Conservatives have resisted the notion that Iraq is “another
Vietnam,” but in fact, as President Bush did two weeks ago, we
should embrace the history of Vietnam as an example of how — and
how not — to conduct a remote and unpopular war.
The history of Vietnam, after all, is not all shame and defeat.
Americans fought bravely and in the end we achieved most of our
objectives. Southeast Asia didn’t fall to communism. More to the
point, we learned important lessons in adjusting our goals to the
mission and recognizing when we are achieving success. It is a
lesson that will serve us well in Iraq.
Vietnam was the country’s first postwar venture into
counterinsurgency. The Korean War was fought very much the same as
World War II, with conventional standing armies. As Communist
subversion penetrated Southeast Asia, however, President John
Kennedy decided to oppose it with a new kind of warfare. He created
the Green Berets and put them into South Vietnam as military
advisers, attempting to shore up the South Vietnamese government
and beat the Viet Cong at their own game.
By 1965, however, the situation had deteriorated to the point
where the military advised President Lyndon Johnson that only the
introduction of American troops could save the day. Theater
commander General William Westmoreland was eager to engage the
enemy and try a new form of anti-guerilla warfare called
“search-and-destroy.”
The strategy was to surprise and out-maneuver the enemy using
the rapid deployment of helicopter-based troops. In the first major
engagement in November 1965, the army dropped 450 soldiers of the
1st Air Cavalry Division into the Ia Drang Valley — where they
were immediately surrounded by 2,000 seasoned North Vietnamese
regulars. Only about 200 Americans made it out.
Faced with such losses, Westmoreland embraced the “body count”
as the standard of success. The idea was to keep score between
American and North Vietnamese casualties, with the side racking up
the greater number of kills supposedly headed for victory. Critics
questioned the wisdom of getting into a war of attrition with a
nation of 20 million people that didn’t seem to mind sacrificing
lives. Westmoreland persisted, however, and the casualties mounted.
By 1968 Westmoreland had 500,000 troops in the field and was asking
for 250,000 more.
The Tet offensive finally prompted a re-evaluation and Johnson
decided to drop out of the race for re-election. President Richard
Nixon won the presidency while touting a “secret plan” to end the
war. Less than six months after Nixon took office, the body-count
reached its climax on “Hamburger Hill,” where the 101st Airborne
suffered 500 casualties in a weeklong battle — only to abandon the
hill in another a few days when it turned out to be strategically
useless. Life magazine published individual photos of all
242 Americans killed during the week, effectively dramatizing the
costs of the failed strategy.
GENERAL CREIGHTON ABRAMS, APPOINTED by Nixon to replace
Westmoreland, soon implemented a new strategy called
“clear-and-hold.” (In Iraq it is “clear, hold and build.”)
Conventional ground offensives were terminated. Instead, American
soldiers moved in with the Vietnamese, setting up security and
winning them to our side. Whereas search-and-destroy missions had
ended up “burning villages in order to save them,” the new strategy
concentrated on gaining the confidence of the people. By 1971, an
entire American division was living in villages in the Mekong
Delta.
In the meantime, Nixon presided over “Vietnamization,” which
meant withdrawing American troops and turning responsibility over
to the Vietnamese. Within four years, the last American combat
brigade had sailed home. Sensing an opportunity, North Vietnam’s
legendary General Vo Nguyen Giap launched an all-out invasion in
the spring of 1972. Nixon responded with “Operation Linebacker” (he
always liked football metaphors) and gave the South Vietnamese full
air support, including the bombing and mining of Haiphong harbor.
The invasion failed and General Giap was punished for his
miscalculations. The renewed conflict set off waves of protests on
American campuses, however, and the divisions became almost
irreconcilable.
George McGovern ran his 1972 presidential campaign on the
grounds that the war was immoral and we should be terminated
immediately — as if nothing had happened in four years. He
suffered a historical defeat. The electorate’s show of resolve
drove the North Vietnamese back to the negotiating table and on
January 15, 1973, Nixon announced the suspension of offensive
action against North Vietnam. Two weeks later both sides signed the
Paris Peace Accords. The release of American POWs followed soon
after.
One year later, the South Vietnamese government was still
standing, protected by American air and naval support. Nixon’s
opening to China had rearranged pieces on the world chessboard and
stability seemed to be coming to Southeast Asia. You could almost
call it a victory.
WHAT HAPPENED NEXT WAS purely domestic. Despite the end of the
fighting, critics could not let go of the idea of “Nixon’s War.” My
Lai, the supposedly immoral invasion of Cambodia, the supposed “war
crimes” of Nixon and Henry Kissinger — on and on it went. When the
catastrophe of Watergate brought down the Nixon presidency, the
effort to defend the fragile edifice collapsed. Riding the tide of
Watergate, the Democrats achieved their largest majorities in
Congress since World War II in the 1974 elections. They immediately
began clamoring for a withdrawal of all support from the South
Vietnamese government. Before the new majority had even taken its
seats, Congress passed the Foreign Assistance Act, which ruled that
all military assistance to South Vietnam must end by July 1976.
Emboldened by this turn of events, the North Vietnamese made a
tentative probe into the Central Highlands in March 1975. Stripped
of American air support, the Army of the Republic of Vietnam failed
miserably. President Ford entreated Congress for $1 billion in
military aid to the South Vietnamese but to no avail. The new
Democratic majority was ready to renounce the whole ten-year
effort.
Realizing America was not going to intervene, the North
Vietnamese continued southward. Although individual ARVN units
fought bravely, the government in Saigon panicked and the retreat
turned into a rout. Within six weeks Saigon fell. Almost
simultaneously, Cambodian Communist leader Pol Pot marched into
Phnom Penh, overthrowing the military regime in neighboring
Cambodia. The result — as President Bush recounted in his recent
speech — was the re-education camps, the Boat People (actually a
pogrom against ethnic Chinese), and the Killing Fields, in which
one-fourth of the population of Cambodia died.
IT IS REMARKABLE HOW CLOSELY our experience in Iraq has paralleled
the Vietnam experience to date. At first we thought we could
overwhelm the opposition with superior military force. The
“shock-and-awe” campaign and the lightening invasion seemed enough
to rout an overmatched enemy. Yet gradually we found ourselves
drawn into a war of attrition. Only after several years of mounting
casualties did we make a midcourse correction and implemented a
much more sophisticated strategy that concentrates on securing and
winning the population. This has led to lower casualty rates and
growing signs of life in the indigenous government.
Still we face almost the same situation at home as we did in
1972. Anti-war Democrats, refusing to acknowledge the success of
the new strategy, are intent on ending the war at any cost, even if
it means abandoning millions of people to their fates. Fortunately
this time we don’t have a Watergate Congress that can override a
President of any persuasion. Even so, the danger remains.
The Lesson of Vietnam is that we didn’t have to lose Vietnam. A
war that had been essentially won on the ground, followed by a
successful American disengagement, was ultimately squandered by the
triumph of defeatist attitudes at home. As the election approaches,
it will be crucial for candidates to avoid a similar outcome. Their
task will be to convince a war-weary public that the conflict must
be judged by current conditions rather than past mistakes and that
every sign of growing stability in Iraq is a true measure of
success.
