The Ho Chi Minh trail leads to Baghdad

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By Muhammad Cohen

John McCain's unwavering support for the Iraq war shows he has failed to learn the lessons of Vietnam

John McCain is trying to win the war in Vietnam on the streets on Baghdad. When asked in Friday's presidential debate to identify the lessons of Iraq, he reminded voters that he missed the lessons of Vietnam. "I think the lessons of Iraq are very clear that you cannot have a failed strategy that will then cause you to nearly lose a conflict," he said.

McCain still believes that in Iraq and Vietnam the problem was the wrong strategy, not the wrong war. It may be the last thing in this campaign McCain says that's true to his core beliefs and record, but he's wrong. Dead wrong.

As Jeffrey Goldberg reports in his cover story in the October issue of the Atlantic, McCain believes that Vietnam was winnable, and that politicians lost that war because they didn't let the military do its job. If only they would have let him and his fellow Navy flyers bomb North Vietnam back to the Stone Age, the US could have prevailed.

Colin Powell, who served two terms in Vietnam as mid-level officer, admits he too was troubled by his Vietnam experience. That led him to formulate the Powell Doctrine, eight questions to be answered before the US takes military action. The Iraq invasion failed at least six of the eight tests, including "Is a vital US security interest threatened?" and "Have the consequences of our action been fully considered?" After opposing an attack on Iraq from the dawn of the Bush administration, Powell got dragged along out of the loyalty to the president, but sees his support for the war as "a blot" on his record.

In contrast, McCain was a cheerleader for the Iraq invasion, remains proud of it and hasn't learned a thing that will help him make the right decision when the next war of choice comes along. "There is no such thing as containment," he tells Goldberg, underscoring the frightening doctrine of pre-emptive war while confirming his aversion to reflection and his Vietnam obsession.

McCain doesn't understand lesson number one of Vietnam: you can't win a political war with foreign military troops. Whatever the war in Iraq began as, it's a political war now. The presence of US troops undermines the legitimacy and appeal of the Iraqi government that needs to win hearts and minds to stop the violence and build credibility.

McCain claims that his troop surge strategy was successful, yet he denies the one metric that would indicate success. The surge was intended to provide a lull in violence that would enable Iraqis to get their political house in order. It may have been naïve to think they could do it in a few months after four years of dithering. The great irony is that Iraqis now say they're ready to stand on their own and want the US to leave, precisely the goal of the surge. But McCain and US military brass say the Iraqis aren't ready. The Bush administration has agreed to a 2011 deadline for withdrawal, but McCain can't even reconcile himself to that distant date. In the debate, he pretended that there is no timetable, no effective Iraqi government, and that Americans alone will determine when, if ever, they leave Iraq.

McCain tried to tie the war in Iraq to the fighting in Afghanistan and to Bush's global war on terrorism. Vietnam taught the lesson that not every conflict fits into the global struggle of the moment. In the 1960s, the US was deep in its cold war against the Soviet Union. The North Vietnamese government called itself communist, but fighting in Vietnam did the US more harm than good in its struggle with the Soviets, costing the US status and goodwill around the world. Developing countries rejected US aid programmes such as the Peace Corps over Vietnam, and US allies had to moderate their support in the face of strong domestic antiwar sentiment. Similarly, the US invasion of Iraq has made it harder for those who share US values, including moderates in the Muslim world, to stand up to radicals. The Iraq fiasco has given solid evidence to support the worst accusations of America's enemies.

Republicans also persist with their myth that fighting in Iraq helps keep the US homeland safe. This is moronic. The invasion created new enemies for the US, and every day that the US stays in Iraq is one more day terrorist recruiters can say the US occupies a Muslim country that it invaded without justification. But that's not the worst of it.

As Barack Obama pointed out during the debate, in the midst of the Wall Street crisis, the US is still spending $10bn a month in Iraq. Vietnam demonstrated that the US couldn't have guns and butter without consequences. President Lyndon Johnson tried to press ahead with his Great Society agenda while escalating in Vietnam. He wound up resurrecting the deadly beast of inflation and saw his other war, the war on poverty, mired in the swamps of the Mekong Delta.

Vietnam also demonstrated that even wars in faraway places that don't directly threaten the US carry grave risks at home. Because of the military draft and far larger number of US troops involved, Vietnam polarised the country. That hasn't happened over Iraq, at least not yet. Republicans like to scream class warfare whenever anyone questions the innate wisdom of tax cuts for rich. But the US risks real class warfare waging the Iraq war with a volunteer force comprised largely of poor people and compels re-enlistments through obscure contract clauses, while troops' parents lose their homes and pay more taxes so the government can rescue big banks and politicians' egos.

It's understandable that McCain missed the lessons of Vietnam at home because, as he said during a Republican primary debate in response to a question about skipping Woodstock: "I was tied up." McCain can be excused for not understanding what he didn't live through. But he remains haunted by what he did live through. "A war that I was in, where we had an army, that it wasn't through any fault of their own, but they were defeated," he said at Friday's debate. "And I know how hard it is for an army and a military to recover from that. And it did, and we will win this one, and we won't come home in defeat and dishonour and probably have to go back if we fail."

McCain is trying to win in Iraq to wipe away that defeat. It's to his credit that Lieutenant Commander McCain was willing to put life on the line to win in Vietnam. But there's nothing honourable about senator or President McCain committing unlimited numbers of other lives to defeat Ho Chi Minh now on whatever battlefield he can find.

What McCain should have learned from his Vietnam experience, as Colin Powell did, is that the US needs to choose its fights carefully. Even miles offshore and hundreds of metres in the air, there's no safe or easy war. Yet, last month, McCain was seemingly spoiling for a fight with the Russians over Georgia, even though a third combat front for the US military would be a nightmare scenario. In the past, he's sung about bombing Iran as if it's a laughing matter. When George Bush blustered "Bring it on", he just didn't know better. McCain has no excuse.

McCain and his supporters are right that it's now pointless to debate the wisdom of invading Iraq, just as it's pointless to debate sending 535,000 US troops to Vietnam. History has judged McCain wrong on both fronts. Voters need to ask which presidential candidate has learned history's lessons to avoid the next mistake. With Hanoi's Red River dykes still in his bomb sights, McCain is ready to grasp with both hands, not the lessons of the Vietnam, but the next tar baby our dangerous times produce. Rather than slay his Vietnam demons, McCain appears destined for the fate of those who don't learn from history.