American Reckoning: The Vietnam War and Our National Identity

by Appy, Christian G.

  O’Neill “may be ready to surrender”: Robert Timberg, The Nightingale’s Song (New York: Touchstone, 1996), p. 342.

  another firestorm of three hundred shells: Robert Fisk, Pity the Nation: The Abduction of Lebanon (New York: Nation Books, 2002), p. 533.

  “Vietnam Never Again Society”: Timberg, The Nightingale’s Song, p. 343.

  “the Vietnam syndrome in spades”: Isaacs, Vietnam Shadows, p. 74.

  a “Soviet-Cuban colony”: Cited in Jon Western’s cogent analysis, Selling Intervention and War: The Presidency, the Media, and the American Public (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2005), pp. 129–30.

  “another reason I wanted secrecy”: Ibid., p. 122.

  support climbed to 63 percent: Ibid., p. 130.

  there was hardly any resistance: Richard A. Gabriel, Military Incompetence: Why the American Military Doesn’t Win (New York: Hill and Wang, 1986), pp. 149–86; Stephen Zunes, “The US Invasion of Grenada,” Foreign Policy in Focus, October 2003, http://www.globalpolicy.org/component/content/article/155/25966.html. Richard Harwood, “Tidy U.S. War Ends: ‘We Blew Them Away,’” Washington Post, November 6, 1983.

  “body and soul”: Lawrence E. Walsh, Firewall: The Iran-Contra Conspiracy and Cover-up (New York: W. W. Norton, 1998), p. 19; Bunch, Tear Down This Myth, pp. 15–20, 94–99, 106–10, 210–14.

  “We did not—repeat, did not”: Cannon, President Reagan, p. 684.

  talk of impeachment subsided: Ibid., pp. 633–55.

  “Where was George?”: The taunt was issued by Senator Edward Kennedy. See Michael Oreskes, “Bush Lashes Back at Kennedy Taunt,” New York Times, September 3, 1988; Newsweek’s cover story for October 19, 1987, was “George Bush: Fighting the ‘Wimp Factor.’”

  In a TV ad . . . Dukakis in the tank: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BRPZQ 3UEN_Q.

  the “crack epidemic”: The biggest drug story of 1989 was buried in the back pages of just a few newspapers. Lost amid all the talk about Noriega’s misdeeds was a Senate Foreign Relations Committee report showing that the Contras had supported their war, in part, by selling cocaine in the United States with the knowledge and support of the CIA and the State Department; http://www2.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB /NSAEBB2/nsaebb2.htm#1.

  Because Noriega allowed the Contras to use Panama: Stephen Kinzer, Overthrow: America’s Century of Regime Change (New York: Times Books, 2006), p. 250.

  the Bush administration took a more aggressive stance: Jane Kellett Cramer, “‘Just Cause’ or Just Politics?: U.S. Panama Invasion and Standardizing Qualitative Tests for Diversionary War,” Armed Forces and Society, vol. 32, no. 2, 2006, p. 186.

  “Big Stick Silences Critics”: Christian Science Monitor, January 8, 1990.

  “Even our severest critics”: Powell, My American Journey, p. 426.

  “Have we got Noriega yet?”: See Jeff Cohen and Mark Cook, “How Television Sold the Panama Invasion,” Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting, January 1, 1990, http://fair.org/extra-online-articles/how-television-sold-the-panama-invasion/.

  at least three thousand people: That figure was supported by former attorney general Ramsey Clark’s Independent Commission of Inquiry. See Larry Rohter, “Panama and U.S. Strive to Settle on Death Toll,” New York Times, April 1, 1990. Rohter challenges Clark’s figures. For a critique of Rohter and additional support of the higher casualty figures, see Noam Chomsky, Deterring Democracy (New York: Verso, 1991), pp. 164–66.

  “an emotional predicate”: James Mann, The Rise of the Vulcans: The History of Bush’s War Cabinet (New York: Penguin, 2004), p. 180.

  When Hussein used . . . tepid objections: Peter W. Galbraith, “The True Iraq Appeasers,” Boston Globe, August 31, 2006. Posted here: http://www.commondreams.org/views06/0831-23.htm; New York Times, July 28, 1990.

  “We have no opinion”: Elaine Sciolino with Michael R. Gordon, “Confrontation in the Gulf; U.S. Gave Iraq Little Reason Not to Mount Kuwait Assault,” New York Times, September 23, 1990. The cable Glaspie sent to the State Department about the meeting, and released by WikiLeaks, has the subject title “Saddam’s Message of Friendship to President Bush.” It indicates a stronger concern about the possibility of conflict than some earlier versions of the meeting, but it remains clear that Glaspie had no instruction to warn Hussein about a U.S. military response should he invade Kuwait. In fact, Glaspie repeatedly emphasizes the desire to build a strong relationship with Iraq: For example, “Ambassador resumed her theme, recalling that the president had instructed her to broaden and deepen our relations with Iraq”; http://www.wikileaks.ch/cable/1990/07/90BAGHDAD4237.html.

  “In fact, it was overwhelmingly opposed”: The comment was aired on January 28, 1997, on Frontline.

  “We’re dealing with Hitler revisited”: Bush’s comparisons of Hitler and Hussein were made on October 23, 1990: http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=18955&st=&st1=.

  “Nayirah” . . . Hill & Knowlton: John R. MacArthur, Second Front: Censorship and Propaganda in the Gulf War (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992), pp. 54–60; John Stauber and Sheldon Rampton, Toxic Sludge Is Good for You: Lies, Damn Lies and the Public Relations Industry (Monroe, ME: Common Courage Press, 2002); Johnson, The Sorrows of Empire, pp. 230–231.

  “it’s jobs”: Quoted by Thomas L. Friedman, “Mideast Tensions; U.S. Jobs at Stake in Gulf,” New York Times, November 14, 1990.

  “This is not another Vietnam”: Arnold R. Isaacs, Vietnam Shadows, p. 76.

  “picture-perfect assaults”: Jim Naureckas, “Gulf War Coverage: The Worst Censorship Was at Home,” Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting, April 1, 1991, http://fair.org/extra-online-articles/gulf-war-coverage/.

  only 13 percent believed the U.S. military: Isaacs, Vietnam Shadows, p. 82.

  “the Fairness Doctrine is in play”: Naureckas, “Gulf War Coverage.”

  878 on-air sources: Ibid.

  “we’ve kicked the Vietnam syndrome”: Bush, “Remarks to the American Legislative Exchange Council,” March 1, 1991, http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=19351&st=&st1=; Bush, “Radio Address to United States Armed Forces Stationed in the Persian Gulf Region,” March 2, 1991, http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=19355&st=&st1=.

  Gulf War syndrome: http://www.publichealth.va.gov/exposures/gulfwar/medically-unexplained-illness.asp.

  “We got no dog in this hunt”: Mark Danner, “The US and the Yugoslav Catastrophe,” New York Review of Books, November 20, 1997.

  “murder, torture, and imprisonment”: New York Times, March 9, 1995.

  “Something, anything must be done”: http://www.ushmm.org/research/ask-a-research-question/frequently-asked-questions/wiesel.

  “What are you saving this superb military for”: Cited in Rachel Maddow, Drift: The Unmooring of American Military Power (New York: Crown, 2012), p. 180.

  “hauntingly familiar ring”: Ibid., p. 179.

  encouraged by military chief Colin Powell: Mann, The Rise of the Vulcans, p. 222.

  evidence of genocide: David Rohde, Endgame: The Betrayal and Fall of Srebrenica, Europe’s Worst Massacre Since World War II (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1997); Peter Maass, Love Thy Neighbor: A Story of War (New York: Vintage, 1997); David Halberstam, War in a Time of Peace: Bush, Clinton, and the Generals (New York: Touchstone, 2001).

  Rwanda could become “another Somalia”: Samantha Power, A Problem from Hell: America and the Age of Genocide (New York: Basic Books, 2002), pp. 374–75.

  “You must make more noise”: Ibid., p. 377.

  “Mission creep is not a problem here”: Ibid., p. 381.

  “We’re here to help”: Isaacs, Vietnam Shadows, p. 66.

  “We are the indispensable nation”: Bacevich, Washington Rules, p. 141.

  “did not fully appreciate”: http://millercenter.org/president/speeche
s/detail/4602.

  576,000 Iraqi children: New York Times, December 1, 1995.

  “the price is worth it”: Bacevich, Washington Rules, p. 143.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN: WHO WE ARE

  the news got no better: David Zucchino, “Marine Pleads Guilty to Urinating on Afghan Corpses,” Los Angeles Times, April 16, 2013; Craig Whitlock, “U.S. Troops Tried to Burn 500 Copies of Koran, Investigation Says,” National Security, August 27, 2012; Gene Johnson, “U.S. Soldier Robert Bales Sentenced to Life in Prison Without Parole for Afghanistan Massacre,” Huffington Post, August 23, 2012, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/23/robert-bales-life-sentence_n_3805952.html; Josh Levs, “Panetta: Photos of Troops with Insurgents’ Bodies Violate U.S. Values,” CNN, April 19, 2012, http://www.cnn.com/2012/04/18/world/asia/afghanistan-troops-photos/.

  “This is not who we are”: Gene Marx, “‘This Is Not Who We Are’—Oh Yeah?,” Antiwar.com, March 24, 2012, http://original.antiwar.com/gene-marx/2012/03/23/this-is-not-who-we-are-oh-yeah/.

  General John Allen: Dan DeWalt, “American Atrocities: Not Who We Are? Really? So Then Who in the Hell Are We?” http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article31262.htm.

  Panetta went to Fort Benning: http://www.defense.gov/news/newsarticle.aspx?id=116198; http://www.defense.gov/speeches/speech.aspx?speechid=1668.

  the military’s media management: See, for example, Susan L. Carruthers, The Media at War (New York: Palgrave, 2000), pp. 131–145; Engelhardt, The End of Victory Culture, pp. 290–300; Douglas Kellner, The Persian Gulf TV War (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1992).

  Investigations revealed: Seymour Hersh, “Torture at Abu Ghraib,” New Yorker, May 10, 2004; Scott Higham and Joe Stephens, “New Details of Prison Abuse Emerge,” Washington Post, May 21, 2004.

  “the America that I know”: http://en.qantara.de/content/usairaq-this-does-not-represent-the-america-i-know; http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/0625-07.htm.

  torture, assault, and maiming: Jane Mayer, The Dark Side: The Inside Story of How the War on Terror Turned into a War on American Ideals (New York: Anchor, 2009), p. 230.

  “There are no rules in such a game”: Cited in H. W. Brands, The Devil We Knew: Americans and the Cold War (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994), p. 61.

  “inherent right”: Richard Falk, “The New Bush Doctrine,” Nation, July 15, 2002.

  “sinister nexus”: http://www.cnn.com/2003/US/02/05/sprj.irq.powell.transcript.09/index.html?iref=mpstoryview; http://www.cnn.com/2008/US/03/13/alqaeda.saddam/.

  the chaos that U.S. policies had created: George Packer, The Assassins’ Gate: America in Iraq (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2006); Thomas E. Ricks, Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq (New York: Penguin, 2007); Rajiv Chandrasekaran, Imperial Life in the Emerald City: Inside Iraq’s Green Zone (New York: Vintage, 2007); No End in Sight, the 2007 documentary by Charles Ferguson.

  “a result of friendly fire”: Jon Krakauer, Where Men Win Glory (New York: Doubleday, 2009), p. 308.

  “so fucking illegal”: Robert Collier, “Family Demands the Truth,” San Francisco Chronicle, September 25, 2005; cited in Dave Zirin, Welcome to the Terrordome: The Pain, Politics, and Promise of Sports (Chicago: Haymarket Books, 2007), p. 175.

  “to parade me through the streets”: Krakauer, Where Men Win Glory, p. 295; on future Chomsky meeting, p. 226.

  “Somehow we were sent to invade”: Kevin Tillman, “After Pat’s Birthday,” Truthdig.com, October 19, 2006, http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/200601019_after_pats_birthday.

  Simply to replenish its ranks: Steve Vogel, “White House Proposes Cuts in Military Recruiting Budget,” Washington Post, May 11, 2009.

  Alexander Arredondo enlisted: Linda Pershing with Lara Bell, “Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night: The Tragic Death of Brian Arredondo,” WarIsACrime.org, June 27, 2012.

  “it was like the whole dictionary”: Quotations from Carlos Arredondo are taken from a documentary work in progress by Janice Ragovin for which I am a consultant.

  “As long as there are marines fighting”: Trymaine Lee, “A Father With a Coffin, Telling of War’s Grim Toll,” New York Times, February 1, 2007.

  long slide into depression: Pershing, “Do Not Go Gentle.”

  Carlos in a cowboy hat: Michael Daly, “Carlos Arredondo, Boston Marathon Hero in a Cowboy Hat, on the Bombs,” thedailybeast.com, April 16, 2013, http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/04/16/carlos-arredondo-boston-marathon-hero-in-a-cowboy-hat-on-the-bombs.html; http://www.masslive.com/news/boston/index.ssf/2014/04/victim_in_famous_photo_marks_y.html.

  Cindy Sheehan: Linda Feldmann, “Did the Cindy Sheehan Vigil Succeed?” Christian Science Monitor, August 29, 2005, http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/0829/p01s03-uspo.html.

  only 18 percent: Michael Oreskes, “What’s the Presidential Tipping Point?” New York Times, July 25, 2004. Cited in David Elliott, “Parallel Wars? Can ‘Lessons of Vietnam’ Be Applied to Iraq?,” in Lloyd C. Gardner and Marilyn B. Young, Iraq and the Lessons of Vietnam (New York, New Press, 2007), p. 23.

  By June 2005: Dana Milbank and Claudia Dean, “Poll Finds Dimmer View of Iraq War, 52% Say U.S. Has Not Become Safer,” Washington Post, June 8, 2005.

  72 percent of U.S. troops: New York Times, February 28, 2006; http://thinkprogress.org/security/2006/02/28/3940/bushvstroops/.

  at least 60 percent: See responses to the simple question “Do you favor or oppose the U.S. war in Iraq?” CNN/ORC poll: http://pollingreport.com/iraq.htm.

  Authorization for Use of Military Force: https://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/107/sjres23/text.

  largest global outpouring of antiwar dissent: https://mobilizingideas.wordpress.com/category/essay-dialogues/the-iraq-war-protests-10-years-later/.

  unequivocal arrogance: Jonathan Stein and Tim Dickinson, “Lie by Lie: A Timeline of How We Got Into Iraq,” Mother Jones, September/October 2006, http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2011/12/leadup-iraq-war-timeline.

  “cakewalk”: Hendrik Hertzberg, “Cakewalk,” New Yorker, December 22, 2003; Stein and Dickinson, ibid.

  less than 1 percent of the population: “By the Numbers: Today’s Military,” NPR, July 3, 2011, http://www.npr.org/2011/07/03/137536111/by-the-numbers-todays-military.

  “Get down to Disney World”: George W. Bush, “Remarks to Airline Employees in Chicago,” September 27, 2001, http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=65084.

  the richest 20 percent: Dan Ariely, “Americans Want to Live in a Much More Equal Country (They Just Don’t Know It),” Atlantic, August 2, 2012.

  reduce the number of very poor Americans: Dylan Matthews, “Poverty in the 50 Years Since ‘The Other America,’” Washington Post, July 11, 2012.

  They chanted with approval: See, for example, Joan Holden’s account in Appy, Patriots, pp. 250–53.

  supported Saddam Hussein: Jeremy Scahill, “The Saddam in Rumsfeld’s Closet,” CommonDreams.org, August 2, 2002, http://www.commondreams.org/views02 /0802-01.htm; on U.S. support for the Afghan rebels, see Steve Coll, Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan, and Bin Laden, from the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001 (New York: Penguin, 2004).

  “We’re an empire now”: Ron Suskind, “Faith, Certainty and the Presidency of George W. Bush,” New York Times Magazine, October 17, 2004.

  “The Case for American Empire”: Max Boot, “The Case for American Empire,” Weekly Standard, October 15, 2011.

  “an empire in denial”: Fiachra Gibbons, “US ‘Is an Empire in Denial,’” Guardian, June 2, 2003; for a fuller analysis, see Niall Ferguson, Colossus: The Rise and Fall of the American Empire (New York: Penguin, 2005).

  “raw material”: Michael Lind, “Niall Ferguson and the Brain-Dead American Right,” Salon, May 24, 2011.

  “empire of bases”: Chalmers Johnson, Dismantling the Empire: America’s Last Bes
t Hope (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2010), pp. 30–35, 109–119.

  CIA-supplied cash and weapons: Coll, Ghost Wars; Johnson, Dismantling the Empire, pp. 11–28.

  “I wish I had stood with them”: Appy, Patriots, p. 424.

  the Powell Doctrine: Mann, Rise of the Vulcans, pp. 43–44, 119–20, 350–51.

  “We don’t do body counts”: John M. Broder, “A Nation at War: The Casualties; U.S. Military Has No Count of Iraqi Dead in Fighting,” New York Times, April 2, 2003, http://www.nytimes.com/2003/04/02/world/nation-war-casualties-us-military-has-no-count-iraqi-dead-fighting.html.

  “I don’t do quagmires”: Department of Defense news briefing, July 24, 2003, http://www.defense.gov/transcripts/transcript.aspx?transcriptid=2894.

  fell back on body counts: Tom Engelhardt, The American Way of War (Chicago: Haymarket Books, 2010), p. 122.

  “God has apparently seen fit”: Jeffrey Bell, “The Petraeus Promotion,” Weekly Standard, May 5, 2008, http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/015/038lzirr.asp.

  counterinsurgency as a career killer: Fred Kaplan, The Insurgents: David Petraeus and the Plot to Change the American Way of War (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2013).

  “chastening effect”: David H. Petraeus, “Lessons of History and Lessons of Vietnam,” Parameters, Autumn 1986.

  “Real men don’t do moot-wah!”: Kaplan, The Insurgents, p. 45.

  “What Have You Done”: Ibid., p. 73.

  the number of insurgent attacks climbed: Gareth Porter, “How Petraeus Created the Myth of His Success,” Truthout.org, November 27, 2012, part 1 of a 4-part series, http://truth-out.org/news/item/12997-how-petraeus-created-the-myth-of-his-success.

  Counterinsurgency Field Manual: The U.S. Army/Marine Corps Counterinsurgency Field Manual (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007), p. xxi.

  “unity of effort”: Counterinsurgency Field Manual. See, for example, pp. 1–2, 29, 48, 137–138.