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“Never Too Late to Do the Right Thing”: Barack Obama, the Vietnam War's Legacy, and the Cultural Politics of Military Awards during the Afghanistan War

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 April 2016

DAVID KIERAN
DAVID KIERAN*
Affiliation:
History Department, Washington & Jefferson College. Email: [email protected].
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Abstract

This article examines the cultural politics of military awards during the Obama administration. It examines the administration's posthumous recognition of three Vietnam veterans, arguing that the President has embraced a remembrance of the war that encourages Americans to celebrate veterans without regard for the illegal, controversial, or morally questionable activities in which they participated. This effort, I argue, helps build support for the United States' continuing expansion of war fighting in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, and elsewhere by encouraging Americans to adopt a similar perspective regarding current wars – one that celebrates military personnel while not questioning the policies that they pursue or the manner in which they do so.

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of American Studies , Volume 51 , Issue 2 , May 2017 , pp. 513 - 533
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press and British Association for American Studies 2016 

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References

1 Craig Whitlock and Greg Jaffe, “Afghan War Hero to Receive Medal of Honor,” Washington Post, 11 Sept. 2010, A06; “CNN Poll Shows Growing Pessimism over the Afghanistan War,” CNN, 29 Sept. 2010, available at www.cnn.com/2010/POLITICS/09/29/afghanistan.poll.

2 Three days before the ceremony, news from Afghanistan included a suicide bombing in a public market, an attempted suicide bombing of a NATO airbase, and a Taliban attack that killed three coalition soldiers. Rod Norland, “Motorcycle Bomb Kills 8 on a Violent Day in Afghanistan,” New York Times, 14 Nov. 2010, A16.

3 For a definitive account see Timothy N. Castle, One Day Too Long: Top Secret Site 85 and the Bombing of North Vietnam (New York: Columbia University Press, 1999), esp. 33–40 and 111–37.

4 As Mary Dudziak, Wartime: An Idea, Its History, and Its Consequences (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012), 132, has written, “Military engagement no longer seemed to require the support of the American people, but instead their inattention.”

5 Here I am following the argument of Kristin Ann Hass, Sacrificing Soldiers on the National Mall (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2013), 19–20.

6 “Transcript: President Obama's Memorial Day Remarks at Vietnam War Memorial,” FoxNews.com, 28 May 2012, available at www.foxnews.com/politics/2012/05/28/transcript-president-obama-memorial-day-remarks-at-vietnam-war-memorial. For a longer analysis of the speech see David Kieran, Forever Vietnam: How a Divisive War Changed American Public Memory (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2014), 235–36.

7 Christian G. Appy, American Reckoning: The Vietnam War and Our National Identity (New York: Viking, 2015), 237–38. On how the impact of the remembrance of maligned veterans and efforts to rectify it have clouded consideration of the war's broader politics see Jerry Lembcke, The Spitting Image: Myth, Memory, and the Legacy of Vietnam (New York: New York University Press, 1998), 122–23. On those issues see Fredrik Logevall, Choosing War: The Lost Chance for Peace and the Escalation of War in Vietnam (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999); Nick Turse, Kill Anything That Moves: The Real American War in Vietnam (New York: Picador, 2013); Edwin A. Martini, Agent Orange: History, Science, and the Politics of Uncertainty (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2012); and Larry Berman, No Peace, No Honor: Nixon, Kissinger, and Betrayal in Vietnam (New York: Touchstone, 2001).

8 Patrick Hagopian, The Vietnam War in American Memory: Veterans, Memorials, and the Politics of Healing (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2009), 10; Appy, 241.

9 Andrew Bacevich, The New American Militarism: How Americans Are Seduced by War (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2005), 107.

10 Grimes, Kyle, “The Entropics of Discourse: Michael Harper's Debridement and the Myth of the Hero,” Black American Literature Forum, 24, 3 (1990), 417–40CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 423; Bacevich, 107; Hagopian, 190, 402.

11 Lembcke, 11, 17.

12 Larry H. Addington, America's War in Vietnam: A Short Narrative History (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2000), 165.

13 Hass, 19–20.

14 Appy, 257.

15 Dudziak, Wartime, 130–31.

16 Kieran, Forever Vietnam, 235.

17 Barack Obama, “Remarks by the President in Address to the Nation on the Way Forward in Afghanistan and Pakistan,” 1 Dec. 2009, the White House, available at www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/remarks-president-address-nation-way-forward-afghanistan-and-pakistan, accessed 31 Jan. 2013. For a more detailed discussion of this speech see Kieran, 217–18.

18 Kieran, 214.

19 Bacevich, 107.

20 Jeffrey T. Kuhner, “Obama's Vietnam?”, Washington Times, 25 Jan. 2009, available at www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/jan/25/obamas-vietnam/?page=all. See also Appy, 330.

21 Patrick Buchanan, “Hamlet as War President,” Tulsa World, 2 Dec. 2009, available at www.tulsaworld.com/opinion/hamlet-as-war-president/article_51e1f7c3-6510-5d47-8bda-2ab32d0da272.html; John Baer, “This Troop-Surge Talk Has a Familiar Ring,” Philadelphia Daily News, 2 Dec. 2009, 4; Investor's Business Daily, “Surge or Vietnam,” 2 Dec. 2009, A10.

22 David Sanger, Confront and Conceal: Obama's Secret Wars and the Surprising Use of American Power (New York: Crown, 2012), 49–51; Jeffrey Kimball, “The Case of the ‘Decent Interval’: Do We Now Have a Smoking Gun?”, SHAFR Newsletter, Sept. 2001, available at www.shafr.org/passport/2001/sep/interval.htm. Interestingly, one New York Times op-ed actually encouraged Obama to channel Nixon's approach. Gideon Rose, “What Would Nixon Do?”, New York Times, 26 June 2011, SR3.

23 Obama, “Remarks by the President in Address to the Nation on the Way Forward in Afghanistan and Pakistan.”

24 “Obama's Speech on Drone Policy,” New York Times, 23 May 2013, available at www.nytimes.com/2013/05/24/us/politics/transcript-of-obamas-speech-on-drone-policy.html?_r=0&module=ArrowsNav&contentCollection=Politics&action=keypress&region=FixedLeft&pgtype=article.

25 Ibid.

26 See Eric Schmitt and Mark Mazetti, “New Taliban Haven Raises U.S. Alarms,” International Herald Tribune, 10 Feb. 2009, 1.

27 Dan Simpson, “What's up with Pakistan,” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 29 April 2009, B-7.

28 Jeremy Corbyn, “It Can Only End in Humiliation,” Morning Star, 11 March 2009, n.p.

29 Robert Fox, “A Surge Won't Work in Afghanistan,” The Guardian, 27 March 2009, available at www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2009/mar/27/afghanistan-pakistan-surge-obama.

30 Paul Koring, “Deskbound Warriors in Nevada Deliver Death,” Globe and Mail, 2 Oct. 2010, A29.

31 Sam Leith, “Might Is Right Has Become the Obama Doctrine,” London Evening Standard, 23 May 2011, available at www.standard.co.uk/news/might-is-right-has-become-the-obama-doctrine-6404161.html.

32 “Changing the War We've Been,” Khaleej Times, 7 June 2009; Mahir Ali, “Ten Years and Counting,” Dawn, 29 Dec. 2010, available at http://en.alalamalislami.com/node/27356; “Demoniac Cunningness,” Frontier Post, 23 Oct. 2010.

33 Castle, One Day Too Long, 6.

34 Ibid., 151–52.

35 Earl Pomeroy to MG Daniel Darnell, 27 June 2006, FOIA request 2011-05703-F-Final MR, copy in author's possession.

36 Gerald H. Clayton to Earl Pomeroy, 17 June 2005, FOIA request 2011-05703-F-Final MR.

37 Robert Moran, “Forty-Two Years on, A Posthumous Award for a PA Veteran,” Philadelphia Inquirer, 4 Sept. 2010.

38 “Obama to Award Air Force Sgt. Posthumous Medal of Honor for Covert Service during Vietnam War,” New York Daily News, 20 Sept. 2010, available at www.nydailynews.com/news/national/obama-award-air-force-sgt-posthumous-medal-honor-covert-service-vietnam-war-article-1.441713. Castle suggests that it was not the case that Johnson was aware of and denied the award. Kathy Boccella, “Berks Airman Awarded Posthumous Medal of Honor,” Philadelphia Inquirer, 22 Sept. 2010, A01.

39 James S. Robbins, “Honoring a Secret Hero: Gallantry Was Displayed in Laos, but Not in Washington,” Washington Times, 22 Sept. 2010, available at www.washingtontimes.com/news/2010/sep/21/honoring-a-secret-hero.

40 Barack Obama, “Remarks on Presenting the Congressional Medal of Honor to Chief Master Sergeant Richard L. Etchberger, September 21, 2010,” at www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2010/09/21/remarks-president-awarding-medal-honor-chief-master-sergeant-richard-l-e.

41 Ibid.

42 Here I am following Grimes’s formulation that “in the act of conferring the Medal of Honor on some new hero, the familiar cultural image of the war hero embodied in the medal is perpetuated through replication.” Grimes, 423. Obama, “Richard L. Etchberger.”

43 Jay M. Winter, “Thinking about Silence,” in Efrat Ben-Ze'ev, Ruth Ginio, and Jay Winter, eds., Shadows of War: A Social History of Silence in the Twentieth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 3–31, 5; Ketil Knutsen, “Strategic Silence: Political Persuasion between the Remembered and the Forgotten,” in Alexandre Dessingue and Jay M. Winter, eds., Beyond Memory: Silence and the Aesthetics of Remembrance (London and New York: Routledge, 2015), 125–40, 129.

44 See John F. Burns, “British Deaths Rise to 300 from War in Afghanistan,” New York Times, 22 June 2010, A6; Dexter Filkins, “Deadly Protest in Afghanistan Highlights Tensions,” New York Times, 12 Jan. 2010, A6; Nicholas Kulish and Helene Cooper, “Holbrooke Says Afghan War ‘Tougher than Iraq,’” New York Times, 8 Feb. 2009, A9. See also Alissa J. Rubin and Abdul Waheed Wafa, “Afghan President, Preparing Cabinet, Tries to Please the Warlords and the West,” New York Times, 19 Dec. 2009, A8; Karen DeYoung, “Afghan Effort Tied to Success in Kandahar,” Washington Post, 23 May 2010, A01; Khaled Hosseini, “The No. 1 Killer in Afghanistan? Poverty,” USA Today, 12 Jan. 2010, 9A.

45 Jeffrey Kimball, Nixon's Vietnam War (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1998), 294.

46 Robert Miraldi, Seymour Hersh (Dulles, VA: Potomac Books, 2013), 137, 142. For a full account of “The Lavelle Affair” see 132–43.

47 Kimball, Nixon's Vietnam War, 444 n. 27.

48 Declaration of Geraldine R. Lavelle, 20 June 2008; Aloysius Casey and Patrick Casey, “Lavelle, Nixon, and the White House Tapes,” Air Force Magazine, Feb. 2007, 90, FOIA request #2011-05704-F, copy in author's possession.

49 Casey and Casey, 88–89.

50 R. James Woolsey to Board of Correction for Air Force Records, 11 June 2008, and Otis G. Pike to John B. Dempsey, 19 April 2008, FOIA request #2011-05704-F.

51 Robert M. Gates to the President, 12 July 2010, FOIA request #2011-05704-F.

52 “Conduct Unbecoming,” Dallas Morning News, 23 June 2010; “Keep McChrystal,” New York Post, 23 June 2010, 34.

53 “McChrystal's Final Agony,” Washington Times, 24 June 2010, available at www.washingtontimes.com/news/2010/jun/23/mcchrystals-final-agony.

54 Richard Sisk, “Took Fall for Dick, Now Rep to Get Fix,” New York Daily News, 6 Aug. 2010, 25; Craig Whitlock, “Honor Restored for General Blamed after Nixon Denied Authorizing Vietnam Bombing,” Washington Post, 5 Aug. 2010, available at www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/08/04/AR2010080407297.html.

55 Columbus (GA) Ledger-Enquirer, “Bittersweet and Belated Justice for Air Force General,” 13 Aug. 2013, available at http://newsbank.com.

56 The “just-following-orders” argument found its most vigorous public use in the aftermath of the My Lai massacre. On this see, among others, John Tirman, The Deaths of Others: The Fate of Civilians in America's Wars (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2011), 299.

57 Seth Lipsky, “A General, His Judgment, and the Fog of War,” Wall Street Journal, 14 Aug. 2010, available at www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052748704388504575419652907636486.

58 Dusty Nix, “Flesh-and-Blood American Man's Video Epitaph,” Columbus (GA) Ledger-Enquirer, 15 Aug. 2010, available at http://newsbank.com.

59 It also subtly recalled Obama's decision to allow McChrystal to retire with four stars. Elisabeth Bumiller, “Mentor Says McChrystal Is ‘Crushed’ by the Change in His Circumstances,” New York Times, 3 July 2010, A4.

60 On signature strikes see Heller, Kevin Jon, “‘One Hell of a Killing Machine’: Signature Strikes and International Law,” Journal of International Criminal Justice, 11, 1 (2013), 89–119 CrossRefGoogle Scholar, esp. 90.

61 Luis Martinez and Mary Bruce, “40 Years Late, Vietnam Hero Leslie Sabo Gets Medal of Honor,” ABC News, 16 May 2012, available at http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/medal-honor-vietnam-hero-leslie-sabo/story?id=16357865.

62 On the Cambodian incursion see Kimball, Nixon's Vietnam, 210–25; and Appy, American Reckoning, 88–89, 186–90.

63 Barack Obama, “Remarks by the President at Medal of Honor Ceremony to Specialist Leslie H. Sabo, Jr.,” the White House, 16 May 2012, available at www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2012/05/16/remarks-president-medal-honor-ceremony-specialist-leslie-h-sabo-jr.

64 Ibid.

65 Ibid.

66 Ibid.

67 Ibid.

68 Robert H. Scales and Paul Van Riper, “Sgt. Giunta's Troubling Fight,” Washington Post, 19 Nov. 2010, A21; Elizabeth Rubin, “In One Moment, Heroism and Heartbreak,” New York Times, 14 Nov. 2010, WK3.

69 Notably, Bush made only the vaguest connection between earlier Medal of Honor winners and the current wars, noting in the 2002 ceremony that “that tradition of military valor and sacrifice has preserved our country and continues to this day.” George W. Bush, “Remarks on Presenting the Congressional Medal of Honor Posthumously to Captain Ben L. Salomon and Captain Jon E. Swanson, May 1, 2002,” in Public Papers of the Presidents: George W. Bush 2002, Volume I (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 2003), 703.

70 Whitlock and Jaffe, “Afghan War Hero to Receive Medal of Honor”; Bill Steiden, “Medals of Honor Becoming Rarer,” Atlanta Journal-Constitution, 12 Sept. 2009.

71 Senate Committee on Armed Services, Nominations before the Senate Armed Services Committee, Second Session, 109th Congress, 109th Cong., 2d sess., 2006, 651; House Committee on Armed Services, Hearing on National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2009 and Oversight of Previously Authorized Programs, 111th Cong., 2nd sess., 2008, 42–43.

72 House Committee on Armed Services, Hearing on National Defense Authorization Act of 2010 and Oversight of Previously Authorized Programs, 110th Cong., 1st sess., 2009, 21.

73 Gordon Lubold, “Obama Honors Fallen Soldier with Medal of Honor,” Christian Science Monitor, 17 Sept. 2009, 2.

74 Commander, Battle Company TF Rock KOP to Commander, CJRF 101, “Recommendation for Award,” 19 March 2008, FOIA release, 3 Nov. 2011, copy in author's possession. As several newspapers at the time noted, an account of Giunta's heroism is retold in Sebastian Junger, War (New York: Twelve Publishing, 2010), 117–19.

75 Barack Obama, “Remarks by the President in Awarding the Congressional Medal of Honor to Staff Sergeant Salvatore A. Giunta, November 22, 2010,” the White House, available at www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2010/11/16/remarks-president-awarding-medal-honor-staff-sergeant-salvatore-a-giunta.

76 Obama, “Richard L. Etchberger”; Obama, “Salvatore A. Giunta.”

77 Obama, “Richard L. Etchberger”; Obama, “Salvatore A. Giunta.”

78 Obama, “Salvatore A. Giunta.”

79 Here I am again following Grimes's argument about “replication” in Medal of Honor ceremonies. Grimes, “The Entropics of Discourse,” 423.

80 Mary Dudziak, Wartime, 131, makes a similar point regarding Iraq.

81 Obama, “Salvatore A. Giunta.” On abandoning the Korengal see the final moments of Restrepo, DVD, dir. Tim Hetherington and Sebastian Junger (Washington DC: National Geographic, 2010).