Forty years ago Thursday, the United States left Vietnam. The pictures of people climbing up ladders to helicopters on the roof of the American embassy are iconic. It was a triumph for some, and a disaster for others. I am not going to get into that argument today. Rather, I wanted to present a tentative thought on our approach to wars like Vietnam – and Iraq.
I think there is, arguably, some symmetry between our experiences in Vietnam and Iraq. In Vietnam, the policies and strategy of President Johnson and General William Westmoreland did not work. General Westmoreland thought we could beat the Viet Cong and the North Vietnamese by firepower. We could win a war of attrition against an enemy who didn’t seem to care about the number of its casualties. (Sigh.) President Johnson both exercised too much control over things like how we bombed of North Vietnam and didn’t pay enough attention to how things were going in South Vietnam.
When General Creighton Abrams took command in March of 1968, things changed. General Abrams’ “One War” strategy started to work. General Abrams understood that security of the population was the key and that going after the enemy’s supplies was an important part of winning this kind of war. By 1972, the situation in South Vietnam had improved. The North Vietnamese launched a three-pronged offensive in late March, the so-called Easter Offensive, but the South Vietnamese, with U.S. advisers and bombers, beat them back. The South Vietnamese held.
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