Beginning in 1964, officers of the Military Assistance Command, Vietnam – better known by its acronym MAC-V – held daily press conferences at the Rex Hotel in Saigon.
The longer the war lasted and the deeper it sank into blood, the more precisely military officials listed the number of enemies killed, the targets bombed and the number of missions flown daily.
The military gave journalists access to the front lines and soldiers on the ground throughout the Vietnam War. Reporters dubbed the daily press conferences the “Five O’Clock Follies.”
Numbers without truth
“They rarely bore any resemblance to the actual conditions in the field,” observed Chicago Daily News correspondent Keyes Beech.
Journalists with experience in Vietnam could see that no matter how the generals twisted the math of the kill counts, it would never amount to an American victory.
Despite the constant stream of meaningless statistics, the public was therefore able to clearly see the growing gap between the reality on the ground and the wishful thinking of the MAC-V generals. The grim picture painted by the media fueled domestic anger and fueled the antiwar movements that shook America out of its postwar lethargy.
History repeats itself
Not even the Pentagon’s best attempts at spin could prevent the truth—America could not win this war—from seeping through the veil of official lies.
A thoughtful politician could draw several lessons from this. Half a century after the end of the Vietnam War, the United States is once again mired in a conflict rich in kill counts but poor in strategy. The official answer to this: flood the zone with facts and figures – which mean nothing.
America’s defense secretary is only interested in an imaginary past of his own making – in which the United States loses wars because it is too “woke” – and an imaginary present in which the latest American adventure abroad has been a stunning, historic success. He believes the real problem with the Trump administration’s hasty intervention in Iran is that people criticize it.
Hegseth versus Congress
“The biggest challenge, the biggest adversary we face right now is the reckless, weak and defeatist words of congressional Democrats and some Republicans,” Pete Hegseth told Congress on Wednesday.
With all due respect to the man who calls himself Secretary of War, words alone don’t lose battles, just as they don’t win them. And you don’t have to have the political and strategic acumen of Napoleon to find it problematic that the country’s top defense official locates his main opponent in a war against Iran in Washington – and not in Tehran.
There is ample evidence that the US and Israel destroyed large amounts of Iranian military equipment in three months of undeclared war. Entire rooms full of analysts and military personnel are dedicated solely to producing reports cataloging this destruction.
Sizzle instead of steak
You can ask different officials at different times and they will describe America’s progress with mathematical certainty: Iran’s military is 92 percent destroyed. Or 100 percent. Or whatever. The US has carried out more than 13,000 attacks, according to Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell. 158 Iranian ships were sunk. 90 percent of the weapons factories were hit. The 86-year-old cleric who ruled the country and a significant part of the Islamic Republic’s leadership elite were killed.
This all sounds very significant. In reality, as Tom Waits put it, “got the sizzle but not the steak” – lots of roast, no meat.
No matter how the Pentagon prepares the statistics: What exactly did America’s bombs achieve strategically in Iran? The administration quickly declares that it has already achieved its goals, reciting a series of half-truths (the Iranian navy is “destroyed”) while ignoring the central issue of the conflict: the status of Iran’s nuclear program.
Hardliners in power
The hardliners still lead the Islamic Republic. They still have hundreds of kilograms of highly enriched uranium and both the will and capacity to advance a nuclear weapons program. Their proxies are weakened but not broken. Enough of their asymmetric military capabilities are intact to threaten ships in the Strait of Hormuz and attack neighboring states in the Persian Gulf.
The temporary ceasefire agreed at the beginning of April has so far only created a stalemate. The talks are not progressing.
“The president has trapped himself and America in a quagmire of another war in the Middle East. He is desperately trying to extricate himself from his own mistakes,” Rep. John Garamendi (D-Calif.) said at the congressional hearing in which Democrats grilled Hegseth.
Propaganda accusation as a distraction
“You call this a swamp and thereby give propaganda to our enemies? Are you ashamed of that statement. Such words are inconsiderate of our troops,” Hegseth replied.
The fact that the criticism is directed at the civilian leadership and not at “our troops” escapes the defense minister. Hyper-partisan fighting spirit is to be expected from Hegseth – his primary interest in war is to use it as a backdrop for his fantasies of male dominance.
Unfortunately, there is no more responsible force waiting in the wings to guide America through its self-inflicted crisis. The president is more interested in interior design projects than managing a geopolitical conflict. Congress has long since abandoned its duty of oversight of this government. Vice President JD Vance—no matter what rumors circulate about his supposed antipathy to war—and Secretary of State Marco Rubio are peripheral figures, unable or unwilling to effect a course correction.
No plan for victory
America’s military is powerful, but few US generals can be trusted to develop winning strategies. Afghanistan alone—another war replete with spreadsheets and PowerPoint presentations depicting a reality that didn’t exist—should have taught the American public that. Generals don’t do politics anyway. They can develop excellent plans for blowing things up, but they cannot solve a political problem that requires careful, visionary and sustained international diplomacy.
President Donald Trump and his cabinet of warmongers never had a plan for victory. They had a plan for war – a not insignificant difference.
The promise sold by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who reportedly persuaded Trump to join Israel in attacking Iran, was a mirage: regime change made easy. Netanyahu knew that the current generation of American leaders had no interest in patient, long-term strategies. Hegseth and his ilk are pure cockiness without prudence. Trump, whose age and mental decline are becoming increasingly apparent, is not the man to tackle complex problems with dogged perseverance.
Tangled in the Persian knot
After the kidnapping of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, the US president thought he had learned how to cut Gordian knots. But Roy Cohn was no Aristotle, and Trump is no Alexander. He didn’t untie the Persian knot – he got tangled in it.
Now the president wants nothing more to do with the whole thing. “Maybe we’re better off if we don’t do a deal at all,” Trump said Friday. “We can’t let this go on like this, you know, it’s been going on too long.”
Hardly anyone will mourn if Iran’s brutal regime collapses – but that scenario looks unlikely. The US naval blockade of the still-closed Strait of Hormuz is costing Tehran billions in much-needed revenue, and the devastating consequences are worsening with each passing day. But the government still has the weapons – and the will to resist.
Pain for everyone
Iran is suffering economically – but so is everyone else. Twenty percent of the world’s oil supply doesn’t move. Ships avoid the Strait of Hormuz if they risk being sunk. Prices are rising. Inflation is rising. There are shortages of fertilizer, of helium, of a dozen boring goods that keep the global economy running.
When asked how he came to financial ruin, Mike Campbell, the fictional Scottish war veteran in Ernest Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises, replies simply: “Gradually, then suddenly.”
This is exactly how most Americans will experience the crisis in Iran – no more than a distant abstraction. The rising prices at the pump are just the beginning.
“No blood for oil,” chanted anti-war demonstrators on the streets in 2003.
Do you think you can be sold “blood for no oil”?