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12/08/2005
Melvin Laird on Iraq
Former Defense Secretary Melvin Laird, who oversaw the
withdrawal from Vietnam, 1969 to 1973, has been silent all these
years on that war. But now, thanks to Iraq, he is speaking out in
the form of a piece in the November / December issue of Foreign
Affairs. Before I get into it, Fred Barnes commented in the Nov.
28 issue of The Weekly Standard.
“Many have forgotten how the United States lost in Vietnam, but
not former Defense Secretary Melvin Laird. When the last
American military unit was withdrawn in 1973, the Viet Cong
had been defeated and the North Vietnamese army checkmated.”
But then Congress cut off the funding for South Vietnam and the
rout was on. Fred Barnes:
“It was a stunning and unnecessary defeat for America and for a
free Vietnam. And the lesson is clear: A war can be won on the
ground overseas and lost in Washington.”
Melvin Laird:
“Richard Nixon was elected in 1968 on the assumption that he
had a plan to end the Vietnam War. He didn’t have any such
plan, and my job as his first secretary of defense was to remedy
that – quickly .Today, nearly 37 years after Nixon took office
as president and I left Congress to join his cabinet, getting out of
a war is still dicier than getting into one, as President George W.
Bush can attest.”
On Laird’s first day there were two items on his desk. The first
was a set of binders that was soon leaked to the New York
Times, “the Pentagon Papers,” which addressed how the U.S.
entered the war. The second document had to do with a one-
year-old request from General William Westmoreland, then
commander of forces in Vietnam, to raise the level of troops
from 500,000 to 700,000. LBJ knew that was deadly during the
’68 presidential campaign so he buried the proposal and bumped
Westmoreland upstairs. As his first act in office, Laird turned it
down as well.
Melvin Laird writes that the withdrawal proved to be a textbook
one, but that 30 years of spin since have left policy makers with
sweaty palms anytime Vietnam comes up. Laird:
“Those who wallow in such Vietnam angst would have us be not
only reticent to help the rest of the world, but ashamed of our
ability to do so and doubtful of the value of spreading democracy
and of the superiority of freedom itself. They join their voices
with those who claim that the current war is ‘all about oil,’ as
though the loss of that oil were not enough of a global security
threat to merit any U.S. military intervention and especially not
‘another Vietnam.’
“The truth about Vietnam that revisionist historians conveniently
forget is that the United States had not lost when we withdrew in
1973. In fact, we grabbed defeat from the jaws of victory two
years later when Congress cut off the funding for South Vietnam
that had allowed it to continue to fight on its own. Over the four
years of Nixon’s first term, I had cautiously engineered the
withdrawal of the majority of our forces while building up South
Vietnam’s ability to defend itself.”
For two years thereafter, South Vietnam held its own despite the
fact the Soviet Union violated the Paris accord by far exceeding
the spending limits imposed on both Moscow and Washington in
terms of funding their allies.
“Yet during those two years, South Vietnam held its own
courageously and respectably against a better-bankrolled enemy.
Peace talks continued between the North and the South until the
day in 1975 when Congress cut off U.S. funding. The
Communists walked out of the talks and never returned. Without
U.S. funding, South Vietnam was quickly overrun .
“I believed then and still believe today that given enough outside
resources, South Vietnam was capable of defending itself, just as
I believe Iraq can do the same now. From the Tet offensive in
1968 up to the fall of Saigon in 1975, South Vietnam never lost a
major battle. The Tet offensive itself was a victory for South
Vietnam and devastated the North Vietnamese army, which lost
289,000 men in 1968 alone. Yet the overriding media portrayal
of the Tet offensive and the war thereafter was that of defeat for
the United States and the Saigon government. Just so, the
overriding media portrayal of the Iraq war is one of failure and
futility.
“Vietnam gave the United States the reputation for not
supporting its allies. The shame of Vietnam is not that we were
there in the first place, but that we betrayed our ally in the end. It
was Congress that turned its back on the promises of the Paris
accord.”
On current Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld:
“(His) overconfident and self-assured style on every issue, while
initially endearing him to the media, did not play well with
Congress during his first term. My friends in Congress (ed.
Laird served 16 years there before joining the Nixon
administration) tell me Rumsfeld has modified his style of late
“If Rumsfeld wants something from those who are elected to
make decisions for the American people, then he must continue
to show more deference to Congress. To do otherwise will
endanger public support and the funding stream for the Iraq war
and its future requirements. A sour relationship on Capitol Hill
could doom the whole effort. The importance of this solidarity
between Congress and the administration did not escape Saddam
Hussein, nor has it escaped the insurgents .
“There are no guarantees of continuity in a partisan democracy.
We are making commitments as to the future of Iraq on an
almost daily basis. These commitments must be understood now
so they can be honored later. Every skirmish on the home front
that betrays a lack of solidarity on Iraq gives the insurgents more
hope and ultimately endangers the men and women we have sent
to Iraq to fight in this war for us. We are now committed to a
favorable outcome in Iraq, but it must be understood that this
will require long-term assistance or our efforts will be in vain.”
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“We need to put our resources and unwavering public support
behind a program of ‘Iraqization’ so that we can get out of Iraq
and leave the Iraqis in a position to protect themselves. The Iraq
war should have been focused on Iraqization even before the first
shot was fired. The focus is there now, and Americans should
not lose heart.
“We came belatedly to Vietnamization; nonetheless, there are
certain principles we followed in Vietnam that would be helpful
in Iraq. The most important is that the administration must
adhere to a standard of competence for the Iraqi security forces,
and when that standard is met, U.S. troops should be withdrawn
in corresponding numbers. That is the way it worked in
Vietnam, from the first withdrawal of 50,000 troops in 1969 to
the last prisoner of war off the plane in January of 1973.
Likewise, in Iraq, the United States should not let too many more
weeks pass before it shows its confidence in the training of the
Iraqi armed forces by withdrawing a few thousand U.S. troops
from the country. We owe it to the restive people back home to
let them know there is an exit strategy, and, more important, we
owe it to the Iraqi people. The readiness of the Iraqi forces need
not be 100 percent, nor must the new democracy be perfect
before we begin our withdrawal. The immediate need is to show
our confidence that Iraqis can take care of Iraq on their own
terms. Our presence is what feeds the insurgency, and our
gradual withdrawal would feed the confidence and the ability of
average Iraqis to stand up to the insurgency.”
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“The president must articulate a simple message and mission.
Just as the spread of communism was very real in the 1960s, so
the spread of radical fundamentalist Islam is very real today. It
was a creeping fear until September 11, 2001, when it showed
itself capable of threatening us. Iraq was a logical place to fight
back, with its secular government and modern infrastructure and
a populace that was ready to overthrow its dictator. Our troops
are not fighting there only to preserve the right of Iraqis to vote.
They are fighting to preserve modern culture, Western
democracy, the global economy, and all else that is threatened by
the spread of barbarism in the name of religion. That is the
message and the mission. It is not politically correct, nor is it
comforting. But it is the truth, and sometimes the truth needs
good marketing.”
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“President Bush does not have the luxury of waiting for the
international community to validate his policies in Iraq. But we
do have the lessons of Vietnam. In Vietnam, the voices of the
‘cut-and-run’ crowd ultimately prevailed, and our allies were
betrayed after all of our work to set them on their feet. Those
same voices would now have us cut and run from Iraq, assuring
the failure of the fledgling democracy there and damning the rest
of the Islamic world to chaos fomented by extremists. Those who
look only at the rosy side of what defeat did to help South
Vietnam get to where it is today see a growing economy there
and a warming of relations with the West. They forget the
immediate costs of the United States’ betrayal. Two million
refugees were driven out of the country, 65,000 more were
executed, and 250,000 were sent to ‘reeducation camps.’ Given
the nature of the insurgents in Iraq and the catastrophic goals of
militant Islam, we can expect no better there.
“As one who orchestrated the end of our military role in Vietnam
and then saw what had been a workable plan fall apart, I agree
that we cannot allow ‘another Vietnam.’ For if we fail now, a
new standard will have been set. The lessons of Vietnam will be
forgotten, and our next global mission will be saddled with the
fear of its becoming ‘another Iraq.’”
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Hott Spotts will return Dec. 22.
Brian Trumbore
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