Shawn Brimley, Kurt Campbell: The Endgame in Iraq
What happens when you take a 40-year-old CIA memo on losing a war and replace the word “Vietnam” with the word “Iraq”? The result is a set of conclusions that are just as true today.
Memorandum
TO: CIA Director Gen. Michael V. Hayden
FROM: Kurt Campbell and Shawn Brimley
RE: The Consequences of Losing in Iraq
American policymakers and intelligence analysts are currently struggling to consider the potential repercussions of failure in Iraq. Forty years ago, an earlier generation of U.S. policymakers were thinking about the implications of defeat in another conflict—Vietnam.
During the summer of 1967, then CIA Director Richard Helms asked for a quiet review of the global political and strategic consequences of an American failure in Vietnam. The result was a classified memorandum circulated on Sept. 11, 1967, “Implications of an Unfavorable Outcome in Vietnam,” which detailed a lengthy list of potential dark outcomes and worrisome prospects.
Excerpts from this document—with only minor edits—offer eerie parallels to the very different set of circumstances the United States faces today in Iraq. In considering the Iraq war’s endgame, the U.S. government would be wise to review its own notes....
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Memorandum
TO: CIA Director Gen. Michael V. Hayden
FROM: Kurt Campbell and Shawn Brimley
RE: The Consequences of Losing in Iraq
American policymakers and intelligence analysts are currently struggling to consider the potential repercussions of failure in Iraq. Forty years ago, an earlier generation of U.S. policymakers were thinking about the implications of defeat in another conflict—Vietnam.
During the summer of 1967, then CIA Director Richard Helms asked for a quiet review of the global political and strategic consequences of an American failure in Vietnam. The result was a classified memorandum circulated on Sept. 11, 1967, “Implications of an Unfavorable Outcome in Vietnam,” which detailed a lengthy list of potential dark outcomes and worrisome prospects.
Excerpts from this document—with only minor edits—offer eerie parallels to the very different set of circumstances the United States faces today in Iraq. In considering the Iraq war’s endgame, the U.S. government would be wise to review its own notes....