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Bundy was one of the architects
of this
i think Gordon you're about
as critical as one could be
it's yet be nice about it
%uh about george bundy's performance in nineteen sixty four as
the national security adviser to johnson
what but would you please elaborate and what you think he didn't do that he should have
used the year nineteen ninety four
to do
there was
no decision
on vietnam
in nineteen sixty four
to escalate
there is no decision in nineteen sixty four
to resolve
there was very little
fertility of imagination
about what we would do
and when we would do it
if we stayed
there was a discussion of and rejection of the possibility
of neutralization
which is what happened in the Laos
the large powers convened and made a formal agreement
to neutralize Laos it would neither be a western or or a communist state it would be neutral
and as i reflected on the missed opportunity of nineteen sixty four
it became clear to me
that there was a chance for bundy
to compose an ex com for the vietnam war
the ex-com or executive committee
was the apparatus that
gamed out the different scenarios in the cuban missile crisis it could have been established
for vietnam it could have been established early in nineteen sixty four
because everyone knew no major decisions when the main until after that election
and it could have
%uh tested every assumption about escalation it could have tested
the viability of any conceivable
american military strategy
%uh it could have been used
to rigorously examine whether bombing would work
%uh it could have been used as a laboratory
to develop
really
seriously
developed
%uh scenarios for the president
to examine
after the election
when he would have to make
decisions about vietnam
but that opportunity wasn't grasped and i think it was %uh
a missed opportunity
Did they ever consider
how many american soldiers it might take
it's fascinating when the ultimate decisions were made
they were made
in a series of ad hoc troop
escalations
and
there was not a probing
steady of what it would take
to win in south vietnam but there were studies of
what would happen
with the bombing
and there were studies of what would happen with the
so-called domino theory
and both of those studies
took senior decision-makers
in the opposite direction of their basic assumptions in nineteen sixty four
there were two military exercises conducted
one was called sigma one
and the other was called sigma two
these were simulations of what would happen if the united states initiated a strategic
bombing campaign
against north vietnam
the assumption at that point was
that you could
coerce
the government in hanoi to stop supporting the insurgency in the south
and the assumption was that bombing was the means to do it
but these war game show clearly
that the opposite result would occur
rather than diminishing the will of hanoi this would harden their will rather than
diminishing the strength of the insurgency
this would
propel it
this would enlarge it
sigma two the second of these were games was one which bundy himself
participated
as one of the most senior civilian leaders
%uh to examine
how the bombing would
play out it was a simulation supervised
by of the head of the social science department at west point was really serious business
and the results were in essence ignored
there was also a intelligence finding in nineteen sixty four that was subsequently known as
the death of the domino theory
memoranda
because it tested
the premises of the domino theory the expectation that
if we lost in south vietnam
that the entire region of southeast asia
would fall under communist control and it disputed these findings
that wasn't examined would it be fair to say gordon that
these guys just didn't want to hear
they just didn't want
to hear they didn't want to take account
of the sigma studies the death of the domino theory study which i had not known
about before
the study showing that bombing would harden the north vietnamese resolve
they just didn't want to hear it they they had
men not the question i'm asking is
that's sort of has two parts one
is it true they just didn't want to hear it and two
if they just didn't want to hear it was it partly because the country
the country in general and they in particular
were in the midst of the cold war psychosis where we just have to fight them all the time
everywhere
i think the answer to that
it's somewhere
in understanding the
pathology %uh of
bureaucratic politics in group decision-making but it was clear
that
men
like Bundy who had already come to a basic
determination
and had a firm conviction that
to fight in vietnam was critically important to defending the national interest that
these studies were
almost
irrelevant
to a conviction that was already clearly established in his in his own mind we must
show that when we make a commitment
our commitment is real
and they were willing to pay the cost for that commitment
so to preserve that credibility
Bundy was prepared to fight a war
that he didn't necessarily think we could win
to fight a war that he didn't necessarily think was an american interest
but to
even send and as you alluded to
earlier in our conversation
send in a hundred thousand men and lose
because the outcome would be marginally better to show
that we were prepared to pay the cost
wasn't that almost in
in retrospect the least
in retrospect that's a bad joke
huh
wasn't that almost and immoral theory
when you consider how many men
today after we lost fifty eight thousand dead in vietnam
were so bitter at Macnamara because we had gotten into a war
with out an intent to win it has some people see it
and we'll discuss the attrition theory of winning
we were not going to do many of the things that might have contributed to success
and men died by the scores of thousands for that
lordy to see this was the amoral of bundy to say well we'll put in a hundred thousand lose
what we lose at least the rest of the world will
will know we're credible people we will stand behind their commitments
a certain lack of morality in that isn't there
i was
startled
by that
particular fragment
and
I puzzled
over it
um for a long time
to try to put it into a broader context
so that I could
understand
when Bundy was thinking in nineteen sixty five
and to contrast that what he thought
thirty years later
when we collaborated on our book and he traveled an enormous distance
between those two points in time
there is
embedded
in every proposal
to escalate in vietnam
of the period that of %uh
that's sixty one
to sixty five
all the serious military proposals
one theme
that recurs
again and again
and that is
the
a theme of how to apply military power and in this case the expectation was
that if we imposed enough pain on
the insurgents
if we imposed enough pain on north vietnam
that you could demonstrate to the adversary that they could not win
and only then
when they saw that they
could not win
and at that a terrible price would be imposed upon them
then a diplomatic negotiation would be possible and that was the expectation
coerce
the adversary to the negotiating table
and then cut a deal on terms favorable to the united states
that was the expectation as it is
encapsulated
in the various proposals to send in
ground combat forces and
prior to that
%uh to
initiate strategic bombing
and it was an utterly misguided assumption
but it was the assumption that drove so many of the decisions
i think in the book you point out that was an unexamined
assumption
at least i would say having lived through this
i thought it was an unexamined assumption because at the time we thought
i have to say very much like in two thousand three and four and five
that american military power was so great as to be irresistible
and if we just ratchet it up
sooner or later ho would get the word
you know one thing i have to say for johnson i didn't know
now believe me i don't want to say anything for johnson
i i've learned in your book i had not known this before
that johnson understood for apparently from the get-go that Ho chi minh was not going
to be persuaded by bombing
which is why johnson unlike kennedy
at least that's one reason why johnson unlike kennedy favored a ground war
and decided to americanize the war in nineteen sixty five
How do you think johnson came to the conclusion how was he shrewd enough
when none of all these brilliant advisers and we talk about how brilliant bundy that
preeminent intellectual of his generation
and i would say that the robert mcnamara had to give him a
good run for the money 'cause he's a brilliant man
it was a gut thing for johnson and he would say old old ho aint gonna give in to no bombs
and that was his that was his belief
and when the pivotal decisions came
in nineteen sixty five it is absolutely remarkable to me
to see the sequence of events
from initiating bombing
to ground combat forces and again
bundy is one of the
central protagonists in this in this drama
february sixty five
he goes to
vietnam he goes to
there's the attack on the plane ride back they
develop their proposal
for bombing
the proposal for bombing does not anticipate
the added need
for base security
to protect the military installations from which
air strikes would be launched is that obviously become very high value
military targets and they would need to be reinforced
they would need to be reinforced by ground combat forces but his proposal is silent on this
general william westmoreland you think he even realized this
it's one of the questions that i've just never able to answer
general william westmoreland immediately pounced is on this oversight and says
we're going to have to significantly increase
the
troop presence to protect these air bases once
air strikes are initiated
and there is that a intense and %uh
angry debate
between westmoreland who is the top military commander
and general max taylor
who had been kennedy's private military adviser and been sent
to south vietnam
as ambassador
and it it's remarkable to read how prescient taylor was he says to bundy and to the
president
don't do this
this is
the first increment of what will be
an ever
all widening and growing demand for american ground combat forces
that if you cross that line
you'll never go back
don't do it
this has been our policy all along to not deploy ground combat forces
we can't break that policy here you got to project the people that are protecting the base
and pretty soon you go out and you're searching
and you exchange and you expand the perimeter
and you liberalize the rules of engagement
all of a sudden you've got a ground war do you think this is what is this what
halberstam meant in the the best and the brightest i think it was but
somewhere where you said that you you
quote him or discuss him
once you start listening to the military
once you start combat
the military's idea will take over because it's just a matter of logic if you're gonna have
an air base you've gotta protect it
if your gonna have
people protecting the perimeter you've got to protect them and so on and so forth
but this is an example of what halberstam was talking about with these two
i think it is and it also underscores
%uh how military conditions themselves
will dictate what your strategy will be rather than
how your strategy is going to define military condition
and you know what one can
can't avoid wondering whether
we're doing the same thing in afghanistan today because now the conventional workers
failed in afghanistan
on the day that we're taping this which is i don't know
which is may twelfth
%um
now we're going to we're going to change our strategy we've got %uh would put in a new
general we're going to do more
%uh the %uh
of the anti-guerilla warfare type thing
and you just can't help wondering whether obama like
johnson before him and kennedy too perhaps extemporizing
and is listening to ideas which are just going to suck us in further and further
and as i say extemporizing because he doesn't want
the harm the rest of his program which was
which was really this a big part of the story about johnson was it not
you know the parallels between vietnam and afghanistan are
truly striking and truly troubling
i don't know the way out of of afghanistan we've been there for seven years and we've
been unsuccessful
in our effort
to eradicate the taliban and bring stability to that country
%uh but both in vietnam in afghanistan you have %uh a large neighboring country that
supports and reinforces an insurgency
in both vietnam in afghanistan we have essentially a corrupt or incompetent
client government in power
%uh in both of these cases we are not fighting a conventional war were fighting %uh an insurgency
%uh which we are
the least well
poised to
prevail in
than in any other form of military conflict
and both of these says situations of we now confronts %uh
a potentially
diminishing
basis of political support here and internationally
for a conflict that doesn't seem to have any
discernible endpoint in sight
so it really is a
extremely difficult problem
today i'm announcing a comprehensive new strategy for afghanistan and pakistan
and this marks the conclusion of
a careful policy review led by
that i've ordered as soon as i took office
my administration's heard from our military commanders as well as our diplomats
we consulted
with the afghan and pakistani governments
with our partners
and our nato allies
and with other donors an international organizations
we've also worked closely with members of congress here at home
and now i'd like to speak
clearly and candidly to the american people
the situation
is increasingly perilous
it's been more than seven years since the taliban was removed from power
yet war rages on
and insurgents control parts of afghanistan and pakistan
attacks against our troops our nato allies and the afghan government have risen
steadily
and most painfully two thousand and eight was the deadliest year
of the war for american forces
you said at lunch that you feel
this truly resonated with me
you feel that we keep making the same mistakes with one thing that i thought
was astonishingly striking
in your description of bundy's views was that he seemed not to care
about the enemies capabilities and reactions
in in deciding what to do with giving advice my question is how come a guy who was supposed
to be so bright
had made such a fundamental mistake if i understand correctly what i've read
that is not to be concerned with the enemies capabilities and intentions
what i've tried to do with my book is look at
bundy's particular
perspective and roll
both then
and retrospectively
and the best answer i can come up with to your question
is that
%um
the man who looked back
at his decisions
three decades earlier was a
fundamentally different man
that made those decisions as a
as we've discussed previously %uh the the persona of bundy and power
is of the man of arrogance and hubris
and overconfidence
something that lincoln once said that is
not too very widely known
went something like this
this nation could be invaded by all the armies of europe
led by napoleon
and they would never
water their horses in the ohio
and the people of vietnam and now some people in afghanistan
used to say something like that than twenty years you'll be gone but we'll still be here
and this is precisely
the message that one of bundy's top aides in the national security council a man named
um
jim thompson tried to communicate to bundy in december of nineteen sixty four
bundy called him into his office and a asked him to read a confidential document
that describes an escalation plan in vietnam
seemed to anticipate some kind of a
%uh %uh
reprisals stimulated by
attack
%uh and the rapid use of overwhelming air power and then
some kind of a diplomatic
effort to
resolve it very quickly it was a very
incongruous and sketch plan
yet what thompson remembers from the meeting
is the discussion they had about the efficacy of bombing and thompson said
to bundy
you know mister bundy
what really
concerns me about this is that
%uh at the end of the day
the vietnamese know
that we're not going to stay there
and that we will leave yet they have no place to go
and over time
isn't that going to work against us
and bundy absorbed this and
was silent for a moment and said
that's a very interesting point jim thank you very much
you know i just read another thing very similar in new york review of books
the review of
some books by benny morris the
israeli historians and one of the ideas behind
one of the ideas are alleged to be in part responsible for the outcome of the nineteen
forty eight war
whitney houston israelis a defeated the the air the year armies
who's the israelis have nowhere else to go
it was better to see
so you know right into the sea so would you have would you find somebody who says
we're not going to go on have to be here fifty years are beginning to one of the two
boy that's that's a tough business
and you know you talked about his parent gets it back in those days
i had a strong i had a sense
i had a sense cordon
that that's why they blew off george ball all the time
and contents of themselves and this is so he did you see this in meetings all the time
the content yourself with
destroying the other guy's argument
never considering whether your argument may be worth of debt
that i have a sense that happened here and i have a sense it's pretty dim the air gets
infancy
and what happened in that meeting was
dispiriting
the ball
and and and tragic really for the outcome in vietnam
what could have been
and honest debate
about
the limitations of military
strategy in vietnam
the vault
into
at three against one attack
in which rusk
bundy and mcnamara
didn't address the shortcomings of their own arguments they address the shortcomings of
balls proposal
for some kind of
face-saving diplomatic scenario
to mitigate the damage in vietnam
they put him in the position of having to explain why his proposal would succeed
rather than
defending why
their proposals for escalation
would-be doubt
and this was symptomatic of the way a decision-making was conducted in the johnson administration
they don't necessarily look
at the viability of their own proposals they look at the costs of pursuing alternative
courses of action like diplomacy
the king once said you know where the other side
you know there's a
what should be a famous %uh statement of american history that is largely that
i remember when the marines and the former marine commandant that david shoot pool went
before congress to review
that is part of the same time type of skepticism that you talk about being directed it
all of that be
the congresspeople city of black ship
howie it was struck troops in vietnam
and shoot shoot shoot
by ship and i play think that that i
nobody wanted to hear the simple truth
when those people were attacking law i think that that in that meeting
i take it that day and and that
really not for years afterwards if ever during the war itself
did we realize that we have could sign their cells because of the limitations we've placed
on our souls
toward war of attrition
but i'd like you to elaborate i will say that i know of no time in american history
except koreans overland campaign
where the enemy was already on the ropes pretty much or it was
right to be put on the ropes
i think that's the sole exception i i know of where america at one
a campaign of attrition
this was a war of attrition as you describe it which
of course we're going to lose a war of attrition getting there
can argue about
a bike and humanity in the sanctity of life in effect
we're fighting ten thousand miles away
but maybe you can explain why it became of what made it a war of attrition
%uh be of consequence of fighting a war of attrition
the series of of %uh skirmishes with small numbers of man
rather than large fixed campaigns in fixed battles
%uh was that
over time
%um
we did grind down
%uh the
enemies capacities
we did grind down their numbers
%um
bundy calculated that we imposed
%uh and order of magnitude of losses on the enemy by exponentially greater
and those we ourselves
%uh %uh suffer something in the in the area about a hundred to one
per capita
yet the irony is rather than the adversary
quitting the field of battle
exhausted because of this attrition
we were the ones
who quit the field of battle
after years of combat exhausted by work at risk
it is my understanding that too
fight that a war that was not a war of attrition
we would have to invade north vietnam and go to hanoi
and that of course racial entry
by the chinese
not to mention that russians possibly by air at least
and of course we never considered that
the north vietnamese were being a resupplied to buy factories that were located in sanctuaries
that is to say china and russia
so %uh with the not going to go in or list the chinese time and again as they did in
korea
and you can't cut off the weapons
what is left in a war of attrition
and this is something
needed to be gained out
and clearly articulated for the benefit of the president's top advisers when they decided
that's going to mention sixty five
because it was a
%uh clearly obvious
scenario
that we would confront
look at all the things that they took off the table diplomacy was taken off the table
the %uh
senior decision makers believe that this was much like the cree morning we had to go and
then
make a stance
%uh there was a time that expectation
and that we would
not invade north vietnam for the reasons that you mention it would trigger
china's entry into the war
%uh norwegian wood
continue to confront the problem of the what she meant rap
the lines of communication resupplied from north vietnam in south korea
we were your birthright we see a writer work
our response will depend upon
the action of the aggressors in this case the north vietnamese
the key to that situation
remains of preparation of infiltration from the north into the about fast
could this conversation
do you think a hundred years from now
lyndon johnson will be remembered more for one of his great achievements the civil rights
act or
more from vietnam
i think he'll be remembered more for vietnam
and for anne and his legislative victories
as important as they are
because i think they would have involved over time
but vietnam was a war of choice not a war of necessity
and that's how
lyndon johnson will be remembered
interesting they would have about over time management is not a shame
even though they would have about the rich that
he certainly speeded them up and he may
they've been told by my today with it not
the civil rights act of sixty four sixty five and yet
and yet
you think what
obvious reason behind you thought
that he'll be remembered more for the it not
and for the civil rights very civil rights work
shows how shocking the terrible situation in the times more