SEND TO A FRIEND

|

PRINT ARTICLE

Want to Lose War in Iraq? Study Vietnam

War critics have spent years attempting to stain the war in Iraq with the stigma of a Vietnam comparison. They have spoken and acted with vigor approaching glee, as if trying to hammer out a self-fulfilling prophecy.

The comparisons largely fail, but with their calls for withdrawal without victory, the surrender wing of American politics does call to mind with disturbing clarity the series of events that led to the crushing shame we endured as a nation by allowing Vietnam to fall.

As painful as it was to watch the Vietnamese we abandoned rushing to cling to the last helicopters out in 1975, at least we did not face the threat of an empowered enemy following us back to our shores to continue attacking us.

We face that threat now. Political enemies of the war in Iraq seem to have forgotten how to win, but their strategy for losing is ripped right from the pages of how we lost three decades ago.

Curiously, even in war-weary 1972, the anti-war candidate could scarcely buy an electoral vote. But President Nixon's trouncing of George McGovern in no way meant America wanted the "peace with honor" Mr. Nixon had tried to sell.

Congress already had its claws buried deep in the war effort. The Senate had voted months before the election to cut funding for any troop movement except an exit. Five months after Mr. Nixon's second inauguration, the House joined the Senate in voting to yank funding within 60 days.

Fearing that Nixon might actually try to prevent the communist pillage of South Vietnam that would surely follow U.S. withdrawal, Congress overrode a presidential veto to pass the constitutionally suspect War Powers Act, which ties presidential hands and forces war decisions through the meat grinder of Capitol Hill.

Having 535 decision-makers in wartime is a recipe for disaster, yet that's the craving of many in today's Congress, where House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid lead a political army that seeks to wrest control of the war from the commander in chief.

Members of Congress do hold the nation's purse strings and thus can de-fund any war they like. But whether it's any Democrat you can name, or a few indignant Republican turncoats, no one has the guts to actually cut off the money.

Thank heaven for small favors, because history gives us a glimpse of what happens when America bails.

Months after the useless Paris peace talks, North Vietnam began ignoring those flimsy agreements and taking advantage of America's retreat. One hundred fifty-thousand communist troops quickly became an army of nearly a half million in 1973, and we were cooked.

It didn't help that the winds of Watergate were starting to blow, but even a scandal-free Nixon probably could not have prodded America back into caring about winning in Vietnam. As a nation, we were just too tired to care.

The following year, after Mr. Nixon's resignation, President Ford wanted to at least funnel some degree of aid to South Vietnam to help them fend off the pummeling they were about to take. But that year's congressional elections were not particularly Republican-friendly. Nearly fifty seats were handed over to freshman Democrats who helped seal Vietnam's fate by barring any hope of aid for the South.

1975 brought the predictable wave of aggression designed to unify Vietnam under a Communist flag. As cities that had once housed U.S. troops fell, President Ford actually squeezed Congress for a few hundred million dollars of emergency military aid.

But it was too little and too late to prevent the fall of Saigon. America had lost in Vietnam. Energized by their brothers' good fortune, the communist Khmer Rouge in neighboring Cambodia began to exterminate political enemies at a Holocaust-style pace.

We can find ways to duck the blame for the consequences of choosing to lose in Southeast Asia. It will not be as easy to spin an intentional loss in Iraq, where an energized enemy will not be satisfied with limiting its killing to the immediate area.

The current U.S. surge in Iraq may succeed enough to create new reserves of patience in a country once again tempted to give up. But even if it does not, we would do well to remember that the people we are fighting today want to follow us home.

---

Sphere: Related Content

|

Email

|

Print

|

---

Related Topics: iraq |

Sponsored Links