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Vietnam redux

Listening to Gen. David Petraeus explain to Congress how he intends to pacify Iraq brought back with painful clarity the warning Clark Clifford said he issued to President Johnson when the Vietnam War was at a similar turning point: “Your generals are leading you down a primrose path, Mr. President.”

Johnson had dispatched Clifford, his old friend and a crafty lawyer who succeeded Robert McNamara as secretary of defense on March 1, 1968, to cross-examine everyone importantly involved with Vietnam policy. Clifford’s mission was to put what he was told through his renowned manure separator and bring back the truth to the President, no matter how grim.

“We’re in a struggle for the president’s mind,” Clifford told us editors and reporters during a luncheon at The Washington Post. In opening the administration’s kimono to reveal some of the in-fighting, Clifford complained that he had asked general after general how many more men on top of the 510,000 already in South Vietnam were needed to win the war. Not one general, Clifford told us, would guarantee victory — no matter how many more troops were sent into the Vietnam quagmire.

On March 10, 1968, The New York Times led the paper with the disclosure that Gen. William Westmoreland, Vietnam field commander, had asked Johnson to send him 206,000 more U.S. troops. The story generated such a storm of protest in Congress and among the citizenry that Johnson denied Westmoreland’s request. I have always suspected, but cannot prove, that Clifford or his designee leaked that story to the Times to help win his argument against committing more troops to the Vietnam War.

So here we are again, 39 years later, arguing about how many American troops are needed to guard the way to a graceful exit from another distant quagmire.

As a former combat correspondent for the Post in Vietnam and as a reporter for the National Journal embedded with Marines during the invasion of Iraq in 2003, I see the same two problems tripping up President Bush as tripped up President Nixon as he tried to back out of Vietnam’s barroom door with guns blazing.

Problem One is that there has to be a stable government to hand the war over to, something Nixon did not have in Vietnam and that Bush doesn’t have in Iraq.

Problem Two is the lack of an effective national army to impose law and order on the country after American troops leave. The North Vietnamese, unified by Ho Chi Minh and his successors, beat the South Vietnamese army and ended the partitioning of the country. The Iraqi government, lacking any such unity, is allowing its country to be partitioned by rival tribes. How can those obstacles allow Bush to make a graceful exit, no matter how smart Petraeus is?

In fairness to Bush, he listened to his generals and gave them what they said they wanted. He was ill-served by many of his top generals, even though he gave them medals and promotions for their service.

Army Gen. Tommy Franks, U.S. Central Command commander, for example, went along with former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and invaded Iraq with too few troops to keep the peace after Saddam Hussein fell. Nor did Franks establish his command post in Baghdad and quickly impose martial law.

This lack of visible control helped inspire the grievous looting by suddenly unrepressed Iraqis. Franks soon afterward retired from the Army rather than see through the campaign he had planned. What would we have thought of Gen. Dwight Eisenhower, World War II commander, if he had quit the Army after the Normandy invasion?

Gen. Peter Schoomaker, whom Rumsfeld called out of retirement to become Army chief of staff, initially rebuffed congressional entreaties to make the Army bigger. Gen. George Casey, former field commander in Iraq and Schoomaker’s successor as chief of staff, contended in the pre-surge era that putting more U.S. troops on the ground in Iraq simply provided more targets and slowed the passing of the baton to the Iraqis.

One consequence of the generals’ early opposition to making the Army and Marine Corps bigger is that there is now no sensible way to come to the rescue of the Iraqi army if it fails, especially not after American troop withdrawals begin.

The base of American military manpower is too small. The troops within it are already overworked, with many serving beyond their normal tours of duty. The generals who opposed a bigger Army remind me of the farmer who taught his horse to work without eating — until the horse died. The military bench is thin; there is no draft to help fill the ranks with quality recruits.

During the Vietnam War, I asked Army Gen. Earle Wheeler, chairman of the Joint Chiefs, what his strategy for victory was. He replied, “If we just keep up the pressure, those little guys will crack.”

Thankfully, Petraeus is more imaginative than that. He did not lay out the primrose path that Bush originally followed. A growing number of lawmakers contend that Petraeus’ path is not different enough from the old one. But their number is unlikely to get big enough to force Bush to change course unless the news out of Iraq gets dramatically worse.

George C. Wilson is a former national security reporter for The Washington Post. He now writes for CongressDaily, where this piece first appeared in slightly different form.