Fox News Sunday<\/em>\u00a0that raises questions about his understanding of history and its pertinence for foreign policy. In the course of talking about the war in Iraq and the \u201clessons learned\u201d from that conflict and its \u201cerrors,\u201d Romney responded to a question about an incident from his father\u2019s brief 1967-68 run for the Republican nomination. In August 1967, George Romney told a Detroit radio-television reporter, \u201cWell, you know when I came back from Vietnam [in November 1965], I just had the greatest brainwashing that anybody can get when you go over to Vietnam. Not only by the Generals, but also by the diplomatic corps over there . . . . And, as a result, I have changed my mind . . . in that particular. I no longer believe that it was necessary for us to get involved in South Vietnam to stop Communist aggression.\u201d<\/p>\nLittle remembered today, Romney\u2019s remark, particularly the careless use of the term \u201cbrainwashing,\u201d ended his run for the nomination. The other governors and the journalists who had been on the 1965 trip disavowed Romney\u2019s insulting characterization of the military and diplomatic personnel who had accompanied the governors. Romney was accused of flip-flopping on his earlier comments that the war was \u201cmorally right and necessary\u201d and that withdrawal was \u201cunthinkable.\u201d One journalist, noting the amount of time between the trip and Romney\u2019s about-face, wondered why it took so long for Romney to get his brain back from the laundry. The media pounced on Romney\u2019s clumsy use of the \u201cbrainwashing\u201d metaphor: the\u00a0New York Times<\/em>headline read, \u201cRomney Asserts He Underwent \u2018Brainwashing\u2019 On Vietnam Trip.\u201d In February 1968, faced with polls showing voters in New Hampshire preferring Richard Nixon by a six-to-one margin, Romney dropped out of the race.<\/p>\nWhen Chris Wallace raised the issue in his\u00a0Fox News Sunday<\/em>\u00a0interview, Romney responded, \u201cYears later when my dad was proven to be right in terms of the errors in Vietnam, my wife asked him, \u2018You know, dad, how do you feel about the fact that you\u2019re finally being vindicated in what you said?\u2019 And he said, \u2018You know, I never look back. I only look forward.\u2019 He\u2019s quite a guy.\u201d<\/p>\nUnfortunately, Chris Wallace didn\u2019t ask an important follow-up questions. When Romney said his father \u201cwas proven to be right in terms of errors in Vietnam,\u201d what exactly did he mean? Was one of the \u201cerrors,\u201d as George Romney had explicitly said, getting involved in Vietnam in the first place \u201cto stop Communist aggression\u201d? And what events exactly does Mitt Romney believe \u201cproved\u201d his father was right? These are critical questions for understanding Romney\u2019s grasp of history and its lessons.<\/p>\n
What that history now shows us is that resisting Communist aggression in Vietnam was a \u201cnecessary war,\u201d as Michael Lind calls it, a critical Cold-War duel that enforced the doctrine of containment of Soviet aggression. Thus if Romney thinks that subsequent events \u201cproved\u201d that intervention wrong, he\u2019s on the wrong side of history. Indeed, there were \u201cerrors\u201d made under General Westmoreland in the conduct of the war. But after the Tet Offensive of 1968 ended in disaster for the North Vietnamese and the Vietcong, and after General Creighton Abrams replaced Westmoreland and instituted effective counter-insurgency and Vietnamization programs, the tide turned. By 1972, the war was as good as won, as ambassador to South Vietnam Ellsworth Bunker said. American troops were coming home, the communist guerrillas in the South had been neutralized, the countryside was pacified, political and economic reforms were taking hold, and an improved South Vietnamese army was in a position to defend the country as long as the South Vietnamese received aid and air support from the US to counterbalance the resources provided the North by China and the Soviet Union, which had made the Army of North Vietnam the fifth largest in the world. But a Democratic controlled Congress in June 1973 passed the Case-Church amendment to the Defense Appropriation bill, which prohibited any further American military involvement in Vietnam after August 1973. Further legislation cut funding and planned to end all assistance in 1976. Left helpless before the combined might of North Vietnam, China, and the Soviet Union, South Vietnam was quickly overrun in 1975. The Congressional abandonment of South Vietnam was the fatal error of the war that squandered that victory.<\/p>\n
What subsequent events \u201cproved\u201d right, then, was not, as George Romney and apparently his son believe, that the intervention was a mistake, but that a failure of political nerve can waste a hard-won military victory and render meaningless the nearly 60 thousand dead and 150 thousand wounded who had earned that victory. Indeed, the following expansion of communism not just in Southeast Asia \u2014 including the genocidal murder of two million Cambodians by communist fanatics \u2014 but also in Latin America and Africa, proved not the error of intervention, but the error of failing to follow through on the part of politicians motivated by ideology or political self-interest.<\/p>\n
Mitt Romney may have been displaying filial loyalty, or he may even not know what his father had actually said. Considering that in his Fox News interview Romney had spoken of the errors committed in the Iraq war, while still voicing support for it, he may have thought that his father was making a similar criticism. Either way, Romney needs to make clear whether or not he endorses the narrative of Vietnam that makes our intervention there a misguided instance of neo-colonial aggression. The answer to that question is critical for our understanding of Romney\u2019s foreign policy philosophy.<\/p>\n
\n
\u00a92011 Bruce S. Thornton<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
by Bruce S. Thornton FrontPage Magazine Mitt Romney recently said\u00a0something\u00a0on\u00a0Fox News Sunday\u00a0that raises questions about his understanding of history and its pertinence for foreign policy. In the course of talking about the war in Iraq and the \u201clessons learned\u201d from that conflict and its \u201cerrors,\u201d Romney responded to a question about an incident from his […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[22,339],"tags":[177,1044,32,447,1032,1070,1030],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p466Sb-l4","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":418,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-clear-alternatives-in-the-presidential-debate\/","url_meta":{"origin":1306,"position":0},"title":"The Clear Alternatives in the Presidential Debate","author":"victorhanson","date":"October 6, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"by Bruce Thornton FrontPage Magazine Forget all the pre-debate handicapping and advice about what Mitt Romney needed to do or what Barack Obama had to avoid. Last night\u2019s debate clarified the stark choice facing American voters on November 6. On the one hand, we heard a candidate who endorses limited\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Bruce S. Thornton"","block_context":{"text":"Bruce S. Thornton","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/our-contributors\/bruce-s-thornton\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":602,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-medias-racial-prison\/","url_meta":{"origin":1306,"position":1},"title":"The Media’s Racial Prison","author":"victorhanson","date":"July 31, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"by Bruce Thornton Frontpage Magazine Two incidents last week suggest once more that our confused, hypocritical, and politicized notions of race and relations will play a huge role in the presidential election. In the first, Virginia state senator L. Louise Lucas, part of Obama\u2019s \u201cTruth Team\u201d campaigning for the president\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Bruce S. Thornton"","block_context":{"text":"Bruce S. Thornton","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/our-contributors\/bruce-s-thornton\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":769,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-obama-romney-doggy-wars\/","url_meta":{"origin":1306,"position":2},"title":"The Obama-Romney Doggy Wars","author":"victorhanson","date":"May 20, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson National Review Online Last week the\u00a0Washington Post\u00a0ran a piece on presumptive Republican nominee Mitt Romney\u2019s high-school years, in which he supposedly was cruel to a shy, perhaps gay fellow student. The piece,\u00a0mirabile dictu, appeared in the middle of the Biden-Obama reversal on gay marriage. Errors were\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Election 2012"","block_context":{"text":"Election 2012","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/obama-administration\/election-2012\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":818,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/when-administrations-implode\/","url_meta":{"origin":1306,"position":3},"title":"When Administrations Implode","author":"victorhanson","date":"April 23, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson Tribune Media Services Administration meltdowns are hardly novel. In almost every presidency there comes a moment when sheer chaos, whether self-induced or the result of an outside crisis, takes hold. Vietnam had effectively destroyed Lyndon Johnson by 1967. Watergate unraveled the Richard Nixon administration, as the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Punditry"","block_context":{"text":"Punditry","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/opinion\/punditry\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":467,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/obama-the-hare-romney-the-tortoise\/","url_meta":{"origin":1306,"position":4},"title":"Obama the Hare, Romney the Tortoise","author":"victorhanson","date":"September 10, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson Tribune Media Services The 2012 race has turned into one of Aesop's classic fables. 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