Drinking Deep At McSorley's

The imperative of making the right decision in Afghanistan is contributing to a surprising new look by experts at the endgame in Vietnam from 1973-75 -- that, plus the attention that Gen. Stanley McChrystal and other Pentagon officials are giving Lewis Sorley's book A Better War. Sorley argues that, thanks to the gains we made under President Nixon, South Vietnam might have survived if only Congress hadn't slashed non-personnel aid while it pursued Nixon over Vietnam. Sorley's book gets a respectful hearing this week from Evan Thomas in "Newsweek":

Not until Gen. Creighton Abrams replaced Gen. William Westmoreland as U.S. commander in 1968 did the Americans smarten up and begin to fight a true counterinsurgency, focusing on protecting the population by a strategy of "clear and hold." Instead of shoving aside the South Vietnamese Army, Abrams built up the local forces until they could stand and fight largely on their own-as they did in 1972, repulsing North Vietnam's Easter Offensive with the aid of American airstrikes.

But by then, as Sorley laments...it was too late. American public opinion had turned. In 1973, President Nixon and the North Vietnamese signed a peace treaty that allowed Hanoi to keep 150,000 troops in South Vietnam, just waiting on orders to march. In 1974, breaking Nixon's promises of continued support to Saigon, the U.S. Congress cut off all aid to South Vietnam. Without logistical support or air cover, the South Vietnamese Army collapsed in 1975 and the communists swept into Saigon. Sorley quotes one of General Abrams's closest colleagues, Gen. Bruce Palmer, as saying that Abrams "died [of cancer in 1974] feeling that we could have won the war. He felt we were on top of it in 1971, then lost our way." Ellsworth Bunker, the U.S. ambassador to Saigon who worked with Abrams to turn the war around, felt the same: "We eventually defeated ourselves," Bunker said.

Of course those May 1972 air strikes didn't materialize out of the thin air over Hanoi. They were ordered at considerable political risk by Richard Nixon. He did it again as peace talks faltered in December, generating heat among congressional opponents that made the Watergate firestorm the following year burn hotter than it would have otherwise. As Thomas notes, some historians dispute whether Nixon and Abrams could really have saved South Vietnam if Watergate hadn't occurred or Congress hadn't interfered. But does anyone really think the U.S. and South Vietnam couldn't have defeated Hanoi under any circumstances? Evans writes:

[T]he revisionists' view of Vietnam does shed some light on the issues facing Obama about war leadership. The most surprising guidance Vietnam may have to offer is not that wars of this kind are unwinnable-which is clearly the common wisdom in America-but that they can produce victories if presidents resist the temptation to fight wars halfway or on the cheap. As President Eisenhower liked to say, if you fight, "you must fight to win."

In an accompanying "Newsweek" article, Sen. John Kerry, former head of Vietnam Veterans Against the War, firmly rebukes the revisionists, though even he adds, with a nod in Sorley's direction:

Yes, we adopted smarter tactics near the end, but by then the die was cast.

From grudging concessions such as these may well come a new appreciation of Richard Nixon as commander-in-chief.

Brando And Murray, Together At Last

Your mind will boggle at how many words rhyme with "ass."

Hat tip to lemondrop.com.

Can You Hear Them Now?

The Brill Building, on Broadway near Times Square, was headquarters for legendary songwriters such as Bacharach and David, Leiber and Stoller ("Yakety Yak"), Ellie Greenwich ("River Deep Mountain High," with Phil Specter), and Doc Pomus ("Save The Last Dance For Me," with Mort Shuman). More about the Brill Building sound here. Music bud Gary Baker (above) and I stopped by on Sunday, at the end of our musical pilgrimage. All we could hear outside the historic doorway (though artists were usually instructed to use the side entrance) was the sound of Manhattan traffic -- but hey, that's what inspired George Gershwin's "Rhapsody in Blue."

Gary and I talked politics during the 17 minutes we weren't talking about music, family, and faith. When I shared that I didn't much care who gave money to politicians or in what amounts so long as voters are fully informed about it and pay close attention, he recommended OpenSecrets.org. Drop by and see who calls the tune for your local officials.

Nazareth Songs: "The Weight" (1968)

Levon Helm and his Midnight Ramble band, plus John Hiatt, performing earlier this year at the Ryman auditorium in Nashville

Yorba Linda Sky

5:30 p.m.

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Wearing Green On Sundays

What constitutes genuine religious belief? An English judge applies a five-fold test and decides that being environmentally minded qualifies.

Baby Steps To The Promised Land

Experts' consensus on the Obama administration's Middle East efforts so far: Amateur hour, beginning with the U.S. demand for a West Bank settlements freeze. New plan: Back to baby steps.

Hat tip to Mike Cheever

Not Bedfellows At All?

Nixon and Kissinger vs. Haig, Rumsfeld, and Cheney? Very interesting indeed. Len Colodny sent me this "Library Journal" review by Stephen K. Shaw of his new book, The Forty Years War: The Rise and Fall of the Neocons, From Nixon To Obama:

Colodny (coauthor, Silent Coup) and [Tom] Shachtman (Airlift to America), two experienced investigative reporters, offer a rigorous and critical examination of the neoconservative movement and the bureaucratic, ideological battles over American foreign policy from 1969 to 2009.

During this period, there was infighting, primarily in Republican administrations, between pragmatists, e.g., Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger, and ideologues, e.g., Alexander Haig, Donald Rumsfeld, and Dick Cheney, for the privilege of conducting foreign policy and establishing American supremacy in world affairs.

Central to this account of the origins and evolution of crusading conservatives and ideologically driven theorists, such as the mysterious, influential Pentagon operative Fritz Kraemer, is a focus on the domestic and international prospects and perils of a foreign, military-driven policy that has sought to re-create the world in America's image. The authors essentially direct our attention to John Quincy Adams's advice that his country should not go abroad in search of monsters to destroy.

VERDICT: Anyone who has read Jane Mayer's The Dark Side or Jack Goldsmith's The Terror Presidency would be well served by this captivating chronicle. Highly recommended, especially for students of U.S. foreign policy and/or presidential politics in the post-World War II era.

Bent Ears

Levon Helm patted Gary and me on the knee when he arrived on stage for his set last night and patted me on the back when he left. Such incarnational moments are surely the stuff of pilgrimages. After he'd given us a big smile, I was so transfigured that I couldn't have cared less about anything else that might have happened. But as a matter of fact, the Band's legendary singer and drummer barely opened his mouth during his two and a half-hour concert last night in his Woodstock studio. A throat cancer survivor, he's still recovering from another scare last summer, when a non-cancerous lesion was removed from his throat.

While he's not yet singing as he works with his vocal coach to get back in shape, he's drumming as powerfully as ever. He powered his 12-piece show band from the right end of the stage, counting four by standing, waving his drumsticks in the air, and mouthing the words. There were plenty of lead vocalists to take up the slack, including his daughter Amy, Teresa Williams and her husband, guitarist Larry Campbell (storied performers in their own right), and, sitting in last night, roadhouse pianist David Keyes, who got to sing this classic Robbie Robertson lyric on "Across The Great Divide":

Standing by your window in pain
A pistol in your hand
And I beg you, dear Molly girl
Try and understand your man the best you can...
Now Molly dear, don't ya shed a tear
Your time will surely come
You'll feed your man chicken every Sunday
Now tell me, hon, whatcha done with the gun?

Helm and his band performed five more Band songs -- "Long Black Veil," a country standard which appeared on their "Music From Big Pink," plus "The Shape I'm In," "It Makes No Difference," "Chest Fever," and "The Weight." Songwriter and guitarist Robertson wasn't there, and Rick Danko and Richard Manuel, the group's two best voices besides Helm, died early. All this Band music, but no Band voices? Nobody cared. Nobody cares if it isn't John Wesley singing the hymns he wrote, either.

Robertson is said to have been unappreciative of the Helm-Danko-Manuel-Garth Hudson iterations of the Band that performed without him in the 1980-90s. I guess I can't blame him in view of the fairly showy "goodbye to the road" the Band paid in the film "The Last Waltz." Still, I hope Robertson brings his famous Fender to the Midnight Ramble one time to see how the congregation is doing with his hymns, the classic songs that have entered the canon of American New Orleans-influenced R&B songwriting.

In addition to Band songs, we heard Delta peaches such as Dr. John's "Such A Night," the boisterous "All On A Mardi Gras Day," and "Do Right Woman, Do Right Man." The Ramble was in Woodstock without being especially redolent of the Woodstock festival, which was more famous for the Who and Jimi Hendrix than for proto-roots music such as the Band's, whose members looked like Mennonites, not acid rockers. The Band played the festival but didn't especially enjoy it. Nor did a certain other Americana band from San Francisco. Bad weather during their set killed the Grateful Dead's spotlights, so nobody saw them. Literally. They said they'd never played worse.

Appropriately enough, Helm's ensemble has its own links to the greater Dead family, Williams and Campbell having recently toured with Dead bassist Phil Lesh. We heard two Dead songs last night: "Tennessee Jed," which Helm recorded on his new album "Electric Dirt," and the Robert Hunter-Jerry Garcia collaboration "Attics Of My Life." Here the evening waxed from joyful to sublime, with Williams, Amy Helm, and Campbell singing Hunter's gorgeous lyrics, as the Dead themselves did on their album "American Beauty," in luminous harmony:

I have spent my life
Seeking all that's still unsung
Bent my ear to hear the tune
And closed my eyes to see
When there were no strings to play
You played to me

Oh regret, oh grace -- oh, baby boomers! We listened in rapt silence to that aching old song, we men and women of a certain age huddled together in a cozy barn, mostly in our fifties and sixties, though there were a few younger people who'd said they learned about the music from their parents. Welcomed with an easy hospitality by Team Levon, which had lit the muddy parking lot with fragrant stove fires and invited us to bring dishes for a common buffet table, we felt like we were going over to an old friend's house. We sipped beer and wine from red plastic cups they'd provided (we were asked to keep the liquor bottles in our cars) and traded stories about concerts we'd seen, albums we'd loved, sights we'd seen around town. Except in church, which comes with a common vocabulary just like rock and roll, I've rarely bonded so easily with strangers. It felt like going to a show when we were 19.

But we weren't 19. Most of our children won't see 19 again. It might just have been a nostalgia trip, but as one of the passengers, I'm looking for a better word than that. It had something to do with the curtain beginning to come down on a storied if self-absorbed generation and trying to savor and honor people and things and memories we love, trying to discern what's really precious and then find the words to explain it.

One of the things I love is the Band's live version of the Motown song "Don't Do It," recorded at the Academy of Music in New York City on New Year's Eve in 1971. Levon Helm sings lead. It's lean, sharp as an icicle, almost explosively powerful. That long-ago night in New York was the first time the Band had worked with a horn section. Howard Johnson, who'd played with Charles Mingus and later led the Saturday Night Live band, played tuba and baritone sax. The horns helped make "Don't Do It" a masterpiece. Near the end, Helm and the late Rick Danko take this line as Helm plays a complicated drum pattern which you're amazed he can hold together while singing: "My biggest mistake was loving you too much." Then Johnson and the rest of the horns come back in with a mighty roar.

I'd be surprised if I've heard the song fewer than 1,000 times in the course of nearly 40 years. If I could have just one song, I'd be content with "Don't Do It." As it happened, Howard Johnson also anchored the horn section last night at the Midnight Ramble. After the show, he walked out behind Helm, and I touched him on the shoulder and said, "Thank you. God bless you." He smiled and said, "Thank you." Perhaps presumptuous of me, definitely gracious of him. I felt like I was thanking him for all the music I'd ever loved.

Mix 'Em, Match 'Em

Grand Central Station, New York City, 6:35 p.m.

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