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A quiet telephone call with George W. Bush
By Arthur Schlesinger
Published: September 28 2005 19:41 | Last updated: September 28 2005 19:41
 
The operator said: "The president of the United States is calling." Then, a
vibrant Texas voice broke in: "Hey, Artie, how goes it?" This confirmed the
caller was indeed George W.?Bush, whom I had never met but whose
predilection for nicknames - no one in 87 years has ever called me "Artie" -
is well known. "I am holding conversations about the Iraq war," the
president continued. "And I would like to know what you think I should be
doing."

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"I would seize an appropriate moment to declare victory - and cut and run,
Mr President," I said.
Mr Bush replied: "My people tell me that cut and run would be a disaster, a
calamity. If we were to pull out now and dump the mess on the Iraqis, what
foreign government could rely on the future word of the United States? It
would wreck our credibility. We must above all stay the course."
"Cut and run has a bad reputation," I said, "and the last time the US cut
and ran in a major way was 30 years ago in Vietnam. The stakes were
ostensibly high. The collapse of south Vietnam, according to President
Eisenhower's domino theory, would mean communist control of south-east Asia.
'Our defeat and humiliation in south Vietnam,' President Nixon further said,
'without question would promote recklessness in councils of those great
­powers who have not abandoned their goals of world conquest.'
"Nevertheless," I added, "Nixon cut and ran from Vietnam. The spectacle of
our Vietnamese friends clinging to American helicopters underlined American
defeat and humiliation. But the crisis in our credibility did not
materialise. The reaction of most foreigners was to see America, after a
long aberration, coming to its senses. Cut and run got us out of an
unwinnable war in which our vital interests were not involved. Cut and run
liberated US armed forces for containment and deterrence elsewhere. Our
withdrawal from Vietnam actually increased our credibility - as de Gaulle's
retreat from Algeria increased French credibility.
"And the aftermath refuted the domino theory that got us into the Vietnam
war - just as the aftermath refutes the weapons of mass destruction theory
that got us into the Iraq war. Mr President, please contemplate our
withdrawal from Vietnam as a historic precedent.
"Moreover," I said, "there were distinct obligations we owed to Vietnamese
friends - obligations that do not exist in Iraq. We intervened in the
­Vietnamese civil war in support of one side. This meant that, when we
­withdrew, we abandoned our Vietnamese comrades. It was a moral betrayal for
which our friends paid a heavy price. We had to make a cruel choice between
persisting in a pointless war or sacrificing our friends. International
geopolitics is a hard game. But despite the death and ruin we brought to
­Vietnam - far more than we have brought to Iraq - Americans today are very
popular in communist Vietnam.
"The future of Iraq is uncertain. Cut and run might lead to anarchy or to
Islamic domination; but it might precipitate Sunni-Shia-Kurd collaboration
in containing the insurgency and governing the country. Maybe the shock of
US withdrawal will stimulate the rise of Iraqi responsibility."
"As long as I'm the president," Mr Bush responded, "we will stay, we will
fight, and we will win the war on terror." "But Mr President," I said,
"surely so long as the American military occupation lasts, it serves as a
recruiting incentive for terrorists from all over the Middle East. As Chuck
Hagel, a Vietnam veteran and senator from your own party, says: 'The longer
we stay, the more problems we're going to have.' That is the fatal
contradiction in the policy of staying the course. Another fatal
contradiction is if the Iraq army is to be made strong enough to destroy the
insurgency, it needs heavy American weapons; but, given the murky future, no
one can tell when such weapons might be turned against the occupying army
itself."
"We owe them something," the president said referring to the soldiers killed
in the Iraq war. "We will finish the task they gave their lives for."
As Stephen Schlesinger, director of the World Policy Institute, notes: "By
this logic, we should have continued fighting in Vietnam because we 'owed'
it to the over 50,000 Americans killed in that conflict?.?.?.?The issue in
Iraq today is assessing where our true national interests lie."
"Mr President," I said, "our true national interests lie in ending this
senseless war."
And then I woke up.
The writer is the author, most recently, of War and the American Presidency
(W. W. Norton & Company)


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