In‐country: the United States in Vietnam and Iraq

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Notes

The Guardian (26 April 2003), ⟨http://www.guardian.co.uk/guardianpolitics/story/0 ,3605,943823,00.html⟩.

* Simon Jenkinson, Politics Department, University of Exeter, Exeter EX4 4RJ, UK. Fax: +44‐1392‐263305. Email: ⟨[email protected]⟩. The ideas in this article derive in part from the author's work in progress Asymmetric Realism: International Relations in the Age of Pre‐eminent States.

This phrase, which played so large a role in the Nixon–Kennedy election, came into being as a technical term to describe anticipated fluctuations in US and Soviet nuclear arsenals during the period when solid‐fuel delivery vehicles such as the Minuteman and Polaris were scheduled to replace older‐technology liquid fuel missiles. See Roy E. Licklider, ‘The Missile Gap Controversy’, Political Science Quarterly, 85,4 (1970), pp. 600–615.

Federal Election Commission data, ⟨http://www.fec.gov/pages/htmlto5.htm⟩ .

Quoted in Brian Van De Mark, Into the Quagmire: Lyndon Johnson and the Escalation of the Vietnam War (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), p. 60.

Though whether or not he should or could have found such an alternative remains a valid, if not especially fruitful, field of debate.

⟨http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2002/01/20020129‐11.html ⟩.

‘North Korea is a regime arming with missiles and weapons of mass destruction, while starving its citizens.’ ‘Iran aggressively pursues these weapons and exports terror, while an unelected few repress the Iranian people’s hope for freedom.' ⟨http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2002/01/20020129‐11.html ⟩.

Though it should not be forgotten that the invasion of Panama by Bush, Sr produced a similar number of civilian casualties, without the same initial worldwide support for retaliation against the United States. Merely an observation.

I wish to state unequivocally at this point that I consider that Bush's State of the Union address committed him as irrevocably to war in Iraq as Kennedy's inaugural speech committed him to war in Vietnam.

The beach‐storming photographs still in circulation, showing US Marines coming ashore at Da Nang, were staged for the benefit of journalists. The war went wrong early for the Americans when the head of the Da Nang Chamber of Commerce added to the carnival air by sending a bevy of local beauties bearing flowers to greet the GIs, resulting in chaos as troops abandoned equipment and discipline to pose for photos with the young women.

‘The Valley of the River Drang’.

See Robert Mason, Chickenhawk (New York: Penguin Books, 1984). Mason, a helicopter pilot with the Cavalry, writes of the first year of American combat in Vietnam, detailing the process of men going from patriotic fervour to fear, despair and disenchantment with the war.

The best account of the North Vietnamese reaction to American strategy and tactics, at least until Tet, can be found in Robert Thompson, Giap: The Victor in Vietnam (London: Warner, 1994).

United States procedure classified hills according to their height above sea level, in metres.

There were at least two attempts on the life of Colonel Honeycutt, who nevertheless made it home alive. See R. D. C. Heinl, ‘The Collapse of the Armed Forces’, Armed Forces Journal (7 June 1971) reprinted in Marvin E. Gettleman (ed), Vietnam and America: A Documented History (New York: Grove Atlantic, 1995), pp. 323–331.

Jane's Defence Weekly (20 June 2003).

I. Arreguín‐Toft, ‘How the Weak Win Wars: A Theory of Asymmetric Conflict’, International Security, 26,1 (2001), pp. 93–128.

Soldiers are now sufficiently emboldened to pen entire articles in the Guardian accusing their government of ‘atrocities’ and of waging war for oil: on one of the more notable occasions Tim Pridmore, serving in Iraq with the 101st Airborne. The Guardian (19 September 2003), ⟨http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0 ,2763,1045345,00.html⟩.

A stark change to the attitudes of the past: even as late as Korea, American officers were very unwilling to commit black troops to combat, on the grounds that they were inferior to whites in combat. This sudden volte‐face in the deployment of black troops suggests a remarkable transformation in this valuation—or perhaps a preference for endangering the lives of black, rather than white, Americans in a war in which these same American officers had little faith.

⟨http://www.goarmy.com/army101/benefits.htm#pays⟩. An unintended consequence of the educational benefits is that a high proportion of the reserve troops called up to fight will be educated and well informed: easily able to find fault with their orders and to articulate their dissatisfaction.

One of the many unintended consequences of this policy was a significant attrition of Buddhist monks: in seeking to up the numbers of ‘enemy structures destroyed’ (another of the many statistics gathered), pilots would destroy from the air the largest buildings in villages classed as ‘hostile’—which almost invariably included the pagoda.

William Shakespeare, Henry V, Act IV, Scene III.