Q&A with former Sen. Max Cleland

Max Cleland served as a U.S. senator (D-Ga.) from 1997-2003. He served in the Army in Vietnam, where he was seriously wounded. He later was administrator of the U.S. Veterans Administration and served as Georgia secretary of state, and now is secretary of the American Battle Monuments Commission.

Q: What is your sense of how the legacy of the Vietnam War affected later presidents when they decided whether or not to send troops into combat?

A: Your thesis or theme was about the haunting legacy of the Vietnam War. I think there was a haunting legacy of the Vietnam War, up until Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfeld…[Earlier,] [Colin] Powell and General Schwarzkopf learned in Vietnam, and incorporated into the Persian Gulf War, concepts of overwhelming force, get it over quickly and come home—the Powell Doctrine. They learned that lesson in Vietnam, and so a positive lesson of the Vietnam War was that those lessons were learned: You have to have a military objective, get it over quickly, and come home. It goes back to a legacy of World War I. [Army General] Fox Conner [was quoted by Defense Secretary Robert Gates]. He said never fight unless you have to, never fight alone, never fight for long. That was all violated in Vietnam. The echo became, “No More Vietnams.”

It was codified in the Powell Doctrine. I visited with Powell when he was JCS Chairman. He said that a man told him, You don’t sound very much like a hawk. He said, I don’t get paid to be a hawk, but to win and win quickly. That was a positive legacy of the Vietnam War, perfected by former young officers of Vietnam: Powell and Schwarzkopf. … George H.W. Bush had been to war, had been shot down—he understood the costs of war, and [wanted] a limited war.

[With George W. Bush], all hell breaks loose—a president who never went to war and a vice president with five deferments. You put all that together, and you end up with the Afghan War that was started but never really done right, and then the concept of taking out Saddam Hussein this time, weapons of mass destruction that did not exist…meanwhile, Afghanistan was on the back burner. Bush let [Osama bin Laden] escape through the Tora Bora mountains. The open-ended conflict goes on through the entire Bush years. The economy goes to hell in a handbasket.

President Obama winds up the war in Iraq, but Afghanistan becomes another Vietnam. At least President Obama determines the exit strategy: This far, but no farther. Beyond 2014, what happens in Afghanistan is up to the people of Afghanistan. …The real haunting legacy is that there was no learning of the Vietnam legacy by the Bush administration. Obama’s surge, throwing good troops after a bad situation--that was Vietnam all over again. [But the] second part, this far and no further, set a date and we’re done, that is the good legacy of the Vietnam War.  The sad part is that the Iraq war under Bush did not learn [those] lessons. Obama’s first two years were more like Lyndon Johnson, then [there was the need to get out].

Q: How have veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars been treated back at home, compared with the treatment of Vietnam veterans?

A: After this country was attacked [on September 11, 2001] on our own soil, not distant, the whole rationale for being in the military became totally patriotic, something of honor and praise. So that is different than the attitude of the Vietnam War [during the draft]. Students who didn’t believe in the war, who didn’t want to go to war, started saying, Hell, no, we won’t go. There were demonstrations while the war was going on, back here in the United States, the whole country was aflame. Nixon was elected and continues the war for four more years. [Eventually] Nixon couldn’t argue for the draft any more.

…[Today] less than one percent of the American people [are in the military], and there’s a lauding of that defense by the 99 percent. It’s commendable on its face, but underneath those of us who did not go to Iraq are like cheerleaders in the stands at an NFL football game—we’re still cheering for our team, but we’re not interested in our son being out there on the playing field. We don’t want our child drafted to participate. That suffering goes on in that little bitty family of that little bitty community.

Fifty percent of the wounded are from [communities of] less than 2,000 people, from small-town America. The draft is by hunger, not a real draft. The pain occurs in small-town America, impoverished America, black and Latino America—[that’s who is] fighting our war. Above that are the cream of the crop, West Pointers, the upper class in the military whose father and grandfather were in the military. So there’s no real democratization of the American military. There’s a disconnect: You go fight, team, but we’re going to go to the mall.

…Ever since [9/11], people in the military have people saying, Thank you for your service. As a Vietnam vet, that never happened to me for the first 25 or 30 years. We could have used that. Not only that, but it was pejorative. [Vietnam veterans] didn’t want anyone to know they were Vietnam veterans. … [Meanwhile,] where are the young people [today]? They don’t have to worry about the draft. There’s no Occupy movement to bring the troops home, but Occupy Wall Street. It’s America’s silent generation in terms of the military. …This is not going to wind up well. It’s much like the Soviet troops in Afghanistan. We’re going to have our crew of Iraq and Afghanistan veterans back here, needing decades of counseling from PTSD, or a powerful loss of meaning for that service. I know how that feels. It’s one thing to struggle with your injuries, but to ask why, and there is no answer to that, is the greatest struggle of all.

Q: What is your sense of how things are going in the Senate these days?

A: …There is no respect for people out there running for office at all. Not only do they have their opponent, but outside money funded by billionaires, is destroying American politics. Fewer and fewer people are going to want to put up with millions spent against them. The Swiftboating of America continues. It’s out of control and it’s destroying our country.

Q: You are now the secretary of the American Battle Monuments Commission. What does that job involve, and what are some of the issues the commission is facing now?

A: If all these people spending all this money could just spend a few hours at Normandy, they could get a little different perspective. I run 24 American cemeteries abroad. There are 125,000 bodies of Americans who never came home, and 95,000 names of the missing. They are all overseas, in 14 nations. Every American citizen ought to go by and see Normandy. The Secretary of Defense [visited] our cemetery in North Africa [recently]. These Americans have paid the full price of devotion for this country. It means a hell of a lot more than spending billions on negative ads.

Interview with Deborah Kalb, co-author of Haunting Legacy.

Max Cleland