Journalist Criticizes U.S. Intervention in Vietnam

America miscalculated the strength of the opposing forces in Vietnam, a misjudgement which contributed greatly to the country's first military defeat, a prominent journalist told a standing-room only crowd at the Kennedy School last night.

Stanley A. Karnow '47, former Far East correspondent for the Washington Post and NBC news special correspondent, said, "The biggest blunder [in Vietnam] was our failure to understand the determination and tenacity of the forces against us."

Karnow cited other mistakes the U.S. government made during the Vietnam Era, such as supporting the French in 1950 and assuming that North Vietnamese leader Ho Chi Min was linked with the Soviet Union.

These and other mistakes lead to "the first defeat in American history," said Karnow, who has authored two books on the Far East and helped produce a television documentary on Vietnam.

Recounting the history of the war, Karnow said that America's support of the 1963 coup against South Vietnamese leader Ngo Dihn Diem "led us inexorably into putting combat troops into Vietnam. It became our war, it became our responsibility."

The Vietnam legacy has had a definitive impact on America's attitude toward foreign intervention, and subsequently on presidential foreign policy, Karnow said.

"What we've adopted is the 'Rambo principle.' We're going to win our wars in the movies, not on the battlefield," Karnow said. While Reagan pulled the troops out of Lebanon, "Johnson would have sent a division," said Karnow.

Americans are more cautious and no longerwilling to "pay any price" for freedom, Karnowsaid. "We're not a nation of John Waynes," hesaid. "We're joining the rest of the world inrecognizing our limitations. A very high price waspaid for these lessons."

Karnow cautioned against calling this new crisisanother Vietnam. "There is a tendency in theReagan Administration to think about CentralAmerica in terms of America's confrontation withthe Soviet Union and Cuba which is the samemistake we made in Vietnam," the former Niemanfellow said.

The Reagan Administration's tendency to see a"monolith" of communism instead of the pluralismthat exists contributes to the discord ininternational relations, Karnow said