IRAQ: Vietnam replayed

(EXCERPT) BY DOUG LORIMER

“It is not Vietnam, and there is no way you can make the comparison”,
Lieutenant-General Ricardo Sanchez, the top US general in Iraq,
snapped at a reporter during a November 11 Pentagon press briefing in
Baghdad. The reporter had asked Sanchez whether the war in Iraq
resembled the early days of the US war in Vietnam.

While the White House and Pentagon brass desperately want to avoid the
US people drawing any such comparisons, with US troops dying every day
at the hands of guerrillas who clearly have popular backing, more and
more Americans are coming to realise that the war in Iraq is a replay
of the Vietnam War.

In a November 16 article on the parallels between the two wars, Troy
Moon, a reporter for the Florida-based Pensacola News Journal,
observed that on the surface, the differences between the two wars
“are vast: jungle warfare versus urban fighting, the amount of time
invested in each conflict, the number of casualties. In Vietnam,
58,000 Americans died in a nine-year period. In Iraq, more than 400 US
troops — and growing — have died since the invasion of Iraq eight
months ago...

“Others say that the parallels cannot be ignored. `In Vietnam, we were
basically fighting guerrilla warfare', said retired Air Force Colonel
Pat Ham, who spent two tours of duty in Vietnam and who, as a foreign
military sales officer, has had extensive dealings with countries
throughout the Middle East. `And that's exactly what's going on now.
They'd fire mortar rounds into the base and hit headquarters or
barracks. It wasn't strategic military victories on their part. It was
a constant thing you lived with, and it`s very similar to the
situation in Iraq now'.”

“I think it's a very d...

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Associate Librarian
The American War Library
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