Is Iraq another Vietnam?

[krsna]

Is Iraq another Vietnam?

 

 

By Barnaby Mason

BBC diplomatic correspondent

 

 

 

The Vietnam war lasted 14 years and killed hundreds of thousands

The veteran Democratic Senator, Edward Kennedy, has described Iraq as George Bush's Vietnam - the long war that ended in humiliating retreat for the United States in 1975.

How justified is the comparison?

 

There are obvious differences.

 

The Vietnam war was fought over 14 years and on a far bigger scale. At its peak, more than half a million American soldiers were deployed there, compared with about a quarter of that number in Iraq.

 

Nearly 60,000 died in Vietnam, together with perhaps 40 times as many Vietnamese.

 

Looking at America's allies, the most obvious difference was the absence of Britain, its primary partner in Iraq. In the 1960s, the British government resisted Washington's pressure to send troops to Vietnam.

 

South Korea fought alongside the United States, together with smaller contingents from Australia, New Zealand, the Philippines and Thailand.

 

Ruthless

 

To help with the Iraqi aftermath, the US has assembled a longer list of allies on the ground, mostly European. But in military terms, only the British contribution is significant.

 

The US used more ruthless methods in Vietnam - including large-scale bombing, often with incendiary napalm, and the destruction of whole villages suspected of harbouring Vietcong guerrillas.

 

In both cases, the United States said it was defending freedom

 

Such tactics are even harder to justify now. The Americans have far more accurate weapons available.

 

But they are often irrelevant to the task at hand.

 

Essentially, the same dilemma faces the Americans in Iraq - how to separate the fighters from bystanders, this time in run-down towns and cities rather than tropical jungle.

 

A purely military solution was and is impossible. But then, as now, a superpower staked its prestige on victory, so the question became: how to get out?

 

 

Many South Vietnamese welcomed the North's victory

Vietnam ruined the presidency of Lyndon Johnson. His successor, Richard Nixon, negotiated a peace deal which in fact meant an American withdrawal and the takeover of South Vietnam by the communist North.

 

Washington's local political instrument, the corrupt South Vietnamese military government, was discredited and collapsed.

 

In Iraq, the Americans have appointed a Governing Council whose legitimacy is disputed. The difference, they hope, will be the involvement of the United Nations and a handover to a more representative government.

 

Ideological justification

 

One striking similarity is Washington's declaration of an ideological, even altruistic motive.

 

In Vietnam, it was resistance to the spread of communism: the theory was that if it was not stopped there, the rest of south-east Asia would fall like a row of dominos.

 

The reasons for the invasion of Iraq are more muddled, but the Bush administration has often sought to present it as part of a war against Islamic terrorism - as well as an effort to establish Iraq as a beacon of western-style democracy in the Middle East.

 

In both cases, the United States said it was defending freedom: but its involvement in Vietnam stimulated a national resistance struggle and a similar phenomenon may be emerging in Iraq.

 

So far, nothing like the mass protest movement against the Vietnam war has emerged in the US.

 

But there is another way in which the shadow of Vietnam hangs over President Bush.

 

His opponent in the November presidential election will be John Kerry, who was decorated for bravery in the Vietnam war - but later campaigned against it.

 

Mr Bush avoided being drafted to serve in Vietnam.

 

 

[ancient_paztriot]

Just noting your title (and without reading your post), I'll say that in Vietnam there was a much better pretext for war in terms of our own (America's) justification for being there.

 

We just look like the thing we're presuming to police now.

[Kulapavana]

there is no oil in Vietnam /images/graemlins/wink.gif

[Guest guest]

sorry to bear sad news, but get ready for another Tet offensive.

 

If one has collection of Life magazines, look at the issue that has Dr Martin Luther King on the cover, the issue describing his assassination, April, 1968.

 

In this issue, it describes vietnam as just about wrapped up, US accomplishing what it set out to do, and the talk of US leaving was real and expected. Then TET hit, and forty thousand more US soldiers died over the next seven years.

 

We are at a similar threashold now, we think that the latest escalation is anomaly, soon to be rectified, etc, etc. etc. Think again. Intelligence sources (intel is great all along, data has been produced, but the readers of such data make terrible military mistakes, like Hweres the exit strategy) indicate that tens of thousands of syrian, irani, baakaa valley, egyptian, saudi, jordanian troopers are ready to flood the borders, all without a thing to lose and only allah to gain.

 

But this is expected, what is not expected, other than 50,000 more US dead, is that other events will take place to render the battlefield combatants useless, not even knowing why they are fighting. This is the biggun, but not to worry, for we are not of this world anyway. It does further the idea that we better be successful now, for a human form of life in the future may not be much better than a dogs body in todays world.

 

This is not a left wing protest (even though I do have that in me), this is commentary about utter incompetence in the executioner of this war fiasco. The leaders have no knowledge in the art of war, and even if invasion of Iraq has justification, they have bungled worse than vietnam. At leasst in Vietnam, we didnt have burma, india and pakistan marching on us for utter disregard for the social and customary ideas of the orient, the way we have butchered the islamic customs and way of viewing the world. And, Vietnamese wanted to continue living, because they were commies, needing the present body to attain their goals.

 

No, this aint another nam, it is ten times worse, and will bust our shores (actually, our shores are totally busted, or has someone got different ideas about the 28 huge oil refinery fires in US over the last few months) and viet, korea, china or russia never did that other than a few covert missions.

 

Kerry aint the answer, he has no exit strategy either. Only a presidential order telling all GIs to leave at once will do the trick, with ultimate air power protecting the exit. Never happen.

 

hare krsna, ys, mahaksadasa

[theist]

it was just offshore in the gulf.

[Guest guest]

Viet was a drug policy. An old document titled "the politics of heroin" told the whole story. This document was stolen from archives, part of the berrigan-ellsburg type infiltrations of the left, but the document was produced by the alphabets, dis, nsa, supersleuths.

 

The policy was deep, hooked up to MK Ultra type projects, but even worse. Read up on the proposed San Diego Republican convention in 1972 (It was cancelled and moved after mcgovern self-destructed by picking a stress case for as running mate). The plan was in place for martial law, but the pot heads had to be controlled by project intercept, a devious program that stopped all the pot while allowing tons of meth and heroin to flow free in the cities of the west.

 

Viet nam was the shipping port for the entire golden triangle, and never was there a more corrupt organization than Command Saigon, the goofs that killed their own while lining their pockets (sound familiar).

 

Petrochemicals are in SE Asia, but not worth the effort at the time.