Haig Sees Vietnam Parallels in Iraq

Former Nixon advisor Alexander M. Haig Jr. said Saturday that military leaders in Iraq were repeating a mistake made in Vietnam by not applying the full force of the military to win the war.

“Every asset of the nation must be applied to the conflict to bring about a quick and successful outcome, or don’t do it,” Haig said. “We’re in the midst of another struggle where it appears to me we haven’t learned very much.”

The comments by Haig, who was President Nixon’s chief of staff and was a secretary of state under President Reagan, came at a conference at the John F. Kennedy Library and Museum examining the Vietnam War and the American presidency.

The conference brought together advisors from the administrations of Presidents Nixon, Johnson and Kennedy, and talk turned to Iraq, where the panelists saw parallels with Vietnam.

Former Nixon Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger made a rare appearance at the conference. He said he agreed to come out of admiration for the Kennedy family.

Kissinger was met outside by about 25 protesters, who chanted “Kissinger should go to jail, no bail.” He refused to directly respond to a question, submitted by the audience and read by a moderator, that asked whether he wanted to apologize for policies that led to many deaths in Vietnam.

“This is not the occasion,” Kissinger said. “We have to start from the assumption that serious people were making serious decisions. So that’s the sort of question that’s highly inappropriate.”

In another audience question, Kissinger was asked whether he agreed that the U.S. bombing of Cambodia had led to the rise of the Khmer Rouge and, if he did, whether he was responsible for the people the Khmer Rouge killed.

“The premise that the bombing of a 5-mile strip led to the rise of Khmer Rouge and the murder of 2 million people is an example of masochism that is really inexcusable,” he said.

The Vietnam War “has fundamentally affected my life,” Kissinger said, “in the sense that the Nixon debate doesn’t ever seem to end, and for many I am the surviving symbol of the Nixon administration.”

Kissinger also spoke about the war in Iraq, saying he supported the invasion.

“We have a jihadist radical situation,” he said. “If the U.S. fails in Iraq, then the consequences will be that it motivates more to move toward the radical side. This is the challenge.”

Former Johnson advisor Jack Valenti said the lessons of Vietnam had been “forgotten or ignored” in Iraq.

“No president can win a war when public support for that war begins to decline and evaporate,” he said.

Valenti, former head of the Motion Picture Assn. of America, added that there was no such thing as a good war, saying “all wars are inhumane, brutal, callous and full of depravity.”