The Last Battle for Vietnam

Mike Burleson

When President Bush made a brief comparison between the current struggle in Iraq and the aftermath of the Vietnam War, in a speech that was really about the post-war miracles that are Japan and South Korea, he shook the established view of that lost cause to its foundations. The common interpretation of the elites in America is that our withdrawal from that war-torn nation while it was still under threat of invasion from the communist North, had no bearing on the subsequent mayhem and slaughter which followed. Their reasoning is a great stretch of the imagination, but the Left are creative in their naiveté, if nothing else.

Back in 1962, President John Kennedy declared prophetically "There is another type of warfare - new in its intensity, ancient in its origins - war by guerrillas, subversives, insurgents, assassins; war by ambush instead of combat, by infiltration instead of by aggression, seeking victory by eroding and exhausting the enemy instead of engaging him. It is a form of warfare uniquely adapted to what have been strangely called 'wars of liberation', to undermine the efforts of new and poor countries to maintain the freedom they have finally achieved."

He might easily have been describing this present fight, known as the Global War on Terror. The reason his views still are relevant in our day, is the constant shirking of our role in this dire problem by US leaders. September 11, 2001 proved this threat can no longer be set aside for the next generation, at least not if we wish democracy to survive.

After Kennedy’s death, 5 American Presidents tried and failed to deal with Third World radicals. A sixth, George Bush Sr., preferred not to come to grips with the problem at all, choosing to leave Saddam Hussein in power after Operation Desert Storm in 1991, limiting as much as possible his involvement in Somalia, and ignoring civil war and genocide in post-communist Yugoslavia .

The other 5 all attempted half-heartedly at best to fight an insurgency conflict. Lyndon Johnson, whose heart was never into defeating the Viet Cong, hoped to reason with his foes through fruitless negotiations (how history repeats itself with leading Democrat politicians calling for the same failed policy ideas in the Middle East). When these Carrots were rejected, he turned to the Stick, but his on again, off again bombing of the North failed to impress the communists, who determined to wait us out.

President Nixon was more successful in the new warfare, eliminating all restrictions on the military for battling the insurgents that were applied when Johnson was micro-managing the war in Washington. The bombing of the North was intensified and a ground invasion of nearby Cambodia severed much of the enemy supply line, the famous Ho Chi Minh Trail. Yet, Nixon had no intention of staying and his enemies knew this. He should have realized that once American troops were withdrawn, South Vietnam would be “out of sight, out of mind”, which is exactly what transpired. By the time of the Fall of Saigon in 1975, the Democrat controlled Congress had ended all military support for our former ally, including vital spare parts to fuel the South’s defensive war machine. The End was a done deal.

The pattern continued. After gutting the military of its own spare parts for years, President Jimmy Carter launched a timid rescue of American Embassy hostages in Iran in 1980. Known to history as the infamous Desert One, this shoe-string operation ended in complete failure and another embarrassing withdrawal, from another country we could have easily “bombed back to the Stone Age“. Carter had previously abandoned the Shah to the radicals led by Ayatollah Khomeini, thus fueling the modern terrorist movement still with us today. Compare this latter act to our current President’s choosing to stand by less than perfect, but nevertheless friendly allies, including Iraqi Prime Minister Maliki and Pakistan President Musharraf.

President Reagan fared little better in the troubled Middle East, when he intervened in the Lebanese Civil War in 1983. In October of that year, suicide bombers murdered 241 US Marines in the worse single-day loss of life for the Corps since Iwo Jima in 1945. Another embarrassing retreat occurred and the chaos that is the Middle East continued. To Reagan’s credit, he rightly saw the more immediate threat from the Soviet Union, and performed the seemingly impossible act of winning the Cold War. He also attempted to supply aid to the Contras fighting communism in Nicaragua, but was hindered from doing so by a Democrat Congress still gun-shy from their last insurgency debacle in Asia. He was more successful in sending arms to the Mujahadeen fighting the Soviets in Afghanistan, which later led to the communists' own "Saigon moment".

The US Military was willing to distance themselves from any notion of counter-insurgency warfare as well. After Vietnam, the Pentagon geared its Cold War strategy toward defeating the Soviet Union in a conventional, World War 2 style battle. Mention of the previous war was deleted from most training manuals, with the Generals feeling there was nothing to learn from the conflict. The first President Bush, and his successor Bill Clinton were equally willing to keep it simple, by utilizing lessons on fighting the Soviets against weaker powers such as Saddam Hussein and the former Yugoslavia. Clinton was far more resistant to sacrificing ground troops in any of his various conflicts, including Bosnia and Kosovo. The final embarrassment came when he ordered the withdrawal from insurgent infested Somalia, the shameful Black Hawk Down episode that convinced Osama Bin Laden America would also run from the Middle East.

Which brings us full circle back to 1962, with President Kennedy’s original dream of defeating the guerrillas and blunting “wars of liberation”, plus the hopes of the Vietnam generation so far unfulfilled . There is promise however, in the counter-insurgency strategy applied this summer by General David Petraeus, the renowned Surge into Iraq. The new commander was appointed after the 2nd George Bush realized that for political progress to succeed, defeating the insurgents was an imperative. He seemed to have forgotten this for a while, though, flush at the usual overwhelming conventional battle that toppled the Taliban in 2002 and trounced the Russian trained forces of Iraq’s late dictator in 2003.

Still on high-tide after the crushing defeat of Democrat presidential nominee John Kerry in the 2004 elections, Bush felt secure in his political capital to attempt Social Security reform. Meanwhile, Iraq was burning as Al Qaeda saw an opportunity to emulate the successful tactics utilized to drive the Soviets from Afghanistan in the 1980’s ,and America from Vietnam in the 1970’s. Bush’s inaction played its part in giving Congress back to the Democrats in 2006, but also gave him the chance to reverse the mistakes of all his predecessors since Kennedy, to stand firm in the face of Third World barbarism and win a counter-insurgency battle.

He appears to have found his man in General David Petraeus, who literally wrote the book on the subject, at least the modern version. Like Bush, the general knows we can no longer pass this conflict on to another generation, now that Globalization and the New Media on the internet gives such forces the means to spread their dark revolutions world-wide. The answer will come when security arrives in Baghdad, and future leaders commit to the fight for the long-haul. President Bush is currently showing us the way, and we dare not wait for another JFK to take up the task.

My blog is at newwars.blogspot.com

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Mike Burleson is a regular columnist with Sea Classics magazine and an advocate of Military Reform. He resides in historic Charleston, SC. http://tv.groups.yahoo.com/group/honestnews/ http://newwars.blogspot.com/

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