the US [with a huge military force] would absorb Canada. England was pretty much powerless to stop them and it was felt that the US would restrain themselves from attacking an independent country rather than a colony.
That is pretty much what I was taught in grade school and high school.
Another Scott
@ceabaird: I was a kid back then, but even I was wondering:
1) “Why can’t we win? Why is the war dragging out so long?”
2) “Will I get drafted and have to fight over there, too?”
I haven’t checked the timeline recently, but IIRC, ending the draft was tied up with 18-year-olds getting the vote. Both were also tied up with politics – Nixon was trying to get out in front and claim credit for Democratic initiatives and boost his re-election chances. And it certainly didn’t hurt him (he did very well among 18-20 year olds, IIRC).
I’m of two minds about the draft:
1) National service of some sort is a good idea. It can help build national cohesion, and there’s a mountain of work that needs to be done!
2) Being forced into low-paying national service when you’re just starting adulthood can be terribly disruptive. And how do you make a draft fair? We don’t need nor can we afford a 5+M wo/man military any more – only a small fraction of those in the relevant population group will be chosen – who gets to refuse?
Plus, remember the run-up to the Iraq war. There were millions demonstrating in the US and around the world. Bush and the GOP didn’t care. The military was too small for their wars (remember “stop loss” and many, many deployments), but they didn’t care. It’s easy to imagine how much worse it would have been if they had a larger pool of people to choose from (“We need a bigger surge!!”)…
There are good reasons to have a draft, but as long as we don’t have sensible people who recognize the limitations of our military then I would be very wary of bringing it back.
Cheers,
Scott.
The Pale Scot
@Paul Gottlieb:
Factoid that has always stuck with me. In 1944 the USA built more airplanes and ships of all types then the rest of the world combined did thru out the entire war. We were launching a dozen merchant ships a day. The Soviet built more tanks than the US simply because their army rode on Studebaker trucks so they could concentrate on combat vehicles.
Boatboy_srq
@The Dangerman: I’d go all the way back to the Monroe Doctrine. The US played the Big Kid On The Block from that point forward. Monroe Doctrine let the US play kingmaker throughout thr New World, tinkering with any nation southward. It explains Texas, California, the war with Mexico, the Spanish-American War, on and on. Manifest Destiny falls under its pervue. The Great White Fleet was part of it as well.
The one change was that twice in three decades the US was part of the coalition that rearranged Europe, and took that as having saved Europe’s collective bacon. The swelled heads and conviction of invulnerability began there – but it began in 1918, not 1945. Post-WW2 actions were thr attempt to cash in on international political capital more than a change in the national mindset.
The Pale Scot
Start by making all the lawyers and MBAs second louies and giving them a rifle platoon.
Ruckus
@opiejeanne:
I was the opposite of your husband. I went to the recruiters and the AF guy was frosty as hell. But I was so worried about the draft that I enlisted in the navy. Then we had the lottery. My number was 15. I was IA. Of course at the time everyone who was breathing and had 4 limbs was 1A. Anyway I would have been drafted had I not already joined. Worked out for me, not so much for many others.
I will say that ending the draft hasn’t really changed who joins. The economically disadvantaged are much more likely to join than the well off, same as it always was. During Vietnam the wealthy (and anyone capable) went to college to delay as long as possible. That left the lower economic orders. Think about what the country has done with the cost of college and how schools looked at the numbers of students. Did the war have any effect on that? I think it’s quite possible part of the cost and payment system of colleges today.
woodrowfan
We became a global power in 1898. But we were one of many. and not the most powerful. By 1919 we were the world’s most powerful country, but not a superpower. In 1945 we were one of two superpowers, and there was a huge gap between the US/USSR and the smaller powers.
schrodingers_cat
@woodrowfan:
How so? Based on what measure?
buckguy
The Vientamese had fought the French already–they knew how to counter a conventional army. They knew the terrain. Our ally was riddled with corruption. Our post-WWII technological and economic position was based on not having our cities be bombed and being away from any real field of battle–the Europeans and Japanese were already starting to erode our industrial advantages at this point. It wasn’t just JFK and LBJ–the “loss” of China influenced Truman and Eisenhower who arguably began our tactical stupidity despite his own concerns about land wars in Asia. He outsourced a lot of foreign policy to the CIA which was a mistake. Truman did a 180 from FDR’s plans for not supporting the French in SE Asia. Nixon kept the war going long enough to fight off any potential challenge from the Right–equally or more cynical than LBJ’s motivations in this area.
Darrin Ziliak (formerly glocksman)
@schrodingers_cat:
Going off the top of my head, I’d say economically & industrially we were both because of the costs of WW1 to the Europeans and the center of world economic power shifted from London to Wall Street.
IIRC, most of the loans during the 20’s to Germany and the developing world were underwritten by US capital.
Militarily, less so because the only world-class military arm we had was the Navy.
Darrin Ziliak (formerly glocksman)
Forgot to add that the rest of the Allies were deeply in debt to us as a result of the war, and we ended it as the world’s largest creditor nation.
One that demanded payment in dollars or gold.
No Drought No More
Great question, many angles to the answer. Here’s one: I’m convinced that the stab-in-the-back legend ginned-up after America’s War in Vietnam served to set the table for the 20013 Big Lie War. In fact, as was the case in the aftermath of the War in Vietnam, when Americans realized that they’d been lied to about WMD’s in Iraq, once again no honest attempt to comprehend what really happened. Certainly not by democratic or republican party operatives. In a matter of war and peace, they have consciously chosen to cover-up for American war criminals and protect them from answering for their treason. By my lights, the refusal of the democratic party shot callers (in particular) to face the bitter truth about the War in Iraq has been inexcusable, and tantamount to breaking their oaths of office to protect this nation from enemies both foreign and domestic… and goddamn them all for it.
NCSteve
The reason Teddy Roosevelt is one of the four faces on our single largest desecration of land sacred to the people from whom we stole it is because we truly stepped out onto the world stage as a great power during his presidency. Arguably, that happened under McKinley (who only got a mountain named after him) during the Spanish American War, but TR was the public face of that war as well, though it was really the Navy that won it.
That said, the European nations recognized that we were a great power in the making almost from the start and eyed us warily for the next century. Once we finally built a fleet of ships on the line after the War of 1812 (ships that almost never went to sea, but which the Brits knew were there in dry dock if we needed them), no one in Europe, even Britain, really wanted to get crosswise with us again. During the Civil War, Lincoln was already looking ahead to the postwar implications of our rapid militarization, saying of the French intervention in Mexico that we’d have to swallow it for now, but once the war was over, we’d be so powerful no one would ever mess with us again. And so it was. We marched a big-ass army down to the Texas border after the war and France promptly abandoned Maximilian.
But it really wasn’t until the 1880’s, after the unfairly derided Chester A. Arthur started us down the path of becoming at least a second class blue water naval power, that the European great powers began to routinely consider us, and, for the same reason, Japan, as members of the club who had to be considered and consulted. Thus, Bismarck didn’t invite us to the Congress of Berlin in 1878, which, in any case, was about purely European matters, but did have to offer us a seat at the Berlin Conference of 1884 when they drew up the plan for the mutually amicable rape of Africa.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Paul Gottlieb: When asked who would win in a war between Germany and the UK, General Woosly answered “America”
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@schrodingers_cat:
GDP and steel production.
Post WWI the US Navy was equal to the Royal Navy, the Royal Navy had more ships but the US Navy’s battleships were newer, much better protected and much more heavily armed.
J R in WV
@Ladyraxterinok:
In 1968 I graduated from HS and went away from home to college. I was not centered upon a particular career and was an indifferent student making Cs without working hard. I also hated the whole idea of the war in Vietnam, and so became involved in the campus-organized anti-war movement.
Then they eliminated student deferments and instituted a birthday lottery to determine in what order people would be drafted. My birthday came up early in the draft lottery in late 1969, I now forget if it was 27 or 72, no matter, they took young men with lottery numbers up into the mid-200s so I went early.
I joined the Navy, which mostly used volunteers already in service to staff the Brown Water Navy, fighting along the swamps and lagoons of SE Asia. I served mostly along the gulf coast in the deep south. When the Kent murders took place I was in boot camp with a bunch of other guys avoiding service in the Army or Marine Corps. All of those guys (well, 90% of them) wanted to shoot them some anti-war commie colledge stuents (sic). It was repulsive.
ceabaird
@Another Scott:
All valid concerns, and every draft always has ways for the rich & powerful to get around it. I’ve always liked the idea of “National Service” – free education for American youth, after which they owe 4 years (paid) service around the nation, or the world. The US gets a load of skilled young people, they fill in all the needed holes around, and when they’re done with national service, they have degrees and experience! Everybody wins!
As for Iraq – in the Gulf War we invaded with ~500,000 troops. When Bush told Shinseki to get ready, he said, “Not without 500,00 troops”, Bush pushed back, Shinseki held his ground, and was fired. So Bush/Cheney decided to make the military “more efficient” by subcontracting out a whole bunch of logistic & support roles to… KBR. So they got filthy rich, and now 14 years later, we’re still fighting; rotating in and out the same bunch of 200,000 people. War is a Racket.
ceabaird
@NCSteve: I’m not sure we ever built any wooden ships greater than 2-deck, 50-gun rating, and the typical ship of the line was a 3-deck, 74-gun monster. Some got as big as 120+ guns. I recall that our policy was to build “super-frigates” like the USS Constitution.
qwerty42
@jefft452: ,,.We did not lack a fleet to rival Britain. The Great White Fleet was built specifically to challenge the Royal Navy. As early as 1908 the Admiralty told Parliament that they could not guarantee control of the Atlantic in the event of war with the US
But by 1908, the Brits (at least the Royal Navy) had concluded their “main adversary” was Imperial Germany. We may say the German Navy could in no way compete with the RN. Then you add the irritant of the German colonies in Africa. Still, not really a menace (current scholarship is largely reflected in The Sleepwalkers; if your last review of the start of WW1 is The Guns of August you are way behind the times). But it added up. In retrospect, it was a kind of hysteria — no one actually realized what they were setting in motion. A very nice tour d’horizon of the lit, circa 2004 (so, now out of date), is Gopnik’s The Big One newyorker.com/magazine/2004/08/23/the-big-one-2
Redleg
@john fremont:
Thanks for the info. I’ll have to check that one out if it’s available anywhere.