Jeffrey Mark Goldberg: The Wars of John McCain
[Jeffrey Mark Goldberg is a journalist. He is an author and a staff writer for The Atlantic Monthly, having previously worked for The New Yorker.]
In April of 1969, the commander in chief of American forces in the Pacific, Admiral John S. McCain Jr., sent a cable to General Earle Wheeler, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and to General Creighton Abrams, the commander of American forces in Vietnam, with a pressing message. It is past time, Admiral McCain advised, for American units in Vietnam to overhaul their mission: the goal of the military effort in Vietnam should be to protect Vietnamese civilians from Communist insurgents, he wrote, rather than merely to hunt guerrillas in the countryside and then withdraw to the safety of permanent bases.
“The war has had from the outset major political as well as military overtones,” Admiral McCain wrote. “All agencies recognize that this is the time to put emphasis on protection of population and special enhancement of civilian security.” The South Vietnamese should do the main work of protecting civilians, McCain argued. The “national police should be the spearhead of this effort, and steps should be taken to attain the 120,000-man” South Vietnamese force by the following year.
The message was meant mainly for General Wheeler, and the Nixon administration. Abrams and McCain already agreed about the need to renovate American tactics in Vietnam. Both men were fairly new to their jobs. Abrams had succeeded General William Westmoreland the previous June and almost immediately had begun to discard many of Westmoreland’s divisive, and tactically fruitless, ideas, most notably his emphasis on search-and-destroy missions, which did little to sequester civilians from Vietcong control. Abrams had helped create the policy, soon endorsed by Nixon, known as “Vietnamization,” which demanded that the American-trained army of South Vietnam shoulder the burden of the fight against the north, and he had also tried, imperfectly, to reform the “Five O’Clock Follies,” the press briefings that provided notably optimistic reports about the war’s progress to a disaffected American public.
Abrams’s son, the retired Army general John Nelson Abrams, told me recently that both his father and Admiral McCain knew that their time was not boundless. “The strategy was, how quickly could you get the Vietnamese military to go from a support role to a lead role,” he said. The younger Abrams, who served in Vietnam as a frontline junior officer, and who dined with his father and Admiral McCain occasionally in Saigon during the war, said that both men understood that “time was running out for the American effort.”
“They never doubted that they were on the right track, but they also recognized that the American national will was the single greatest factor in determining whether the outcome would be victory or not,” he said. Both men were also impatient for victory, John Abrams said, in part out of concern for their own children. Two of Creighton Abrams’s three sons were serving in combat units, and Admiral McCain’s son, the naval aviator John S. McCain III, had been shot down over Hanoi on his 23rd bombing mission and was, at the time Admiral McCain drafted his cable to Wheeler and Abrams, a year and a half into what would turn out to be five and a half years of captivity in North Vietnam.
“You could see there was genuine fondness between them, and maybe in part because of the family commitment to the war, they were absolutely focused on winning,” John Abrams said, speaking of the relationship between his father and Admiral McCain. McCain, however, did not speak of his son’s captivity. “He would never show his emotions like that,” Abrams told me. After John McCain was released, in 1973, he learned that on several Christmases during his captivity, his father had traveled to the northernmost reaches of American-held territory, to be as close to him as physically possible. And only in 1973 did Admiral McCain learn that John McCain III had been singled out by the North Vietnamese for especially rigorous torture because he was the son of an important admiral. The North Vietnamese, in fact, referred to Admiral McCain’s son as the “prince.”
If Admiral McCain had doubts about America’s chance for victory, he concealed them expertly. In his public comments, he expressed supreme confidence that America had a plan in place to defeat the Communists. Though he was said to agree with General Abrams that overoptimistic reporting of battlefield successes had had the perverse effect of poisoning American public opinion, in a February 1969 interview with Reader’s Digest, he said, “We have the enemy licked now. He is beaten. We have the initiative in all areas. The enemy cannot achieve a military victory; he cannot even mount another major offensive.” In Faith of My Fathers, the biography of his father and grandfather—who was a legendary admiral of the Second World War—John McCain III reported that Henry Kissinger would bring Admiral McCain to see Nixon whenever the president seemed dispirited. “My father’s no-nonsense determination, Dr. Kissinger claims, was infectious and served as a tonic for the President’s flagging spirits,” McCain wrote.
“The reason I thought it would be helpful for President Nixon to see Admiral McCain on occasion was because he thought what we were doing was doable,” Kissinger told me a few weeks ago. “He talked about the practical problems. He wasn’t weighted down by what the op-ed pages of The New York Times and The Washington Post said.” Kissinger explained that although Admiral McCain spoke of “victory,” he understood the ambition of the Nixon administration to be the more finely calibrated goal of “withdrawal with honor.”
In 1972, the just-retired Admiral McCain wrote an opinion article for The New York Times in which he stated, “The South Vietnamese are doing sound military planning; the South Vietnamese Army has come of age; and the South Vietnamese Air Force is performing a steadily growing role in support of South Vietnamese Army ground forces. Vietnamization is successful.”
Less than three years later, Saigon fell to an invasion force of North Vietnamese tanks and infantry.
There are some obvious, even eerie, parallels between Admiral John McCain’s steadfast commitment to victory in Vietnam, and Senator John McCain’s dogged pursuit of victory in Iraq.
A few weeks ago, sitting in his suite in a Columbus, Ohio, hotel, I handed the senator a copy of his father’s 1972 Times opinion piece.
“1972?” he asked, reading it. “I hadn’t seen this. I was still in the prison.” He turned to Lindsey Graham, a Republican from South Carolina who is among his closest friends in the Senate, and who had wandered into the suite while McCain and I were talking. “Hey, Lindsey, look at this article. This is from when The New York Times still published op-eds by McCains,” he said with a half-smile. The week before, the Times opinion editor had rejected a characteristically pugnacious McCain op-ed that was highly critical of Barack Obama, for what McCain called his flawed understanding of the situation in Iraq.
I handed McCain a batch of his father’s exhortative cables to General Abrams. I’ve known McCain for some time and, while he can be a heroic talker, given to digressive, and often droll, colloquies on the news of the day, it has sometimes been difficult to pry from him insights into his own experience in Vietnam; he has a general aversion to what he once described to me, in a different context, as “this psycho stuff,” meaning, among other things, self-analysis. So I was hoping these cables, which he hadn’t previously seen, would prompt him to introspection.
He pulled one out and began to scan it. “Look at this,” he said, holding up an April 1969 message from his father to Wheeler and Abrams. He started to read aloud: “As shown in the negotiations in Paris, the government of Vietnam is acting more independently of the U.S. and may become even more independent as U.S. troops begin to withdraw.”
He put down the cable and laughed. “History repeats itself, huh?” he said. “You’re darn right history repeats itself.”..
Read entire article at Atlantic.com
In April of 1969, the commander in chief of American forces in the Pacific, Admiral John S. McCain Jr., sent a cable to General Earle Wheeler, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and to General Creighton Abrams, the commander of American forces in Vietnam, with a pressing message. It is past time, Admiral McCain advised, for American units in Vietnam to overhaul their mission: the goal of the military effort in Vietnam should be to protect Vietnamese civilians from Communist insurgents, he wrote, rather than merely to hunt guerrillas in the countryside and then withdraw to the safety of permanent bases.
“The war has had from the outset major political as well as military overtones,” Admiral McCain wrote. “All agencies recognize that this is the time to put emphasis on protection of population and special enhancement of civilian security.” The South Vietnamese should do the main work of protecting civilians, McCain argued. The “national police should be the spearhead of this effort, and steps should be taken to attain the 120,000-man” South Vietnamese force by the following year.
The message was meant mainly for General Wheeler, and the Nixon administration. Abrams and McCain already agreed about the need to renovate American tactics in Vietnam. Both men were fairly new to their jobs. Abrams had succeeded General William Westmoreland the previous June and almost immediately had begun to discard many of Westmoreland’s divisive, and tactically fruitless, ideas, most notably his emphasis on search-and-destroy missions, which did little to sequester civilians from Vietcong control. Abrams had helped create the policy, soon endorsed by Nixon, known as “Vietnamization,” which demanded that the American-trained army of South Vietnam shoulder the burden of the fight against the north, and he had also tried, imperfectly, to reform the “Five O’Clock Follies,” the press briefings that provided notably optimistic reports about the war’s progress to a disaffected American public.
Abrams’s son, the retired Army general John Nelson Abrams, told me recently that both his father and Admiral McCain knew that their time was not boundless. “The strategy was, how quickly could you get the Vietnamese military to go from a support role to a lead role,” he said. The younger Abrams, who served in Vietnam as a frontline junior officer, and who dined with his father and Admiral McCain occasionally in Saigon during the war, said that both men understood that “time was running out for the American effort.”
“They never doubted that they were on the right track, but they also recognized that the American national will was the single greatest factor in determining whether the outcome would be victory or not,” he said. Both men were also impatient for victory, John Abrams said, in part out of concern for their own children. Two of Creighton Abrams’s three sons were serving in combat units, and Admiral McCain’s son, the naval aviator John S. McCain III, had been shot down over Hanoi on his 23rd bombing mission and was, at the time Admiral McCain drafted his cable to Wheeler and Abrams, a year and a half into what would turn out to be five and a half years of captivity in North Vietnam.
“You could see there was genuine fondness between them, and maybe in part because of the family commitment to the war, they were absolutely focused on winning,” John Abrams said, speaking of the relationship between his father and Admiral McCain. McCain, however, did not speak of his son’s captivity. “He would never show his emotions like that,” Abrams told me. After John McCain was released, in 1973, he learned that on several Christmases during his captivity, his father had traveled to the northernmost reaches of American-held territory, to be as close to him as physically possible. And only in 1973 did Admiral McCain learn that John McCain III had been singled out by the North Vietnamese for especially rigorous torture because he was the son of an important admiral. The North Vietnamese, in fact, referred to Admiral McCain’s son as the “prince.”
If Admiral McCain had doubts about America’s chance for victory, he concealed them expertly. In his public comments, he expressed supreme confidence that America had a plan in place to defeat the Communists. Though he was said to agree with General Abrams that overoptimistic reporting of battlefield successes had had the perverse effect of poisoning American public opinion, in a February 1969 interview with Reader’s Digest, he said, “We have the enemy licked now. He is beaten. We have the initiative in all areas. The enemy cannot achieve a military victory; he cannot even mount another major offensive.” In Faith of My Fathers, the biography of his father and grandfather—who was a legendary admiral of the Second World War—John McCain III reported that Henry Kissinger would bring Admiral McCain to see Nixon whenever the president seemed dispirited. “My father’s no-nonsense determination, Dr. Kissinger claims, was infectious and served as a tonic for the President’s flagging spirits,” McCain wrote.
“The reason I thought it would be helpful for President Nixon to see Admiral McCain on occasion was because he thought what we were doing was doable,” Kissinger told me a few weeks ago. “He talked about the practical problems. He wasn’t weighted down by what the op-ed pages of The New York Times and The Washington Post said.” Kissinger explained that although Admiral McCain spoke of “victory,” he understood the ambition of the Nixon administration to be the more finely calibrated goal of “withdrawal with honor.”
In 1972, the just-retired Admiral McCain wrote an opinion article for The New York Times in which he stated, “The South Vietnamese are doing sound military planning; the South Vietnamese Army has come of age; and the South Vietnamese Air Force is performing a steadily growing role in support of South Vietnamese Army ground forces. Vietnamization is successful.”
Less than three years later, Saigon fell to an invasion force of North Vietnamese tanks and infantry.
There are some obvious, even eerie, parallels between Admiral John McCain’s steadfast commitment to victory in Vietnam, and Senator John McCain’s dogged pursuit of victory in Iraq.
A few weeks ago, sitting in his suite in a Columbus, Ohio, hotel, I handed the senator a copy of his father’s 1972 Times opinion piece.
“1972?” he asked, reading it. “I hadn’t seen this. I was still in the prison.” He turned to Lindsey Graham, a Republican from South Carolina who is among his closest friends in the Senate, and who had wandered into the suite while McCain and I were talking. “Hey, Lindsey, look at this article. This is from when The New York Times still published op-eds by McCains,” he said with a half-smile. The week before, the Times opinion editor had rejected a characteristically pugnacious McCain op-ed that was highly critical of Barack Obama, for what McCain called his flawed understanding of the situation in Iraq.
I handed McCain a batch of his father’s exhortative cables to General Abrams. I’ve known McCain for some time and, while he can be a heroic talker, given to digressive, and often droll, colloquies on the news of the day, it has sometimes been difficult to pry from him insights into his own experience in Vietnam; he has a general aversion to what he once described to me, in a different context, as “this psycho stuff,” meaning, among other things, self-analysis. So I was hoping these cables, which he hadn’t previously seen, would prompt him to introspection.
He pulled one out and began to scan it. “Look at this,” he said, holding up an April 1969 message from his father to Wheeler and Abrams. He started to read aloud: “As shown in the negotiations in Paris, the government of Vietnam is acting more independently of the U.S. and may become even more independent as U.S. troops begin to withdraw.”
He put down the cable and laughed. “History repeats itself, huh?” he said. “You’re darn right history repeats itself.”..