THE RISING EAST
Some striking, scary parallels between Iraq and Vietnam
By Richard Halloran
Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., asserts that "Iraq is George Bush's Vietnam." President Bush, a Republican up for re-election in November, says: "I think the analogy is false." And the debate rages on.
Advertiser library photo • 2002
Iraq is not Vietnam by any stretch of the imagination, not in geography, history, religion, culture or any other measure of a nation. On at least three counts for Americans, however, the parallels between the wars in Iraq and Vietnam are striking and scary.
The reflection of Navy veteran Rick Oldham of Cedar Rapids, Iowa, is seen on the memorial to Vietnam War veterans after the rededication service for the new All Veterans Memorial on Nov. 9, 2002, in Cedar Rapids.
• Quagmire: Bush has led the United States into a turbulent situation that his administration clearly does not understand just as presidents Dwight D. Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson led the United States into the quagmire of Vietnam, from which it took President Richard Nixon four years to find a way out.
From the beginning, Vietnam was cast as a gate to be slammed in the campaign to contain communism. With the benefit of hindsight, the struggle in Vietnam turned out to be the last of the anti-colonial wars in which the United States was seen as the colonial power seeking to replace an imperial France.
If the United States failed in Vietnam, so the official line went, other Asian nations would in turn fall to communism like a row of dominoes. Similarly, in a news conference last week, Bush contended: "The defeat of violence and terror in Iraq is vital to the defeat of violence and terror elsewhere; and vital, therefore, to the safety of the American people."
In a Tuesday television appearance that had echoes of Vietnam, the president justified the invasion of Iraq: "Saddam Hussein was a threat. He was a threat because he had used weapons of mass destruction on his own people. He was a threat because he coddled terrorists. He was a threat because he funded suiciders. He was a threat to the region. He was a threat to the United States."
Whether hindsight will affirm that Saddam and Iraq were a clear and present danger any more than North Vietnam was is open to question.
• A silver bullet: While appearing determined and even defiant, Bush seemed to be thrashing around for a magic formula, a silver bullet that would end the turmoil in Iraq, permit a democratic government to emerge and bring U.S. troops home.
The president told reporters that Gen. John Abizaid, commander of U.S. forces in Iraq, has indicated "that he may want more troops ... If that's what he wants, that's what he gets." That echoed Gen. William Westmoreland and other generals in Vietnam who argued that if they just had a few more soldiers, victory would be at hand.
After American troops swept Iraqi forces before them a year ago, they have been ordered to use tactics that ignore the principles of war, just as in Vietnam. They seek a measured application of power rather than applying, as soldiers have since Alexander the Great, overwhelming force that would crush the enemy.
Whether that will continue or the Americans and their allies will impose martial law to subdue Iraqi insurgents and terrorists remains to be seen, even as Bush said: "I have directed our military commanders to make every preparation to use decisive force, if necessary, to maintain order and to protect our troops."
• Political struggle: Bush told correspondents: "We're not an imperial power, as nations such as Japan and Germany can attest. We are a liberating power, as nations in Europe and Asia can attest, as well. America's objective in Iraq is limited, and it is firm: We seek an independent, free and secure Iraq."
There is precious little evidence, however, that the United States has been able to persuade the Iraqis of those noble objectives any more than Americans were able, three to four decades ago, to persuade the Vietnamese of the same. The daily toll of American troops being killed and wounded by Iraqis is stark evidence of the opposite.
In Vietnam, moreover, the United States was unsuccessful for 20 years in fostering a South Vietnamese government that could win the hearts and minds of the people. The Iraqis seem even less prepared to assume the responsibility of running a government and providing security to their own people than were the Vietnamese.
Nonetheless, President Bush said the United States was committed to "the transfer of sovereignty back to the Iraqi people" on June 30, a scant 15 months after Saddam was toppled. To use a cumbersome phrase, is "Iraqization" the successor to "Vietnamization," which ended in a rout of South Vietnam's forces in 1975?
