Vietnam? Why the analogy doesn't hold water.

The analogy can hold all the ocean's water.

Parallels to Vietnam, besides the mounting death toll, can be found in the conflict's duration, and the government's recurring attempt to gain public support without fully informing the public, i.e., "lying to facilitate a war."

In the 1960s, President Lyndon Johnson exaggerated the threat that justified a military escalation in Vietnam, and the ensuing "credibility gap" ultimately cost him his job.

Four decades on, Bush is experiencing a widening credibility gap between the White House's marketing of the war and the known facts (WMD that never existed and the failed effort to link Saddam Hussien to Al Qaida.)

After Viet Nam, the Pentagon vowed never to go to war again "without the informed consent of the American public."

The parallels are striking.

Other than both being wars on foriegn soil, there is no comparison.

The basic premise here is wront. It is best summed up in this final paragraph.

As the Vietnamese were not our enemy, the Iraqis are not our enemy.

The insurgents represent the "terrorists" in Iraq among the Iraqis were are trying to liberate. The Viet Cong in Vietnam represented the "communists" among the Vietnamese we were trying to liberate.

If we get kicked out of Iraq there will be some Iraqis who will undoubtedly be some Iraqis who are sad to see us leave.

The Vietnam analogy is not perfect, but there are many striking similarities. Consider the following facts on the ground in Iraq that are very similar to Vietnam.

- The troops are confronted with an enemy that looks the same as the people they are there to protect. The enemy can attack and then blend into a civilian public.

- A primary front is a battle for the hearts and minds of the people. Each military attack creates angry civilians.

- The troops are being accused of commiting atrocities.

- The US complains a "Ho Chi Min" trail has opened between Iraq and neighboring Iran and Syria.

- The US is claiming that everything is going well while it is raising the number of troops in the country. This is in spite of a raising death toll.

- The anti-war movement is being blamed for the problems the military is having.

While the anology is not perfect, there are many similarities that worry this American.

You can find similarities between the Earth and Mars too, but that doesn't make them the same. The left wants to use vietnam as an example because it was a failed war. That's it.

McGentrix:

And contrary to what FOX and AM-Radio say. I've yet to see evidence of success.

Not to mention the further conflicts our actions have fueled by providing fuel for terrorists. Contrary to what your Shepherd says!

Oh yeah, I forgot that one in my growing list of similarities.

Incidently, as a physicist I must respond to this scientific analogy.

The similarities between the Earth and Mars are significant and important. That is the reason we are there. We use what we know about the Earth to inform us about Mars. What we are discovering about Mars will help us to understand more about the Earth.

They are not the same, but the similarities are real. Paying attention to them will lead to a deeper understanding.

Thanks for the excellent analogy!

I expect the Iraqis will speak of this as "The American War," as the Vietnamese call the war in Vietnam "The American War."

WASHINGTON -- The first George Bush once said he thought the Gulf War would cure America of the Vietnam syndrome. He was wrong. There is no cure for the Vietnam syndrome. It will only go away when the baby-boom generation does, dying off like the Israelites in the desert, allowing a new generation, cleansed of the memories and the guilt, to look at the world clearly once again.

It was inevitable that Iraq would be compared to Vietnam. Indeed, the current comparisons are hardly new. During our astonishingly fast dash to Baghdad, taking the capital within 21 days, the chorus of naysayers was already calling Iraq a quagmire on Day 8! It was not Vietnam then. It is not Vietnam now.

First, rather than inherit a failed (French) imperialism, we liberated the country from a deeply reviled tyrant. Yes, pockets such as Fallujah, which prospered under the tyrant, do not like the fact that those days are over. And they are resisting. But they represent a fraction of a fraction (only a sixth of Iraqis are Sunni Arabs) of the population.

The Shiites, 65 percent of Iraq, are another story. They know we liberated them, but they are also eager to inherit the throne. They are not very enthusiastic about the draft constitution which would limit their power. They chafe at the occupation, but most, in particular their more revered religious leaders, know that if we were to leave, they would fall under the sway of either the Saddamites, foreign Sunni (al Qaeda) terrorists, or the runt Shiite usurper, Moqtada Sadr.

None of these are very appealing prospects, which is why the Shiite establishment has been negotiating on our behalf with the Sadr rebels. And why the members of the Iraqi Governing Council have been negotiating on our behalf with the holdouts in Fallujah.

This is good. We do have a crisis but we also have serious communal leaders working in parallel with us. And these leaders have far more legitimacy than Sadr's grandiloquent Mahdi army or the jihadists of Fallujah.

Iraq is Vietnam not on the ground, but in our heads. The troubles of the last few weeks were immediately interpreted as a national uprising, Iraq's Tet Offensive, and created a momentary panic. The panic overlooked two facts: First, Tet was infinitely larger and deadlier in effect and in scale. And second, Tet was a devastating military defeat for the Viet Cong. They never recovered. Unfortunately, neither did we, psychologically. Walter Cronkite, speaking for the establishment, declared the war lost. Once said, it was.

The other major difference between Vietnam and Iraq is the social terrain. In Vietnam, we confronted a decades-old, centralized nationalist (communist) movement. In Iraq, no such thing exists. Iraq is highly factionalized along lines of ethnicity and religion.

Until now, we have treated this as a problem. Our goal has been to build a united, pluralistic, democratic Iraq in which the factions negotiate their differences the way we do in the West.

It is a noble goal. It would be a great achievement for the Middle East. But it may be a bridge too far. That may happen in the future, when Iraq has had time to develop the habits of democracy and rebuild civil society, razed to the ground by Saddam.

But until then, expecting Iraqis to fight with us on behalf of a new abstract Iraq may be unrealistic. Some Iraqi police and militia did fight with us in the last few weeks. But many did not. That is not hard to understand. There is no de Gaulle. There is no organizing anti-Saddam resistance myth. There is as yet no legitimate Iraqi leadership to fight and die for.

What there is to fight and die for is tribe and faith. Which is why we should lower our ambitions and see Iraqi factionalization as a useful tool. Try to effect, within the agreed interim constitution, a transfer of power to the more responsible elements of the Shiite majority, the moderates who see Sadr as the Iranian agent and fascistic thug that he is.

This is no time for despair. We must put down the two rebellions -- Fallujah's and Sadr's -- to demonstrate our seriousness, then transfer power as quickly as we can to those who will inherit it anyway, the Shiite majority with its long history of religious quietism and wariness of Iran. And antagonism toward their former Sunni oppressors. If the Sunnis continue to resist and carry on a civil war, it will then be up to the Shiites to fight it, not for Americans to do it on their behalf.

Hardly the best of all possible worlds. But it is a world we could live with.

Link

The first Gulf war was the cure for the Vietnam syndrome. We went in to Iraq the first with a complete plan, achievable goals and an exit strategy. The mission was well defined and well executed. Even those of us who were morally opposed to the first Gulf war recognized that it was well done.

The planning of the first Gulf war is the way to avoid the quagmire that we saw in Vietnam and now see in Iraq.

This article is also flawed because it takes a distinctly American viewpoint. The real battle is being fought in the hearts and minds of Iraqis. Fighting the battle with American ideals and myths is hopeless.

We can argue all we want about whether America is a lberator or an Imperial power. But what we think is not important.

The fact is there is an overarching point of view that is prevelent in Iraq and the whole Middle East that says the the US is an Imperial power. We viewpoint is supported not only by US actions in Iraq, but also our action toward the Palestinians and the rest of the Middle East.

People in the region do feel there is a "nationalistic movement" in the Middle East.

The great error of US policy is our insistence that the Iraqi's should see things our way.

Well, more than one year ago, the Bush administration claimed that Iraq was a democracy in waiting. And Vietnam ...

We aren't singing the "Ballad of the Green Barrets" yet, but Iraq and Vietnam show certainly some significant and important similarities, like Earth and Mars.

They also show a lot of more important differences.

Iraq has a small population of religious zealots fighting for dominance of a population that doesn't support them, but live in fear of them.

There is no major power backing up the zealots with arms and ammo.

The death count is miniscule in comparison.

The Last Iraqi Insurgency

Vietnam and Iraq, there is one major similarity, both are gorilla wars. In most wars of the 20th century there have been front lines. WW I, WW II, Korea, Gulf War (part 1), there were defined lines, us and them. In Vietnam and now in Iraq, there are no lines; the enemies do not wear a uniform. There will be the death of civilians, and there will be combatants killed, and clamed as civilians there will be troops who will think they are approaching friendly, and get killed for there mistake, and there friends will be too quick on the trigger next time.
But if we pull out now, what will happen? What happened the last time we helped a country throw off a government we did not like, and felt was a threat, and when they won, we left too?

Death tolls dont even come close http://www.rjsmith.com/kia_tbl.html If anyone feels that Iraqi casuaulties will reach 53,000 when we have already completed the initial objective and i cant se the war going on for another 1 or 2 years.

As for duration i seriously hope that was a joke. Though I guess you could say they were similar in that the initial reasons of war were wrong.