Leslie Gelb and Richard Betts analyzed the Pentagon Papers in 1979 as then senior colleagues at the Brookings Institutions, to get a better comprehension of the clandestine internal decision-making processes that had driven four institutions to hurl themselves into a trivial conflict in Southeast Asia. At the end of the analysis, their decisions were just about as unmistakable as they were disagreeable. They deduced that American leaders had not been tricked into a war; rather, they had been trapped in a snare of mindless compliance and bureaucracy, centered on keeping Vietnam from sinking to communism that they failed to consider the costs and potential off-ramps of America's staggering struggle there. "U.S. strategy toward Vietnam was not a 'botch' or 'aberration,' ¿Gelb wrote in a later prelude to their book, "The Irony of Vietnam: The System Worked." "Rather, it streamed unavoidably from the essentials of American democracy, political culture, and the common machinations and estimations of the U.S. national security organization."
A lot has been made of the parallels between Vietnam and Afghanistan, two quagmires about 50 years apart that feature the shortcomings of America's...READ MORE