Drinking Deep At McSorley's

The imperative of making the right decision in Afghanistan is contributing to a surprising new look by experts at the endgame in Vietnam from 1973-75 -- that, plus the attention that Gen. Stanley McChrystal and other Pentagon officials are giving Lewis Sorley's book A Better War. Sorley argues that, thanks to the gains we made under President Nixon, South Vietnam might have survived if only Congress hadn't slashed non-personnel aid while it pursued Nixon over Vietnam. Sorley's book gets a respectful hearing this week from Evan Thomas in "Newsweek":

Not until Gen. Creighton Abrams replaced Gen. William Westmoreland as U.S. commander in 1968 did the Americans smarten up and begin to fight a true counterinsurgency, focusing on protecting the population by a strategy of "clear and hold." Instead of shoving aside the South Vietnamese Army, Abrams built up the local forces until they could stand and fight largely on their own-as they did in 1972, repulsing North Vietnam's Easter Offensive with the aid of American airstrikes.

But by then, as Sorley laments...it was too late. American public opinion had turned. In 1973, President Nixon and the North Vietnamese signed a peace treaty that allowed Hanoi to keep 150,000 troops in South Vietnam, just waiting on orders to march. In 1974, breaking Nixon's promises of continued support to Saigon, the U.S. Congress cut off all aid to South Vietnam. Without logistical support or air cover, the South Vietnamese Army collapsed in 1975 and the communists swept into Saigon. Sorley quotes one of General Abrams's closest colleagues, Gen. Bruce Palmer, as saying that Abrams "died [of cancer in 1974] feeling that we could have won the war. He felt we were on top of it in 1971, then lost our way." Ellsworth Bunker, the U.S. ambassador to Saigon who worked with Abrams to turn the war around, felt the same: "We eventually defeated ourselves," Bunker said.

Of course those May 1972 air strikes didn't materialize out of the thin air over Hanoi. They were ordered at considerable political risk by Richard Nixon. He did it again as peace talks faltered in December, generating heat among congressional opponents that made the Watergate firestorm the following year burn hotter than it would have otherwise. As Thomas notes, some historians dispute whether Nixon and Abrams could really have saved South Vietnam if Watergate hadn't occurred or Congress hadn't interfered. But does anyone really think the U.S. and South Vietnam couldn't have defeated Hanoi under any circumstances? Evans writes:

[T]he revisionists' view of Vietnam does shed some light on the issues facing Obama about war leadership. The most surprising guidance Vietnam may have to offer is not that wars of this kind are unwinnable-which is clearly the common wisdom in America-but that they can produce victories if presidents resist the temptation to fight wars halfway or on the cheap. As President Eisenhower liked to say, if you fight, "you must fight to win."

In an accompanying "Newsweek" article, Sen. John Kerry, former head of Vietnam Veterans Against the War, firmly rebukes the revisionists, though even he adds, with a nod in Sorley's direction:

Yes, we adopted smarter tactics near the end, but by then the die was cast.

From grudging concessions such as these may well come a new appreciation of Richard Nixon as commander-in-chief.

"Come Home, America" Watch, Day 18

It's an Afghanistan trial balloon a day from the Obama administration. Today's is the lead of a comprehensive glimpse of the President's mind, courtesy the AP:

President Barack Obama is prepared to accept some Taliban involvement in Afghanistan's political future and will determine how many more U.S. troops to send to the war based only on keeping al-Qaida at bay, a senior administration official said Thursday.

Back in the day, that would've been Henry Kissinger whispering to the reporter in the parking garage. Today, whoever the senior leaker is, it probably means no Afghanistan surge as requested by Gen. Stanley McChrystal. It means that the Vice President, who favors maintaining current troops strengths while relying increasingly on counter-terrorism efforts to track down al-Qaeda and its enablers, may have the edge in the agonized reappraisal now so flamboyantly underway in the White House. It means we're probably coming home from Afghanistan over the next few years.

And it means Obama really is the new Nixon.

In January 1969, President Nixon took office with over half a million Americans fighting in Vietnam. The antiwar movement, an increasingly antiwar Democratic Congress, and voters' growing skepticism about the war convinced him that the U.S. would have to withdraw its troops and that South Vietnam would have to resist communist aggression by itself, albeit with continued U.S. aid and materiel. Interestingly, military historian Bob Sorley's account of how Mr. Nixon and his McChrystal, Gen. Creighton Abrams, prepared South Vietnamese forces to fight on their own is making the rounds at the Pentagon. Its principal teaching for Obama: Withdraw U.S. forces if you must, but train our allies well, and never, never, never let them run out of bullets as the Watergate Congress did South Vietnam in 1973-75.

Although the contention within the agonizing administration don't reflect well on the President Formerly Known As No-Drama, it probably couldn't be helped given the immensity of the policy shift he appears to be contemplating. Ever the wonk, he seemingly doesn't want to be confined by any prior assumption or statement, such as:

We're there, so we have to stay. I said this was the good war during the campaign, so we have to stay. I'll look weak if we go, so we have to stay. My critics say it's the front line in the battle against terrorism, even th0ugh I don't think it is, so we have to stay.

With the lives of so many Americans and Afghans in the balance, Obama should be commended and supported in his search for the right, as opposed to the easy, policy. It's as if he's learning in a few weeks of earnest confabs (beginning, I'm convinced, with the White House-sanctioned leak 18 days ago of the essentially pessimistic McChrystal report) what it took us from 1961-69 to learn from our experience in South Vietnam: It's ultimately up to the people of Afghanistan to determine, with appropriate support from their friends in the event of foreign interference, who their leaders are.

If a Taliban government, or one in which the Taliban share power, doesn't threaten our interests, then it's not a vital concern of ours -- though our heart must weep for Afghan women who may again be subject to Taliban-style Islamic apartheid. If Afghanistan does threaten our interests, then we have to be prepared to go back. After the Vietnamese communists began violating the Paris Peace Accords in the spring of 1973, President Nixon might well have resumed a significant U.S. role, via massive air strikes at least, but Watergate made it impossible. If Obama gets out of Afghanistan on his terms, as a popular President making a rational, careful call rather than a politically imperative one, it will be easier for us to return if necessary. The risk is that our re-intervention would end up being the result of a terrorist strike emanating from Afghanistan. Should we indeed deescalate the good war, the key question will be how vigilant and ruthless a counter-terrorist the President would be willing to be.