David Gergen on the midterms

Posted By Aditya Tiwathia Thursday, November 9, 2006 - 10:55 AM Share

The midterm results were nothing short of a minor earthquake here in Washington, with a new party in power and new leadership at the Pentagon. To decipher just what it all means for the war in Iraq, the race in 2008, and our allies - and enemies - abroad, FP turned to David Gergen, a professor at Harvard's Kennedy School and advisor to four presidents, to get an insider's take. Here's a excerpt:

FP: After 9/11, many people said the “Vietnam Syndrome” was dead—that Americans were now willing to accept large numbers of casualties in prolonged interventions overseas. Does this election prove that wrong?

DG: What we are seeing in Iraq is not a replay of the Vietnam Syndrome. Rather, it’s a sense that we are engaged in a conflict without an obvious end in sight and [that] things are getting worse. The Vietnam Syndrome argued that we should not commit force again unless our vital interests are clearly at stake. But in Iraq, we did commit our troops to conflict without a clear national interest at stake. It was a war of discretion and yet, the American people supported it. So, I don’t think the Vietnam Syndrome is what our problem is here. Rather, it is that the war has been so incompetently managed that the people have lost faith in the capacity of those running it.

EXPLORE:BUSH ADMINISTRATION, DECISION '08, ELECTIONS, IRAN, IRAQ, NORTH KOREA

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