Robert McFarlane: Iraq looking more and more like Vietnam in 1968
[Mr. McFarlane, a former Marine officer, served as National Security Adviser to President Reagan.]
Thirty-nine years ago, half way through my second tour in Vietnam, the Tet Offensive was launched by North Vietnamese and Viet Cong forces, who were soundly defeated on the battlefield. Two measures of that battle -- both relevant to the situation in Iraq today -- stand out for me. The first relates to an important lesson U.S. forces had learned after three years of conflict: the vital role of "winning hearts and minds" of the local population. The second concerns the power of the press to affect our ability to sustain violent warfare.
Concerning the first of these, by early 1968 Marines had conceived a plan for building mutual trust and respect among villagers in Northern I Corps built around the deployment of platoon-sized units that lived and worked each day with local Vietnamese peasants with no greater mission than to "make life better."
Each of these Combined Action Platoons (or CAPs as they were called) included a medic qualified to carry out "well checks" -- including inoculations and treatment of minor maladies -- as well as assistance with securing hospital care if needed for the families in each village. An engineer was also often sent along to organize repairs of fragile dwellings, drill wells, help organize perimeter fortifications, and to undertake a hundred other utilitarian tasks.
The results from launching the CAP program were enormous and measurable. Probably the most significant return from the good will earned by these enlisted Marines was the increasing yield in tactical intelligence. Specifically, throughout the week-long Tet offensive in early 1968 not one village in which a CAP was deployed fell to the enemy.
Yet the press -- notwithstanding the defeat of the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong on the battlefield and the complete failure of the enemy to provoke an uprising and rallying of southerners to their cause -- portrayed U.S. forces as having been surprised, bloodied and having suffered a resounding defeat. That misrepresentation had a powerful effect in Washington and in our body politic. Support for the war, already declining, unraveled at an accelerating pace.
[The author goes on to argue that the same thing is happening now: at just the moment that the military has adopted a workable counterinsurgency strategy the media have decided the war is lost.]
Read entire article at WSJ
Thirty-nine years ago, half way through my second tour in Vietnam, the Tet Offensive was launched by North Vietnamese and Viet Cong forces, who were soundly defeated on the battlefield. Two measures of that battle -- both relevant to the situation in Iraq today -- stand out for me. The first relates to an important lesson U.S. forces had learned after three years of conflict: the vital role of "winning hearts and minds" of the local population. The second concerns the power of the press to affect our ability to sustain violent warfare.
Concerning the first of these, by early 1968 Marines had conceived a plan for building mutual trust and respect among villagers in Northern I Corps built around the deployment of platoon-sized units that lived and worked each day with local Vietnamese peasants with no greater mission than to "make life better."
Each of these Combined Action Platoons (or CAPs as they were called) included a medic qualified to carry out "well checks" -- including inoculations and treatment of minor maladies -- as well as assistance with securing hospital care if needed for the families in each village. An engineer was also often sent along to organize repairs of fragile dwellings, drill wells, help organize perimeter fortifications, and to undertake a hundred other utilitarian tasks.
The results from launching the CAP program were enormous and measurable. Probably the most significant return from the good will earned by these enlisted Marines was the increasing yield in tactical intelligence. Specifically, throughout the week-long Tet offensive in early 1968 not one village in which a CAP was deployed fell to the enemy.
Yet the press -- notwithstanding the defeat of the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong on the battlefield and the complete failure of the enemy to provoke an uprising and rallying of southerners to their cause -- portrayed U.S. forces as having been surprised, bloodied and having suffered a resounding defeat. That misrepresentation had a powerful effect in Washington and in our body politic. Support for the war, already declining, unraveled at an accelerating pace.
[The author goes on to argue that the same thing is happening now: at just the moment that the military has adopted a workable counterinsurgency strategy the media have decided the war is lost.]