Indeed, a majority of Democrats in Congress voted not to give President Bush the authority to go to war against Saddam Hussein in 1991. Major cracks in the liberal isolationist consensus appeared only a few years ago during the war in Bosnia. Many Vietnam-era doves argued that the United States would lose its credibility as the world's only democratic superpower if it failed to stop Serbia, a nationalist Communist regime that sought to enlarge its territory by aiding guerrillas in a civil war that killed and expelled ethnic minorities. Conservatives would also benefit from rethinking the lessons of the Vietnam War. Unfortunately, all too many conservatives have accepted the myth that the civilian advisers in the Johnson Administration, like Mr. McNamara, prevented the United States military from winning an early and decisive victory, either by invading Laos, Cambodia or North Vietnam, or by more intensely bombing .
Bad history leads to bad policy.
In reality, the debacle in Vietnam resulted not from foolish micro-management by President Johnson or advisers like Mr. McNamara, but from the strategy devised by General William C. Westmoreland, head of the United States MilitaryAssistance Command, Vietnam. Hanoi launched an insurgency campaign, based in South Vietnam. A classic counterinsurgency strategy might have minimized the number of American casualties. Small units could have been deployed to protect the population centers that were the source of Vietcong supplies and recruits. In time, Hanoi would have had to abandon its campaign to unify Vietnam under Communist rule or switch from guerrilla war to conventional war, in which the United States had an overwhelming advantage.