> Headquarters didn't see the value of Hackworth's liaison with the
> Australians. ''When Gen. (William) Westmoreland heard about it, he
> freaked,'' Hackworth said of the head of U.S. forces in Vietnam. ''He
> said, 'We can't be learning from those guys.' ''
Of course to truly appreciate this anecdote you have to realize (a) Westmoreland was the very modern of a modern general who completely misunderstood guerrilla warfare, and (b) Hackworth's whole personal mythology is as the anti-Westmoreland, the guy in the field who figured out we were doing it all wrong and applied practical common sense to do it better.
So Hack is using this fake quote (aka a paraphrase) as a seal of his own approval.
What in fact happened in Vietnam is that there were soon two large opposing camps, both of them representing a side of official wisdom: the side that thought all we needed was more conventional force; and the side that thought we needed to develop an unconventional kind of warfare that was totally new. (As well, of course, as a mushy center who thought these two views were exaggerated and not that different from each other.)
These two views have basically both been present in military circles since the 50s, and this debate can be counted on to emerge into the open once any campaign starts running into trouble. Both are official views and both have the ear of power. The actual strategy used in Vietnam was largely the result of trying to do both at once, which most people agree was a failure. The second view -- that you have to fight insurgency with counterinsurgency -- thereafter became the dominant *theoretical* view in military circles for exactly that reason. (The view that all we need is more conventional force -- i.e., drop some 2000lb bombs, that'll scare 'em -- is no longer so much a theoretical view as a view embedded in our conventional training practices. But since that's what forms most people's convictions in most professions, it's always one to be reckoned with).
And (to go back to Dwayne's original question), in the counter-insurgency camp in Vietnam, there was widespread conviction that the experience of the British in Malaysia represented the one known case of complete success against Mao-style communist guerrilla war. And that the French experience in Algeria, which was in itself an adaptive response to their own failure in Indochina, was also germane. (There were many in military circles who believed the French campaign in Algeria was a military success and a political failure -- that the guerrillas only triumphed because of their success at the UN and on the homefront. There are in fact several prominent liberals and leftists who believe that even today.) So experts in those conflicts were brought in as instructors, and they designed much of the Vietnam program. The whole strategic hamlet program, for example.
There was nothing covert about the British contribution. Sir Robert Thompson's _Defeating Communist Insurgency_ was considered a Marine bible, and he was a very prominent speaker in public policy debates. I believe he even headed up a blue ribbon commission on the conduct of the war at one point. On the French-Algerian side, Roger Trinquier's _Modern Warfare_ was discussed more quietly, since some of its ideas smelled a bit like fascism. But perhaps for that very reason it was even more popular among covert action types, and so was he. The integrated plan of death squads and torture that proved so effective in Latin America might be said to derive from Trinquier.
One minor point to note: there is a difference between jungle fighting tactics (such as the Australians were familiar with, and such as the US used in the Phillipines) and a (reputedly) successful counterinsurgency strategy, which is what gave the British and French advisors such prestige.
And like I said, there was nothing hidden about this. In the security journals of the 70s and 80s, "counterinsurgency" was even more of a buzzword than "deterrence" and everybody cited Malaysia.
Going back to the current example of Israeli help -- in the abstract, it makes perfect sense, when something clearly isn't going well, to ask other people with experience for their advice. That's no different in military endeavors than any other. The problem here of course is that it places a bomb under the US's symbolically weakest point. But it's not odd that the military establishment should have been oblivious to that. They are not known for their hypersensitivity against giving offense. And for those who are hypersensitive to political appearance, and knew perfectly well what would happen when word got out (i.e., the likudnik politicos in the Pentagon), the bad effects of setting off this bomb -- the risk that it might burn all our bridges and make it Israel and America alone against the world -- is a deeply desired outcome. They're for it.
Although to be fair, they they genuinely deeply believe these methods work, and that the two of us together can beat the world. Hawks, both American and Israeli, are defined as people who believe that purely military solutions are possible. All hawks in both countries believe that Israel *military* policy has been a success (and that military policy can be analytically separated from political policy).
That's the key thing that's left out of the manipulation debate. It is true that what America is doing is bad for our strategic interests; but the hawks that are instantiating it sincerely believe the opposite. Similarly, it is true that hawks in Israel believe this is fowarding Israel's interests; but they are just as wrong as the hawks in America. The manipulation idea comes from picking and choosing from those propositions -- choosing to believe that Israeli hawks see the unvarnished truth while US hawks are mad. But in fact they're both mad. Purely military solutions are possible in either case -- or for that matter in any case. It's not a conspiracy to subordinate US interests to Israel. It's a conspiracy against the interests of both countries by a coterie of people who fully believe they are furthering the interests of both countries. And that the only people who disagree are people who don't have access to the secret data that makes their opinions true.
Don't think it's possible for the military and political elite to be that stupid? Go study up on WWI. Or for that matter on Vietnam.
One last point, about information management. This was something that was impossible to keep secret. If it hadn't happened, it would have been made up. In fact it already had been. To do it was to announce it. That was the problem with it.
Michael