Transcripts For CSPAN3 Writing 20240705

So were going to get started with our second panel. We spent the first hour talking about the of war and something about the military issues and strategies associated with it. In this hour, were going to talk about writing about war. What it means to be on the ground in the place, sort of study it and reflect on it from. A historical or literary point of view. And id like to start with we have panelists. Ill introduce them very briefly, although i suspect known to all of you, robert brigham, the shirley ecker. Barsky professor of history and International Relations at vassar and author of numerous books on vietnam war, including reckless Henry Kissinger and the tragic tragedy of the vietnam war and vietnam and the limits of american power. Bob brigham. Next, we have philip caputo, a vietnam vet and author of 71 books, including a rumor of war, one of the most important early books on vietnam. And indeed, it helped to establish a whole genre. Winner of the Pulitzer Prize for investigative reporting, along with other awards. Next, we have frances fitzgerald, a pioneering american journalist and historian who has written many books on a wide variety of subjects. Her book, the fire in the lake the vietnamese and americans in vietnam, which has been discussed quite a bit already this morning, won the National Book award and the Pulitzer Prize, among numerous other. And then frederick the vol the lawrence dee belfer, professor of International Affairs at harvard university. Hes the author of Pulitzer Prize winning the embers of war the fall of empire and the making of americas vietnam, and more recently, jfk coming of age in the american century, 1917 to 1956, the first of two planned volumes on jfk. So welcome. Its great to have the four of you with us for this next hour. And if we if i can, id like to start with frank with a question about indeed, youre a pioneer. Your work in vietnam helped to establish an extraordinary level of of journalistic scholarship and significant engagement with the issues on the ground. But can you talk a little bit about what it meant for you as a young woman in vietnam to be writing about war . How did you understand that experience . Well, all i can say is that that fire in the leg was the most difficult book ive ever had to write. And the reason was not so much the subject matter. It was a matter of tone. I mean, im talking in writerly way and. The subject code came up immediately that. I got to vietnam. I remember getting there on a plane from vientiane, and the plane was going along and so on, and suddenly went almost vertically to a land and the we got out and they said, well, you know, they were mortaring the airport just now. And so we had to do that. So then i got through the customs and so forth, and i was met by a. Friend and he said, weve got to hurry. And i said, why . He said, because i have a tennis game. And he did. So i thought, you know how, how do i write about that . And that evening we went to not he and i, but you know, the whole press corps gang went to a Birthday Party given by the sailors for nbc correspondent for his photographer girlfriend, and it was on the roof, the Caravelle Hotel and. There was roses and champagne and there were firing in the distance all the time. Was of it was outgoing, but some of it was incoming. And we heard even. Gunfire in the streets just below. And nobody paid any attention at all except me and i thought, well, how do i write about this . And then then the next thing i remember very well was i went up to quinlan, which is the capital of indian province, finding out who had been a viet cong forever. I mean, it might as well have been in the north. And the americans were putting on an enormous more than operation. It went on for a couple of weeks and somehow the first place i got to was the hospital. And they said, well, its over there. So i went and this beautiful old french building, i went inside the courtyard and there was nobody there at all. So finally i saw this american leaning over one of the balconies and so i went up to him and he was a doctor who was there for six months. And he said he was practically his hair out. He said, you just cant believe how terrible it is. You cant believe it. You cant believe it. You cant believe it. And he showed me along this corridor where were there. There were stretchers with people lying on every one of them not able to get into the rooms and the people were so horribly disfigured, they they they were up to twice their size. And a lot of them had terrible wounds as well. And of course, it was napalm or c4 that had done it. And it was clearly. Initiative. So. He couldnt speak to them. He had no medicine even even to make them make it more comfortable that he was he didnt he . You know, he saw himself when it came there as being in a nice clinic with some some children. You know. But there it was almost all by himself with these impossible cases that and he didnt know who they were, what where they came from, what had happened to them. So on and i remember him, whereas we were looking over over the courtyard there was a dog walking along with a bone in his body in its in its in its mouth. And he said, you know, thats a human bone because they dug, they, they dont bury them very deeply. And so dogs often just dont dig, dig the bodies up and and chew the bones and and you know, the whole spectacle was so terrible that i really had no idea how to how how to how to deal with it. I mean, i could have sort of screamed like he did know in writing, but i knew that that nobody could read that, you know, it would just turn everybody off and they would think that was a little crazy. And equally, i could not sort of take that distance from it because the id be if i did. And so, you know, i would go back forth while i was there between these two things were four things, you know, the sort of general ease of life in saigon and and these horrors outside and so that thats when i started to worry about how to how to write about the whole thing. And it and i learned more about the context about the war and about the vietnamese who still was there. And so when i started writing this book, i still didnt quite know how i was going to be able to deal with. Its really paradox in some ways that wandered into this circumstance and found to be as complicated as you did, but you set out to write an extra ordinarily ambitious book and as a very Young Journalist on the ground, you recognize at the time you were beginning work the level of ambition that would be required to pull it off. I guess not. I wouldnt. Well, it worked out, which is good. Well, i thank john for for boosting it. Very kind of him. Well, thank you. So, fred, you have as a historian who has studied the vietnam a great deal from the distance of the aftermath of the war, can you tell you something about your own interest, this work, what drew you to it in the first place and how you see the evolution of thinking about this issue since you published the embers of war . Well, i think i im originally from sweden and i think developed an interest early on down in us Foreign Policy. We emigrated to canada and i dont think you cant help when you live in canada to be if you care about foreign affairs, to think a lot about the us, what are they up to down there . And so i think i developed this interest. I read and ill come back to this in a second. I read David Halberstams best in the best and the brightest college blew my mind. And then in graduate school, i decided, need to figure out how this whole thing started. And initially, that had to do with kennedy and johnson and their decision to americanize. And i think something that happens to all of us or many of us is that we begin to write about this conflict and then we visit the country and something takes hold. And so all of a sudden you find yourself committing to do another book. And so thats a thats how i got into this in terms of the the literature. Dan i guess id make a couple of remarks. You know, were as historians to were trained to believe that you a certain period of time before you can really good history. I think thats true. But im also conscious of the fact that so many of the early works, we might call them first cut histories. Second cut have just stood up so incredibly well and the certain person just my immediate right, i, i think fire in the lake belong is on any short list today. Any short list of essential books on the war. Halberstam. George herring. Bernard faull, arguably one of our great writers, still on this conflict. So its striking to me. Dan chester, there are a number of these early books that i think right now if you picked them up, you would find you learned a great deal about this conflict. It should also be said, maybe my second point is that, of course, the scholarship thats come out over the last couple of decades ive contributed a bit of this to this myself, i think has been incredibly important. Its given us a whole new a whole new understanding in some respects of the of the struggle. Some of it based, obviously, on vietnamese sources, sources in france that ive made use of and others have made use of an incredible outpouring of documentary materials in this country. And and its its its been so important. And yet theres irony here which i think that this new scholarship has really changed the terms of the debate in this country. Im conscious of the fact that were still debating the core questions. Why did the United States get involved . Why did the United States escalate its involvement . Why did it perpetuate wait this war . Why did it fail to achieve its objectives . I guess what the new scholarship is really doing is allowing to debate those questions with more sophistication than we had before, which it seems to me is an interesting. And if i may, just one final thought on this, and that is whats striking to me after 25 years of studying this war is, that american leaders and this includes John F Kennedy, who did research and writing about right now, kennedy, johnson and nixon, as i see it, were realists behind closed doors. They were gloomy realists about this war, i think from the beginning to the end, Robert Mcnamara would later say to us, if only we had known it was a kind of of the latter day mcnamara. He sells himself short. He did know. They did know. And so what i find striking for me is the degree to which they were realists about the war. Dan and they escalated, it seems to me, and perpetuated a war that they privately doubted was either winnable or necessary. Thats a rather gloomy conclusion that ive reached on the basis of my research. Well, it raises themes that id like us to discuss in this hour. One of them is the role of leadership in Decision Making that that maybe we can come back. And the question is, why is it today still we seem to devalue integrity, transparency, a certain commitment to honesty. And in way in which leadership is practiced in this country politically, when we learn much after the disclosures of, mcnamara and johnson and nixon, we knew what they were really thinking because actually that became public, which was revelatory. But i want to back up just a bit and stay with you for a second, fred. It seems to me, anyway, it was selfevident by the late 1970s that if we learned nothing else, well never do that again. We will not go back to a place like vietnam, not understanding the nature of the conflict that we are engaging. And we spent much of our time this talking about afghanistan and iraq. So from a historical point of view, what we learned or not, in your view . Well, in the final paragraph of my first book, which is called choosing war, i wrote, and i remember thinking about, should i put this in, should i not put this in . But i put it in and i remember i wrote the last conclusion about the escalation, the war in vietnam. Is this something very much something very much like it could happen again. So some of me understood that eternal temptation of politicians to pursue their short term interests, to push to do whats best for them in the short term will continue to be there, even this misbegotten adventure in Southeast Asia, Southeast Asia. And i think down that thats what weve seen. Weve seen in terms of their calculation of best for them in the short term pursuing a military option in these later conflicts works for them. It gets to something that i havent mentioned, which i think is central to understanding. Certainly the war in vietnam, but also these later interventions, which is that i think it has a lot to do with domestic politics and maybe democrat in particular being nervous about being tarred with the soft on communism or later soft on terrorism label and in domestic political terms and in careerist terms. Lets not underestimate the importance of playing old careerism, making these commitments, even if youre saying Something Else behind closed doors matters, which is i guess a way of saying, dan, that maybe we havent learned, maybe we havent learned that much or. Maybe its really about leadership and well come back that. Thank you, phil. Most everyone knows, i think about your first book, which certainly anyone who has any interest in the vietnam war has encountered a rumor of war. I certainly have. And i thought it was an extraordinary achievement. Can you Say Something about why you decided to write about vietnam in that way . What was your process that led you create a rumor of war and then reflect a little bit about what youve learned since you wrote it. Well, i had no idea what process was. I dont even know if i had a process. I think we all need to make a distinction between the kind of book that i wrote and and what my fellow panelists up here or wrote and mine was basically an account, an intensely personal experience. It had nothing to do with politics or with the geopolitical causes of the war. And what i basically wanted to write about what the was like for those were in it. The the i have two problems with that. One was, is that in the past novels or memoirs, convention or wars call them that, whether it was Norman Mailer, james jones or Siegfried Sassoon of world war one, had a narrative that was imposed on them by the event itself. In other words, like, say, Norman Mailer wrote about the philippines, the Philippine Campaign in his novel the naked, the dead. Well, that had a beginning, a middle, an end of the vietnam war just seemed to have no coherence or pattern to it at all. And i had almost no idea about how to go about writing an arc to that or putting it a narrative arc on that experience. And the other one, of course, was that at the time i was writing it, it was it was still an intensely debated topic here in the us and elsewhere. So it was difficult to get away it to get a perspective on it. But what saved me in that was, is first of all, as i read, i was in london and i read sid fritz as soon as memoirs of an infantryman officer, which was best, it was a memoir, thinly, thinly, thinly disguised as a novel and i said, thats ive ive got to do the arc is what happened to me and my who were over there. Thats the arc thats the narrative arc, not the event itself. And then i said i wanted to write about it in such a way that was it was such fidelity to the experience that those who were debating the war back here would take a pause and say, what do i think about now . I mean, everybody struck me as almost smug in their attitudes about the war, whether they were, you know, prowar or somewhere in between. And thats what i wanted. I wanted the book to undermine been there, assumed the attitudes. So thats why i wrote about it the way i did. But there was no process to it. I just if i may, i started that book when i was still in and in. I started it and at camp lejeune, North Carolina and got nowhere with it and i continued to it around with me literally all over the world for Something Like nine years before i was finally able to put it all together. And then i think id written one third of it in those nine years. And then in the last six months, i wrote the rest of it. It all came together. Well, one of the things i think you accomplished brilliantly in the book is its theres no question the hardest thing about writing about war is giving people a sense of really what it feels like to be in a war. That terror can only be known by people who have lived it. But you tried in a literary way, and i think quite brilliantly to evoke something about how awful it and what it feels like to be in a war. And i know youve spoken about that that hadnt really been done in that way before. So my question is how did you come about doing that . And at the time were actually writing the book . Nobody wanted to talk about the vietnam war. It wasnt you were ahead of your time. This was not a moment when people were talking about memorials and memory though nobody wanted to talk about the war. So how did you come to terms with those issues . I you know, i was ive never experienced in my career since then what i did there was a compulsion to create this narrative that i could not overcome and nothing outside of me could overcome it. I mean, if i say this in all sincerity, if somebody had told that if you write this book, you will be shot by the government, i would have written it anyway. And. The. And so there was there was that compulsion that was that was that was just driving me. And i dont know if that answers question, but. Well, the best reason to write a book is because you cant figure out anything better to do. So i think thats yeah, i had Something Better to do. I was a i was actually if i was a newspaperman for ten years, thats one of the reasons it took so long to write. So yeah, i had very little bits, little spare time to work on it. I, by a certain irony i got shot in another war in lebanon and it put me in the hospice or on crutches for Something Like nine months and thats when i truly had nothing better. Write book. Did you have any inkling that the book actually might sell . No. You know, i was quite certain it would just i think i got an advance of 6,000 for the book and i and i remember telling my wife that i said, you know, i think i think it might earn the advance and we could maybe take a nice holiday somewhere. And i had no idea i was going to have the the impact, the effect that it did. And it still does. 437 holidays later. Yeah, right. And you know, the title of the book that was inspired. Oh, so i dont know who came up with that, but i just think it works beautifully for. Oh so maybe that has something to do. Well, it could be thats actually who came up with that was matthew. I got that quote from the verse in the gospel of matthew. It works. Okay. Oh, great. Thank you, bob. You have built a career on writing a great deal about vietnam war in various ways. I wonder if you could tell us a little bit about why. Well, this is going to be a strange story for those of you who dont know me very well and for those of you who do know me, youve heard this repeat oddly. So i apologize. Oh, i was born to an unwed mother in the Salvation Army in inner city buffalo. Spent some time in foster care, was finally adopted upstate new york, and shortly after my adoption, my new parents divorced and a social worker came by our house to see how i was doing. And in a conversation, a new mom, she whispered the word vietnam. And it was september 1967, and i was in a working class town in upstate new york. So vietnam was no stranger to me. And in my seven year old mind, vietnam represented a thing that was destroying families. So on the spot in that moment, i created story in my head about my father being vietnam and that is why my biological family whole and i told that story to myself on walks and from school, changing some details. My father would return to vietnam, find my mother. I never knew where she was in these daydream and we would be reunited all adoptees have discovery fantasies and we all tell stories fit in. Mine just happened to be a war story. And as time went on and no father up, i changed the narrative in my head. And eventually, after april 1975, that narrative meant that he was dead and so i led from that moment on with being the son of who died in vietnam. The first time i met many of you in. This room, that is what i told you. First time i met fred, first time i met francie, peter hank, brian. That was the story that i told myself because that was the way i constructed a life that had a history when i had no history of my own. And i had not a shred of evidence my mother, my adoptive mother told me years later that that conversation with a social worker never even took place. I think shes wrong that so i literally reading as a young person, reading the books, many of the people in this room convinced myself that not only was that my story, but way to really get connected and a past and and have feet the ground was to become a historian of that war. And so thats what i did and thats who i am. And one sense and then four years ago, a dna test brought me to the biological father i never knew. And would never meet. And it turned out that he had been with me for much of my life, and i had never known it. The first paper i wrote in college was on a photograph he took in vietnam in february of 1968. He was a marine corps sergeant. He was a combat photographer with alpha one one the first Reaction Force into way during the tet offensive. I wrote my First College paper on his for a photograph. I didnt know he was my father. My first trip to vietnam in 1989. Charles oshaughnessy of National Archive gave me about two dozen photographs because he knew i was going to way and i wanted to improve my lectures on way. I use these photographs to retrace the steps of of that of that long siege in way they were my fathers photographs. I did not know that for 40 years i have taught the vietnam war and especially the tet offensive, using my fathers photographs that i not know where my fathers photographs. So thats what im writing now, but its the 10th book of nine books on vietnam. Many of with with peter osnos. Thankfully. And so ive kind of feel like ive come full circle, but i have a lot more to say about this war. Its an amazing revelation and it reminds us of mysteries of all kinds that you dont anticipate in our lives. But i guess the question therefore, is how has it affected your work since . Well, now i have to learn how to write a memoir. So thats affected it. I, i think i dont know. I havent done anything except the memoirs since this discovery re i mean, its affected my personal life in some strange ways. I was all alone. My adoptive sister died, my adoptive mother died, my adoptive father died. And now i have nine brothers and sisters, 101st cousins. So and they know nothing about this war, even though most of them were in the military. So i. I im learning more about the war to tell them and im more about my father through, his photographs and through his letters and through his diaries, my outlook as a historian hasnt changed. I dont think when i first wrote the memoir, i did several drafts and they were just awful because i was a historian writing, someone elses story. And thats not really what a memoir is. So i think one of the things thats changed is ive learned how to write in that way. And i dont know how that will impact the next book, but well have to wait and see. Well, the news is everybody in this room is going to buy. I hope so. Thats good news there. So id like to a little bit about the theme of leadership which comes up in your work for of you in various ways. And maybe, phil, i like to start with you because maybe it was least selfish consciously an issue for you in your own writing. I the question of leadership when you were there, when you were in vietnam was a question that both bob and chuck answered in the prior panel. How thoughtful were you about why you were there and the nature of the leadership who were setting the policies that led to your your actions . Was that present for you . No, no, no. Every now and then it it came up. It could because i was there early in the war, but even early in the war, we who were fighting it were beginning to question about what what what are we here for . Whats going. And every now and then one of my troopers or squad leader would say, hey, l. T. , you know, what in the hell are we doing here . And i would just say, you know, were marines here because weve been ordered to be here, period. That was that was about the best answer i could give. But the its difficult for me to to explain it in this kind atmosphere when youre in that kind of environment, you are so focused, a, accomplishing whatever mission youve been assigned, but also be keeping all of your people alive and wounded. And thats all. And yourself, obviously, thats thats all you really have time to think about and to say nothing of the fact that you quite often you get 2 hours sleep a night and so youre so tired, you cant about these deep thoughts about why are we here and whats the gop political reason to be in indochina and so forth. Yeah, when i was writing the book on vietnam in that time, i had great conversations with jim, who was in the audience here, who was a who served with Michael Odonnell in vietnam, a fellow helicopter pilot. And he told me in great detail how their focus each day not on the larger political questions. It was staying alive every day. How do we get through . What do we have to do in order to get the day . How do we make sure we take care of each other . And according to jim and im sure this is true for many who serve, it just wasnt time to think about leadership. That wasnt why they what that was on their radar dimension. So what you say, of course, resonates. And thats also what we heard earlier. But stepping back, all of you have reflected on leadership and frankly in your work, has your have your own thoughts about Political Leadership developed since the fire in, the lake. What are your views about about Political Leadership and the war making . And and has that taken news for you . Yeah, i think it has. I pentagon papers was was published just before i finished the book and that that had an enormous impact on me that that those papers and i actually knew people who wrote them and so they were they while some didnt tell me at the time they described this and there was a book that dan ellsberg wrote was someone else called what it called papers on the war maybe. No, it was. Oh, thats just something about irony of the i forget. Anyway, it i think the central idea was that when you started out with these very small wars and then in the case of vietnam and everybody thought, you know, it could it could be kept at that small distance and it and it didnt because the vietnamese were too good. And so more were going in. And so everybody well, why doesnt someone stop at some some point or another and and the the cynical but i think real answer was that was that that each president would put off defeat until the next and. That really sort of horrified me. And, you know, i have to have to worry about president s and war ever since. Does it matter who they are . Yeah. Thank you. So fred, this is an unfair question, but i bet youve been asked it 100 times. Youre on jfk. The next volume of your biography and ive certainly been asked many times what my reflection are as to what would have happened if jfk had not been assassinated and what would have been his policy in vietnam. Yeah, you know, with students, we do a lot of a analysis of counterfactuals. A lot of professional historians. That is to say, what if questions a lot of my fellow professional historians say, well, no, we shouldnt be doing a doing that kind of analysis. We have enough difficulty explaining what did happen in history. Lets not waste time with what might have happened to which i say no. On the contrary, counterfactuals help us better understand what did happen. Its not a parlor game. So in this case, speculating in a careful way. And i do think there are ground rules rules, a careful way about what a surviving kennedy. He returns from dallas alive, what he would done in vietnam, not only. Is, i think, intellectually interesting helps us understand him, but it also actually helps us better understand what johnson did do. So ive written a little bit this and its going to come up, as you say, in my in in the second volume. Basically, my is this stand, which is that i dont agree with those who suggest that he had already decided withdraw when he withdraw from vietnam when he left on that fateful trip to texas. I just dont think the evidence is there. I know evidence is being presented. I just dont think it quite shows what these people suggest. I do think that though we can never know. Obviously, its a counterfactual counterfactual, inherently unanswerable. I do think that for me, the best argument is that a surviving kennedy does not americanize his the war does not opt for a large scale escalation. His his his doubts about the war and went back and i cover this in volume one of my biography and its also in embers of war actually his go back to 1951. He visits with his brother bobby during the french war and both of them, but in particular jack, remarkably prescient about whats going on, the french and whats likely to happen for. Any western power that might seek to defeat what he means revolution. I dont think that those ever go away. So for the next 12 years until his death i think John F Kennedy is of view that any large military intervention is likely to to fail. So theres a paradox because if that if im right about that, how do we explain the sizable escalation that occurs on kennedys watch and thats something that im grappling with now in the second volume of the book, i think as i suggested earlier, has something to do with a lot to do with his perceived domestic political imperatives. And i hope that maybe some measures of the type that were now implementing will succeed will stabilize the South Vietnamese government and will allow this thing to take maybe a a course little bit similar to what happened in korea, where south korea is stabilized. We can say that we succeeded. And then as frankie just said, maybe i can hand this off to the to to to the next person. So thats my best guess. That counterfactual, ill say one other thing about this, because it speaks to to the point about leadership down. You know, i just think that i think peter pointed this out in the first session. Vietnam changed how view leaders and leadership and how they how they how they view government because they realized as peter pointed out, that the government was lying to them and i think it made people and im not going to suggest that all of the problems that plague our Society Today their roots in the vietnam era. But on point i think peter is exactly correct that that americans became cynical about government and cynicism is corrosive of because cynicism seizes it stops from believing in change. It stops you from believing in what government can do. I mean, think about this. You do not build the interstate system. You do not build hundreds of public universities and colleges. You dont send a man to the moon if you dont believe in what government can accomplish. And of course, the Us Government did that. Ironically, during the vietnam era. And so im concerned that that this leadership that that that americans have learned something through the vietnam experience that were still needing to grapple with. Would you say, please, frankie, i just want to to respond to this a little bit. That if you if if you consider vietnam as stable. In the midst of its war, it wasnt the had just been overthrown. The generals had just taken over. Things started happening in vietnam that were quite different, quite new and it it really looked at a certain point and perhaps kennedy foresaw this better than we could that the whole thing was coming apart the seams because. None of the generals were any good as leaders and if that happens, you have a very stark choice. Its very soon. You either have to withdraw, let the South Vietnam into chaos, or else you you put in troops problem. Yeah. Thank you, bob. Have made studying leadership a major part of your scholarly work over the last generation. Can you talk little bit about the nature of that work and perhaps about your work on mcnamara and then kissinger both very examples of leadership failure in this context . Well, i think one of the things that struck me when i was working on book with bob mcnamara for peter, Brian Vandermark had the same experience. Sure. When he was working with bob on in retrospect, which just how divided, especially the Johnson Administration really was, ill just tell. 11. On this. You know, bob mcnamara, by the summer of 1967 was convinced that the war was going to have to end and through negotiation in july of 1967, he and Nick Katzenbach went to saigon for two weeks and they came back and mcnamara was convinced that he had to do something public to to show that there was no military to this. And he appeared before the Stennis Committee the next month and Strom Thurmond called him a communist sympathizer because he wouldnt approve new target. And that was the beginning of bobs deeper commitment to this idea that know it was going to have to be negotiations. And so in a National Security council meeting, it came up that there was this a initiative that had been sitting on dean rusk, secretary of states desk, for a long time. And bob thought it had some some legs, so he asked johnson for permission to do it. But it it did it it didnt. It was called pennsylvania. It didnt go anywhere for a variety of reasons, but it did have some legs for a short period of time. But why on earth is the government organized or the secretary of state has washed his hands completely of any diplomatic initiatives and the secretary of defense is picking up what could be, you know, the 172nd secret peace contact. I just think thats partly due to the leadership with chuck cooper telling a story. When we were gathered in hanoi that in one nsc meeting, they around the table and chet straw wrongly disagreed with the president , with president johnson on a point. And he was going to say no, mr. President , thats not right. Even if i have to resign and were going to do that. And they went around the table and everybody said, yes yes, yes. And chet, who had had more experience in vietnam than anybody else at the table, and he pursed his lips to say no, out came yes because johnson wanted a yes. And thats the way as yes as fred, fred and frankie and another did and bryan and others have written. I mean, that was what was expected. So if you have as the as the management ethos, i dont think youre going to get good decisions. And i think kissinger was much the same way, except had a hold on. Kissinger yes, sure. Going with this other with mcnamara, one of the great advantages we all now is if you want to know what they were talking, we can listen to the tapes and hear what they were talking about. And theres a powerful its clear that johnson was not interested in hearing points of view that might differ from his own. And you can see in magnum hear it in mcnamaras voice. And the question is, how did he reconcile that at the time worked with peter and produced in retrospect, which a very brave and important publication, which in some ways changed everything about how we understand what government officials think. But prior to that moment, he was on the ground acquiescing to these these from johnson. Have you did you talk to him about that and have a sense of how he lived with that . Like like brian, we talk thats all we talked about for a decade. I mean, i think part of it is i think he really thought that he could he could control rash or impulses better from the inside, the outside. So if you you know, if you did a venn diagram of the kind of like the troop that westmoreland was making, that mcnamara having, i mean, i think he thinks that was the way that he was trying to manage this crisis. I think in to borrow a title he thinks that management wasnt always as successful because johnson didnt want it to be successful. I mean, thats bundy left government, you know, you just thought he had lost all influence. And i think by the of 67 i think bob was probably there you can tell that in a voice on the tapes. Yeah. Thank you. Okay kissinger i think its just a completely different animal altogether either because i think a lot of what kissinger was about was, was helping nixon with this radical bureaucratic revolution, Foreign Policy that they both agreed on. They needed each other. They didnt always like each other, but they needed each other to to centralize Foreign Policymaking in the white house. I mean, when nixon was giving the inaugural address, was actually sending out memos to the National Security bureaucracy telling everythings changed, you know, all decisions now are going to through the basement of the white house and the old country file system is done. And so i think that had, you know, that radical revolution, bureaucratic revolution had an awful lot to do with the way that nixon and kissinger saw Foreign Policy and it changed the way that they they governed. No, thank you. The purpose today is to reflect as it were, in retrospect, on what weve learned about war. So i want to ask each of the four of you who have thought very carefully about this or written about it in profound ways, if you could identify, what you think the most important lesson or two, we should carry us now from this war, what would the what would those be . Maybe start with fred. I would say a couple of things. I guess in response to that question. One, i think important takeaway for me that all wars are won politically. If theyre going to be won at all and, that was something i think the United States and the french before them. I havent talked about the french today, but in embers of war. I look very closely at the french war and french civilian leaders, french generals, at least again, behind closed doors, came to realize this thing in political terms was just going to be a loser for them and pure men. This france, when it comes in, has the courage act on that basis. So one conclusion then would be that you have to win wars politically and think in later us this again applies i think a second lesson maybe that i take away from this is that counterinsurgency is a very difficult proposition. Its going to take a long time. And even though the emphasis in counterinsurgency is to some extent on winning hearts and as the phrase goes, great violence will almost be used. And is something that i think again, americans came to see american commanders and civilian leaders, i think, came to see during the long war in vietnam. And yet maybe adequately understand and terms of later implications. And then i guess the final thing ill say on this is and if i may, ill bring it back to kennedy, since hes much on my mind these days. Jack kennedy was really interested in from his college days at harvard right through to the end of his life in the problems of democrat leadership and challenges of democratic leadership. And lets remember, hes at harvard in the late thirties, a pretty tense time in global affairs. And so i think from then on hes interested in this question of. How, as a leader, if if youre if youre parochial constituents are wanting you to go in one direction and you think whats best for the country is to go in this direction, how do you reconcile all this because you want to win reelection. If youre if youre a successful politician. But your sense is that maybe these constituents or these Interest Groups are wanting you to do something that you dont think is in the nations. I think thats an eternal challenge for us and for leaders and i think kennedy didnt get that always correct, but it was something that interested him. And i deal with this in volume one of the biography, and its going to be a theme also in volume two. And so i guess the the final takeaway there down is that we have to hope that our leaders will have as, he would put it political courage to make careful distinctions, certainly taking into consideration what their constituents want. This is an elected person were talking about but also act the basis of his or her own her own sense, honest sense of the situation. Yeah, and bob kerrey talked about that in a different way in the last panel where theres when theres a lack of alignment between what you think the right thing to do is and what the public might be interested in or how prepared they are. And i think we all face in this environment today, the irony that never in the history of the world have people had more access to information than they do now. And all that has happened. We have curated our own insular ways of understand in the world, so were more limited than we were before. Yeah. Well, thank you so, francie. Well, a couple things. One is that. I think what weve been doing ever since the, you know, all through the cold war. Really . Yeah. When we fought hot wars is over wars of decolonization and that we kept we kept thinking that. It was. We were. We were anticommunist all the time. But really it had to do with internal disputes over, over, over decolonized ocean and if we realized that we would have done better better. So i think, you know, to take that lesson further along, we have to understand in what sort of geopolitical context were were talking about and if were wrong, were really wrong because its not going to work out for us. And i think that part of that is understanding the countries that we get involved with one way or another. I dont think you can, you know, prop up dictators and but its very difficult because, you know, in some countries, alternative is chaos. And i think that thats a very hard problem to solve, even if youre just looking at the Foreign Policy and forget the other one. Yeah. Thank you, phil. Well, to be succinct about it, i think the lesson of the vietnam war is is that we should never again become directly involved in a civil war in Southeast Asia asia. And its a good lesson. Im not being facetious about that. I think it was it was a very i dont think that that that that experience over there really trends leads to much. Maybe it did a little bit in iraq and afghanistan, but not much. Yeah. Well, by implication, Southeast Asia is far away. The the degree to which our policymakers and and leaders understood very little about what was happening on the ground is just stunning. Yet they were willing to commit the resources and the people to a war they didnt fully understand. Thats a lesson weve all learned. Bob, i think war happens to real people in real time. And in a democracy that should demand a full and frank discussion about whether youre going to put people in uniform in harms way. We have two people here that engaged in full and frank discussion, but it doesnt usually happen. And thats a failure of democracy. Well said. Thank you. Well, we come to the end of this panel and we have a break ahead now and will reconvene at 1130 sharp. Thank. Thanks so much. Thank you