The recent PBS series on the Vietnam War and the recent debate over the national anthem got me thinking about the parallels between then and now, and I'm putting my thoughts into this stream-of-consciousness post about how little has changed since the end of the war. Specifically, how little we (as a country) have learned since then. Let's look at the lessons we thought we learned, but then discarded.
First, the US government (the White House and the Pentagon) fell back into the habit of sending troops to fight wars for flimsy justifications, vaguely-defined objectives, and inadequate equipment and resources. This hasn't happened all the time, but more often than not, the troops went in without what they needed for victory: a coherent plan, resources that matched the objective, and a valid reason to fight. When it comes to smaller, shorter conflicts, the score is about even. Grenada and Panama didn't become quagmires, but Somalia and Lebanon did. In regard to large-scale conflicts, the tally is pretty one-sided. The 1990-91 Gulf War had a clear mission and sufficient resources, if a rationale that was more about economics than security; but on the other side of the ledger, we have Afghanistan, the Balkans, and Iraq Part II.
There was supposed to be a deep discussion about America's use of military power in the wake of Vietnam, but it never really got off the ground. Not enough to lead to any meaningful changes, anyway. The senior officers who hoped to avoid a repeat of the Vietnam quagmire succeeded for a few years, and during that time they managed to implement meaningful reforms. For example, when Colin Powell served in the White House as a military assistant to Secretary Weinberger, he helped craft the "Weinberger Doctrine", which acted as a litmus test for when to commit US troops. The war hawks eventually outmaneuvered those senior officers, though, and critics who charged that the Doctrine was so narrow that it practically guaranteed US troops would never be deployed anywhere. Vaguely-defined missions began to come back into favor in the 1990s, and became standard procedure after 9/11.
Washington also ably deflected any deep discussion by transitioning from a draftee military to an all-volunteer force. Richard Nixon wisely calculated that halting the draft would deflate anti-war protests, and he was right. Once the overall population stopped having a stake in America's wars, they stopped worrying that they might someday get dragged into a quagmire conflict. This weakened the bond between the military and the general population, and gave military leadership much more license to send the military anywhere they wanted. Somewhere along the way, Congress (which holds the power to declare war) stopped holding the president accountable in any meaningful way. How it got there is a story about a lot of boring political maneuvering, but the moral of the story is that "accountability" was a sham. Political appointees and mid-level staffers took the fall for military failures, partisan bickering replaced debate, and nobody asked the questions that should have been asked after Vietnam. Which brings us to the present, where history is repeating itself.
I'm almost done here, but I'd like to make one more point. To me, this isn't an academic debate. I served in the Army for four years and spent five years after that as a defense contractor. During that time, I made several trips to combat zones and deployed locations. My experiences have made me very skeptical of how the government employs the military, to the point where I oppose a military intervention by default unless I see a very good reason for it. I'm probably not evaluating a military intervention impartially, but I don't really care if I'm being fair or not. I think being extremely skeptical is preferable to not being skeptical enough. Every soldier, sailor, airman, and Marine is someone's child/parent/sibling/friend, and if the president and the senior generals put them in harm's way, they need to be absolutely certain that the sacrifice is worth it. Anything less is morally repugnant in my opinion.
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