While working on a story yesterday about Sen. Barack Obama’s speech in Washington, D.C. outlining his anti-terror programs, I had a brief but illuminating conversation with Tony Lake, who served as President Bill Clinton’s National Security Advisor from 1993-1997.
Perhaps tellingly, or perhaps not, Lake has become a foreign policy advisor for Obama — the first time, he told me, he’s become involved in a political campaign advisor since helping Clinton in 1992.
Lake, a long-time foreign policy academic who began serving in the State Department in Vietnam before that war became a quagmire in the early 1960s, was kind enough to indulge me while on vacation on Long Island. There were two reasons why Lake hooked up with Obama who is fighting against the tide of conventional political wise-guy wisdom that he’s a foreign policy novice (not unlike Bill Clinton in 1992). Lake said that since meeting Obama in 2004 before he was elected to the U.S. Senate, he has become impressed with Obama’s intelligence, practicality and decisiveness. The second reason is more metaphysical: “We simply have to show a new face to the world, one offering new hope. The act of electing him would send a message to the world.”
Lake is under no illusions that after the past six-plus years of the Bush gang mucking it up almost beyond recovery on the foreign policy front. But he saw first-hand the country muck it tragically in Vietnam and end the horror.
While the post-9/11 environment is not as world-threatening as the joys mutually assured suicide by nuclear destruction (I am old enough to have taken part in ‘duck and cover’ drills in case the big one or two fell in our neighborhood), Lake said the 21st Century will require a new set of skills.
“This is gonna be harder. We could resolve problems with negotiations,” said Lake who was a vital part of the peace talks ending the Bosnian War in 1995. “Who do we bargain with now?” He asked referring to the stateless but lethal al Qeada terrorist brigades.
When I asked off-handidly about the Clinton-Obama spat about the relative values of experience and new ideas, Lake was, not suprisingly, diplomatic. “It depends on the experience,” he said. He believes that Obama has “really good judgment...he brings both good judgment and a fresh look at things.”
This conversation took place on a day when GOP candidate Mitt Romney waved his pom poms and urged the American people to buckle up and show more support for the war effort — and other war supporters were jumping for joy by a recent NY Times OpEd (by a pair of so-called liberal war critics who upon even cursory inspection have shown themselves for a long time to be pom pom wavers) saying that by golly with a little luck, more surging and the blessings of the gods, we just might win in Iraq.
Lake had written a thoughtful piece about his personal connection to Iraq (via a former Georgetown student and ROTC grad who served a tour) in the Boston Globe in January (see here). Here’s a condensed version for contemplation:
The former student “asked why some who supported the war were arguing that we must persist because we could not afford another “defeated army “ of the kind we had seen after Vietnam. Here is what I told him:
“Their argument is wrong in fact and unintentionally unfair to our troops. Our Army was never defeated in Vietnam. They were not driven out of Vietnam. They won their battles. The fault lay not in their performance, but in their civilian leaders in Washington. They were given an unattainable goal. “Success” in Vietnam could only be achieved if we could leave behind a Vietnamese government that could survive on its own -- a political goal. And even after the longest war in our history, it was unattainable. Lacking enough support by its people, the government in Saigon became more and more dependent on the United States -- further limiting its political support among a highly nationalistic Vietnamese people.
“Similarly, our troops are not being defeated in Iraq. Yes, despite fighting a war that has lasted longer than American participation in World War II, we are further than ever from success. Our soldiers performed brilliantly in defeating Saddam Hussein. But their subsequent mission has not been accomplished because they were given a mission impossible. As in Vietnam, our civilian leadership failed to understand the internal divisions and nationalism of a foreign society. You cannot fix another country’s politics and resolve its internal fractures primarily through military means, coupled with floundering political, economic, and social programs that create as much dependency, corruption, and resentment as progress.”
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