Mel Laird: we were winning in Vietnam, we could win in Iraq!

[who knew this guy was still alive?]

       IN THE NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2005 ISSUE OF FOREIGN AFFAIRS:

                   Iraq: The Lessons from Vietnam

Former Defense Secretary Melvin Laird Speaks Out

In a strikingly frank memoir-cum-analysis, former Secretary of Defense Melvin Laird speaks out for the first time in many years. During Richard Nixon’s first term, he argues, the United States managed to withdraw American forces while creating a viable South Vietnamese army. The same approach could work in Iraq today, he concludes: “I believed and still believe today that given enough outside resources, South Vietnam was capable of defending itself, just as I believe Iraq can do the same now.”

 The truth about Vietnam that revisionist historians conveniently forget
 is that the United States had not lost when we withdrew in 1973.  In
 fact, we grabbed defeat from the jaws of victory two years later when
 Congress cut off the funding for South Vietnam that had allowed it to
 continue to fight on its own.

 Donald Rumsfeld has been my friend for more than 40 years. Gerald Ford
 and I went to Evanston to support him in his first congressional race,
 and I urged President Bush to appoint him secretary of defense. But his
 overconfident and self-assured style on every issue, while initially
 endearing him to the media, did not play well with Congress during his
 first term. ... Several secretaries during my service on the
 Appropriations Committee, running all the way from the tenure of
 Charlie Wilson to that of Clark Clifford, made the mistake of thinking
 they must appear much smarter than the elected officials to whom they
 reported. It doesn't always work.

 For me, the alleged prison scandals reported to have occurred in Iraq,
 in Afghanistan, and at Guantanamo Bay have been a disturbing reminder
 of the mistreatment of our own POWs by North Vietnam. Š The minute we
 begin to deport prisoners to other nations where they can legally be
 tortured, when we hold people without charges or trial, when we move
 prisoners around to avoid the prying inspections of the Red Cross, when
 prisoners die inexplicably on our watch, we are on a slippery slope
 toward the inhumanity that we deplore.

 FULL TEXT:

http://www.foreignaffairs.org/20051101faessay84604/melvin-r-laird/iraq-learning-the-lessons-of-vietnam.html

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