QUOTE OF THE MONTH:
“If we were about to be attacked or had been attacked or something happened that threatened a vital U.S. national interest, I would be the first in line to say, ‘Let’s go.’ I will always be an advocate in terms of wars of necessity. I am just much more cautious on wars of choice.”
Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates
June, 2011
(Editor’s Note: The following “Sense and Nonsense” column is the final installment in a series of eight columns on the theme of “Dangerous Lines to Cross.” The series began last February with a column on “The Line between Poor and Rich.” Subsequent columns included “Journalism and Propaganda,” “The Need for Magical Critical Thinking,” “Community and Rugged Individualism,” “The Line between Justice and Injustice,” “The Line between Ideas and Ideology,” and “Bridge Builders or Wall Builders?” I postponed writing about “Wars of Necessity versus Wars of Choice” because war is a personal subject for me, as it is for so many veterans who have served this country in a war zone and for so many innocent civilians who have been killed or wounded by war. I served as one of three Air Force public information officers in Vietnam in 1964-65. I was in a combat zone, but I never fired a bullet nor was I ever fired upon. I was sent there to provide a buffer between military operations and the very brave and courageous war correspondents sent to report on the war. I still have great respect both for the veterans with whom I served and the professional journalists I worked with including photographers Larry Burroughs of Life Magazine, Eddie Adams of Associated Press (AP), Al Moldvay with National Geographic, and writer John Wheeler of Associated Press. War was different then and the same as now. It kills, maims, and reveals courage and cowardice often in the same individual. It should never be celebrated. The cost is too high. Those who are impacted by it—especially those who pay the ultimate price—should always be honored and memorialized. I am proud of my military service. I am enraged by politicians who fabricate reasons to go to war. I think war profiteers occupy the lowest rung on the ladder of human depravity. War is not a game in which there are winners and losers. There are only losers. War may be a permanent symptom of the human condition, but preemptive wars, so-called “wars of choice,” only serve to blur the line between strength and weakness. Wars of choice represent a national policy of weakness in its most dangerous camouflage.)
SENSE AND NONSENSE—WARS OF NECESSITY vs. WARS OF CHOICE
From the editor: The last war of necessity in my lifetime was World War II. Obviously survivors and victims of the Bosnian conflict, the rebel forces in Libya, the millions who have died in Rwanda and the killing fields of Cambodia, as well as the entire nation of South Korea, have every right to disagree with that statement. It is admittedly a simplistic and myopic view of the difference between wars of necessity and wars of choice. However, it makes an important distinction.
I am not a pacifist. I believe there are wars that must be fought to protect our national security—wars of necessity. Further, I believe that some limited war-powers should be reserved for the force necessary to prevent genocide wherever it might occur. The U.S. did not intercede when it should have on a limited basis in Rwanda and in Cambodia. It justifiably did intercede and has interceded on a limited basis in Kosovo and Libya. However, I do not believe these efforts should ever be undertaken unilaterally and over extended periods of time.
Since 1945, military history in the U.S. has been dominated by the Korean War, the Vietnam War and the war in Iraq. This column will focus upon the war in Vietnam and the Iraq War because they provide clear examples of wars of choice. The justification for the Vietnam War was a non-existent attack upon U.S. Navy destroyers patrolling the Gulf of Tonkin on Aug. 4, 1964. The justification for the War in Iraq was a non-existent effort by Saddam Hussein to acquire uranium from Africa.
The Vietnam War
Declassified National Security Agency (NSA) reports and eyewitness accounts substantiate the view that there was no attack by the North Vietnamese on the U.S.S. Maddox in the Gulf of Tonkin. The NSA historical study written by Robert J. Hanyok and declassified in 2005 states: “It is not simply that there is a different story as to what happened; it is that no attack happened that night…In truth, Hanoi’s navy was engaged in nothing that night but the salvage of two of the boats damaged on August 2.”
On Aug. 2, two days before the phantom Aug. 4 attack, the U.S.S. Maddox had fired three warning shots at approaching North Vietnamese torpedo boats precisely to prevent a confrontation in international waters. However, the torpedo boats used those shots as a reason to return fire. The U.S. denied firing the first shots. Then U.S. Navy jets flying cover for the U.S.S. Maddox sank one of the North Vietnamese boats and damaged a second vessel. The Aug. 2 encounter took place entirely in international waters, but the ambiguity of the encounter (determining who the provocateur was) effectively delegitimized the claim that U.S. vessels had been the object of an unprovoked attack.
The claim did, however, place everyone on edge and establish the mindset that led to the miscommunications and assumptions made two days later on Aug. 4.
Navy Squadron commander James Stockdale, the pilot of an F8 Crusader Jet launched from the aircraft carrier U.S.S. Ticonderoga, said in his 1984 book, Love and War, “I had the best seat in the house to watch that event (the Aug. 4 event), and our destroyers (the Maddox and the Turner Joy) were just shooting at phantom targets -- there were no PT boats there…There was nothing there but black water and American fire power.”
These accounts of Aug. 4 are largely substantiated by at least three cables sent by Captain John J. Herrick, commander of the U.S.S. Maddox, when he reported to his superiors in Honolulu on Aug. 4 that “freak weather effects” on the ship’s radar had made such an attack questionable. Unfortunately, Defense Secretary McNamara failed to inform President Johnson immediately that Captain Herrick was urging a complete evaluation “before any further action.”
President Johnson went on national television the same day announcing the phantom attack as an established fact. He had stayed silent after the exchange of gunfire on Aug. 2. Congress passed the Tonkin Gulf Resolution on Aug. 7 giving President Johnson the authority to conduct military operations in Southeast Asia without the benefit of a declaration of war.
The resolution resulted almost immediately in bombing missions aimed at Hanoi and key targets in North Vietnam, flown by the South Vietnamese Air Force with support from the U.S. Air Force. I personally witnessed South Vietnamese General Nguyen Cao Ky invite AP reporter John Wheeler into his military vehicle on the tarmac at Danang Air Base to publicly announce leading the first bombing mission on North Vietnam. The U.S. also began exponentially building the size of its ground forces in the early spring of 1965 when the first marines were sent to Danang.
Much like vultures circling fresh road kill, war profiteers such as the “engineering” firm Brown and Root were not far behind. Ultimately Brown and Root became KBR after Halliburton purchased the parent company of M.W. Kellogg and created KBR in 1998. Halliburton had previously purchased Brown and Root in 1962. The political careers of Messrs. Lyndon Johnson, Vice President Cheney, and President George W. Bush received much of their financial backing from these huge engineering/war benefactors. Cheney continues to unabashedly benefit from both sides of this public/private partnership.
Much of the explanation for the utterly destructive paths and outcomes of both the Vietnam War and the Iraq War can be found in the tragic marriage of political ambition with an outlandish perversion and abuse of the profit motive. To make it worse, the “marriage vows” between war profiteers and politicians continue to be hidden under the pretext of classified information. Vice President Cheney even invented a new category of classification when he would stamp documents “Treat as Classified,” thus bypassing normal procedures for determining whether information should be secret.
The Iraq War
The resolution authorizing the Iraq War was eerily similar to the resolution authorizing the Vietnam War. The Constitution grants Congress the power to declare war in Section 8 of Article 1. In Vietnam and Iraq, however, Congress relinquished that power to the President.
The Tonkin Gulf Resolution of 1964 states, “…the Congress approves and supports the determination of the President, as Commander in Chief, to take all necessary measures to repel any armed attack against the forces of the United States and to prevent further aggression.”
The joint resolution authorizing use of military force in Iraq states, “…the President is authorized to use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, or harbored such organizations or persons, in order to prevent any future acts of international terrorism against the United States by such nations, organizations or persons.”
This resolution was specific in its reference to Sept. 11 but extraordinarily broad in its scope and lack of timeframe. President Bush was unencumbered by limits on where and when and against whom he could unleash the military power of the U.S. The resolution authorized use of military force “to prevent any future acts of international terrorism.” A direct result of this authorization was an endless effort by the Bush Administration to substitute fiction for fact.
Weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) would be adequate justification for war under the resolution. This resulted in a claim that Saddam Hussein was attempting to acquire quantities of uranium from Africa. Doubts expressed in CIA documents in 2002 and authored by envoy Joe Wilson about this claim echo the doubts expressed by Captain Herrick about the phantom Gulf of Tonkin attack on Aug. 4, 1964. In fact, the documents upon which the non-existent uranium-acquisition attempt rested were forged documents. Knowing the doubts being expressed, Bush still stated in his 2003 State of the Union address that “The British Government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.”
August 7, 1964, the day in which Congress passed the Tonkin Gulf Resolution and September 18, 2001, the day in which Congress passed the Iraq War resolution (officially called the “Authorization for Use of Military Force”) should take their rightful places on the list of “Days of Infamy” alongside Dec. 7, 1941, and September 11, 2001. Our nation was temporarily weakened on Dec. 7 and Sept. 11. But it was more grievously wounded on Aug. 7, 1964 and Sept. 18, 2001.
Those resolutions have irreparably weakened the “Separation of Powers” doctrine skillfully authored by our founding fathers in the first three articles of the Constitution. In addition, they have established precedent granting the President—any President—the power to opt for wars of choice.
For the record, Congress repealed the Tonkin Gulf Resolution in 1971 and passed the War Powers Resolution in 1973 which attempts to place limits on the President’s power to conduct war. However, both congressional actions have been effectively ignored by all sitting presidents since 1973.
Notwithstanding Defense Secretary Gates’ newly found cautiousness about wars of choice, a combination of the profiteering of the military-industrial complex and the political calculations of past- and present-day Presidents make wars of choice the dominant paradigm.
The war in Vietnam was Lyndon Johnson’s war. He bought it and he continues to own it. Nixon inherited that war and extended it. The war in Iraq was and is George W. Bush’s war. He launched it with “shock and awe” in March, 2003. Obama inherited that war and is ending it. He should end the war in Afghanistan as well. The price we have paid as a country for the folly of Johnson and Bush exceeds our capacity to fully comprehend. It has and will affect generations to come. There may always be wars of necessity. That does not mean we need to feed our reptilian instincts with wars of choice.
Maynard Chapman, Editor
The Compass Newsletter
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