Yes indeed.

Like helping an alcoholic, intervention might be necessary but it is not sufficient.

This is history revisionism at its best. First the stab-in-the-back strawman and then the "real" reasons that the US lost--the valiant politicians that wouldn't back off.

The promotion of the idea that it was "the growing dismay of the American people over the futility of the war" and its effect on US "elected leaders" that ended US involvement in Vietnam shows a fundamental lack of understanding of the true conditions in Vietnam.

The US defeat in Vietnam had less to do with what any elected leaders did than with the fact that the US army, largely a drafted army, was broken by the futility of the enterprise, which led to drug use and racial differences, which in turn resulted in mission refusal and fragging (and the threat of fragging). "Victory" was never an option with this fractured force irregardless of any "better understanding of the Vietnamese" or any "far more convincing argument".

When men are asked to participate in a hellish enterprise at the risk of their lives they must first be convinced of its correctness, and when they realize that to the contarary they have been used, simply used, they naturally rebel against the enterprise. Some academics, particularly if they have never served in the military, fail to grasp this simple truth, and not understanding that soldiers are not robots they come up with all kinds of esoteric political and strategic reasons to explain simple human behavior.

We will see the same thing happen in Iraq and Afghanistan. Even though our current army is supposedly a volunteer one, enticed with huge enlistment bonuses, they are still human and in fact many of them are no longer volunteers. At least I hope we will. There are some good people working on it.

ecotourism
WeGoEco.com

Charley Reese: link

I have opposed and still oppose the war in Iraq because, knowing something about the Middle East, I knew it would be futile. I knew we weren't threatened by Iraq. I knew that the war would be a war of aggression on our part. I knew that no clear-cut victory would be possible.

Even though there has been some diminution in violence, the fundamental political problem remains. The Sunnis, the Shi'ites and the Kurds are not fond of each other. For a long time, the Shi'ites and the Kurds suffered under Saddam Hussein's primarily Sunni regime. Now that the Shi'ites and the Kurds are in control, they are not going to be easily reconciled. Furthermore, the Kurds don't especially like Arabs and want an independent country. The Turks don't especially like the Kurds and will react violently to any move on the part of the Kurds to declare independence.

So, the U.S. forces in the country have a wolf by the ear. We can keep the level of violence reasonably contained as long as we stay there, but neither the armed forces nor the U.S. budget can afford to stay there indefinitely. And to leave, we have to let go of the wolf.

I think it is amazing what distortions of logic people will go to to avoid acknowledging that invading Iraq was a very bad idea that would inevitably lead to just the mess we now find ourselves in. When you say,"it is not too late to salvage U.S. power in the Middle East and preserve many of the benefits that could derive from it." you are not dealing with reality.

The benefits that derived from the invasion have already been realized.  Massive amounts of money have been transferred from the US Treasury to the bank accounts of Republican supporters.  And, GWBush got to serve a second disastrous term as president.  Sure, it is barely possible that even more money can be transferred, if only the Iraqis would give us the oil, but that isn't going to happen.  And, the voters are very unlikely to hand over the government to another Republican just out of irrational fear of Arab people.

By the end of 2009 virtually all US troops will be out of Iraq, no matter who wins the presidency next.  And, the oil there will remain the property of Iraq.

Hoppy in Sacramento

First, sustainable victory in Vietnam would have required a far better understanding of the Vietnamese than policy and intelligence officials were willing or able to muster.

--
Howard

*equal opportunity offense to both extremes*

"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it" [George Santayana]

The delusional "official line" on Iraq is precisely what we are worried about. It doesn't jibe with reality or with American public sentiment, but the appearance of success on the basis of superficial criteria ("metrics") buy the Bush administration time in which to offload responsibility for withdrawal to the next president. It may be true that the notional success of the surge has made Iraq marginally less important to voters, but the signals of pacification there are likely to be transient. If so, Iraq will reclaim center stage in the 2008 election. Even--indeed, especially--if it doesn't, our exhortation will stand that misplaced faith in counterinsurgency and sidelining wider diplomacy will only make the ultimate outcome worse for the region and for the United States.

Our (my) obsession pretty clearly is not with "victory" at all but, to the contrary, with the Bush administration and conservative revisionists' insistence on "victory" by some definition and with their tendency to militarize the corresponding policy. Though it is true that even the tunnel-visioned Bush administration has amended its version of success in Iraq as circumstances have flagrantly rendered the original one implausible, the Bush team has continued to leverage military power--albeit under the auspices of a better-formulated counterinsurgency model--as its principal actuator. The same thing was happening in Vietnam until political circumstances rendered the program unsustainable.

I acknowledge that Iran is in reality probably more pragmatic than Ahmadinejad's rhetoric suggests, that the "Shia crescent" probably has relatively flat trajectory, and that Saudi Arabia and other Sunni powers may be less than desperately worried. But they cannot ignore Iran's nuclear ambitions or its Shiism as major threats, and still value strategic partnership with the United States as a hedge. It is not only on account of oil and tactical counterterrorism cooperation that Saudi-U.S. relations have as stabilized since their nadir right after 9/11. Overall, Sunni Arab cooperation on the United States' dubious Israeli-Palestinian peace initiative indicates a prudential interest in continued U.S. involvement in the region. Even Syria sent a delegate to Annapolis--apparently for fear of being further isolated by virtue of its traditional alignment with Iraq, among other things.

As for the Bush doctrine, even its stalwarts on the Bush team have at least tacitly recognized its destructive naivete, and understood that democratization in the Middle East must be, at best, a slow, gentle, and selective process. What they can't seem to come to grips with remains Iraq itself.

~

Here we find 19 simple words from Mr. Stevenson that were buried in 5 days of meandering meaninglessness while wandering in the slog through Vietnam...

The centerpiece of the argument we are pressing is that victory was not possible because its prerequisites were unattainable.

The Bush administration, like the Johnson and Nixon administrations, is creating the illusion that we are winning on points through military advances while suppressing the likelihood that the insurgency’s resiliency, Iraqi military inadequacy, and Iraqi political dysfunction will combine to inflict a knockout punch.

Iraq is strategically more important than Vietnam was, so the U.S. cannot afford to abandon or ostracize Iraq as it did Vietnam.

But contrary to Bush Administration supporters and conservative pundits, this does not mean that any form of U.S. withdrawal from Iraq will have terrible and persistent consequences – namely, an all-out Sunni/Shia war; the emboldenment of Iran, Hezbollah, and al-Qaeda; and diminished energy security.

Those consequences are much more likely to arise from a panicky exit springing from continued American futility.

Consequently, the Vietnam experience counsels not staying put but rather minimizing the U.S. military presence soon, while still promoting political progress in Iraq and regional stability.

No cost-free solution exists; any “victory” would achieve far less than what was originally envisioned by the war’s architects and strongest defenders.

But a strategic withdrawal would constitute a mature response to what has become an obviously futile quest and to the American people’s loss of trust and confidence in the way the war has been conducted.

Comparable things could happen with respect to Iraq.

If we do not exercise strategic discretion and design a near-term military disengagement that incorporates residual U.S. support for Iraq, we are likely to be forced – by domestic opinion at least as much as facts on the ground in Iraq – into a Vietnam-esque withdrawal that leaves no room for such support for Iraq and diminished American standing throughout the world.

That fate is the one we tempt by keeping troops in Iraq when their presence there cannot secure America’s interests and only weakens the United States’ strategic position.

At the end of the day, America’s allies value, and its adversaries fear, not its persistence in a dubious policy that is unlikely to serve its own interests, but its preservation of viable strategic options.

I guess that pretty much covers "...that victory was not possible because its prerequisites were unattainable."

~OGD~

It's difficult to accept as credible any analysis of Vietnam which does not realistically discuss at what point Nixon knew Vietnam was a lost cause:

H. R. “Bob” Haldeman Diary Entry on Vietnam, December 21, 1970
Personal Diary of H.R. Haldeman

Henry was in for a while and the President discussed a possible trip for next year. He's thinking about going to Vietnam in April [1971] or whenever we decide to make the basic end-of-the-war announcement. His idea would be to tour around the country, build up [South Vietnamese President Nguyen Van] Thieu and so forth, and then make the announcement right afterwards.

Henry argues against a commitment that early to withdraw all combat troops because he feels that if we pull them out by the end of '71, trouble can start mounting in '72 that we won't be able to deal with, and which we'll have to answer for at the elections.

He prefers instead a commitment to have them all out by the end of '72 so that we won't have to deliver finally until after the [US presidential] elections [in November 1972] and therefore can keep our flanks protected. This would certainly seem to make more sense, and the President seemed to agree in general, but he wants Henry to work up plans on it.

For those who have a bit of cognitive dissonance with a timeline, this predates the Winter Soldier Investigation by 1 month.

Then there is the recently declassified and published NSA Archives: "Memorandum of Conversation with Zhou Enlai, 20 June 1972". (3.13 MB PDF File). Pages 27 - 37 are relevant to Vietnam.

It wouldn't do forgetting this gem from the Nixon White House Tapes:

Oval Office Conversation #760-6 Transcript
August 3, 1972
8:28am - 8:57am
Location: Oval Office

President Richard M. Nixon: Let’s be perfectly cold-blooded about it. If you look at it from the standpoint of our game with the Soviets and the Chinese, from the standpoint of running this country, I think we could take, in my view, almost anything, frankly, that we can force on [South Vietnamese President Nguyen Van] Thieu. Almost anything. I just come down to that. You know what I mean? Because I have a feeling we would not be doing, like I feel about the Israeli, I feel that in the long run we’re probably not doing them an in—uh, a disfavor due to the fact that I feel that the North Vietnamese are so badly hurt that the South Vietnamese are probably gonna do fairly well [unclear—overlapping voices]. Also due to the fact—because I look at the tide of history out there, South Vietnam probably can never even survive anyway. I’m just being perfectly candid—I—

Henry A. Kissinger: In the pull-out area—

President Nixon:[Unclear—overlapping voices] got to [unclear—overlapping voices] that we can get certain guarantees so that they aren’t, uh, as you know, looking at the foreign policy process, though, I mean, you’ve got to be—we also have to realize, Henry, that winning an election is terribly important. It’s terribly important this year, but can we have a viable foreign policy if a year from now or two years from now, North Vietnam gobbles up South Vietnam. That’s the real question.

Kissinger: If a year or two years from now North Vietnam gobbles up South Vietnam, we can have a viable foreign policy if it looks as if it’s the result of South Vietnamese incompetence. If we now sell out in such a way that, say, within a three - to four - month period, we have pushed President Thieu over the brink—we ourselves—I think, there is going to be—even the Chinese won’t like that. I mean, they’ll pay verbal—verbally, they’ll like it—

President Nixon: But it’ll worry them.

Kissinger: But it will worry everybody. And domestically in the long run it won’t help us all that much because our opponents will say we should’ve done it three years ago.

President Nixon: I know.

Kissinger: So we’ve got to find some formula that holds the thing together a year or two, after which—after a year, Mr. President, Vietnam will be a backwater. If we settle it, say, this October, by January ’74 no one will give a damn.

Nixon/Kissinger sold-out South Vietnam for "more important business".

American leadership faltered in Vietnam because of its ... its stubborn refusal to recognize the limitations that domestic political opinion irrepressibly imposes on democratic leaders.

If the last year has shown anything, it's that public opinion doesn't necessarily impose much of any restrictions on a democratic leadership if that leadership chooses to ignore it.

Apparently, the truth is that public opinion only imposes limits on leaders if they recognize public opinion as important or at least recognize the authority of the public over them.

But one of the principal -- but often overlooked -- premises of the conservative movement seems to be a refusal to recognize the authority of either the majority or the people as a whole. Refusing to address the fact that 60 percent of the public opposes your policy is
called leadership among conservatives. You see this attitude also in the argument that we should just leave military decisions to the generals. We may have a government that constitutionally requires civilian control of the military but increasingly the argument is that civilians have no place in military decisions. And, in fact, far from being seen as an indication of a failed policy, the turn in public opinion on Iraq -- and I suspect on Vietnam -- is seen by conservatives as a sign of the weakness of civilian culture and therefore as a greater argument for military control of war decisions.

And while you may be correct that "the growing dismay of the American people over the futility of the war was not some mere speed-bump that elected leaders could steamroller with pleas for or assertions of 'political will'", there's an argument that they would not have needed to if they achieved military control of the south in the same way it was achieved in S. Korea. You cannot change the domestic politics of the situation with words, but you can with successful actions and that's what conservatives count on. It's what they're counting on right now in Iraq.

It is why they never worry about political opinion domestically or internationally when going to war because they assume victory, and assume that victory will create its own positive political environment.

And generally they've been right. The support for the first gulf war was really pretty soft going in, but the first Bush knew that once we had troops on the ground everyone would go along with it and then once it was successful and pretty much over, everyone would say it was brilliant because nothing breeds support like success.

But even if conservatives were to accept that political opinion was irreversibly against the war and that it had to be honored, the political environment has nothing to do with the question of what choices we face in foreign policy or war, except in the narrow sense of how other nations might react or how our international image might be affected.

The reason everyone keeps focusing on whether the thing could have been won is that the only relavent question is what choices or options did and do we have. It may be a choice between pulling out and really long odds at succeeding while committing a ridiculous amount of resources for an indefinite period for very little return. But that's still a choice.

The political environment or whatever is just about the process of making the choice and who makes it. I really don't see the relevance of that to determining what choices we had and what the costs of the choices were except in the sense that we might pay politically in international relations, and even that is just one thing to weigh on the scales.

Saying that we absolutely had to pull out because the majority was or are against the war just seems a way to avoid grappling with the merit of the various choices themselves, a way to avoid making a solid argument for cutting and running, which is exactly what we need to do in the face a militant conservative culture that will insist on fighting to the end even if little is gained at a high price.

The truth is, that as liberals, we don't oppose the Iraq war or the Vietnam war because it's unwinnable or because the rest of the crowd opposes war. We opposed those wars because we consider the cost in human life and suffering unbearable, particular for the return. We oppose those wars because we considered them immoral to begin with, winnable or not, for a variety of reasons. we opposed those wars because our leaders lied to us about them. We opposed those wars -- especially the current one -- because we oppose the idea of an American imperial empire.

This is what the real argument is about. Not strategy and tactics.