Return of the syndrome

BY: Frank Gaffney
The Washington Times, April 18, 1991

As ironic moments go, this was a hard one to top.

I was sitting in the British Broadcasting Service’s TV studio Tuesday listening to President Bush announce that the United States was dispatching a small number of U.S. military forces to northern Iraq. Their job, he said, would be to provide in a very limited way a measure of assistance and protection to the people of that country – people who were suffering the depredations of a totalitarian regime the United States opposed. The mission, the president assured us, was consistent with international law, narrowly circumscribed, humanitarian in nature and one in which we would be joined by several of our allies.

Sound familiar? While not a perfect fit, the parallels between President Bush’s half-baked idea of setting up refugee camps on "flat" Iraqi territory — to be defended by U.S. and allied armed forces and eventually turned over to someone else to manage (if someone like the U.N. steps forward to take on the task) – is eerily reminiscent of the early, ill-defined American commitment to the people of South Vietnam.

Regrettably folks, like Hollywood’s Gremlins, "the Vietnam syndrome" is back.

This is not to say that the United States should refuse to come to the aid of the Kurds and others suffering at the hands of Saddam Hussein. To the contrary, we should — and I am confident we ultimately will — do far more for the Iraqi people than the president has proposed to do so far.

It is fair to note, however, that the recently announced half-way measures to assist Saddam’s victims are the unmistakable product of an attack of the "Vietnam syndrome." Indeed, even as Mr. Bush was triumphantly announcing the demise of this incapacitating legacy of America’s last, wrenching war, he was falling prey to it.

The onset of Mr. Bush’s clinical case of the syndrome can be traced to his precipitate decision to stop the war with Iraq. We may never know the real reasons for his doing so: On the one hand, the president maintained — Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf’s views to the contrary notwithstanding — that all U.S. objectives had been accomplished. On the other, rumors abound that the American juggernaut was about to run out of ammunition and would not have been able to continue the assault much longer. Some observers believe the true impetus was that the Soviets demanded an end to the war before their Iraqi client, Saddam Hussein, was toppled.

Whatever the explanation, the effect of stopping when and how we did was eerily reminiscent of the bad old days of Vietnam: a job left half done when the political leadership got cold feet and directed the military to pull its punches; a suddenly pitiful, muscle-bound America unable (read unwilling) to prevent psychopaths from inflicting murderous revenge on innocent people, people who — with our encouragement — had the temerity to resist totalitarian despotism.

For me, the irony in Mr. Bush’s announcement that U.S. armed forces would at last intervene to help the Kurds was not to be found in its similarity to the gradualist manner in which we slipped into an ill-defined and open-ended commitment to South Vietnam. It was not even the contrast between this grudging, halfhearted and dreadfully belated action and the resolute, unstinting and swift steps taken earlier at the president’s direction to liberate Kuwait.

The real irony was to be found in the fact that sitting next to me in the BBC studio at that moment was the "Vietnam syndrome" incarnate — former Sen. George McGovern. If any proof were needed that Mr. Bush is on a losing wicket, it can be found in the ringing endorsement given his announcement by this once and, reportedly, future presidential candidate!

Now — before any additional U.S. troops are removed from the region and, therefore, before American options are reduced still further — Mr. Bush must adopt a fundamentally different approach to aiding the people of Iraq: Instead of providing symptomatic relief by trying to feed, clothe and house millions of refugees, the United States and its allies should swiftly address the root cause of their suffering by bringing to an immediate end Saddam Hussein’s barbaric misrule.

Should he choose to do otherwise, the president may please for the moment George McGovern and those who share his policy predilections. He may even slacken temporarily the pressure he clearly feels to shed the image of a man indifferent to terrible suffering for which he bears some responsibility. And yet, Mr. Bush should understand that he will inevitably soon be forced to admit that such efforts are inadequate to the task.

Then, the president will face the painful Hobson’s choice confronted in the past by several of his predecessors over Vietnam: Either cut our losses and retreat, or take the next incremental, constrained and ultimately equally ineffectual step toward still greater involvement in the "internal affairs" of another country.

If he wishes to lick the "Vietnam syndrome" once and for all, Mr. Bush must bring to the liberation of Iraq the same determination, vision and unconstrained willingness to commit American resources that so brilliantly achieved the liberation of Kuwait. Only by doing so can he provide real relief to the suffering Kurds and other Iraqi citizens; offer the Persian Gulf region long-term protection against Saddam Hussein’s malevolence; and secure for the United States and its allies the full benefits of the recent, but still incomplete, victory in the war with Iraq.

Frank J. Gaffney Jr. is the director of the Center for Security Policy.