The current situation in Iraq is eerily familiar to the situation in Vietnam at the beginning of 1971, and not because of the number of years we’ve been fully committed. In late 1970, Nixon was fearful that the North Vietnamese would launch a spring offensive as broad as the 1968 Tet Offensive. So he authorized a massive ground attack into Laos. But knowing that he (especially after Kent and Jackson State) couldn’t use American ground troops, the operation envisioned the use of purely Vietnamese units.
Code named ‘Lam Son 719’, it was to be the first big test of the policy of ‘Vietnamization’, or training and equipping the South Vietnamese to fight on their own in the defense of their central government. Richard Helms at the CIA thought the Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN) would be routed once they engaged seasoned North Vietnamese fighters in Laos. Secretary of State William Rogers didn’t understand why the attack was being launched. But Nixon and Kissinger were determined, as Robert Dallek explains in his book Nixon & Kissinger: Partners in Power.
Nixon and Kissinger still thought the risks were worth taking. “It was a splendid project on paper,” Kissinger wrote later. “We allowed ourselves to be carried away by the daring conception, by the unanimity (sic) of the responsible planners in both Saigon and Washington, by the memory of the success in Cambodia (sic), and by the prospect of a decisive turn.”
The “chief drawback” of the plan, Kissinger candidly wrote later, “was that it in no way accorded with Vietnamese realities. South Vietnamese divisions had never conducted major offensive operations against a determined enemy outside of Vietnam and only rarely inside.” After ten years of training by American military advisers and billions of dollars in military equipment, Kissinger acknowledged that, “the South Vietnamese divisions were simply not yet good enough for such a complex operation as the one in Laos.
As even Joe Klein seems able to comprehend, Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki’s assault on Basra was not a success. It was, in a very real way, the first major test of ‘Iraqification’, or training and equipping the Iraqis fight on their own in the defense of their central government. And like Lam Son 719, the operation in Basra was a total disaster.
More than the military humiliation, it is the failure of all our training and investment to create a government force capable of standing up to militias and imposing order. As McClatchy reports:
“There is no empirical evidence that the Iraqi forces can stand up” on their own, a senior U.S. military official in Washington said, reflecting the frustration of some at the Pentagon. He and other military officials requested anonymity because they weren’t authorized to speak for the record.
Having Iraqi forces take a leadership role in combating militias and Islamic extremists was crucial to U.S. hopes of withdrawing more American forces in Iraq and reducing the severe strains the Iraq war has put on the Army and Marine Corps.
The failure of Iraqi forces to defeat rogue fighters in Basra has some in the military fearing they can no longer predict when it might be possible to reduce the number of troops to pre-surge levels.
“It’s more complicated now,” said one officer in Iraq whose role has been critical to American planning there.
Even before the Laos Operation resulted in humiliation, Nixon took a familiar stance.
From the start of the operation, Nixon was determined to give it the appearance of success. He wanted any dissent from his view to be sharply attacked. “We should whack the opposition on patriotism, saving American lives, etc.” he instructed Haldeman. “The main thing, Henry, on Laos,” he told Kissinger in March, “I can’t emphasize too strongly: I don’t care what happens there, it’s a win. See? And everybody should talk about that.”
After the humiliation, he was even more vehement.
He told Kissinger, “The news broadcasters are, of course, trying to kill us.” He wanted everyone to be extra careful about what they said to newsmen. Journalists should leave a briefing saying, “That was a very poor briefing…That’s what we want the cocksuckers to have.”
Even more pleasant is this exchange.
On March 30, Haldeman recorded that the polls were showing “us the lowest we’ve been.” To combat the slump, Charles Colson, a White House aide, suggested to Nixon that they try to pay off pollster Lou Harris. “We can buy him,” Colson said. After Haldeman followed Nixon’s instructions to offer Harris a polling contract, Colson said, we will find out “how much if a whore Harris is.” Although there is no evidence of wrongdoing on Harris’s part, he began performing services for the Nixon White House.
Kind of reminds me of Jeff Guckert and Armstrong Williams.
In any case, we’ve lived through this script before and it ended badly. Iraqification isn’t working. Bring the troops home.
