Vietnam déjà vu

I got fury in my soul, fury's gonna take me to the glory goal
In my mind I can't study war no more
     Laura Nyro, Save the Country, 1968

Does bombing a foreign country change hearts and minds there?

Yes. It backfires.

Dropping bombs on Vietnam

I imprinted on the music that I heard in my youth, approximately 1963 to 1973. I also imprinted on the lessons of the Vietnam War of the same era. I studied that war by osmosis, the way I listened to music. I was surrounded by it. 

It was an idea universally acknowledged during my youth that the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor was a tactical victory and a strategic mistake. The Pearl Harbor "sneak attack," changed American minds. Instantly opposition evaporated to our "gettin in" on the war waging in Europe. Attack us, and Americans united in opposition to the attacker. That was settled history, and remains so.

America's youth had learned the origin story of American independence: the brave Minutemen fighting the large imperial power, using guerilla tactics against the Redcoats. We knew something about the Boston Massacre. British troops fired upon protesters. The bad guys were Britain, its king, and their troops.

The Pearl Harbor story fits into that mindset. The attacker is the bad guy bully, and its attacks backfire in the long run. Vietnam fit the pattern in the minds of the anti-war youth.

The U.S. sought regime change in Vietnam. It wanted a pro-American, anti-communist regime. Ho Chi Minh admired the U.S. and its founding documents, but he was a communist, and that was enough for our leaders. Presidents Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon spoke of the need to win the "hearts and minds" of the Vietnamese people. One reason Vietnam was so hard to pacify was because so many "innocent-looking" civilians, supposedly on our side, were secretly helping the Vietcong. President Johnson understood we had a persuasion problem. He said:

So we must be ready to fight in Vietnam; but, the ultimate victory will depend upon the hearts and the minds—of the people who actually live out there.

The tactic to win the hearts and minds was the military. We would create pain so great that they would give up. We reported comparative body counts. We celebrated killing 10 enemies for only one of ours. Anyone we killed was an enemy or potential enemy, so that counted. Surely pain would cause them to give up. A saying attributed to Johnson summarized the plan:

 When you've got them by the balls, their hearts and minds will follow.

President Trump's original war aim was regime change in Iran. It was a reasonable desire, and indeed a less evangelical, less Islamist Iran has been an American goal since the Iranian Revolution in 1978. Trump called on the Iranian people to rise up; demonstrators were brutally repressed. The U.S. has a tool: overwhelming military power that could administer pain to the Iranian regime and public. I presume that our bombing the girls school was an accident -- a mistake in targeting -- but I note that our government is not offering a big mea culpa. Stuff happens. There is a logic to not admitting grievious error because what we were doing was creating pain, and what is more painful than having schoolgirls killed as collateral damage? It is Iran's fault for not capitulating, as we had demanded.

Our bombing of Iran was a tactical success. The lesson of Pearl Harbor and Vietnam hold true. Bombing does not displace a government or dispirit the people being bombed. It energizes them. Iran's leadership regime remains in place, stronger than before. The U.S. is withdrawing from the region.

When Trump first campaigned back in 2015 and 2016 he seemed to have learned that lesson. He was, arguably, the peace candidate, and Hillary Clinton was the hawk.

He forgot the lesson, or got persuaded by Israel hawks that this time is different. It wasn't different.

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