Lary Bloom
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Monday, December 26, 2005
Laird Bared
Melvin Laird's essay, "Iraq & Vietnam," in a recent issue of Foreign Affairs is an intermittently lucid, if maddeningly self-serving, view of how one difficult war applies, or doesn't, to another. Here's a sentence for you that illustrates no lucidity: "In hindsight, we can look at the Vietnam War as a success story -- albeit a costly one -- in nation building, even the democracy we sought half-heartedly to build failed."Laird should know better. He was, of course, Secretary of Defense during the last years of the Vietnam War. And, though he decries in his piece certain clear mistakes in our conduct of that war, he seems to conclude that indeed there was a light at the end of the tunnel. If only we had stayed at it longer. If only Congress had not cut off funding for the South Vietnamese government to wage war after our troops finally left. If only....What nonsense. We were funding a corrupt group of politicians and Army officers. But in the manner of today's politicians, views are conveniently arranged to justify unjustifiable acts.
Later in his piece, Laird writes cogently: "Victory meant everything to North Vietnam and nothing to the average American. We had few economic interests in Vietnam. Our national security interest-- preventing the domino scenario, in which the entire world would fall under the sway of communism if we lost in Southeast Asia -- didn't have enough currency to carry the day."
Laird argues, correctly, that George Bush has more going for him in Iraq -- people understand oil, and they understand the idea of trying to prevent 9/11 from happening again, even if they can't quite make a physical connection between Iraq and Osama Bin Laden. Many may buy into the "spreading freedom" idea, or to the idea of a democratic foothold in the Middle East, which historically has meant more to Americans than Southeast Asia has.
But in the end, Laird's essay self destructs because it holds fiercely to the idea that Vietnam was in some sense a dramatic success. It shows that "public servants" will cling to any view, even decades after it's proven untenable, to forge an honorable place in history.
Posted by:Lary Bloom at 11:38 AM
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