Vietnam redux

Vietnam redux
By George C. Wilson

Listening to Gen. David Petraeus explain to Congress how he intends to pacify Iraq brought back with painful clarity the warning Clark Clifford said he issued to President Johnson when the Vietnam War was at a similar turning point: “Your generals are leading you down a primrose path, Mr. President.”

Johnson had dispatched Clifford, his old friend and a crafty lawyer who succeeded Robert McNamara as secretary of defense on March 1, 1968, to cross-examine everyone importantly involved with Vietnam policy. Clifford’s mission was to put what he was told through his renowned manure separator and bring back the truth to the President, no matter how grim.

“We’re in a struggle for the president’s mind,” Clifford told us editors and reporters during a luncheon at The Washington Post. In opening the administration’s kimono to reveal some of the in-fighting, Clifford complained that he had asked general after general how many more men on top of the 510,000 already in South Vietnam were needed to win the war. Not one general, Clifford told us, would guarantee victory — no matter how many more troops were sent into the Vietnam quagmire.

~snip~

So here we are again, 39 years later, arguing about how many American troops are needed to guard the way to a graceful exit from another distant quagmire.

As a former combat correspondent for the Post in Vietnam and as a reporter for the National Journal embedded with Marines during the invasion of Iraq in 2003, I see the same two problems tripping up President Bush as tripped up President Nixon as he tried to back out of Vietnam’s barroom door with guns blazing.

Problem One is that there has to be a stable government to hand the war over to, something Nixon did not have in Vietnam and that Bush doesn’t have in Iraq.


Rest of article at: http://www.airforcetimes.com/community/opinion/airforce_backtalk_vietnam_071001/