Timothy Naftali: What Bush Could Learn from LBJ

Timothy Naftali, at the Huffington Post (6-29-05):

The Vietnam analogy, like all historical analogies, has its limits as a source of insight on the Iraq war. There are significant differences between the struggles, not least of which is that with the passage of 30 years military technology and advanced military medicine have reduced significantly the US death toll and therefore the war's political toll. But it still holds value as a window on the limits of presidential leadership. Then as now it was almost impossible for a president to admit any error of judgment in wartime, especially when this could call the entire enterprise into question. The cost to personal reputation, to party and to national morale was potentially staggering. What do you say to the wives, mothers and fathers of the men and women who lost their lives due to a policy failure?

On February 1, 1966, while publicly defending the war, Lyndon Johnson privately told Minnesota Senator Eugene McCarthy that the war in Vietnam was a mistake, but that he was stuck. He taped this conversation and it should forever be an antidote to the fallacy that staying the course is always wise in international affairs. Staying the course makes sense, after all, when the course makes sense:

President Johnson: Well I know we oughtn't to be there, but I can't get out. I just can't be the architect of surrender.... I'm willing to do damn near anything. If I told you what I was willing to do, I wouldn't have any program. [Republican Senate Minority Leader Everett] Dirksen wouldn't give me a dollar to operate the war. I just can't operate in a glass bowl with all these things. But I'm willing to do nearly anything a human can do, if I can do it with any honor at all.

[You can listen to this conversation in its entirety on whitehousetapes.org, the website of the Miller Center of Public Affairs's Presidential Recordings Program]

At the time the President of the United States was admitting that he had sent young men to war for the wrong reason, the comparatively small number of 2,460 had died in Vietnam. This was before a young John McCain and most of the other POWs were taken hostage; indeed before the vast majority of the horrors we now associate with Vietnam had taken place. It is staggering to reflect on the fact that another 55,733 would have to die before the US military could extricate itself from a war that its Commander-in-Chief already knew was a mistake. Put differently, when LBJ was privately admitting error, 95% of the young men who would ultimately die in Vietnam were still alive and well.