Lessons from the Vietnam War

Stephen Kershnar

What Have We Learned from the Vietnam War?

Dunkirk-Fredonia Observer

January 22, 2018

            Many of us recently watched Ken Burns’ outstanding documentary: The Vietnam War. What’s interesting is how little we learned from the war.

            The Vietnam War teaches us that there are three requirements that should be met before the U.S. goes to war. First, the U.S. should fight on the just side. No country may trample on other people’s moral rights regardless of its international goals. Second, the U.S. should go to war only when doing so is in the American people’s interest. The government is the people’s agent and should act on its behalf. Third, the U.S. should go to war only when doing so satisfies the Constitution. The Constitution is a contract between the government and the people and it’s wrong to ignore it no matter how strongly politicians feel about some international cause.

            First, consider whether the Vietnam War was in the U.S. interest. The U.S. lost 58,000 people and spent $800 billion adjusted for inflation. When you add in the value of the 58,000 lives lost (currently valued at, roughly, $9 million per life), the total cost is more than $1 trillion dollars. Even if the U.S. hadn’t lost, it is hard to see how the American people would have benefitted enough by the preservation of a corrupt South Vietnamese government to justify spending that much blood and treasure.

            Did we learn anything from this expenditure? No. According to Brown University’s Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs, the second Iraq War cost the U.S. $2 trillion dollars. The Bush II and Obama wars in Afghanistan, Libya, and Syria and drone strikes in Pakistan, Somalia, and Yemen added a considerable sum to this expenditure. Bush I’s first Iraq War preceded the spending orgy. According to the Congressional Research Service, it only cost $100 billion. The American people are spending money they don’t have for wars whose costs to them dwarf their benefits. Worse, when the amount of death and destruction are taken into account, it’s not even clear they’re good for the people we’re trying to benefit.  

            Second, consider whether the Vietnam War was Constitutional. The Constitution requires Congress to declare war (Article I Section 8). In the Vietnam War, this wasn’t done. Congress merely passed the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution. In not declaring war, Congress followed its pathetic precedent in the Korean War, authorizing war in some sense without declaring it. Making matters worse, the resolution was repealed in 1971 and Richard Nixon continued the war anyway. Congress further muddied Constitutional waters in 1973 by passing the War Powers Resolution that permitted it to authorize war without declaring it. Congress and the courts then followed this retreat by failing to enforce either that resolution or the Declaration of War clause.

            Did we learn anything from this pattern of ignoring the Constitution and statutory law during the Vietnam War? Again, no. As in Korea and Vietnam, U.S. wars in Kosovo, Somalia, Afghanistan, Iraq (two different wars), Libya, and Syria were all done without Congress declaring war. Congress preferred to shirk its constitutional duties. Congressional cowards didn’t want to go on record because doing so would make them accountable.   

Some of these wars didn’t even satisfy the War Powers Resolution. Even after Congress explicitly refused to authorize air and missile strikes, Clinton bombed Serbian forces anyway. The Obama administration made the ridiculous argument that it didn’t need Congressional authorization to attack the Libyan military with drone strikes and cruise missiles. Other examples include Obama’s unauthorized attacks on ISIS and Syria. Such gross unconstitutionality occurred without the courts stepping in, members of the military living up to their oath and insisting on proper authorization, or the media demanding that the Constitution and statutory law be followed.

The Constitutional problems with the Vietnam War were made worse by conscription. Conscription made it clear that in their rush to engage in wasteful and, in some cases, unconstitutional wars, Woodrow Wilson, Harry Truman, and Lyndon Johnson were not going to let American freedom stand in their way. Sadly, their names are not blacked like other historical villains. In 1918, the Supreme Court held that the Constitution permits conscription in one its most embarrassing decisions.

            Did we even learn anything from the lies and lack of integrity displayed by the Presidents and the military leadership during the Vietnam War? No.

The Gulf of Tonkin Resolution was based on lies. The first attack was a North Vietnamese response to aggressive intelligence-gathering maneuvers by coordinated American, Laotian, and South Vietnamese forces. The second attack likely never occurred. Johnson and the military knew this, but used it to get Congress to authorize war anyway (albeit without declaring it). Both Johnson and Nixon thought the war was unwinnable but kept feeding American boys into the Vietnamese meat grinder. Johnson lied about whether the war was winnable, how much it was expected to cost, and how well it was going. In his 1964 Presidential campaign, he promised not to escalate the war. Nixon told similar lies, scuttled peace talks during the next presidential campaign, and secretly bombed Cambodia.

            Did we learn anything about putting sleazy men in high office? No. The Bushes, Clinton, and Obama are cut from the same cloth as Johnson and Nixon. While less tragic than the Vietnam War, the second Iraq war involved an impressive number of half-truths and lies. It might be that the nature of the American political class makes a lack of integrity, lying, and cover-ups standard operating procedure. Still, this is all the more reason to limit presidential opportunities for starting and continuing wars and to tightly monitor them once they begin.

            It is unclear what we’ve learned from the Vietnam War. The reputation of Lyndon Johnson remains intact. We’ve failed to ensure that American wars are in the people’s interest, legal, and not propelled by a pack of lies. George Santayana said it well, “Those who do not remember the past are doomed to repeat it.”