February 21, 2020
Hello ,
I discovered an infamous wall while researching the Vietnam War, a wall that failed spectacularly, a wall that wasted money and cost lives. A wall built upon fear, confusion and ignorance.
Have we learned anything?
McNamara Says We Can Learn
From His Mistakes
The McNamara Line was meant to be a barrier between North and South Vietnam, to stop communist soldiers from infiltrating and moving weapons and supplies south to aid the Viet Cong.
It was not a solid wall, and those it meant to keep out were soldiers, not immigrants. I'm not comparing President Trump's wall with defense of the DMZ during wartime, I'm just saying there are a few clear similarities we could learn from.
45's wall will fail to stop illegal immigration, just as the McNamara Line failed its purpose. The architect of the wall built between North and South Vietnam in 1966-1967 has admitted we can learn from his mistakes.
Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara ordered construction of the "electronic" wall code named Dye Marker. U.S. troops tasked with building the barrier took to mocking it, referring to the project as the McNamara Line. The name stuck.
The barrier closely followed the 17th parallel in the DMZ, stretching from the China Sea, across the neck of South Vietnam to the Ho Chi Minh trail in Laos. Roughly one hundred miles long, the eastern section lay across coastal plains, the western part threading into jungle covered mountains.
U.S. Marines cleared a 2,000-foot-wide buffer zone along the eastern end and strung it witl "old-style" ditches, barbed-wire and minefields, and new tech seismic and acoustic sensors. Marines guarded it with searchlights and watchtowers, and defended the line at intermittent strong points backed by fortified support bases.
Right away, the North Vietnamese attacked the McNamara Line and kept the pressure in July 1967, they hammered Con Thien.
"The Marines at Con Thien were the human equivalent of a tripwire," according to an ABC News correspondent Don Hill who covered the battle.
U.S Marines, Con Thien, 1967. Photo courtesy David Duncan.
"[The Marines were] there to block North Vietnamese ground incursions. In reality, the men became a sitting target for scores of North Vietnamese artillery pieces, which rained down shells on their positions 24 hours a day. Between February 1967, when they arrived, and their departure two years later, 1,419 men were killed and another 9,265 wounded."
While these men were fighting and dying, our military and political leaders knew this was a war America couldn't win. One could say they valued their reputations and power more than the lives of these soldiers, more the the good of the country.
The people who have died and will die at the foot of 45's wall and in American detention centers will be migrants, not soldiers. The lives of these men, women and children are not valued by 45.
The hundred-mile McNamara Line cost about a billion dollars. The western section in the mountains and covering the Ho Chi Minh trail in Laos used 1960s high tech, including a “people sniffer,” designed to sense sweat and urine and another sensor
that could detect exhaust from truck engines ten miles away.
The McNamara Line certainly stopped some North Vietnamese traffic, but after Robert McNamara resigned, his successor cancelled the barrier project, saying, “It did not work out as expected.”
45's 576-mile border wall is expected to cost nearly $20 million per mile and will be the most expensive wall in the world. Like the barrier in Vietnam, it will feature buffer zones and barbed-wire, as well as the latest tech in lighting and surveillance cameras.
Like 45 is diverting resources that had been committed on other fronts to build his wall, so did the project in Vietnam. The Marines, who disagreed vigorously with the concept, had to divert to it troops and resources that they could not readily spare.
This border wall will not stop desperate Central American migrants from arriving at our border and claiming asylum. Many of these people will take great risks, resort to terrible
extremes and refuse to give up because they are running for their lives And the lives of their children.
The wall will not stop visitors to the United States from overstaying their legal visas. In 2018, roughly the same number of immigrants didn't go home on time, as the number people caught entering the country illegally. Caught trying to get in: 600-thousand.
Staying past their welcome: 660-thousand.
Trump's new budget asks for 2 billion dollars in funding for the wall, in addition to the 1.375 billion Congress approved last year. Add that to the 7 billion he expects to divert from other areas of the budget.
Imagine what 10 or 11 billion dollars could do if spent to resolving problems, rather than walling them off as if they're nothing to do with us.
Robert McNamara wrote a book about what we could learn from the mistakes in Vietnam on his watch.
Here's his number one admission, which applies to Trump's wall in that he sees immigrants as out adversaries.
We misjudged then — and we have since — the geopolitical intentions of our adversaries … and we exaggerated the dangers to the United States of their actions.
Errol Morris' number one takeaway was:
Empathize with your enemy. McNamara is quick to clarify "not sympathize," empathize.
In his own book he admits, "Our misjudgments of friend and foe, alike, reflected our profound ignorance of the history, culture, and politics of the people in the area, and the personalities and habits of their leaders."
The following back and forth between Morris and McNamara about the Gulf of Tonkin incident is offered as an example of lesson #7: Belief and seeing are both often wrong.
McNamara says. "It was just confusion....President Johnson authorized bombing in response to what he thought had been the second attack; We were wrong, but we had in our minds a mindset that led to that action. And it carried such heavy costs. We see incorrectly or we see only half of the story at times."
Morris adds, "We see what we want to believe."
McNamara agrees, "You're absolutely right. Belief and seeing, they're both often wrong."
Lastly, I'll mention lesson #8: Be prepared to reexamine your reasoning.
The McNamara Line was devised because a plan called Rolling Thunder had failed to stop North Vietnamese infiltration. The operation his North Vietnam with 864,000 tons of bombs and missiles. This total compares to 503,000 tons of conventional bombs dropped
in the Pacific theater of World War II.
Both bombing and the barrier failed because President Lyndon Johnson and his advisors made decisions based on fear, did not fully understand the problem, and chose the quick fix of American power and might.
It didn't work then, and it won't work now.
Related articles that might interest you:
"The border wall is headed for a state park, a butterfly refuge and the land of a Hispanic family who’s called the Rio Grande Valley home since before it was the United States."
"It was known to local missionaries as “the Hill of Angels,” but to the occupying Marines, Con Thien was a little piece of hell."
Last but not least, here's a sign of hope. Last night I heard Patricia Cullers speak about her latest work. She's one of the founders of #BlackLiveMatter. Check this out.
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