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November 20, 2005
Fred Barnes' 'Vietnam Flashbacks'
Fred Barnes, executive editor of the conservative and influential Weekly Standard, asserts in "Vietnam Flashbacks" that "Many have forgotten how the United States lost in Vietnam, but not former Defense Secretary Melvin Laird."
"When the last American military unit was withdrawn in 1973," Mr. Barnes writes, adding: "the Viet Cong had been defeated and the North Vietnamese army checkmated. For the next two years, "South Vietnam held its own courageously and respectably against a better-bankrolled enemy," Laird writes in the current Foreign Affairs," Mr. Barnes claims. "Given enough outside resources, South Vietnam was capable of defending itself." Instead, "we grabbed defeat from the jaws of victory [in 1975] when Congress cut off the funding for South Vietnam that had allowed it to continue to fight on its own. . . . Without U.S. funding, South Vietnam was quickly overrun."
Mr. Barnes said, "It was a stunning and unnecessary defeat for America and for a free Vietnam. And the lesson is clear: A war can be won on the ground overseas and lost in Washington."
If the U.S. wins a war on the ground in Iraq it will have to occupy the country for years in an effort to preserve victory. The bottom line is that a victory cannot be preserved as long as the U.S. presence in Iraq attracts Muslim fighters from surrounding countries.
Posted by Munir Umrani at November 20, 2005 05:47 PM
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