Bear Taylor 
RIPPLE SALVO… #407… A COMMENTARY ON ROBERT McNAMARA’s “IN RETROSPECT”…but first..
Good Morning: HAPPY EASTER… Day FOUR HUNDRED SEVEN of a return to the air war with North Vietnam…
16 APRIL 1967… HOMETOWN HEADLINES from The New York Times on a sunny Sunday in NYC…
Page 1: “Navy’s New Plane Undergoes A Test”... “Flown in rain to determine if its jet engine will stall in Vietnam like squalls, the Navy’s newest aircraft, the A-7A Corsair II, is hunting thunder showers and storms in Florida. The basic engine in the A-7A is the same as that in the swept wing General Dynamics F-111 fighter-bomber that has also experienced engine problems…on going tests are being pushed to insure deployment of the new plane to Vietnam by November. The Navy attack plane meant to supplement and ultimately replace the Navy’s Douglas A-4 Skyhawk has been ordered in quantity and the Navy has been counting on the aircraft to replace Vietnam combat losses and from accidents. A Navy admiral was quoted: ‘I’ve never seen an airplane program that has gone as far and as well as the A-7.’ “… Page 1: “Richard Speck Found Guilty”…of the murder of eight young nurses in Chicago last July.”… Page 4: “Stars and Stripes Celebrates 25th Year of Service for GIs”... “The soldiers newspaper established during World War II is celebrating its 25th anniversary. The first issue was published in London on April 18, 1942 and carried a picture of Franklin D. Roosevelt, who had entered his 10th year in the White House.”… Page 5: “Draft is Debated By Puerto Ricans”... “Must young Puerto Ricans, who believe their island should be independent of United States control, be subject to the military draft?… This issue, involving questions of military service without political representation, and in some cases of national allegiance is being discussed in this commonwealth that sends more men in uniform than Connecticut, Iowa or Mississippi.”…
Page 3: “50,000 Anti-War Protesters at San Francisco Rally at Kezar Stadium”... mostly young people…Among the numerous banners: “The Vietnam National Liberation Forces Never Called Us Nxxxxx”...”Bring the GIs Home”…”Stop The Bombing“…“Tune in, Turn on, Drop out”… The speakers included Coretta King and Julian Bond of Georgia and some 20 Black Nationalists led the parade.”...Page 7: “Haiphong Visitor Assails U.S. Raids”... “An American woman who spent eight days in North Vietnam said today she believed the United States was trying to kill civilians there. Mrs. Eugene Boardman, one of eight Americans who sailed on the yacht Phoenix to Haiphong last month, said she had seen ‘vast amounts of bomb damage to what was purely civilian property. There was so much of it,’ the 49-year old mother of six said, ‘that we concluded that it had to be deliberate. The North Vietnamese believe it is being done to intimidate them and we were inclined to agree.” Mrs. Boardman is a University of Wisconsin professor and a member of a Quaker ‘action group.’ She was interviewed at a news conference at Quaker Center in New Delhi.”…
Page 1: “FBI Is Watching Anti-War Effort, President Says”... “President Johnson’s attention was turned again to the war in Vietnam today only a few hours after he returned to his Texas ranch from the conference with Latin America leaders in Uruguay. His preoccupation was evident as he received reports from J. Edgar Hoover on ‘anti-war activity’ and from Ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge on progress in the war and as he moved to prevent a long tie-up at a helicopter plant in Connecticut that produces engines for Vietnam…With major demonstrations being held against the Vietnam war today, Mr. Johnson let it be known that the FBI was keeping an eye on ‘anti-war activity.’ The President’s spokesman refused to make any connection between this disclosure and the demonstrations.”…
16 APRIL 1967… OPERATION ROLLING THUNDER… New York Times (17 Apr reporting 16 Apr ops)… Page 11: “Air Force, Marine and Navy Pilots flew 84 missions over North Vietnam, including strikes that set large fires 18 miles northwest of Donghoi . A total of 486 missions were flown in the South.”… (Bear#59mk81niteMilkyDMZstelmofire+)… “Vietnam: Air Losses” (Hobson) there were no aircraft lost in Southeast Asia on 16 April 1967. The C-130 crash into Cam Ranh Bay was reported yesterday.
RIPPLE SALVO… #407… Found in the CIA Reading Room: A 13-page review of Secretary of Defense’s book, In Retrospect. Author Harold P. Ford took his time and minced no words in his task. The paper is titled: “Thoughts Engendered by Robert McNamara’s In Retrospect,” and starts out like this:
“Mr. McNamara’s accounting of history is ambiguous, debatable, and, above all, selective. It does illuminate certain facets of policy making and intelligence, but it does not dispel many of the frustrations that have long clouded our comprehension of the war. Mr. McNamara’s troubled conscience tells us, repeatedly, that he and his colleagues were wrong, terribly wrong. They should not have tried to fight a guerrilla war with conventional military tactics against a foe willing to absorb enormous casualties ‘…in a country lacking the fundamental political stability necessary to conduct effective military and pacification operations. It could not be done, and it was not done.‘ (p.212). They did not adequately level with the public. There were many occasions in which they should have begun considering a withdrawal from Vietnam.”... The 13-pages of good stuff are at…
Humble Host includes here one of the final sections of the Ford review of In Retrospect. I hope it is posted in the White House War Room… and a copy gets in the President’s night reading (he reads doesn’t he?)… ( lesson: “a reading or exercise to be studied by pupils; an instructive example”)
I quote:
McNamara’s Lessons
McNamara’s greatest tribute to CIA, if indirectly, are the lessons of Vietnam that he draws at the end of In Retrospect. Many of the 11 lessons he enumerates echo certain cautions that for a long time CIA (and other US intelligence) officials tried unsuccessfully to get through to him and his colleagues. In abbreviated form here, the lessons for the United States he lists are:
- We misjudged the geopolitical intentions of the Viet Cong, the DRV and the USSR, and exaggerated the dangers to the US of their actions.
- We viewed the people and leaders of South Vietnam in our own experience.
- We underestimated the power of nationalism to motivate a people to fight and die for their beliefs and values.
- We were profoundly ignorant of the history, culture, and politics of the people in the area.
- We failed to recognize the limitations of modern, high-tech military equipment, forces and doctrine.
- We failed to draw Congress and the American people into a full and frank discussion and debate to the pros and cons of becoming involved in large-scale military engagements in Southeast Asia’
- We did not explain fully what was happening and why we were doing what we did. We failed to maintain national unity.
- We failed to recognize that neither our people nor our leaders are omniscient. We do not have the God-given right to shape every nation in our own image or as we choose.
- We erred in taking unilateral military action not supported by multinational forces and the international community.
- We failed to recognize the international affairs there may be problems for which there are no immediate solutions.
- We failed to organize the top echelons of the executive branch to deal effectively with the extraordinary complex range of issues at hand. end quote…
I reiterate: We do not have the God-given right to shape every nation in our own image or as we choose. We failed to maintain national unity. We failed to draw the American people and the Congress into a full-fledged discussion of what we were trying to do. We failed to recognize the limitations on all our technical stuff. We failed; or as Mr. McNamara wrote: “We were wrong, terribly wrong.”
Humble Host wonders why these lessons written in the blood and guts of 58,000 brave American Vietnam war fighters, among millions of others, have not been learned and made mandatory considerations and actions before committing our nation to new battlefields.
Lest we forget… Bear
