Pierre Atlas, a professor at Marian College has an interesting essay on Iraq and Vietnam. While he notes that Iraq is not like Vietnam, he also points out that there are several things that the US needs to apply from the experience in Vietnam to the current situation in Iraq.
The Vietnam War became unwinnable for several reasons. The basic assumptions leading to American intervention were faulty. We were fighting an enemy that had more legitimacy in parts of South Vietnam than the corrupt regime we were defending. Political leaders in Washington micro-managed strategy and tactics, often ignoring the advice of experienced people on the ground.
The Vietnam War became unwinnable for several The gap between the reality in the jungle and official assessments from Saigon and Washington strained credulity. Finally, the media and the majority of the Americans turned against the war.
Prof. Atlas makes some good points. I disagree on the media element, I think the real story of Iraq is that things on the ground are often substantially better than are reported by the often skewed media. Actions like sending Rich Galen to Iraq to aid in getting the real story out is helpful, but more can always be done. Despite the many differences between Iraq and Vietnam, the media has already painted Iraq as a “quagmire” just as they had the war before and the situation in Afghanistan many times. The Administration must simply learn to contend with the fact that the media is practically acting as cheerleaders for the enemy.
I also agree with Prof. Atlas that getting more and more Iraqi control of their own country is crucial. The coalition must begin to build the legitimacy of the Iraqi government. That means that the Iraqi have to be able to rely more on them and less on us for basic services and humanitarian relief. This may take some time, but the US has to relinquish some control while still maintaining a presence.
Both Atlas and Fareed Zakaria do agree on one thing: the lesson of Vietnam that applies most directly to Iraq is the lesson that leaving the Iraqi people too soon would be an unmitigated disaster.
I always thought the lesson of Vietnam was that the US military cannot effectively operate as an occupying force, and need a tangible enemy to be effective (or, as Rush has said, the Army should only be used to break things and kill people).
And, just a thought, but wasn’t our continued presence in Vietnam what delayed the eventual and inevitable fall of the South Vietnamese government that we installed? So, don’t the millions of dead Vietnamese actually stand to represent the NEED to not stay in occupational situations for too long, as ultimately occupations serve to increase suffering? (Note: no, that is not me advocating the total withdrawl of forces from Iraq, it’s me advocating for doing whatever it takes to stabilize Iraq quickly and with as few casualties as possible, which will require that the US not be the body that installs a new Iraqi government, as a US-installed gov’t will certainly not be a stabilizing force–see S.Vietnam, Haiti and Afghanistan for examples)
Ask someone who escape from Vietnam after 1975 or a victim of the Khmer Rouge about what they think of that idea.
One thing is guaranteed, if we pull out before the job is done Iraq will fall into anarchy, and al-Qaeda will have been delivered a victory that virtually guarantees that America will be attacked more ruthlessly than ever before.
Furthemore, the US has acted as a successful occupying force far more often than it has failed – as in the aftermath of the Spanish American war and World War II.
The aftermath of the Spanish-American war is that we now AGAIN have troops sent to the Phillipines to battle guerillas, and we STILL haven’t left Germany. Plus, there was a need for a hegemonic stationing of troops in Germany, so we could be a deterrent to the USSR (in the event they attacked, our troops would have been slaughtered there, and it would have created such an outcry at home that the US would have launched a full-scale war). We already had a troop deployment in the Middle East; in fact, we had several. Now we have another, only this time, unlike Germany, it’s in a country that has a heavily-armed insurgent movement that is proving disturbingly good at creating unrest.
Oh, and now we’re sending the Marines to Iraq. Remember when the Marine Corps had to go to Berlin to keep the citizens from killing American occupation personnel? Me neither.
Meanwhile, if you’re interested in success-fail ratios, how did we do in the 20th Century concerning US military intervention and creating stable democracies out of it? Last I checked, we didn’t do so hot in any conflict since, well, WWII.
And how quickly the morality card comes into play, Jay!
“Ask someone who escape from Vietnam after 1975 or a victim of the Khmer Rouge about what they think of that idea.”
Asking a victim of the Khmer Rouge, which was Cambodian and not the target of our campaign, or a victim of the orth vietnamese army, would be difficult, Jay, as they died. They died horrible deaths at the hands of ruthless men, and TEN YEARS of heavy American involvement couldn’t stop it, which was my initial point. What it would have taken to stop these atrocities would have been just as atrocious and even more costly.
You’re trying to salvage the Vietnam War forty years after it was lost, and thirty years after we conceded the fact.