Iraq Already Looks Ominously Like Vietnam, says historian

Published on Monday, November 10, 2003 by The Age (Australia)
Iraq Already Looks Ominously Like Vietnam
by Gabriel Kolko

There are great cultural, political and physical differences between
Vietnam and Iraq that cannot be minimized, and the geopolitical
situation is entirely different. But the US has ignored many of the
lessons of the traumatic Vietnam experience and is repeating many of
the errors that produced defeat.

In both places, successive American administrations slighted the
advice of their most knowledgeable intelligence experts. In Vietnam
they told Washington's decision-makers not to tread where France had
failed and to endorse the 1955 Geneva Accords provisos on
reunification.

They also warned against underestimating the communists' numbers,
motivation, or their independent relationship to China and the Soviet
Union. But America's leaders have time and again believed what they
wanted, not what their intelligence told them.

The Pentagon in the 1960s had an uncritical faith in its overwhelming
firepower, its modern equipment, mobility, and mastery of the skies.
It still does, and Donald Rumsfeld believes the military has the
technology to "shock and awe" all adversaries. But war in Vietnam, as
in Iraq, was highly decentralized and the number of troops required
only increased, even as the firepower became greater. When they
reached half-a-million Americans in Vietnam, the public turned against
the president and defeated his party.

Wars are ultimately won politically or not at all. Leaders in
Washington thought this interpretation of events in Vietnam was
bizarre, and they ignored their experts whenever they frequently
reminded them of the limits of military power.

In both Vietnam and Iraq the public was mobilized on the basis of
cynical falsehoods that ultimately backfired, causing a "credibility
gap".

The Tonkin Gulf crisis of August 1964 was manufactured, as the CIA's
leading analyst later admitted in his memoir, because "the
administration was seeking a pretext for a major escalation".
Countless lies were told during the Vietnam War but eventually many of
the men who counted most were themselves unable to separate truth from
fiction.

Many US leaders really believed that if the communists won in Vietnam,
the "dominoes" would fall and all South-East Asia would fall under
Chinese and Soviet domination. The Iraq War was justified because
Saddam was alleged to have weapons of mass destruction and ties with
al-Qaeda, but no evidence for either allegation has been found.

There are 130,000 American troops in Iraq now - twice the number Bush
predicted would remain by this month - but, as in Vietnam, their
morale is already low and sinking. Bush's poll ratings have fallen
dramatically. He needs more soldiers in Iraq desperately and foreign
nations will not provide them.

In Vietnam, president Nixon tried to "Vietnamize" the land war and
transfer the burdens of soldiering to Nguyen Van Thieu's huge army.
But it was demoralized and organized to maintain Thieu in power, not
win the victory that had eluded American forces.

"Iraqization" of the military force required to put down dissidents
will not accomplish what has eluded the Americans, and in both Vietnam
and Iraq the US underestimated the length of time it would have to
remain and cultivated illusions about the strength of its friends.

The Iraqi army was disbanded but now is being partially reconstituted
by utilizing Saddam's officers and enlisted men. As in Vietnam, where
the Buddhists opposed the Catholics who comprised the leaders America
endorsed, Iraq is a divided nation regionally and religiously, and
Washington has the unenviable choice between the risks of disorder,
which its own lack of troops make likely, and civil war if it arms
Iraqis.

Despite plenty of expert opinion to warn it, the Bush Administration
has scant perception of the complexity of the political problems it
confronts in Iraq. Afghanistan is a reminder of how military success
depends ultimately on politics, and how things go wrong.

Rumsfeld's admission in his confidential memo of October 16 that "we
lack the metrics to know if we are winning or losing the global war on
terror" was an indication that key members of the Bush Administration
are far less confident of what they are doing than they were early in
2003.

But as in Vietnam, when defense secretary Robert McNamara ceased to
believe that victory was inevitable, it is too late to reverse course
and now the credibility of America's military power is at stake.

Eventually, domestic politics takes precedence over everything else.
It did in Vietnam and it will in Iraq. By 1968, the polls were turning
against the Democrats and the Tet offensive in February caught
President Lyndon Johnson by surprise because he and his generals
refused to believe the CIA's estimates that there were really 600,000
rather than 300,000 people in the communist forces. Nixon won because
he promised a war-weary public he would bring peace with honor.

Bush declared on October 28 that "we're not leaving" Iraq soon, but
his party and political advisers are likely to have the last word as
US casualties mount and his poll ratings continue to decline.

Vietnam proved that the American public has limited patience. That is
still true.

The real lessons of Vietnam have yet to be learned.

Gabriel Kolko is professor emeritus of history at York University in
Canada and the author of Anatomy of a War, a history of the Vietnam
War.


I would add that not the whole Gulf of Tonkin affair was
confectionary; only the second "attack" - one that was no real attack
at all. [The first attack *did* actually happen, but in and of itself,
it wouldn't have gotten congress off its duff to sign onto war. We
'needed' the second attack for that.]

But what was truly concocted about Tonkin was the myth that the poor
old USA was merely an innocent bystander when it was - WITHOUT
PROVOCATION - viciously attacked by the N. Vietnamese in the Gulf of
Tonkin. That's what brought every god-fearing patriot's blood to a
boil.

Turns out, we'd been spoiling for a fight, trying to provoke the North
into giving us the excuse we needed. When the damn jerks wouldn't
cooperate, we pushed and pushed and pushed till we got what we so
dearly dreamed of.

Admiral James Stockdale tells the interesting tale that after the
second 'attack' in the Gulf of T. he reported that, as a pilot flying
over the scene with a 'front row seat,' he was sure no attack
whatsoever happened. And that's what he told 'higher authority.'

But as with the fickle Weapons of Mass Deception, that's not what the
higher authority/military wanted to hear. So the military went to
other, more maleable/useful military witnesses, and crowed to the
world about the vile ruthlessness of the second, imaginary, attack.

Now perhaps Stockdale, who served, what? 6 years in a N. Vietnamese
brig, is a Commie and maybe we can't take a word he says seriously.
But, for me, his story has the ring of truth, especially in view of
the similarity one sees in the military being willing to see only what
it wants to see, believing only what it wants to believe today in
Iraq.

We told the world to screw off, that we'd heroically gird our loins
and save the world imminent annihilation from Saddam's WMD's all by
ourselves, thank you very much. But there *was no* imminent threat,
the sanctions having done a very good job over the years in
eliminating it. And so the world responded to our predicament
predictably, saying, O.K., Bozos, you broke it, you go ahead and fix
it now. [Lets hope that if US Gulf Vets come down with a neo-Gulf War
Syndrome from our use of depleted uranium that our boys get better
care from the USA than vets in Gulf War I got.]

We have no one to blame but our own corrupt, dishonest leadership.

Hail to the Chief!

Gary

In article , Gary
Aguilar wrote:

>
>
> There are great cultural, political and physical differences between
> Vietnam and Iraq that cannot be minimized,

Yes, there are....

Get used to it.