Trump Should Take the Late Sen. George Aiken’s Advice

 

Many decades ago, during the long and devastating Vietnam War, Senator George Aiken (R-VT) was said to have urged President Nixon to “declare victory and get out.”

 

President Trump and Secretary of Defense Hegseth seem to be telling us, on the one hand, we are destroying the enemy and, on the other, this may take a while.  In fact, we may even need boots on the ground.  Iran, like North Vietnam, seems unlikely to accept terms of “unconditional surrender” or even begin to cease their attacks.

 

Iran’s ability to close the Strait of Hormuz, blow up tankers and oil refineries, and destroy other strategic targets, despite being bombarded by U.S. and Israeli ammunitions, is not a good sign. We may be flattening the country but we are, at the same time, upending an international economic system and undermining our security interests (Ukraine, Taiwan, relations with our allies, relations with Russia and China, etc., etc.).

 

The costs are also rising fast.  The costs of the war ($11.3 billion in 6 days), the costs to consumers at the gas pump, the costs from the stock market dive and the cost to Trump’s rising disapproval rating.  The politics of this are not good, just as they weren’t for Presidents Johnson and Nixon during the Vietnam War.  Republicans know that an extended and unsuccessful war will be on them in November and could result in serious mid-term election losses.

 

Senator George Aiken was a respected Republican Senator for thirty-four years and a previous Governor of Vermont.  He had taken on Senator Joe McCarthy in the early 1950s denouncing his tactics and warning about those who sought “victory through the selfish political exploitation of fear, bigotry, ignorance and intolerance.”  Sound familiar?

 

He also was deeply concerned about Vietnam and finally came to the conclusion that the U.S. should “declare unilaterally that we have ‘won’” and then stop the war.  He said that “It may be a far-fetched proposal, but nothing else has worked.”

 

The adage during Vietnam – “We need to destroy the village in order to save it” – must not be the defining principle of the current war.

 

This war, like Vietnam and Iraq and others, is misguided and dangerous in a precarious world.  Locked at the hip with Israel is not the place to be with their never-ending conflict in Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon, Iran, Hamas, Hezbollah, you name it. We should be pulling them back from military aggression and prioritizing peace and negotiation.  Instead, we have inserted ourselves into ongoing wars in the Middle East.  This is a longer diplomatic and strategic discussion but suffice it to say that Trump and Hegseth and this administration should quickly adopt the Aiken “Rule” — declare victory and get out!

 

 

 

 

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/11/world/middleeast/iran-war-costs-pentagon.html?smid=url-share

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Aiken