A 21st-Century Tet?
By Colbert I. King
Columnist
The Washington Post
Saturday, February 22, 2003
Thirty-five years ago this month, the unthinkable happened, or at least we thought so at the time. The U.S. Embassy in well-fortified Saigon fell under enemy attack. I was then assigned to our embassy in Bonn. A TV news clip showed a couple of embassy civilians and uniformed U.S. military personnel fending off the dozen or so Viet Cong commandos who had invaded the U.S. compound. One of the civilians was wielding an automatic weapon high above his head, firing on targets over a wall. I knew him from Washington.
But there we were in 1968, overseas and assigned to embassies as attaches. The State Department diplomatic list described us as "regional administrative specialists." Forget that "administrative" part: Our job was to see that clandestine agents bent on obtaining sensitive information, or armed insurgents out for blood, didn't penetrate the security of U.S. diplomatic missions or compromise our personnel. But blood had been drawn in Saigon. When it was over, all the Vietnamese commandos were dead, but so were some Americans and South Vietnamese.
That day in February 1968 and the days of fighting that followed in Saigon and key South Vietnam district capitals came to be known as the Tet offensive. It mattered not that the U.S. Embassy was never overrun, or that the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong paid a heavy price in lives for their attacks. The surprise military offensive was a giant media and psychological success for the North Vietnamese. In his book "My American Journey," Colin Powell wrote: "Tet marked a turning point, raising doubts in the minds of moderate Americans, not just hippies and campus radicals, about the worth of this conflict, and the antiwar movement intensified."
Today American military might dominates the world. But there is, at least in some quarters, a disquieting feeling that without drawing a drop of American blood, the setbacks in the U.N. Security Council a week ago, the standoffs with NATO and the waves of global protests against a U.S.-led war on Iraq may come to be seen one day as our 21st-century diplomatic Tet.
The Vietnam analogy is, I know, pretty gauzy. It doesn't hold up in many respects. But Tet comes to mind because at the time it happened we regarded it not as an event that turned the tide but rather as a defeat for the enemy. It was to be seven more years before the military of North Vietnam would march victorious into Saigon.
Current plans call for taking out Saddam Hussein. Fine. But there's more to come after he's gone. And that's the worry. Where is this dream of making Iraq a model of Middle East democracy and an American-led transformation of the Arab world taking us?
Today the absence of support from a broad international coalition, and the millions in the streets protesting a possible war with Iraq, are not regarded by the Bush White House as serious cause to pause. The administration instead is emboldened to push ahead.
Those in it choose to grumble about French President Jacques Chirac as if his challenge to U.S. dominance is the reason for worldwide demonstrations. They sneer at the Germans and Belgians for standing in the way of the United States.
But French and German leaders, opportunists and saboteurs though they may be, are not the reason public opinion overseas has swung against the Bush policies. Paris and Berlin are being given too much credit. And protesters didn't turn out on five continents, including the largest demonstration in British history, out of some misguided sympathy for Saddam Hussein.
What we are witnessing, along with the diplomatic offensive, however much we don't like it, is broad popular opposition to U.S. policies. That radicals and leftists are among the leadership of the protesters cannot take away from the cross section of people who turned out against the war.
Even at home, the case for war is not a slam-dunk for the administration. Yes, a majority of Americans, according to a Washington Post-ABC News poll, support action to take out Saddam Hussein even if the Security Council objects, provided key allies are with us. But a majority also oppose a postwar rebuilding burden that would require the long-term presence of U.S. troops as well as the outlay of billions of dollars to stabilize a defeated Iraq. Yet the Bush administration, as The Post reported this week, plans to take complete, unilateral control of a post-Saddam Hussein Iraq, including the direction of the country's reconstruction and the creation of a "representative" Iraqi government.
Let's get this straight: Hussein is a menace and should be disarmed by force if necessary. Ridding Iraq of weapons of mass destruction is one thing, however. Taking over and running the country is quite another.
Imagine what an American occupation force in Iraq will do for anti-American sentiment in the Middle East. Does the administration know what it is getting into? Are Americans ready to pay that high a price?
Which gets me back to Vietnam. In his book, Powell complained about having to fight in Vietnam while "back home, the administration was trying to conduct the war with as little inconvenience to the country as possible." True, unlike then, reserves now have been called up. But Powell's Vietnam complaint that "taxes to finance the war had not been raised" applies today. We're deepening the deficit by giving tax cuts to the better off.
Powell also wrote: "War should be the politics of last resort. And when we go to war, we should have a purpose that our people understand and support. . . . You do not squander courage and lives without a clear purpose, without the country's backing, and without full commitment."
Are the American people committed to governing Iraq, to having a U.S. administrator run an American-created civilian government in a Muslim and Arab country, with all that entails?
In a speech a week ago in New York, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld shared his thoughts on the right and wrong way to go about helping nations recover from war and regain self-reliance. His object lesson was Afghanistan, but it could apply to Iraq.
"From the outset of the war, our guiding principle has been that Afghanistan belongs to the Afghans. The United States does not aspire to own it or run it," he said. Which explains, he said, why the United States deliberately decided against following the Soviet example of sending in a massive invasion and occupation force. Instead, he said Gen. Tommy Franks put together a coalition and kept the "footprint modest." Rumsfeld cautioned against establishing a long-term foreign presence in a country, and he warned of "well-intentioned foreigners [who] arrive on the scene, look at the problems and say, 'Let's fix it' " without regard for unintended adverse side effects.
Rumsfeld told his audience: "Iraq belongs to the Iraqis, and we do not aspire to own it or run it." He spoke of working with American partners to help the Iraqi people establish a new government, not complete unilateral control of a post-Hussein Iraq.
Powell wrote in "My American Journey" that his generation of soldiers vowed that when their turn came to call the shots, they would not quietly acquiesce in war for "half-baked reasons that the American people could not understand or support. If we could make good on that promise to ourselves, to the civilian leadership, and to the country, then the sacrifices of Vietnam would not have been in vain."
So if Rumsfeld means what he said, and Powell believes what he wrote, are we planning to plunge deeper into a postwar Iraq?
Don't we remember the Vietnam quicksand?
e-mail: kingc@washpost.com
© 2003 The Washington Post Company
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