Remembering Vietnam, But Why Do We Still Stumble Into Futile Wars?

by Louis René Beres (May 2015)

Now that more than forty years have passed since the fall of Saigon, it is high time to ask some truly basic questions. No single question could be more necessary than the utterly obvious query: Why does the United States still get itself drawn into misconceived and losing wars? To be sure, even now, this most primordial question must remain sensitive or even painful for many Americans. Still, the long-term costs of simply ignoring it further are apt to be intolerable and catastrophic.

Not a scrap.

As to the American Order of Battle that had been crafted for halting Communism in Southeast Asia, it never had a sliver of operational hope.

None at all.

How could we possibly not ask this question?

Here, however, the overriding problem has been operational or tactical.

These particular wars, although just in origin and coherent in concept, can never be won.

What would Thomas Jefferson have thought of American political judgments on national war making? Plainly, perhaps among other interrelated sentiments, Jefferson would have recognized the evident warning symptoms of a declining democracy, a system of governance now operating here without benefit of any meaningfully discernible intellect or virtue.

Sometimes, in such matters, truth is counterintuitive. The Founding Fathers deeply believed that true liberty could only be menaced by democracy. For them, such liberty would have to be secured not by democratic governance, but rather by a predictably expansive regard for private property.

In the 1950s, Harvard historian Perry Miller published a book titled The Life of the Mind in America. Then, thoughtful references to a vital national literary tradition rooted primarily in Emerson, Thoreau, and the American Transcendentalists, were instantly recognizable, even to the average citizen reader. Not today.

Now, any work offered with a similar title would need to be very brief. More than likely, because few Americans are willing to challenge themselves beyond the demeaning genres of Hollywood movies, supermarket literature, and habitual social networking, The Life of the Mind in America would have to be listed, sotto voce, as an indisputably grim satire.

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Louis René Beres contributes regularly to The Iconoclast, our Community Blog. Click here to see all his contributions, on which comments are welcome.