Iraq is NOT Vietnam No Matter How Much You Whine

I read this Op-Ed by Kirk Caraway this morning and it's been irritating me ever since. I'm still astounded that Kirk seems to be taking Vietnam and the lessons learned there and then state that we didn't learn anything there. Worst of all, he doesn't actually provide any real evidence. His arguments are very thin for the most part.

History is written by the victors.

It is with this notion that I am trying to understand the statements of President George W. Bush during his recent visit to Vietnam, in the shadow of the ongoing war in Iraq.

Bush stated there are lessons we can learn from Vietnam to help us achieve victory in Iraq. His two lessons: That it takes time for freedom to triumph, and that "We'll succeed, unless we quit."

Trying to make sense of these lessons requires a greater leap from reality than I am willing to take.

In reality, history isn't written by the victors. The US failed in Vietnam, but yet the majority of histories written on Vietnam are written by Americans. I especially like that he discounts Bush's "lessons." They are in fact completely true. And Vietnam proved them. If you quit you lose. That's nearly a truism. Not sure how you can argue with that. As for time being a requirement for "freedom to triumph" that is also completely supported. Considering the aftermath of the US withdrawal from Vietnam, can Kirk honestly argue that they got freedom in anything like a short time period? I'd say the huge quantity of deaths and forced "re-education" prove that freedom didn't come for a very long time.

Are we to assume that Bush thinks the U.S. could have won the war in Vietnam, and that country would be a better place today, if we hadn't left, if we were still there bombing them into oblivion?

But then, that contradicts Bush's other statements, on how Vietnam has improved since we quit the place 31 years ago.

"For decades, you had been torn apart by war," Bush said. "And today, the Vietnamese people are at peace and seeing the benefits of reform."

All of these statements are even more surreal when you add in the image of Bush standing in front of a bust of Ho Chi Minh, visiting with government officials who defeated the American forces, handing the U.S. its most serious military defeat to date.

Another fascinating assumption that flies in the face of reality. The withdrawal from Vietnam was due to political pressures in the US. There were actual successful operations in Vietnam that could have ended with a success. The CAPs programs were very successful, but were abandoned when the troops had to withdraw. And why does he assume that we would have continued with the bombing as they had been using. Again, this wasn't a military defeat, it was a political one. Kirk's complete lack of understanding on that one lesson makes the majority of his discussion completely idiotic.

And Vietnam did change drastically over time due to the communist rule failing fairly seriously. The Capitalist economies of the world caused the changes in Vietnam more than anything else. Could the improvements have come sooner? I'd say yes, but the US public hadn't the stamina and the military made a major mess of the whole thing.

Let's take Bush's central strategy for victory, that "as the Iraqis stand up, we'll stand down." Boiled down, this means we train the Iraqis to take over the fighting so American forces can start coming home. This is Richard Nixon's Vietnamization doctrine with a new coat of paint, but the same tired engine under the hood.

If you want a lesson from history, here's a good one: Vietnamization didn't work, even with a far more cohesive military force than we have in Iraq, armed to the teeth with our best weapons. Meanwhile, the U.S. military is afraid to hand over any heavy weapons to the Iraqi forces for fear they will use them on each other, and on coalition forces.

What do you say when your current policy is failing worse than the old failed policy it was based on?

Maybe we should ask Henry Kissinger. He had a front-row seat for Vietnamization. He has also been one of the main figures advising Bush to stay the course in Iraq. Yet now, he has come out to say the war in Iraq cannot be won militarily. Maybe this old warhorse has started to learn from his own history.

This argument is so simplistic that it pretty much doesn't apply. Vietnamization was working, the problems with that strategy was that the US set them up to fight in the wrong way. This has been discussed by many military historians. Setting the Vietnam army to fight in the big battle style that was used in WWII. If the use of militias had been instituted for local control and policing against the insurgency and then additionally providing a strong military capable of quick reactions to attacks from North Vietnam they may have had more success. The problem was that they needed outside funding. The US abandoned that aspect quickly. The North Vietnamese continued receiving funding from China and the USSR. I understand that those are inconvenient facts for Kirk, but facts they are.

Kirk also misses the differences between Iraq and Vietnam. There is no external primary support country in Iraq. The issues that need to be solved are primarily political. The sectarian and tribal conflicts aren't being solved due to those groups posturing for control. They see themselves first as Sunni of Shia then as some tribal group then as Iraqis. These social mechanisms are making the environment in Iraq exceptionally complex. Unless there is progress in this issue there is little likelihood that the political solutions can succeed.

Perhaps the real lessons of history need to come from the winners of these conflicts. In The Associated Press story of Bush's visit to Vietnam, the reporter spoke to Huynh Tuyet, 71, a veteran of the war who lost a hand fighting against American forces.

"Even though the Americans were more powerful with all their massive weapons, the main factor in war is the people," he said. "The Vietnamese people were very determined. We would not give up. That's why we won."

The Vietnamese Insurgency was determined. The reason the won was because the US public wasn't. I'd say the US public was the greater factor in the end.

The Iraqi people seem very determined as well, and there is no sign of them giving up. A recent poll taken in Iraq shows that a wide majority of respondents feel American troops provoke more violence than they prevent, and they want us to leave.

Maybe another important lesson to learn from Vietnam is that the country didn't start getting better until after we left.

Yes, the Iraqis are determined. Determined to get their slice of power or revenge. Note that the majority of fighting is sectarian or tribal and very little against the US forces. There is insurgent attacks against the US military, but it has been fairly minimal compared to the sectarian conflicts.

As for Vietnam getting better after the US left, does Kirk have any concept of history at all? How many people died in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia after the US left? The numbers projected variously from hundreds of thousands to over a million. That must have been better than when the US was in the region.

Bush didn't set out to repeat the Vietnam War game plan, yet it seems that is exactly what he has accomplished so far. The only real debate left is whether Iraq will end the same way Vietnam did. Are we doomed to defeat, or is there a way to put the pieces back together?

Whatever your viewpoint, it's clear we aren't going to achieve a result different than Vietnam unless we stop following the same script.

And that's the best lesson we can learn.

With this example of a complete lack of understanding of the lessons of Vietnam, it is fairly evident that Kirk doesn't actually have a clue that Iraq has very little in common with Vietnam. Difference in cultures, religions, environment and history pretty much indicates that there is little that was scripted that was similar between the Iraq and Vietnam. No doubt there have been a lot of mistakes in Iraq, but they are by no means the same as what happened in Vietnam. The main similarities seems to be that the MSM has facilitated the propaganda war, and the end result of the public failing to show sufficient determinations to finish a war.

There are many other lessons that can be drawn from other insurgencies and applied to Iraq. Algeria is probably much better a comparison. Malaysia has some lessons, but probably to a lesser extent since that insurgency was smaller and less complex in the cultural aspects. But Vietnam is much less comparable .