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Professor David Kaiser writes that "Mark Safranski seems to think it would have required extroardinary clairvoyance to realize that the defense of South Vietnam might be either hopeless or much too costly to be worth it in 1964-5." A good point except for the fact that I had selected an earlier time frame involving the Geneva talks and Diem's crushing of his noncommunist rivals, the Binh Xuyen, Cao Dai and Hoa-Hao. The years 1964-1965, I would agree with Professor Kaiser, are a different kettle of fish when the commitment of American resources and presitige was already not inconsequential but the potential outcomes were visibly bleak. Professor Wingrove offered several possible and relevant examples of " alarm bells " that could have rung for policy makers and went on to make the following astute observation: "Having said that, international conflicts probably always seem sufficiently different in their circumstances, with a logic of their own which can lead statesmen to sometimes avoid hearing the 'alarm bells'. Historians might note the 'alarm bells' in retrospect, of course, although they will no doubt want to engage in some debate about the concept itself." That was, in my view, a neatly defined illustration of the differences in the cognitive biases held respectively by historians and statesmen. I thank Professor Wingrove for his insight. Historians as a group by training are Hindsight Analysts. I use that as a definitive statement not as a perjorative one because in seeking to explain causation of historical events, historians generally have access to documentation and a perspective unavailable to a policy maker at the time who in dealing with a *dynamic* state of affairs, intends to *take action* based upon Foresight Analysis to influence potential, hoped-for but yet unrealized outcomes. At the time of the "Pusan Perimeter" it might have been rational in a probalistic sense to conclude that further resistance by the South Koreans and UN forces would be futile and that Koreans should "be permitted to determine their own future" in the picturesque phrase used by Dr. Matray to describe the Soviet-supported blitzkrieg of Kim Il-Sung's totalitarian North Korea. It would also have been wrong as events soon proved when the fortunes of the Communist side reversed. The Greek Civil War, a subject on which I claim no particular expertise, had its own tipping point as well. It would be human nature, in my view, to overestimate from hindsight what would have been readily apparent to a policy maker attempting to look ahead in 1958 to determine the possible outcome of American assistance to South Vietnam. Policy-makers and statesmen would more naturally gravitate to examples of success than failure in reviewing similar endeavors. Hindsight is 20/20 after all. Mark Safranski Independent Scholar
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