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

From Ted Kennedy to the cover of Newsweek, we are being warned that Iraq has turned into a quagmire, George W. Bush's Vietnam. Learning from history is well and good, but such talk illustrates the dangers of learning from the wrong history. To understand what is going on in Iraq today, Americans need to go back to 1920, not 1970. And they need to get over the American inhibition about learning from non-American history.

President Bush, too, seems to miss the point. "We're not an imperial power," he insisted in his press conference on Tuesday. Trouble is, what he is trying to do in Iraq ?- and what is going wrong ?- look uncannily familiar to anyone who knows some British imperial history. Iraq had the distinction of being one of our last and shortest-lived colonies. This isn't 'Nam II ?- it's a rerun of the British experience of compromised colonization. When Mr. Bush met Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain on Friday, the uninvited guest at the press conference ?- which touched not only on Iraq but also on Palestine, Cyprus and even Northern Ireland ?- was the ghost of empire past.

First, let's dispense with Vietnam. In South Vietnam, the United States was propping up an existing government, whereas in Iraq it has attempted outright "regime change," just as Britain did at the end of World War I by driving the Ottoman Turks out of the country. "Our armies do not come into your cities and lands as conquerors or enemies, but as liberators," declared Gen. Frederick Stanley Maude ?- a line that could equally well have come from Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld this time last year. By the summer of 1920, however, the self-styled liberators faced a full-blown revolt.

A revolt against colonial rule is not the same as a war. Vietnam was a war. Although the American presence grew gradually, it reached a peak of nearly half a million troops by the end of the 1960's; altogether 3.4 million service personnel served in the Southeast Asian theater. By comparison, there are just 134,000 American troops in Iraq today ?- almost as many men as the British had in Iraq in 1920. Then as now, the enemy consisted of undisciplined militias. There were no regular army forces helping them the way the North Vietnamese supported the Vietcong.

What lessons can Americans learn from the revolt of 1920? The first is that this crisis was almost inevitable. The anti-British revolt began in May, six months after a referendum ?- in practice, a round of consultation with tribal leaders ?- on the country's future and just after the announcement that Iraq would become a League of Nations "mandate" under British trusteeship rather than continue under colonial rule. In other words, neither consultation with Iraqis nor the promise of internationalization sufficed to avert an uprising ?- a fact that should give pause to those, like Senator John Kerry, who push for a handover to the United Nations.

Then as now, the insurrection had religious origins and leaders, but it soon transcended the country's ancient ethnic and sectarian divisions. The first anti-British demonstrations were in the mosques of Baghdad. But the violence quickly spread to the Shiite holy city of Karbala, where British rule was denounced by Ayatollah Muhammad Taqi al-Shirazi ?- perhaps the historical counterpart of today's Shiite firebrand, Moktada al-Sadr. The revolt stretched as far north as the Kurdish city of Kirkuk and as far south as Samawah, where British forces were trapped (and where Japanese troops, facing a hostage crisis, were holed up last week).

Then, as now, the rebels systematically sought to disrupt the occupiers' communications ?- then by attacking railways and telegraph lines, today by ambushing convoys. British troops and civilians were besieged, just as hostages are being held today. Then as now, much of the violence was more symbolic than strategically significant ?- British bodies were mutilated, much as American bodies were at Falluja. By August of 1920 the situation was so desperate that the general in charge appealed to London not only for reinforcements but also for chemical weapons (mustard gas bombs or shells), though these turned out to be unavailable.

And this brings us to the second lesson the United States needs to learn from the British experience. Putting this rebellion down will require severity. In 1920, the British eventually ended the rebellion through a combination of aerial bombardment and punitive village-burning expeditions. It was not pretty. Even Winston Churchill, then the minister responsible for the air force, was shocked by the actions of some trigger-happy pilots and vengeful ground troops. And despite their overwhelming technological superiority, British forces still suffered more than 2,000 dead and wounded.

Is the United States willing or able to strike back with comparable ruthlessness? Unlikely ?- if last week's gambit of unconditional cease-fires is any indication. Washington seems intent on reining in the Marines and pinning all hope on the handover of power scheduled ?- apparently irrevocably ?- for June 30.

This could prove a grave error. For the third lesson of 1920 is that only by quelling disorder firmly and immediately will America be able to achieve its objective of an orderly handover of sovereignty. After all, a similar handover had always been implicit in the mandate system, but only after the revolt had been crushed did the British hasten to install the Hashemite prince Faisal as king.

In fact, this was imperial sleight of hand ?- Iraq did not become formally independent until 1932, and British troops remained there until 1955. Such an outcome is, of course, precisely what Washington should be aiming for today ?- American troops will have to keep order well after the nominal turnover of power, and they'll need the support of a friendly yet effective Iraqi government. Right now, this outcome seems far from likely. What legitimacy will any Iraqi government have if the current unrest continues?

There is much, then, to learn from the events of 1920. Yet I'm pessimistic that any senior military commander in Iraq today knows much about it. Late last year, a top American commander in Europe assured me that United States forces would soon be reinforced by Turkish troops; he seemed puzzled when I pointed out that this was unlikely to play well in Baghdad, where there is little nostalgia for the days of Ottoman rule.

Maybe, just maybe, some younger Americans are realizing that the United States has lessons to learn from something other than its own supposedly exceptional history. The best discussion of the 1920 revolt that I have come across this year was in a paper presented at a Harvard University conference by Daniel Barnard, an Army officer who is about to begin teaching at West Point. Tellingly, Mr. Barnard pointed out that the British at first tried to place disproportionate blame for their troubles on outside agitators. Phantom Bolsheviks then; Al Qaeda interlopers today.

But for the most part we get only facile references to Vietnam. People seem to forget how long it took ?- and how many casualties had to pile up ?- before public support for that war began to erode in any significant way. When approval fell below 40 percent for the first time in 1968, the total American body count was already past the 20,000 mark. By comparison, a year ago 85 percent of Americans thought the situation in Iraq was going well; that figure is now down to 35 percent and half of Americans want some or all troops withdrawn ?- though fewer than 700 Americans have died. These polls are chilling. A quick withdrawal would doom Iraq to civil war or theocracy ?- probably both, in that order.

The lessons of empire are not the kind of lessons Americans like to learn. It's more comforting to go on denying that America is in the empire business. But the time has come to get real. Iraqis themselves will be the biggest losers if the United States cuts and runs. Fear of the wrong quagmire could consign them to a terrible hell.

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.