Just Like Vietnam

Thanks, Mr. Bush, for stating the obvious. The Iraq Occupation does share many, many traits with that other occupation, that in Vietnam. Let’s analyze a few of those similarities, shall we?

In Vietnam the United States tried repeatedly to set up new governments, overthrowing and even assassinating the leader of its own client regime when it inevitably failed. The reason the puppet government failed was not because they weren’t strong enough or even democratic enough; it was because they weren’t supported by the people of South Vietnam. In Iraq we’ve installed three of “our kind of men” as Prime Minister. None have been able to come to any kind of political consensus with the “electorate” leading to the complete factional stand-off we see now.

Vietnam, just like Iraq, was sold to the public based on a non-existent threat. The domino theory, wherein communism would have swept over Asia as states like Vietnam “fell,” was never likely to come to fruition. Communism did take over all of Vietnam when we withdrew, but it didn’t lead to the dominoes falling. It led to the position we are in now, with communism itself marginalized and weak. Where it WAS once successful and even a “threat,” it fell not because of Reagan as the common myth states, but because of the inherent, fatal economic problems in Russia’s system. Iraq was, and still is, based on a similar ruse: the idea of terrorism as some existential threat or, even less commonly spoken, the idea of an Islamic caliphate taking over the U.S. Laughable both, but in Iraq, as in Vietnam, the real reasons for the war, the need to identify an enemy and pursue it with our entire might, rationale and results be damned, remains unspoken.

Iraqification = Vietnamization. Surge = Escalation. These are both checkpoints in the occupation of a failed state. The removal of the existing government leads to a power vaccuum, and the occupier fills it in. The process is instituted to give power to what is supposedly the occupied nation, but resistance to the occupiers leads to ramping up the forces, leading to less of a perception that the people have control of their own country. “Cyclical” comes to mind.

In terms of US casualties, the similarities even exist. During the first five years of the occupation of Vietnam, around 5,000 were killed, roughly the same amount as this time when contractors are added to the soldiers total. It was when the escalation ramped up that the numbers of casualties dramatically increased. We’re seeing the beginnings of a similar trend now under Bush’s escalation. This summer has seen more Americans killed than any of the others.

Bush also claimed in his speech that withdrawing from Iraq will lead to similar outcomes as our withdrawal from Vietnam. We could only be so lucky. The examples that Bush laid out (except for the “killing fields” example in Cambodia, whose Khmer Rouge government was ousted by the Vietnamese communists) are true; nobody says otherwise. Just as no one says that withdrawing from Iraq will be pretty in the short term. More lives will be lost. But Vietnam, while still recovering from the destruction we caused, is well on its way to economic viability, embracing the West as evidenced by Bush’s recent visit and their growth leading to their inclusion in Goldman Sachs’ list of the Next-11 nations for investment and economic opportunities. Communism did not spread, it fell. The short-term pain led eventually to Vietnam’s emergence as a growing power when the occupying nations were removed.

But the greatest lesson from the Vietnam withdrawal is the one Bush completely failed to grasp when he made the amazingly bad decision to go ahead with this new talking point. This is the fallacious notion that we could have “won,” whatever that might mean, if we had just stayed longer. The term “Friedman Unit” had yet to be invented, of course, but the parallels are striking. Success is “just around the corner,” “we just need the willpower to go the whole way,” “if we leave now, we’ve lost.” The historical record has made such a strong case against this argument in terms of Vietnam that it’s almost repetitive to even repeat it here. There is no chance for victory in Iraq, just as there was none in Vietnam, and even those pushing for “victory” seem to have no idea what it means or what it will even look like. What is happening in Iraq is beyond their capacity for expression, and they revert to simplistic slogans which mean practically nothing but are incredibly effective in deluding those easily deluded.

If the goal of this entire enterprise, as George W. Bush has consistently claimed, was to build a strong democracy in the Middle East that would ally itself with our interests, then we have certainly already lost. The current democratic government in Iraq has fallen apart, has factionalized to such a degree it’s likely untenable. No American attempts to intervene on its behalf are going to garner the popular support they would need to be successful. The government we’ve installed has collapsed, our presence is adding nothing to creating a viable state, and it won’t get any better until we leave.

Just like Vietnam.

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