| 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military unit was withdrawn in 1973, the Viet Cong had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.
For the next two years, "South Vietnam held its own
courageously and respectably against a better-bankrolled
enemy," Laird writes in the current Foreign Affairs.
"Given enough outside resources, South Vietnam was
capable of defending itself." Instead, "we grabbed
defeat from the jaws of victory [in 1975] when Congress
cut off the funding for South Vietnam that had allowed
it to continue to fight on its own. . . . Without U.S.
funding, South Vietnam was quickly overrun." 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. We are
not at that point in Iraq, not yet anyway. Nonetheless,
with the events of last week in Washington, plus another
in Dubai, the specter of defeat suddenly looms on the
horizon. An Iraq that America allows to fall into the
hands of Saddamites and jihadists is no longer
inconceivable. Winning in Iraq isn't enough. The war
must be won in Washington as well.
By themselves, the events are small. A normally
hawkish Democratic congressman, John Murtha calls for an
immediate withdrawal of American troops from Iraq. The
Republican-controlled Senate passes a resolution that
says 2006 is the year to begin a "phased redeployment of
United States forces from Iraq." Democrats continue
their attacks on President Bush for allegedly hyping or
falsifying the prewar intelligence on Iraq.
And on top of all that, former President Bill Clinton
changes his mind about the liberation of Iraq by
military force. Clinton was a strong supporter of the
war--but no longer. "Saddam is gone," he said at the
American University in Dubai. "It's a good thing. But I
don't agree with what was done. It was a big mistake."
By "it," Clinton meant the invasion that deposed Saddam
Hussein.
Taken together, these events are ominous. They may
not represent an irreversible new consensus among the
political class toward America's intervention in Iraq.
But at a minimum, they suggest that troop removal has
superseded victory as the primary American concern. The
current shift in attitude is reminiscent of the one that
followed the Tet Offensive in 1968, which consisted of
Democratic defections, Republican anxiety, and a general
loss of confidence in America's ability to prevail in
Vietnam. And we know where all that led: directly to the
1975 collapse.
The defection of Clinton may be the most alarming
development since he is a bellwether, a reliable
reflector of where elite opinion is headed. Just last
year, he expressed his support for the "Iraq thing" in
strong terms. He explained that the president,
post-9/11, had to do everything possible to keep weapons
of mass destruction out of the hands of terrorists. Now
he's flipped. His wife, Democratic senator Hillary
Clinton, may follow.
Murtha's insistence on an immediate pullout of all
American troops is significant, if only because he is
one of the few Democrats in Congress who has ever been
called pro-military or a hawk. His call for withdrawal
was more emotional than rational, but definitely
sincere. He nearly broke down when talking about the
wounded soldiers he's visited.
The Senate resolution represented a serious
miscalculation by Republican leaders. They were worried
that a Democratic measure, proposed by Sen. Carl Levin
of Michigan, would pass with help from a few
Republicans. So they concocted, with White House
approval, an alternative to appeal to Republican
waverers. It undermined the Levin proposal, but it was
interpreted by the press as a break with Bush's Iraq
policy.
The Levin resolution would have required a timetable
for the removal of American troops from Iraq. The
Republican alternative has no schedule of withdrawals,
but it includes mushy language from the Democratic bill
about beginning the pullout of troops from Iraq.
Republican leaders expected the defeat of the Levin
resolution to attract media attention. It didn't. On the
contrary, the media focused on the Republican measure
and reported that it reflected Republican
dissatisfaction with Bush. Republican John Warner of
Virginia, chairman of the Senate Armed Services
Committee, said the resolution reflected public unease
over Iraq.
What message did this package of events send to the
insurgents in Iraq? Stay the course, the Americans may
be going soft again, just as they did in Somalia a
decade ago, in Lebanon in the 1980s, and in Vietnam in
the 1970s. What other conclusion could the insurgents
draw?
This leaves Bush, Vice President Cheney, and the
entire administration with a larger task than refuting
the trumped-up Democratic charge that they
misrepresented intelligence on Iraq. They're already off
to a good start in knocking down that canard. Now they
must quash the idea of Vietnam redux.
Mel Laird, it turns out, isn't the only person who's
been thinking about the parallel between Iraq and
Vietnam. So has Ayman al-Zawahiri, Osama bin Laden's
deputy. In his intercepted email to al Qaeda's man in
Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, he said, "Things may develop
faster than we imagine." He wrote that "the aftermath of
the collapse of American power in Vietnam--and how they
ran and left their agents--is noteworthy." Indeed, and
it is relevant.
Fred Barnes is executive editor of The Weekly
Standard.
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