Lessons From History on How to End the Iraq War

Nov. 10, 2006 — -- When it comes to changing the guard at the Pentagon, is history repeating itself? I hope so but I'm not at all sure.

In 1967, the announcement came that Robert McNamara was stepping down as secretary of defense.

He had been a chief architect of the U.S. escalation in Vietnam, an early advocate of the use of force there, and, like Donald Rumsfeld 40 years later, a man sure of his own superiority who brooked no interference

By late 1967, McNamara had grown disenchanted with the policy he had helped forge and had come to the conclusion that the "game was not worth the candle."

He proposed to Lyndon Johnson a troop freeze, a halt to the bombing of North Vietnam, and a phased withdrawal of U.S. forces.

Johnson fired him.

Johnson chose Clark Clifford to replace McNamara. Clifford had come to prominence as a young man by helping plan the strategy that won the 1948 election for Harry Truman.

He rose rapidly as a top strategist and sage within the Democratic Party, and later as a high-powered lawyer in private practice, became the man to see if you wanted something done in Washington.

As the new secretary of defense, Clifford gathered together a group of similarly impressive individuals and pushed the president toward accepting the very recommendations that McNamara had made.

It was Clifford more than any one individual who turned Johnson around on the war. Johnson agreed to a bombing pause and agreed to open negotiations in Paris with the North Vietnamese.

So now, Rumsfeld has been fired.

There is a difference, of course. Unlike McNamara, Rumsfeld was not fired because he had turned against this war but because he didn't prosecute it properly and beside, given this week's elections, someone had to be served up to an angry public.

But Rumsfeld is not the important comparison here.

The important question is whether Robert Gates will prove to be another Clark Clifford and help turn this president away from a disastrous policy. The augurs are mixed.

On the one hand, Gates is clearly an intelligent person with a record of accomplishment that brought him to the directorship of the CIA in the administration of this president's father.

He knows how to navigate in Washington, and he knows something about the Middle East and the peoples and religion of the region.