Does Rumsfeld Remember His Own Vietnam Lessons for Iraq?

Despite the Bush administration’s assurances that the United States will prevail in Iraq, the creation of a modern, democratic state is slipping further and further from reach. The violence continues to grow more destructive daily. The number of U.S. soldiers killed topped 2,100 (844 for 2005), while conservative estimates put the number of Iraqi civilian dead at more than 30,000. Most Iraqis either energetically oppose the American presence or do not support it. Charges of waste, mismanagement and fraud continue to dog the very legitimacy of the entire process of rebuilding the shattered state. American corporations such as the construction giant Halliburton remain at the center of controversy for war profiteering, and now individuals have been indicted on charges of accepting kickbacks and bribes for handing out millions in contracts. Experts now tell us that one for every three dollars spent goes to pay private contractors. The Iraqi state and its rebuilding have been thoroughly privatized, and yet much of the physical infrastructure such as water and electricity remains war-torn, neglected and unreliable. The people of Iraq and in the Arab world more generally have drawn their own conclusions regarding America’s intentions following an alarming string of revelations of abuse from the Abu Ghraib prison to the latest accusations of torture in other parts of Iraq and around the world. Nevertheless, the Bush administration continues to assure the world that this state building effort will succeed, that the United States can and will “win the hearts and minds” of the Iraqi people and build a stable, free, democratic nation. Perhaps administration officials such as defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld know something we, and the president, do not.

It is true, after all, that Rumsfeld, who warned us that the American mission in Iraq would be “a long, hard slog,” knows very well what the U.S. is up against in Iraq. As a Representative from Illinois during the 1960s, he traveled to Vietnam along with a team of congressmen during the “Americanization” of the effort there. This team conducted the first comprehensive investigation of the U.S. economic and military assistance programs to Vietnam. Its members investigated war-induced inflation, hoarding, the black market economy, corruption, theft and other “diversions” of American aid, the auditing and oversight processes, profiteering, capital flight, port congestion, the effort to pacify the people, the refugee problem, the public health care infrastructure and the massive construction contracts awarded to private firms to physically build the new nation.

This investigation revealed shocking levels of corruption, mismanagement and out right theft that were built in to the program. Donald Rumsfeld reported to the subcommittee, “I want this record and you gentlemen to know how disappointed I was at the discussions in Vietnam with AID [the Agency for International Development] personnel.” Repeatedly, questions put to these officials by Rumsfeld and others, “could not be answered…because of the lack of records, the lack of audits, the lack of procedures whereby this information would be available. And I got the feeling…that the information is not available. It was this thread that ran through the entire investigation that gave me a great deal of concern. It is distressing for a member of a subcommittee to be attempting to come to grips with these problems, and to be repeatedly told that necessary and basic information is not available.” The result of these considerable and overlapping problems, Rumsfeld added, “has been that the U.S…programs have failed to appreciably assist the Vietnamese in developing a more stable and secure society.”

These were not little problems, according to Rumsfeld, but large ones which threatened to undermine the entire project. The United States, he wrote, “has committed billions of dollars and hundreds of thousands of military and civilian personnel to Vietnam. Thousands of lives have been lost and additional heavy losses can be expected….Unless we can advance the economic, political, and social development of Vietnam, any military success will be limited and of little lasting value.” Rumsfeld clearly understood what the mission in Vietnam involved, and he decried “the almost total lack of success on the nonmilitary side of the effort. All could be wasted unless the political instability, religious and regional differences, and the severe economic difficulties are remedied.”

The findings and recommendations of the congress all those years ago contain very important lessons for today. The situation in Iraq daily grows more desperate. The needs, economic, social, and political, are great. The appearance of American unilateralism only hinders the overall effort. As Rumsfeld himself concluded in a letter to the congress voicing his considerable shock and consternation over the policies of the administration of Lyndon Johnson, “the real problem is the development, by the United States, preferably working in cooperation with other…nations rather than alone or almost alone as at present, of programs and techniques and approaches more suitable to meeting the pressures as they exist in Vietnam.”

As is well known, this did not come to pass in Vietnam. The Johnson administration, and that of Richard Nixon which followed, seemed impervious to bad news and to sound advice that ran counter to its own agenda. For his part, Lyndon Johnson demanded that those around him energetically stamp all talk of a neutralist settlement even if they believed it the proper course given events in Vietnam. Johnson himself said more than once that one of the principle obstacles to U.S. policy was the fact that there was no real, legitimate government in Saigon. Responding to advice to take the war north of the 17th parallel, Johnson admonished, “you don’t send a widow woman to slap Jack Dempsey.” Yet, he sent the old widow north in 1965. Even the sharp criticisms of fellow Democrat J. William Fulbright, the powerful Arkansas Senator, could not dissuade the administration from its disastrous course. Similarly, Richard Nixon ignored warnings of profound corruption, weakness and instability of the Saigon regime. His policies included no real effort to counter the regime’s illegitimacy and lack of popular support. He insisted that real obstacles centered on communist subversion and insurgent terrorism and followed with a secret and illegal war in Cambodia.

The crisis in Vietnam ended in humiliating defeat for the United States and massive destruction for the people of Vietnam. Given these historic developments, Donald Rumsfeld brings to this current crisis considerable experience. At the very least, the current defense secretary no doubt learned some valuable lessons from the tragic experience in Vietnam. The real question is: does he remember them?