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Jules Crittenden reflects on a question asked by John Kerry decades ago:
The last man to die as a result of the decision to abandon Vietnam may not be dead yet.Gotta put that one in the "wish I'd said that" category - along with the rest of his post, and the Herald column that follows.
Meanwhile, over at the Washington Post, Walter Pincus offers congressional Democrats a Vietnam-era strategy for losing the war:
Now that they'll soon be back in control, congressional Democrats are looking to play a role in shaping U.S. policy on the Iraq war. If they want a precedent to follow, there's a good one -- from the Vietnam War era.Much more at both links, and I can't add anything that tops Jules' quote above.I witnessed this precedent up close nearly four decades ago, when I worked on Capitol Hill for Sen. J. William Fulbright (D-Ark.), then chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. In 1969, Congress's ruling Democrats began to offer amendments to funding bills -- often approved with Republican votes -- to limit President Richard M. Nixon's military alternatives in Southeast Asia. Although the Hatfield-McGovern amendment to cut off money for the war was defeated in August 1970, it accelerated Nixon's steps toward Vietnamization of the fighting. And three years later, with withdrawal of U.S. forces having begun, Congress voted to cut off all funding for "offensive" military action, sealing the deal.
