Losing Iraq = Bad News for U.S.

Thomas Ricks, the Washington Post’s military correspondent, has talked with a number of Washington insiders. These folks generally have little use for Bush or his war. Turns out, the way they believe Bush has blown it is by leaving us in an even worse position than we were after we lost Vietnam.

Here are some of the comments Ricks gathered:

"In terms of the consequences of failure, the stakes are much bigger than Vietnam. The geopolitical consequences are . . . potentially global in scope."

--Former defense secretary William S. Cohen

“Vietnam does not have oil and is not in the middle of a region crucial to the global economy and festering with terrorism, so the long-term effects of the Iraq war will be worse for the United States.”

--Unnamed “experts”

"It makes Vietnam look like a cakewalk." While the domino theory that nations across Southeast Asia would go communist was not fulfilled, with Iraq "worst-case scenarios are the most likely thing to happen."

--Retired Air Force Gen. Charles F. Wald

Iraq is worse than Vietnam "in so many ways. We knew what we were getting into in Vietnam. We didn't here." Nixon used diplomacy with China and the Soviet Union to exploit the split between them and so minimize the fallout of Vietnam. By contrast, the Bush administration has "magnified" the problems of Iraq by neglecting public diplomacy in the Muslim world and by not developing an energy policy to reduce the significance of oil.

--Retired Army officer Andrew F. Krepinevich Jr., author of one of the most respected studies of the U.S. military's failure in Vietnam

Vietnam was part of containment, a policy that preceded the war and endured for 15 years after Saigon fell. "I'm not sure we can count on a similarly prompt strategic recovery this time around,"

--Retired Army Col. Richard H. Sinnreich

"Most of my military acquaintances agree that the issues in our departure from Vietnam will pale beside those that will be presented by an Iraq withdrawal."

--Vietnam Marine veteran Gary Solis, who taught the law of war at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point

"I think the hangover from this war will be at least as bad as Vietnam and wouldn't be surprised by a growing movement toward retrenchment and isolationism."

--Harvard University counterinsurgency expert Erin M. Simpson

These experts all see Iraq as a lost cause. If we can still prevail in Iraq, then each of their comments becomes an argument for the need to help Petraeus’ surge succeed. If losing is important, then so too is winning.