Media and Democrats pushing the policies that failed in Vietnam

LA Times:

New tactics favored by U.S. commanders in Iraq borrow heavily from the end of another war that might seem an unlikely source for a winning strategy: Vietnam.

The tactics — an influx of military advisors and a speeded-up handover to indigenous forces followed by a gradual U.S. withdrawal — resemble those in place as the U.S. effort in Vietnam reached its end.

In historical assessments and the American recollection, Vietnam was the unwinnable war. But to many in the armed forces, Vietnam as a war actually was on its way to succeeding when the Nixon administration and Congress, bowing to public impatience, pulled the plug: first withdrawing U.S. combat forces and then blocking funding and supplies to the South Vietnamese army.

If they hadn't, the South Vietnamese army, which had been bolstered by U.S. advisors and a more focused "hearts and minds" campaign in the later stages of the war, could have been able to fend off the communist North, many leading military thinkers have argued.

In their view, progress was undermined by President Nixon's decision to begin withdrawing U.S. troops in 1969 in the face of political pressure at home, despite military objections that the South Vietnamese army was not ready to go it alone. Another key U.S. mistake, they contend, was the deep cuts Congress made to military aid to Saigon beginning in 1974.

For many in the military, the lessons of Vietnam are clear: Maintain public support, and be patient.

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The argument that Abrams was on the right track has gained a strong following among influential military thinkers, including Sepp and Krepinevich, who have the ear of many in the Pentagon.

"There's a considerable sentiment of those who really studied Vietnam and, ideally, served there, that the approach to the war after Westmoreland left was on a new track," said retired Army Col. Stuart A. Herrington, another Vietnam veteran who has advised the Pentagon on Iraq policy. "It was a radical change in the approach to the war, and there's no question that even [former North Vietnamese] adversaries now admit that the second approach was extremely, extremely damaging to them."

Veterans of later years of the Vietnam conflict, some of whom are now in positions at the military's leading war colleges, often describe a strategy that was beginning to work even as combat forces began to withdraw in the early 1970s.

James Willbanks, a former military advisor in Vietnam who heads the history department at the U.S. Army's Command and General Staff College, argued that pacification efforts — the strategy of pushing South Vietnamese forces into the countryside to provide a physical and psychological sense of security — had largely succeeded by 1972. He adding that the ARVN was even able to hold its own without American combat troops until Congress decided to withhold military funding to Saigon shortly after U.S. troops withdrew in 1973.

"We trained them to fight like us, and then we pulled all our support out," Willbanks said, echoing sentiments of other military scholars.

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Perhaps more troubling, however, is that like the Abrams initiatives, which ran from 1968 through 1973, the current move to step up training of the Iraqi forces comes at a time when domestic support for war is on the wane and political winds are blowing in favor of a quick pullout of combat forces.

"There are certain things you just can't do in a military situation like Iraq or Vietnam, and if you violate these tenets, you're at great risk," Herrington said. "One of them is to take too long to figure out what you ought to be doing so the American public falters in its support."

Such fears, and the consequences of losing political backing for the war in Iraq, have colored military strategy. Senior military officials have acknowledged that maintaining domestic support for the war effort is frequently factored into planning discussions.

"Unfortunately, the timeline we see that it would take to build a fully capable, competent [Iraqi] force — and for us to feel comfortable stepping away — is longer than the timeline that we feel now our country will support," said Gen. James T. Conway, the new commandant of the Marine Corps. "So we have a little bit of a mismatch there."

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If the military had a plan for maintaining domestic support for the war it has been a bigger failure than its operations in Iraq. They story misses the time line on this strategy of putting more responsibility on the Iraqis. That could not really be done until Iraqi sovereignty was in place. The problem has come with the failure of the Iraqi government to seize the opportunity presented to them. It is a mistake to think that Gen. Abizaid has only recently come to the conclusion that the Iraqis should be given more responsibility. That has been his plan from the beginning of the war and has been the chief reason why he has resisted the call for additional troops since the end of major combat operations. It appears that some in the media are only recently comprehending what his plan has been all along.

The Democrats and the media have been making the same mistake that caused us to lose in Vietnam. They seem determined to do for Iraq what they did for Vietnam. They have a desperation for defeat.