If Only We'd Stayed in Vietnam, We Wouldn't Be in Iraq Today

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Things were really going so well for President Nixon in 1971. My Lai was behind him, an unfortunate blot on the history of the otherwise spectacular Vietnam War. True, the Pentagon Papers were making public appearances difficult. (When the New York Times began publishing the papers, Nixon told Henry Kissinger, his national security advisor, "Let's get the son-of-a-bitch in jail.") In any case, in 1971, Nixon was looking forward to re-election and a promising second term. But then, erratically and with no prior warning, Nixon actually began to execute the campaign slogan he’d run on in his first election. He began to pull the troops out of Vietnam.

There’s a lesson in here somewhere, and it was being offered this week by President Bush on his brief, poignant trip to Vietnam. Bush hadn't been to Vietnam since...oh, wait a minute, he'd never been to Vietnam. When asked about the comparison between Vietnam and Iraq, he said, “We tend to want there to be instant success in the world. The task in Iraq is going to take a while. We’ll succeed unless we quit.”

Was he suggesting that because we quit in Vietnam, we weren’t able to succeed there, or that we can’t compare Iraq to Vietnam yet, because it’s going to take a lot more time for Iraq to see the kind of political and economic success we now have in Vietnam?

After all, Vietnam welcomed Bush this week with open arms—who can argue with the kind of political maturity Vietnam has developed. Take this example from the Mercury News:

Dissidents throughout the country say they have been harassed, detained and, in one case, beaten up by authorities to keep them from meeting with foreign journalists or engaging in any protests while the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation meeting convenes.
The home and cellular phones of many prominent dissidents have been disconnected. Some activists have been locked inside their homes. Throughout the city, barricades have been erected at the homes of many dissidents, typically with four or five police officers standing guard. Signs around the homes warn visitors: ``Restricted Access,'' ``No Foreigners'' and ``No Pictures.''

They sure have come a long way. Meanwhile--it's a small world-- Kissinger himself told the BBC this morning that a military win in Iraq is impossible:

"If you mean by 'military victory' an Iraqi government that can be established and whose writ runs across the whole country, that gets the civil war under control and sectarian violence under control in a time period that the political processes of the democracies will support, I don't believe that is possible."

...which is pretty much what I think of when I think 'military victory.' What he offered as an alternative was the possibility of avoiding a wholesale collapse of the country, which he said "would have disastrous consequences for which we would pay for many years and which would bring us back, one way or another, into the region."

So we can’t win, and we can’t lose. Instead, Kissinger continued, we should “redefine our course” by working with Iran, Pakistan, India, and other of Iraq’s neighbors to define ways to bring peace to the region. What a great idea. I wish he’d thought of it five, or maybe ten, or heck—concerning another regional hotspot—even fifty years ago.