Iraq isn't Vietnam, Henry

As congress debates the war in Iraq, it's becoming clear that many lawmakers want to bring the troops home while avoiding the likely consequences -- a ruinous civil war and a calamitous victory for Iran and Al Qaeda. This has led to much pining for some kind of negotiated solution -- what the Iraq Study Group called a "new diplomatic offensive" -- that might allow us a graceful exit.

Enter Henry Kissinger, the octogenarian "wise man" who is an advisor to President Bush. While rightly stressing that a "precipitate withdrawal" of U.S. forces would result in a "geopolitical calamity," he suggested in a recent syndicated column that "a sustainable political end to the conflict" can be achieved not through military action but through "wise and determined American diplomacy" that engages everyone from internal Iraqi players to Iran and Indonesia.

He didn't mention it in the column, but there is little doubt that Kissinger had in mind his own actions in negotiating the 1973 Paris peace accords that ended direct U.S. military involvement in the Vietnam War. Indeed, some of his previous essays -- including one that ran in this paper in May -- have been explicit in citing his own experience as a model to learn from.

How seriously should we take him? Is it really possible that a super-skilled secretary of State -- someone like, umm, Henry Kissinger -- could deliver "peace with honor" today? It didn't work the last time around. Why should it work now?

Only in Kissinger's own telling was his Vietnam diplomacy a great triumph. As he described it in The Times, "a breakthrough occurred in 1972" because of the defeat of North Vietnam's Easter offensive and the U.S. mining of Haiphong's harbor -- and because of his own efforts to cut a deal with North Vietnam's sponsors. "When the U.S. mined North Vietnam's harbors, Hanoi found itself isolated because, as a result of the opening to China in 1971 and the summit in 1972, Beijing and the Soviet Union stood aside."

The result, Kissinger claims, was that North Vietnamese negotiator Le Duc Tho had to accept America's terms: "an unconditional cease-fire and release of prisoners; continuation of the existing South Vietnamese government; continued U.S. economic and military help for it; no further infiltration of North Vietnamese forces; withdrawal of the remaining U.S. forces; and withdrawal of North Vietnamese forces from Laos and Cambodia."