thedrifter
05-07-07, 08:43 AM
Familiar territory
Funding-bill debate echoes Vietnam era
By George C. Wilson -
Posted : May 14, 2007
The battalion commander that hot afternoon sat in his hooch inside a barbed wire donut on South Vietnam’s Delta and boiled over about how unfair the war was to his troops. The year was 1968. I never had to get his quote from my tape recorder because his angry words burned into my mind and stayed there. They are no doubt being repeated by our new generation of officers in Iraq today:
“All I’m doing down here is buying time with my kids’ lives for the politicians to settle this thing,” despaired Lt. Col. John Keeley of the 9th Infantry Division as we talked into the night. “Don’t those guys in Washington realize that using military force to achieve diplomatic objectives is like using an ax to do brain surgery?”
One of Keeley’s missions was to push his troops through the stifling rice paddies by day in hopes of finding the elusive farm boys in black pajamas who formed the backbone of the Viet Cong’s insurgency force. Another mission was to prevent the Viet Cong sappers from blowing up the blacktop road — a vital link between the Delta’s rice basket and the South Vietnamese capital of Saigon — running alongside Keeley’s command post. But the shadowy Viet Cong managed to blow up the road almost every night in an earlier version of improvised explosive device warfare.
The reason Rep. Jack Murtha, D-Pa., a Marine who served in Vietnam, is so passionate about getting our troops out of Iraq is that he feels today like Keeley felt 39 years ago. Although his passion for setting a date certain for U.S. troop withdrawal was widespread enough in Congress to get language into an appropriations bill ordering President Bush to do just that, the legislative history of similar efforts during the Vietnam War tells us the president’s veto power gives him the upper hand in such battles.
As a combat correspondent in Vietnam in 1968 and again in 1972, I was amazed at how bad the news about that war could get without two-thirds of Congress — the requirement to override a presidential veto — ordering the president to withdraw our troops from Vietnam by a date certain.
U.S. troops slaughtering civilians at My Lai; enemy troops getting inside our embassy compound during the Tet offensive of 1968; Air Force leaders lying about what they were bombing; the ground truth coming from the John Keeleys in the field — none of that was enough to make Congress shut down the war during its worst days. More than one-third of lawmakers were always afraid of looking to the voters as being weak on defense or undercutting our boys on the battlefield.
Not until 1973 did Congress muster the votes to order President Nixon to stop bombing Cambodia. Then, as now, the lawmakers chose to put their orders to the commander in chief inside an appropriations bill loaded with money for the Pentagon.
At the time, President Nixon was in peace talks in Paris with the North Vietnamese. With the end of the war in sight, it would have seemed to be no major concession for Nixon to bow to Congress’s will on Cambodia. But Nixon, like Bush today, did not see it that way. He vetoed the money bill.
Substitute “surge” for “great accomplishment” and Iraqis for Asians in Nixon’s veto message of June 27, 1973, and you almost hear Bush saying the same thing:
“It would be nothing short of tragic if this great accomplishment, bought with the blood of so many Asians and Americans, were to be undone now by congressional action,” Nixon wrote.
Democratic leaders could not round up enough votes to override Nixon’s veto even with peace in sight. But shortly after Nixon’s veto was sustained, he promised to stop bombing Cambodia as of Aug. 15, 1973, because a peace treaty with the North Vietnamese was in hand.
The lesson for the present battle between Congress and the White House over who has the power to do what in wartime is that the president’s veto power gives him the upper hand. So unless Bush bends, Congress’ success in setting a date certain for withdrawing American troops from Iraq will be short-lived.
But I think there is better than a 50-50 chance that the al-Maliki government of Iraq will collapse before Bush leaves office and that the succeeding Iraqi government will demand U.S. troops leave the country by a date certain.
Bush, then, would have no choice but to head for the exit — perhaps to his secret, but great, relief.
The writer is a former national security reporter for The Washington Post. He now writes for Congress Daily, where this piece first appeared in slightly different form.
Ellie
Funding-bill debate echoes Vietnam era
By George C. Wilson -
Posted : May 14, 2007
The battalion commander that hot afternoon sat in his hooch inside a barbed wire donut on South Vietnam’s Delta and boiled over about how unfair the war was to his troops. The year was 1968. I never had to get his quote from my tape recorder because his angry words burned into my mind and stayed there. They are no doubt being repeated by our new generation of officers in Iraq today:
“All I’m doing down here is buying time with my kids’ lives for the politicians to settle this thing,” despaired Lt. Col. John Keeley of the 9th Infantry Division as we talked into the night. “Don’t those guys in Washington realize that using military force to achieve diplomatic objectives is like using an ax to do brain surgery?”
One of Keeley’s missions was to push his troops through the stifling rice paddies by day in hopes of finding the elusive farm boys in black pajamas who formed the backbone of the Viet Cong’s insurgency force. Another mission was to prevent the Viet Cong sappers from blowing up the blacktop road — a vital link between the Delta’s rice basket and the South Vietnamese capital of Saigon — running alongside Keeley’s command post. But the shadowy Viet Cong managed to blow up the road almost every night in an earlier version of improvised explosive device warfare.
The reason Rep. Jack Murtha, D-Pa., a Marine who served in Vietnam, is so passionate about getting our troops out of Iraq is that he feels today like Keeley felt 39 years ago. Although his passion for setting a date certain for U.S. troop withdrawal was widespread enough in Congress to get language into an appropriations bill ordering President Bush to do just that, the legislative history of similar efforts during the Vietnam War tells us the president’s veto power gives him the upper hand in such battles.
As a combat correspondent in Vietnam in 1968 and again in 1972, I was amazed at how bad the news about that war could get without two-thirds of Congress — the requirement to override a presidential veto — ordering the president to withdraw our troops from Vietnam by a date certain.
U.S. troops slaughtering civilians at My Lai; enemy troops getting inside our embassy compound during the Tet offensive of 1968; Air Force leaders lying about what they were bombing; the ground truth coming from the John Keeleys in the field — none of that was enough to make Congress shut down the war during its worst days. More than one-third of lawmakers were always afraid of looking to the voters as being weak on defense or undercutting our boys on the battlefield.
Not until 1973 did Congress muster the votes to order President Nixon to stop bombing Cambodia. Then, as now, the lawmakers chose to put their orders to the commander in chief inside an appropriations bill loaded with money for the Pentagon.
At the time, President Nixon was in peace talks in Paris with the North Vietnamese. With the end of the war in sight, it would have seemed to be no major concession for Nixon to bow to Congress’s will on Cambodia. But Nixon, like Bush today, did not see it that way. He vetoed the money bill.
Substitute “surge” for “great accomplishment” and Iraqis for Asians in Nixon’s veto message of June 27, 1973, and you almost hear Bush saying the same thing:
“It would be nothing short of tragic if this great accomplishment, bought with the blood of so many Asians and Americans, were to be undone now by congressional action,” Nixon wrote.
Democratic leaders could not round up enough votes to override Nixon’s veto even with peace in sight. But shortly after Nixon’s veto was sustained, he promised to stop bombing Cambodia as of Aug. 15, 1973, because a peace treaty with the North Vietnamese was in hand.
The lesson for the present battle between Congress and the White House over who has the power to do what in wartime is that the president’s veto power gives him the upper hand. So unless Bush bends, Congress’ success in setting a date certain for withdrawing American troops from Iraq will be short-lived.
But I think there is better than a 50-50 chance that the al-Maliki government of Iraq will collapse before Bush leaves office and that the succeeding Iraqi government will demand U.S. troops leave the country by a date certain.
Bush, then, would have no choice but to head for the exit — perhaps to his secret, but great, relief.
The writer is a former national security reporter for The Washington Post. He now writes for Congress Daily, where this piece first appeared in slightly different form.
Ellie