The fog of war
By Roy Edroso recently did a nice job skewering this silly argument, which Prof. InstaHack liked so much he repeated it again today. Said the sage of Knoxville:
Lyndon Baines Johnson was another President with a silver star and a short combat career who seemed to feel that he had a lot to prove. Might Kerry’s rather clear desire to be seen as a tough guy make him a surprisingly resilient warrior? Or might it backfire, as it most likely did with LBJ?
In addition to Edroso’s points, the other funny thing about this, of course, is that LBJ’s Vietnam strategy corresponds almost perfectly with Reynolds’ current position. Like LBJ, Reynolds posits military force as a universal solvent, believes that if the current amount of force isn’t achieving its objectives maybe you should try more, and that the best way to deal with data suggesting the said policy isn’t working is to ignore it, preferably while smearing people who prefer not to ignore this data as traitors and cowards. And, of course, Reynolds’ position is even more indefensible, since even if one accepts the (extremely dubious) proposition that Islamic terrorism presents an existential threat to the United States comparable to Stalinism, there is the additional problem that the former does not primarily manifest itself in conventional nation-states.
LBJ’s Vietnam policy certainly was a disaster, and unlike in Bush’s case its doubly tragic because it undercut what was an otherwise terrific level of presidential achievement. But it’s not clear on what basis Reynolds, given his premises, can claim Vietnam was a disastrous policy. It was, based on these premises, in fact more defensible that the war on Iraq.