Henry Kissinger: Military Victory Not Possible in Iraq

Henry Kissinger, "who helped engineer the U.S. withdrawal from Vietnam" broke with the Bush Administration on Sunday and said, "the problems in Iraq are more complex than that conflict, and military victory is no longer possible."

In an AP News exclusive, Kissinger noted that "A 'military victory' in the sense of total control over the whole territory, imposed on the entire population, is not possible."

The faceless, ubiquitous nature of Iraq's insurgency, as well as the religious divide between Shiite and Sunni rivals, makes negotiating peace more complex, he said.

"It is a more complicated problem," Kissinger said. "The Vietnam War involved states, and you could negotiate with leaders who controlled a defined area."

But Kissinger, an architect of the Vietnam War who has also advised Bush on Iraq, warned that a sudden pullout of U.S. troops or loss of influence could unleash chaos.

"I am basically sympathetic to President Bush," he said. "I am partly sympathetic to it because I have seen comparable situations."

During his tenure under President Richard Nixon, first as national security adviser and then as secretary of state, Kissinger faced a similar challenge in formulating policy for a Vietnam War that was increasingly unpopular at home.

He oversaw a gradual U.S. pullout from Vietnam through a strategy also planned for Iraq, where U.S. troops are training their Iraqi counterparts to take fuller control of security. He also negotiated directly with North Vietnamese leaders on ending the conflict.

Kissinger said in the interview, echoing what John Kerry has been saying for a very long time that, "the best way forward is to reconcile the differences between Iraq's warring sects with help from other countries." He also "applauded efforts to host an international conference bringing together the permanent members of the U.N. Security Council and Iraq's neighbors, "including bringing Iran to the table, as Kerry has suggested.

"That is the sort of framework out of which it is conceivable that an agreement should emerge," Kissinger said. "One needs to be prepared to negotiate with adversaries."

Saying that the "fighting in Iraq is likely to continue for years," Kissinger also said, "that America's national interest requires an end to partisan bickering at home over war policy."

"The role of America in the world cannot be defined by our internal partisan quarrels," he said. "All the leaders, both Republican and Democratic, have to remember that it will go on for several more years and find some basis for common action."

It's doubtful that the Bush Administration will heed Kissinger's comments, but they would be wise to do so. It's painfully obvious that they are on the wrong course and with more and more prominent Republican coming forward and breaking with the Bush Adminstration on Iraq, we can only hope that the Bush Administration will begin to listen.