TEN years after the start of the war in Afghanistan, an odd specter haunts the Obama White House the specter of Vietnam, a war lost decades before. Like Banquos ghost, it hovers over the White House still, an unwelcome memory of where America went wrong, a warning of what may yet go wrong.
When the United States loses to a raggedy-***, little fourth-rate country, as Lyndon B. Johnson described his North Vietnamese foe, the loss leaves an unshakable legacy. There is no escape from history. Every president since Gerald R. Ford has had to weigh the consequences of the Vietnam defeat when he considers committing troops to war.
Ford, for example, was concerned that the United States might be seen as a paper tiger after the Communist victory in Vietnam on April 30, 1975. And so, two weeks later, he decided to use overwhelming military force against a handful of Cambodian boats that had seized an American merchant ship, the Mayaguez, in an act that Ford denounced as piracy. In 1979, when Soviet troops swept into Afghanistan, an angry Jimmy Carter organized an unofficial alliance to give the Soviets their Vietnam (which Afghanistan became).
In 1984, when Ronald Reagan withdrew from Lebanon after 241 American servicemen were murdered in their Beirut barracks by Islamic fanatics, he told a friend that the American people had been spooked by Vietnam and that he didnt want a similar experience in the Middle East. By 1990, President George Bush was willing to send a half-million-strong army to drive Iraq out of Kuwait, but he did so under the Powell Doctrine, drawn from the Vietnam experience: get Congress to approve; use huge firepower; get in and out on a timetable of your choosing.
Of all the presidents since Vietnam, Mr. Obama may be the most fascinating, because unlike Bill Clinton and George W. Bush he was too young to have fought in Vietnam or to have gamed the system and avoided service in it (as both Mr. Clinton and Mr. Bush did).
Barack Obama was 3 when Johnson escalated the war, and 13 when Ford ordered Americans to leave Saigon. As David Axelrod, one of Mr. Obamas political advisers, explained, the whole debate about Vietnam that was not part of his life experience. Nevertheless, time and again, he has found himself entangled in its complexities.
During his presidential campaign, he visited Iraq and Afghanistan accompanied by two senators. What did they discuss on the long flights to and from the war zones? Mr. Obama kept asking: What could we learn about Vietnam that should now be applied in Afghanistan?
At his first National Security Council meeting, in January 2009, he stressed that Afghanistan is not Vietnam. Nevertheless, it echoed. Recent intelligence had suggested that only an increase in American military aid could eliminate the chance of a Taliban triumph. Mr. Obama, a Democrat who had never served in the military, did not want to be saddled with a defeat. He ramped up American troop strength, linked the problems in Afghanistan to those in Pakistan and ordered a total review of Americas war strategy. Bruce O. Riedel, a former C.I.A. officer who wrote the review, kept running into the Vietnam legacy wherever he turned. Vietnam, he recalled, walked the halls of the White House. And none of the presidents close advisers saw Vietnam more as a cautionary tale than the late Richard C. Holbrooke, a diplomat who had gripping memories of Saigon in the early 1960s, when he worked there as a young Foreign Service officer.
In the summer of 2009, when the president ordered another review of his war strategy, it was marked by bitter leaks and obvious distrust between the White House and the Pentagon. At the heart of the disagreement was an old argument about Vietnam, emerging from two radically different books. Lessons in Disaster, by Gordon Goldstein, served as a lesson for the White House: America blundered and lost because the president and his advisers knew nothing about Vietnam. At the Pentagon, the best seller was Lewis Sorleys A Better War, which argued that Vietnam could have been won if only the White House had not lost heart and Congress had not cut funding.
Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/09/o...nam-war-still-haunting-obama.html?ref=vietnam
When the United States loses to a raggedy-***, little fourth-rate country, as Lyndon B. Johnson described his North Vietnamese foe, the loss leaves an unshakable legacy. There is no escape from history. Every president since Gerald R. Ford has had to weigh the consequences of the Vietnam defeat when he considers committing troops to war.
Ford, for example, was concerned that the United States might be seen as a paper tiger after the Communist victory in Vietnam on April 30, 1975. And so, two weeks later, he decided to use overwhelming military force against a handful of Cambodian boats that had seized an American merchant ship, the Mayaguez, in an act that Ford denounced as piracy. In 1979, when Soviet troops swept into Afghanistan, an angry Jimmy Carter organized an unofficial alliance to give the Soviets their Vietnam (which Afghanistan became).
In 1984, when Ronald Reagan withdrew from Lebanon after 241 American servicemen were murdered in their Beirut barracks by Islamic fanatics, he told a friend that the American people had been spooked by Vietnam and that he didnt want a similar experience in the Middle East. By 1990, President George Bush was willing to send a half-million-strong army to drive Iraq out of Kuwait, but he did so under the Powell Doctrine, drawn from the Vietnam experience: get Congress to approve; use huge firepower; get in and out on a timetable of your choosing.
Of all the presidents since Vietnam, Mr. Obama may be the most fascinating, because unlike Bill Clinton and George W. Bush he was too young to have fought in Vietnam or to have gamed the system and avoided service in it (as both Mr. Clinton and Mr. Bush did).
Barack Obama was 3 when Johnson escalated the war, and 13 when Ford ordered Americans to leave Saigon. As David Axelrod, one of Mr. Obamas political advisers, explained, the whole debate about Vietnam that was not part of his life experience. Nevertheless, time and again, he has found himself entangled in its complexities.
During his presidential campaign, he visited Iraq and Afghanistan accompanied by two senators. What did they discuss on the long flights to and from the war zones? Mr. Obama kept asking: What could we learn about Vietnam that should now be applied in Afghanistan?
At his first National Security Council meeting, in January 2009, he stressed that Afghanistan is not Vietnam. Nevertheless, it echoed. Recent intelligence had suggested that only an increase in American military aid could eliminate the chance of a Taliban triumph. Mr. Obama, a Democrat who had never served in the military, did not want to be saddled with a defeat. He ramped up American troop strength, linked the problems in Afghanistan to those in Pakistan and ordered a total review of Americas war strategy. Bruce O. Riedel, a former C.I.A. officer who wrote the review, kept running into the Vietnam legacy wherever he turned. Vietnam, he recalled, walked the halls of the White House. And none of the presidents close advisers saw Vietnam more as a cautionary tale than the late Richard C. Holbrooke, a diplomat who had gripping memories of Saigon in the early 1960s, when he worked there as a young Foreign Service officer.
In the summer of 2009, when the president ordered another review of his war strategy, it was marked by bitter leaks and obvious distrust between the White House and the Pentagon. At the heart of the disagreement was an old argument about Vietnam, emerging from two radically different books. Lessons in Disaster, by Gordon Goldstein, served as a lesson for the White House: America blundered and lost because the president and his advisers knew nothing about Vietnam. At the Pentagon, the best seller was Lewis Sorleys A Better War, which argued that Vietnam could have been won if only the White House had not lost heart and Congress had not cut funding.
Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/09/o...nam-war-still-haunting-obama.html?ref=vietnam