[Mb-civic] A Vietnam Architect's Wisdom on Iraq - David Broder - Washington Post Op-Ed

[William Swiggard]

A Vietnam Architect's Wisdom on Iraq

By David S. Broder
Sunday, October 16, 2005; Page B07

Mel Laird has a unique perspective on the U.S. engagement in Iraq. Not 
surprisingly, the man who was defense secretary in the Nixon 
administration and the architect of the policy that managed the 
extraction of American forces from the seemingly endless war in Vietnam 
has his own view of the current struggle.

In a lengthy essay in the forthcoming issue of Foreign Affairs magazine, 
Laird offers an analysis of the parallels -- and differences -- between 
Iraq and Vietnam that challenges the thinking of both President Bush and 
the critics of administration policy.

By speaking out publicly for the first time on the subject, the longtime 
Republican leader -- who served 16 years in Congress before going to the 
Pentagon for four years in 1969 and to the White House staff for eight 
months near the end of Nixon's presidency -- has done another service to 
his country.

Laird does not concede, even now, that Vietnam had to fall to the 
communists, blaming the loss directly on the Democratic Congress and 
indirectly on the Ford administration for acquiescing in the cutoff of 
aid to the Saigon regime.

Nor does he consider democracy in Iraq a lost cause. Far from it. 
However false the original premise of the war, the fight against 
terrorism is one that must be won, he says. But speaking from 
experience, he argues two points that call for a change in emphasis, if 
not direction, in American policy, and a third that would require Bush 
to execute a complete about-face.

Noting that the U.S. effort in Vietnam was undercut by Washington's 
eagerness to install "a real puppet government" in Saigon, made up of 
"selfish men who were no more than dictators in the garb of statesmen," 
he argues that in Iraq, "a legitimate government, not window dressing, 
must be the primary goal." To the extent that the United States is seen 
as manipulating both the writing and the ratification of the new Iraqi 
constitution, that advice has been ignored.

Second, Laird argues that the United States should "not let too many 
more weeks pass" before beginning to withdraw troops from Iraq and 
turning over the security of the country to Iraqi forces.

When he took over the Pentagon, Laird said, he changed the mission 
statement "from one of applying maximum pressure against the enemy to 
one of giving maximum assistance to South Vietnam to fight its own battles."

That should have been U.S. policy in Iraq "even before the first shot 
was fired." It ought to begin now and continue indefinitely, with the 
pace to be restrained only by the judgment of American military 
commanders on the capabilities of Iraqis to fill the security role.

"We owe it to the restive people back home to let them know there is an 
exit strategy, and, more important, we owe it to the Iraqi people," 
Laird says. "Our presence is what feeds the insurgency, and our gradual 
withdrawal would feed the confidence and the ability of average Iraqis 
to stand up to the insurgency."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/10/14/AR2005101401789.html?nav=hcmodule
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