IN THE NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2005 ISSUE OF FOREIGN AFFAIRS:
Iraq: The Lessons from Vietnam
Former Defense Secretary Melvin Laird Speaks Out
In a strikingly frank memoir-cum-analysis, former Secretary of Defense Melvin Laird speaks out for the first time in many years. During Richard Nixon's first term, he argues, the United States managed to withdraw American forces while creating a viable South Vietnamese army. The same approach could work in Iraq today, he concludes: "I believed and still believe today that given enough outside resources, South Vietnam was capable of defending itself, just as I believe Iraq can do the same now."
The truth about Vietnam that revisionist historians conveniently forget
is that the United States had not lost when we withdrew in 1973. In
fact, we grabbed defeat from the jaws of victory two years later when
Congress cut off the funding for South Vietnam that had allowed it to
continue to fight on its own.
Donald Rumsfeld has been my friend for more than 40 years. Gerald Ford
and I went to Evanston to support him in his first congressional race,
and I urged President Bush to appoint him secretary of defense. But his
overconfident and self-assured style on every issue, while initially
endearing him to the media, did not play well with Congress during his
first term. ... Several secretaries during my service on the
Appropriations Committee, running all the way from the tenure of
Charlie Wilson to that of Clark Clifford, made the mistake of thinking
they must appear much smarter than the elected officials to whom they
reported. It doesn't always work.
For me, the alleged prison scandals reported to have occurred in Iraq,
in Afghanistan, and at Guantanamo Bay have been a disturbing reminder
of the mistreatment of our own POWs by North Vietnam. Š The minute we
begin to deport prisoners to other nations where they can legally be
tortured, when we hold people without charges or trial, when we move
prisoners around to avoid the prying inspections of the Red Cross, when
prisoners die inexplicably on our watch, we are on a slippery slope
toward the inhumanity that we deplore.
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