"If the election were held today, Obama would win the veteran vote by as much as seven points over Romney, higher than his margin in the general population," reports Margot Roosevelt of Reuters.

I have to say this surprised me. Reuters says veterans report being tired of our wars, are angry about the foolishness of invading Iraq, and worried by the situation with Iran. One says he likes how Obama handled Libya.

On the other hand, 37 percent of vets asked said they disapprove of the way Obama has handled the presidency, vs. just 27 who approve, and everyone else up in the air. So the poll numbers leave me a bit confused.

Mitt Romney is a Republican version of John Kerry, I think -- a rich politician from Massachusetts who doesn't really know who he is but (as James Carville has put it), was born on third base and thinks he hit a triple.

By Kayla Williams

Best Defense guest columnist

Rising suicide rates among military personnel and veterans have received a great deal of attention from the media, advocacy organizations, and pundits. While I appreciate the efforts to raise awareness and address the problem, I am gravely concerned about the tone and method of much of this coverage, some of which reminds me of Mrs. Lovejoy on The Simpsons, flinging her hand to her forehead and gasping "Won't somebody think of the children?!" without providing solutions.

Rather than simply urging DoD and VA to do "something" or "more," we should push for specific changes like those identified by CNAS in Losing the Battle  and increased use of evidence-based programs such as those identified in the RAND study The War Within.

The media should acknowledge their responsibility to cover military and veteran suicides carefully. There is a proven "contagion effect" for suicide, and there are widely available recommendations for journalists to follow in order to reduce imitations and encourage help-seeking. Unfortunately, most coverage does not follow those recommendations. An article in Stars and Stripes last week is, in my opinion, an egregious example of this -- it is irresponsible and hypocritical to note that VA failed to provide the hotline number to someone in crisis while not providing it!* Every article on military and veteran suicide should feature the crisis line, 800-273-TALK (veterans press 1). Advocates who go on TV to talk about military and veteran suicides should insist that it be included on-screen and mention it at least once. If you are active in this community and don't have the number memorized, you are wrong.

I certainly don't hold advocates or the media uniquely responsible. DoD and VA have a long way to go in improving their response to high suicide rates, even though they are making progress. However, this problem is too big for DoD or VA to address alone. I know how powerful the feelings of desperation can be, and it's time for all of us to come together to act, rather than simply calling for someone else to do something. If you hear from or know of a veteran who is suicidal, point them toward the right resources -- or call the hotline yourself and get them help. Change should start with each of us -- and advocates, journalists, pundits, and bloggers must be aware that by ignoring available recommendations, they can actually make the problem worse rather than better. Learn the recommendations on how to cover suicide responsibly. Follow them. Lives depend on it.

Kayla Williams is author of Love My Rifle More Than You: Young and Female in the US Army.

*When I called @LeoShane out on this via Twitter recently, he responded, "It's going in print that way, and we're having a little trouble with the web layout. But all the resources will be up there." At the time of this writing, neither a list or resources nor the crisis line had been added to the online version.

Yesterday I was on an FPRI panel discussing PME, or professional military education. Specifically, we discussed Joan Johnson Freese's critique of the state of PME and her proposed solutions.    

But I have to say that retired Maj. Gen. Bob Scales, who holds both a Silver Star from Hamburger Hill and a doctorate in history from Duke, kind of stole the show with his scathing review of the state of military education at the war college level.

Some excerpts from Scales, who also is a former commandant of the Army War College:

--These days, "the Army War College is a great place for pre-retirement training."

--"The Army War College fell of the cliff when it was subordinated to a trainer" (that is, to the Army's Training and Doctrine Command, which, he indicated, doesn't understand education).

--The Army should bring together its history offices, its military research entities, and related offshoots, and put them all under the Army War College commandant, in part so that research and teaching can inform each other. Right now, he said, research and education are "ripped apart."

--For officers, "the object of the PME system is to be selected but don't go."

Johnson-Freese, for her part, noted that discussions in war college seminars often consist of the uninformed exchanging their ignorance. 

On the train from Exeter to London the other day I was re-reading retired Lt. Gen. Dave Richard Palmer's Summons of the Trumpet, partly because I decided I didn't really get it the first time around when I read it a couple of years ago. I also picked it up again because it as close as I think anyone has come to writing an operational history of the Vietnam War.

The book is good, but a bit dated in places. I think General Palmer is over-optimistic about the implications of the Ia Drang fight. He also seems credulous about the Gulf of Tonkin incident, especially in his interpretation that Hanoi was foolish to launch such an attack.

That said, overall I think it is the best book I've been able to find for an overview of what actually happened in the war, rather than what people were saying about it.  

This is what Palmer writes about the important role foreign military advisors played in the creation of these United States of America (pp. 27-28). They might be appreciated by anyone trying to advise Afghan forces nowadays:

"There was once a time when the American army needed foreign advisors. . . Having neither a nucleus of professionals nor a backstop of military tradition to draw on, Congress turned with scant hope to Europe for trained officers. They came. Lafayette, Steuben, Kosciusko, Dekalb, Pulaski, Duportail -- just to mention a few of the better known names is to evoke an image of the vitally important role they played in the winning of our War of Independence.

These advisors tackled an awesome task: molding an army from raw material in a backward country in the midst of war. A strange and often inhospitable environment seriously complicated their job, not to mention problems created by the barriers of language and other cultural differences. Then, too, buffeted by puzzling and sometimes petty crosscurrents of political and personal jealousies, . . . the foreigners often suffered acute frustration and actual bitterness. Nonetheless, they persevered.

. . .  Another unchanging reality of advising is the more or less constant cocoon of frustration enveloping the advisor. Adjusting to advising is a greater individual challenge than can be easily imagined by anyone who has not done it.

I think I've mentioned that I can't find a good operational history of the Afghan war so far that covers it from 2001 to the present. (I actually recently sat on the floor of a military library and basically went through everything in its stacks about Afghanistan that I hadn't yet read.)

Here are some of the questions I would like to see answered:

--What was American force posture each year of the war? How and why did it change?

--Likewise, how did strategy change? What was the goal after al Qaeda was more or less pushed in Pakistan in 2001-02?

--Were some of the top American commanders more effective than others? Why?

--We did we have 10 of those top commanders in 10 years? That doesn't make sense to me. 

--What was the effect of the war in Iraq on the conduct of the war in Afghanistan?

--What was the significance of the Pech Valley battles? Were they key or just an interesting sidelight?

--More broadly, what is the history of the fight in the east? How has it gone? What the most significant points in the campaign there?

--Likewise, why did we focus on the Helmand Valley so much? Wouldn't it have been better to focus on Kandahar and then cutting off and isolating Oruzgan and troublesome parts of the Helmand area?

--When did we stop having troops on the ground in Pakistan? (I know we had them back in late 2001.) Speaking of that, why didn't we use them as a blocking force when hundreds of al Qaeda fighters, including Osama bin Laden, were escaping into Pakistan in December 2001?

--Speaking of Pakistan, did it really turn against the American presence in Afghanistan in 2005? Why then? Did its rulers conclude that we were fatally distracted by Iraq, or was it some other reason? How did the Pakistani switch affect the war? Violence began to spike in late 2005, if I recall correctly -- how direct was the connection?

--How does the war in the north fit into this?

--Why has Herat, the biggest city in the west, been so quiet? I am surprised because one would think that tensions between the U.S. and Iran would be reflected at least somewhat in the state of security in western Afghanistan? Is it not because Ismail Khan is such a stud, and has managed to maintain good relations with both the Revolutionary Guard and the CIA? That's quite a feat. 

Anybody got a recommendation on what to read that covers all this? Maybe articles that explain some of it?

By Rebecca Frankel

Best Defense Chief Canine Correspondent

This week U.S. Marine Lance Corporal Jeremy Vanhoose welcomed home, officially, his former partner, MWD Imi -- or as she's otherwise described by Jeremy's mother, "the missing piece to Jeremy's puzzle of recovery."

While on patrol in Sangin Afghanistan last August, Vanhoose and his unit encountered not one but three IEDs. Imi alerted to the danger, but setting off the devices couldn't be helped. In the explosion Vanhoose lost his left foot and sustained "shrapnel wounds to the right leg, back, and head" and was medevaced from the scene. As soon as he was able, Vanhoose was quick to let others know that he didn't blame Imi for what happened saying, "she was onto something and I just took one more step."

Reported stories about this team are so far scarce, but the pair is said to have been a close one. Vanhoose was a steadfast handler who spent long hours training with Imi, a German shepherd, before their deployment to ensure they were as ready as possible. In almost three months of service the team is said to have had approximately two-dozen finds. It is a dedication and commitment that Vanhoose has applied to his recovery.

From what I gather from the personal and emotional account that Ms. Vanhoose gave in January to Silent Rank Sisterhood (a nonprofit organization devoted to offering resources and support to military families), after sustaining his injury Jeremy was told that he would be able to adopt Imi. It turned out to be a promise of support that was more complicated to secure than the family had anticipated. The question of whether or not Imi might have to redeploy surfaced after Jeremy returned to the States in September and the adoption became uncertain. 

Read on

In the dialogue with the people of the small, weak island of Melos, the Athenians explained why the island must submit to the wishes of the city of Athens: "the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must." (P. 352, Landmark edition) Yow. That is (as the headline suggested) perhaps the nastiest line I ever have read. 

The Melians asked to be allowed to remain neutral in the war. Tough luck, said Athens, which then invaded and "put to death all the grown men whom they took, and sold the women and children for slaves," and then re-settled the island with their own colonists.

Such wholesale violence seemed to be about par for the course in the ancient Greek world. Samos is not that big an island, but when one party in a civil war on the island prevailed, it executed 200 of most powerful men from the other party and banished another 400. (P. 493, Landmark edition) Sounds to me like they extirpated the opposition.

Brett McGurk, who I ran into in the Green Zone when he was negotiating the SOFA with the government of Iraq, has been named U.S. ambassador to Iraq. This is good because he knows all the promises Maliki has made over the years, not just to the U.S. but to Kurds and others, and so might be able to better forestall the prime minister's various attempts to re-negotiate all his deals.

No word on whether he had to take an oath renouncing all support for the Bush administration. 

By Col. Gregory Daddis, USA

Best Defense guest respondent

For the past six months, the Vietnam War has been a popular topic among The Best Defense readers. In October 2011, Lewis Sorley identified ten reasons why General William Westmoreland near single-handedly lost the war during his tenure as the MACV commander between 1964 and 1968. In January 2012, retired Lieutenant General John H. Cushman argued that he had solved the knotty problem of pacification as early as 1964, yet the unfortunately timed American escalation in 1965 prevailed over his revelations. More recently, Charles A. Krohn has offered a fascinating traveler's account of a veteran retracing his steps across the 1968 Hue battlefields. Given the inescapable comparisons between our nation's current struggles in Afghanistan, it seems unsurprising that Vietnam has garnered so much interest as of late.

The unfortunate thread interwoven through nearly all of these accounts is the near universal oversimplification of American strategy in Vietnam. Guest columnists, along with many commentators, invariably have applied well-worn clichés like "search-and-destroy," "big unit war," and most notoriously "attrition" to explain Westmoreland's concept of operations for the employment of military force in South Vietnam. At the risk of tilting at windmills, I would like to suggest that such aphorisms are unsuited for a deeper understanding of what irrefutably was a much more intricate war. If we are going to benefit collectively from the American experience in Vietnam, it is time to unhinge ourselves from all too convenient tropes which hinder critical analysis of historical events. This appeal is hardly novel.

In August 1965, roughly three months before the Ia Drang battles of which Mr. Krohn spoke, The New York Times ran a page one story titled "The Undefinable War." Reporting from Saigon, correspondent James Reston argued that the war in Vietnam was "so alien to American experiences" that it defied "precise definition and [was] almost beyond comprehension." Conventional language failed to capture the political, cultural, religious, and regional complexities of a country and a conflict which were unfamiliar to contemporary Americans. The article further underscored the difficulties of accurately portraying the violence then escalating within South Vietnam's borders. As Reston pronounced, "This war needs a new vocabulary."

Nearly five decades later, Reston's largely unheeded admonition reminds us how many historians and veterans have used-and misused-language in their portrayals of the American experience during the Vietnam War. Just as the word "surge" now embodies the entirety of American operations and strategy in Iraq during the Petraeus era, catchphrases like "attrition," "body counts," and "search-and-destroy" have become mainstays within the Vietnam War's historiography. One historian even has described Westmoreland's "strategic equation" as "mobility + firepower = attrition." Strategy could not be made any simpler.

Yet in their employment, these shibboleths have helped distort the historical record. As the MACV commander, Westmoreland never implemented a strategy focused solely on attriting enemy forces, just as he never focused solely on pacifying the countryside. As much as the general's detractors wish him to be a narrow-minded traditionalist intent only on achieving high body-counts, the real Westmoreland simply never viewed the war in such limited terms. Throughout his correspondence with both senior officials in Washington, D.C. and subordinate commanders in South Vietnam, MACV's chief consistently highlighted the problems of a war that could not be won by military force alone. Certainly, attrition was a part of American strategy under Westmoreland, just as it was under his successor Creighton Abrams. How else were American forces supposed to confront the threat of both North Vietnamese regulars and the armed forces of the southern National Liberation Front?

Lost in the selective use of words like "attrition" are the attendant non-military aspects of American strategy in Vietnam. If Westmoreland was so intent on killing the enemy, it is doubtful that one of his first messages to the commander of the incoming 1^st Infantry Division would have spoke of something other than attrition. Less than three weeks after Ia Drang, Westmoreland directed the 1^st Infantry to place emphasis on rural construction that would assist South Vietnamese units in their own population security operations. As the general noted in early December 1965, "an effective rural construction program is essential to the success of our mission." In fact, even before Ia Drang Westmoreland wrote to Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Earle Wheeler that "civic action in the form of food, medical care and other assistance" was a "critical aspect" of the war. These were not hollow words. Examining the operations of the 25^th Infantry Division in Hau Nghia province, for instance, one finds a unit balancing the myriad tasks of both a military and political struggle rather than artlessly floundering about on search-and-destroy missions. Other units, like the 4^th Infantry Division, followed suit.

The perils of simplifying American strategy in Vietnam lie in the potential for misusing history by misreading it. If I may be so bold as to disagree with my kind host, Mr. Ricks misconstrues Clausewitz when he contends that war is simple. In fact, Clausewitz maintained just the opposite and it is worthwhile to read the entirety of Book One, Chapter Seven in On War to understand why the Prussian proposed such an argument. More to the point of Vietnam, if we dismiss Westmoreland's strategy as simply one of misplaced attrition, it becomes all the easier to succumb to the belief that a well-conceived strategy can solve all of our foreign policy problems. It is possible that what failed in Vietnam was not an attrition strategy, but something much more complex.

The ramifications of this hypothesis are worth considering beyond the tropes and clichés of a lost war in Southeast Asia. Talented Americans generals can develop and implement a comprehensive political-military strategy and still lose a war. What does it say about strategy if even good ones aren't enough to win wars?

Gregory A. Daddis is an academy professor at West Point and author of No Sure Victory: Measuring U.S. Army Effectiveness and Progress in the Vietnam War.

Longtime readers know that I think the U.S. military ought to fire generals more often than it does. I think we should reward success and punish failure. I don't think we should be "fair" to generals when the lives of our soldiers and the nation's interests are at stake. I think we should move out people when we think we have someone better ready to move in. I think we should even fire generals for simply having too long a run of "bad luck."

Now, in Afghanistan, we've had a painful run. First, Marines pissing on the bodies of enemy dead -- and being stupid enough to video the action. Then U.S. soldiers putting Korans in the burn pit. And then a soldier running amok and shooting Afghan civilians.

So why am I not calling on General Allen to get the big heave-ho? Basically, I don't see a pattern of poor leadership on his part contributing to the three events. With Abu Ghraib in Iraq, by contrast, there was clearly a pattern of poor leadership by General Sanchez that helped create the conditions at Abu Ghraib. But I don't see that here. And while he has had some bad luck, it has not been long enough by itself to justify jettisoning him.

In addition, he might be just about the best guy to deal with these problems. From what I saw in Iraq, I suspect he may be the most culturally sensitive combat general we have. So, if he retains the confidence of his superiors, both military and civilian, I think he should remain. 

William Shkurti's Soldiering On in a Dying War: The True Story of the Firebase Pace Incidents and the Vietnam Drawdown is one of the more interesting books I've read in awhile.

Essentially, his argument is that while the U.S. Army in Vietnam had troubles in 1970-72, it wasn't nearly as bad as it has been portrayed. He makes his case well, with extremely fine-grained portrayals of units and combat at the time. (At one point, we even get an account done mortar round by mortar round.)

"There was a problem with drugs and fraggings," he concedes. "Motivation did become more difficult as the war wound down. People in the lower ranks were more willing to challenge authority. But what…these analyses overlook is how both officers and enlisted men, regardless of how they felt about the war, struggled but managed to hold it together without much help from anywhere else." 

But. But…the evidence he introduces in defense of the quality of the soldiers of the time frequently is hair-raising:

-- A squad ordered to set up a night ambush along a part of the Cambodian border crawling with both North Vietnamese and South Vietnamese units has six men who have never before been in combat? Yow. That's a recipe for fratricide, or losing the whole squad.

--Another question about leadership: A unit that had refused to go on patrol in an area because its members worried there were unmapped Claymore mines in the area finally is persuaded to go-and finds loads of Claymores. The lieutenant colonel commanding in the area reports around this time that morale is "uniformly high."

--Speaking of which, Shkurti assures the reader that "only 4.5 percent of Army soldiers in Vietnam GIs were hard-core heroin users." Only? You don't need all the soldiers in a unit to be ill-disciplined or stoned for the unit to go rotten. Imagine how one stoned guy, stumbling along, or laughing and jiving, could foul up a combat patrol. Or fall asleep on sentry duty. Let's see: 4.5 percent of a platoon is on heroin. Others are smoking dope. Some are ill-disciplined. Are you going to sleep well?     

Also, it doesn't seem right to me for the author to consider an incident as not a combat refusal if the order in question is subsequently rescinded (which both he and the Army of the time seem to think is just fine). What a great way for a commander to keep his unit record "clean" while letting his soldiers pick and choose their missions.

At times, the book felt to me like someone arguing an airline is a lot safer than it looks because only 10 or 15 percent of its planes crashed last year. Sure, 85 percent did just fine. But that is not what worries me. 

So why do I like the book? Because it made me think, on almost every page. It mounted a clear and consistent argument that made me re-examine the evidence and to re-consider what I think I know (and what I have written in the book I am working on). Also, while I disagree with a lot of the book, I got the sense that his heart is in the right place, and that matters to me. He is struggling to make sense of what happened in that war. So am I. We are all pilgrims on this road, boys.

Bottom line: This might be the best book I've read on the last part of the American involvement of the war (though it has been many years since I've read James McDonough's Platoon Leader, which I will go back and look at again soon).

Americans are unhappy and in a hunker-down mode, says a strategic assessment by a Canadian defense institute that is being rolled out today:

Americans are war-weary, disappointed with what has been achieved at great expense, and feeling exploited by ungrateful allies. Debate is intensifying over how national interests should be defined and the degree to which the security of Americans requires expenditure of lives and treasure in faraway places. The rising mood of disengagement coupled with a fragile economy will make it very difficult for the administration to send large forces anywhere in 2012 unless security interests are openly threatened or humanitarian need is overwhelming.

By Lieutenant General John H. Cushman, US Army, Retired

Best Defense department of Vietnam War studies

For of all sad words of tongue or pen,

The saddest are these: "It might have been!"

      John Greenleaf Whittier, Maud Muller

This is a sequel to my Reflections on Vietnam 1963-64: Trying to talk to Gen. Westmoreland about COIN, posted January 6, 2011. It is taken from an oral history now in progress.

Returning home from Vietnam in April 1964 I believed that I understood that situation. I had brought back copies of the flip charts that my deputy senior advisor Bob Montague had built to brief visitors to the 21st ARVN Infantry Division headquarters at Bac Lieu and to our Advisory Team 51. They described in detail the oil spot pacification scheme that the division with our help had developed and employed.

While waiting to attend the National War College, I used those charts to brief people at OSD and the CIA. I went up to West Point and briefed the cadets. I briefed at Forts Benning and Bragg.

I briefed LTG Harold K. Johnson, the Army DCSOPS. For about an hour I told him our story. At the end he said, "You know what we have to do to solve this problem in Vietnam? We have to build a command post down in the basement of the Pentagon where we can plot every platoon and every company and plot out the Vietnam situation in detail." I said, "General, even at the 21st Division we didn't keep that kind of detail. I don't see how you can keep that kind of detail in the Pentagon." He said, "That's what McNamara requires."

This was May 1964. If General Johnson had been perceptive he would have said to me. "You have just described the strategy for success in Vietnam's countryside." He would have bought the concept right then. He would have had me briefing everywhere. He did not. Eighteen months later he sponsored a massive study called PROVN which said essentially the same thing that I had been saying.^[1]

He missed a huge opportunity. We had the essentials of PROVN in April 1964.

When I got to the National War College that August with ideas on Vietnam, the Vietnamese government was in upheaval. There had been a series of coups. Things were deteriorating in the countryside. Battalions of the ARVN were being ambushed and beat up by main force Viet Cong. It got so bad there was talk of committing U.S. combat forces. It was election season. Barry Goldwater was President Johnson's opponent. That fall LBJ would not mention the possibility of sending combat forces into Vietnam.

As a student my message was, "The countryside is no place for American troops. They will only tear it up. They won't be able to tell friend from foe." I believed that pacification was the answer and that with U.S. advice and assistance Vietnamese troops could deal with the Viet Cong.

In my view there were two problems in Vietnam; one, the instability in the countryside, and two, the reinforcements being received by the Viet Cong from outside South Vietnam. I believed that I had found the solution to pacifying the countryside. I began to study the problem of infiltration.

Some supplies were coming through Cambodia. A small amount came in over the beaches. But most reinforcements and materiel were coming down the Ho Chi Minh trail in Laos and entering through the South Vietnam's northern provinces. I thought that the best use of American resources would be to block the Ho Chi Minh trail.

Each student was required to write an individual research paper. I began to consider historical examples of counterinsurgency. An office at the Pentagon was keeping a library of them. I compiled a list of recent cases in which established governments had coped successfully with an insurgency (Burma, Greece, Hungary, Korea, Malaya, the Philippines and Tibet) and a list of those in which the insurgents were successful (China, Cuba, Indochina, Indonesia, Israel, and Laos, and a draw, Algeria). There were seven of each type.

For each case I wrote a one-page paper describing the government's internal measures compared to the effort being made by the opposition, grading it on a scale of one to 10. For each case, on the same one to 10 scale, I determined the degree to which the insurgents did not receive outside support.

When I plotted all fourteen insurgencies on graph paper the successful counter-insurgencies were grouped in the upper right, with a "7" or more in both dimensions. I plotted that as a "zone of success." I then gave my assessment of the situation in South Vietnam: it was down in the lower left at about a "3". I said, "You're not going to have a successful counter-insurgency until you solve both problems. The zone of success is up here and the situation in Vietnam is down here."

I derived this general principle that I put in my paper:

In order for a counterinsurgency to succeed, there must be both an internal effort substantially superior to that of the insurgents, and an effective restriction of (or an absence of} external support to the insurgents. Neither action alone is sufficient to success. Both are necessary.

That simple operations analysis with its profound truth was an appendix to my individual research paper, External Support of the Viet Cong: An Analysis and a Proposal. Originally classified TOP SECRET, it has been downgraded to unclassified and can be found in the special collections of the library of the National Defense University.

I had become convinced that a satisfactory conclusion in Vietnam was not possible if the Ho Chi Minh trail were allowed to exist. I thought that there had to be some way to use the great military capability of the United States to solve this problem. I thought air mobility could supply part of the answer. I had been following the evolution of air mobility in the Army for years and especially since the approval of the recommendations of the Howze Board in 1963 as I left for Vietnam.

While at the National War College I kept abreast of the formation of the 11th Air Assault Division at Fort Benning. Employment of that division was a key element of my paper.  My plan was to use the 173 Airborne Brigade (Okinawa), the 25th Infantry Division (Hawaii) and the 11th Air Assault Division to seize blocking positions on the Ho Chi Minh trail.

I thought that the force to seize and establish the positions on the Ho Chi Minh trail must be a coalition force, including Vietnamese and other nations' troops. As a cover plan, a Southeast Asia Treaty Organization exercise in Thailand would provide a reason for moving forces into the area. The assembled force would then launch the trail cutting operation.

Coalition partners would justify their action by citing North Vietnam's operations in Laos since 1961 to seize the trail's territory as flagrant violations of the 1954 Geneva Accords^[2]. I offered a U.S. political-military concept aimed at convincing China that it should not intervene in this defensive blocking action.

I thought that with engineer effort positions could be built and fields of fire cleared to establish positions that could be held and from which operations could be conducted to deny enemy use of routes. I made the best terrain analysis that I could based on the available maps. I determined that my planned multinational, multidivision joint force could do the job.

I also described how U.S. forces available at end-1964 were substantially greater than those available at end-1960 during the Laos crisis. In 1965 we had, for example: 1,119 UH-1 and 71 CH-47 helicopters on hand compared to only a handful in 1961. We had 139 Army CV-2B Caribou aircraft and 682 Air Force C-130 cargo aircraft, compared to zero Caribou and 264 C-130s in 1961's inventory. Secretary McNamara had in four years more than doubled the Air Force and Navy's capabilities in tactical air. So I thought that adequate force was available.

After the 1964 election someone at OSD called me wanting to know more about my idea of cutting the Ho Chi Minh trail and using the 11th Air Assault Division. He said, "Tell me more about this division." I sensed that they were thinking of deploying the division and using it in the countryside. I said, "Don't use this outfit that way. It's not the proper mission. This unit should be assigned to seize and secure terrain interdicting the infiltration routes."

My notion was overtaken by events. In April 1965 a battalion of  U.S. marines landed at Da Nang. In June LBJ gave General William Westmoreland the authority to commit American troops to ground combat operations in Vietnam. That summer the 11th Air Assault Division, renamed the 1st Air Cavalry Division, was committed into Vietnam's countryside, as was the 1st Brigade of the 101st Airborne Division. Search and destroy began. Half a million U.S. troops followed.

Years later, in the 1980s and 1990s, I presented this trail-blocking idea at various symposia as having had merit as a possible solution. I said that it should have been undertaken as a feasibility study. Many commented that it would never have worked, for various reasons. I'm not sure, but someone should have made a proper feasibility study. If done right, there would have been no Ho Chi Minh highway and we could have had a success in South Vietnam.

In 1984 General Bruce Palmer, who was the Vice Chief of Staff under General Westmoreland, came out with a book The 25-Year War: America's Military Role in Vietnam in which he said we should have done something like this early in the war. I took some comfort from the fact that he had the same notion.

General Cushman commanded the 101^st Airborne Division, the Army Combined Arms Center, and the ROK/U.S. field army defending Korea's Western Sector. He served three tours in Vietnam.

^[1]Program for the Pacification and Long-Term Development of South Vietnam (PROVN) March, 1966:

"PROVN examines the situation in South Vietnam within the context of history and in broad perspective. Specific problems of pacification and long-term development are identified, and specific actions are proposed to alleviate them...

"PROVN submits that the United States and the Republic of Vietnam must accept the principle that success will be the sum of innumerable, small and integrated localized efforts and not the outcome of any short-duration, single master stroke."

^[2] Text: "Final declaration, dated July 21, 1954, of the Geneva Conference on the problem of restoring peace in Indochina, in which the representatives of Cambodia, the Democratic Republic of Viet-Nam, France, Laos, the People's Republic of China, the State of Viet-Nam, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, the United Kingdom and the United States of America took part...

"In their relations with Cambodia, Laos, and Viet-Nam, each member of the Geneva Conference undertakes to respect the sovereignty, the independence, the unity, and the territorial integrity of the above-mentioned states, and to refrain from any interference in their internal affairs."

By Joseph Sarkisian

Best Defense department of politico-military affairs

Lately a lot of journalists have been pointing out the neo-conservative return from the grave manifested in Mitt Romney's foreign policy team. The list is a who's who of advisors under the most recent Bush administration -- 15 of the 22 of them -- including six former members of the "Project for a New American Century." If you recall, this was the same group of policy "experts" that advocated the war in Iraq with confidential reasons to bust OPEC by privatizing Iraq's oil infrastructure, removing the Saudis' ability to set prices, and flooring the price of crude.

Clearly this never came to pass and Iraq has remained a member of OPEC. However, although the neo-conservatives lost in their war with the State Department and oil industry to privatize Iraq, a campaign against Iran would give them another shot.

While conflict with Iran may partly be attributed to its nuclear program, it isn't the whole story. Just like with the Baathist regime, the powers that were and may be again are unhappy that an authoritarian regime with a hatred for Israel to boot is having so much say in the price America pays for a barrel of oil. In 2003, the surface motivation was about Iraqi WMD, and today the surface motivation is about Iranian WMD. This unsubstantiated fear proved to be the catalyst the OPEC-busters needed to move on Iraq. That same catalyst could be used to move on Iran.

Iran is much more easily vilified simply because it actually has a nuclear program, unlike Iraq did. Therefore public support for a campaign to make sure Iran never develops a nuclear weapon is winning against non-intervention. But the neo-conservative constituency isn't appeased with the setting back of Iran's nuclear program. In fact, some of them advocate for full-scale regime change.

The neo-cons moan over the uselessness of sanctions, and on this point they may be correct, but not for the right reasons. The issue as they state it is Iran having adequate time to put together a nuclear device. This may or may not be the case, but it certainly is the case that regardless of the Ayatollah's plans for his fissile material, the rhetoric keeps oil prices high, as potential kinetic conflict over the issue becomes more of a possibility.

A back and forth approach to ceding some ground on the nuclear issue keeps the price of oil up, which is good strategy for Iran. However, if prices get too high, the regime may effectively commit suicide if a conservative White House loses its temper. Therefore, the current price of oil is close to ideal since it keeps Iran in the sweet spot of dividing the world over whether or not to intervene. Although sanctions are appearing to hurt the Iranian economy, higher oil prices will benefit them if they can strike a deal with China and India to buy what the EU leaves sitting on the tanker.  They'll have six months to figure it out.

None of this bodes well for neo-cons who understand that this back and forth will keep oil expensive for the foreseeable future. Therefore, a plea for regime change in Iran would make sense in their eyes, just like it did in 2003. And why not? Public opinion seems to favor at least intervention at this point, Israel is more than happy to help out, and Iran is easier to sell than Iraq ever was. It wouldn't be hard to put Mitt Romney on a plan to privatize Iran's oil infrastructure given the opportunity; he is a businessman after all.

But as we've seen, neo-conservatives aren't much interested in the consequences of action; only the consequences of inaction by others that they believe are too "soft" on Iran, which is pretty much everyone but themselves. They fail to realize that Iran is not Iraq and that it can defend itself. Regime change doesn't happen from the air. Considerable ground forces would be necessary for such a campaign, and Iran has a trained insurgency at the ready that would make Iraq look like Grenada. This would undoubtedly drive the price of oil skyward for an extended period of time, just like it did in 2003.

One entity may be powerful enough to oppose such grand plans (and sadly it isn't the American voters): Big Oil. They shut down the plan to privatize Iraq in 2003 and may be able to do the same thing in Iran if there were an attempt to do so. No OPEC means more competition in the market place, which means lower prices.  Translate that to lower profit for oil companies and one can see the connection. Keeping oil in the ground makes more sense to an oilman than taking it out when there is excess supply.

It may be rhetoric in an election year as some have posited, but Israel's involvement and the alignment of many on Romney's foreign policy team with AIPAC and Israeli interests points to a long lasting commitment to taking on Iran in one way or another, whether it is good for American interests or not. Only time will tell, but it is very hard to believe that given the chance, the neo-conservatives wouldn't try and bust OPEC to achieve their goal of reclaiming the almighty American empire one more time.

Joseph Sarkisian is a graduate student in international relations at the University of Massachusetts at Boston, where he is also a teaching assistant for political science. The focus of his research is U.S.-Iranian relations.