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Despite commonly held belief, Iraq-Vietnam comparisons don’t add up

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by Gerald Cox

Friday, August 31, 2007

Lately, it's been pretty popular to relate our failures in Iraq with our previous failures in Vietnam. Surprisingly, even the most devoted of the Iraq war's apologists has now delved into the Iraq-Vietnam comparisons. In a recent speech, President George W. Bush invoked the aftermath of our withdrawal in Vietnam to galvanize near nonexistent support for his war in Iraq. With all of these Iraq-Vietnam comparisons being used to prop up desperate arguments, which idea do we buy into?

Do we leave Iraq because it is similar to Vietnam, or stay for the same reason? Whether we stay or go should have little to do with lessons learned in Vietnam, as the situation in Iraq is nothing like the absurdity of our involvement in Vietnam. The uniqueness of the Iraq misadventure is, regrettably, all its own, and the situation in Iraq shares little in common with our involvement in Vietnam.

When the architects of our invasion of Iraq — or liberation, depending on your preference — turn to Vietnam comparisons to justify their continued involvement in a war that has seen this nation's credibility, allies, and influence dwindle over the past half decade, it points to their acute desperation. Invoking the most salient American foreign policy failure to justify the most salient American foreign policy failure since, well, Vietnam, just doesn't sound like sound American foreign policy, does it? Only desperation mingled with intransigence could link the example of Vietnam to the debacle of Iraq in some sort of twisted attempt at justification.

But the president did not mean to justify the war itself. The American people have long foregone the misperception that the invasion itself was justified, but the president realizes there is an argument to be made for our continued presence in Iraq. The ridiculousness of our current situation in Iraq is that we have created more of a mess than we set out to fix, and now it needs cleaning. Yeah, sounds like Vietnam. But I'm telling you, it's not.

The myriad voices of critics — and their voices are myriad — would use the example of Vietnam to justify immediate withdrawal. After all, we thought leaving Vietnam would be like shooting ourselves in the foot. However, as presidential hopeful former Sen. Mike Gravel opined in one of his colorful outbursts in the CNN YouTube debate, you can purchase a Baskin Robbins ice cream cone in Hanoi. If that's not capitalism and freedom, I don't know what is.

Mr. Gravel's platitude was meant to invoke the senseless loss we suffered in Vietnam, as if the freedom we see in Vietnam now will spring forth from Iraq once we leave. I like Baskin Robbins as much as the next guy, but I don't think ice cream is in the cards for Iraq.

In Vietnam, insurgents fought for a unified and Communist Vietnam. In Iraq, insurgents fight for a piece of the pie that is the nation of Iraq. There isn't a faction in Iraq that has the sort of unified vision and purpose that the North Vietnamese and the Viet Cong guerilla force had in Vietnam. After Saigon fell, there was only one Vietnam, albeit a Communist one. Should we leave Iraq prematurely, there isn't really a totalitarian communist government around with a determined willingness to pick up the pieces and get the whole Baskin Robbins franchising process started.

Iraq may cease to exist once Shiites, Sunnis, Kurds, Iran, Syria, Saudi Arabia and the crew all have their opportunity to stake out their claim to Iraq unimpeded by an American military presence. In Vietnam, a nation was formed once we left. In Iraq, one may cease to exist.

So whose Vietnam-inspired vision of post-withdrawal Iraq is most accurate? The vision of a stable, Baskin Robbins-filled Hanoi? Or the violent upheaval that plagued Southeast Asia upon our departure?

Iraq is nothing like Vietnam, and the President as well as his critics would be best served to avoid the comparison. Unfortunately, viewing Iraq through the lens of Vietnam will offer little help and even less inspiration. Iraq offers its own horrors, its own unique hopelessness. Iraq invokes its own sense of senseless violence and breathless blunders. And it's all because we went in the first place.

Gerald Cox (cox@badgerherald.com) is a senior majoring in economics, languages and cultures of Asia, and Middle Eastern studies.

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Anonymous (September 1, 2007 @ 3:05pm):

Iraq an Vietnam are alike in that the USA can only lose in DC, not on the battlefield.

Surrender now will cost more USA lives later.

Anonymous (September 4, 2007 @ 8:30am):

The fact is that opponents of the war have drawn the Vietnam analogy like a gun, seeking from the very beginning to argue that Iraq and Vietnam were analogous. Ted Kennedy famously called Iraq "George Bush's Vietnam."

I have argued on several occasions that the parallels between the two conflicts at the operational and strategic levels of war were nonsensical. But that has never stopped the opponents of the current war from invoking the conventional Vietnam War narrative, which goes something like this: The U.S. was predestined to lose the Vietnam War because the Vietnamese Communists were too determined, the South Vietnamese too corrupt, and Americans were incapable of fighting the kind of war that would have been necessary to prevail. Accordingly, "orthodox" Vietnam historians often act as if Hanoi had pursued a course of action with little regard for what the United States did.

It is clear that those who invoke Vietnam in discussing Iraq accept the orthodox narrative. But revisionists such as Bob Sorely in A Better War and Mark Moyar in Triumph Forsaken have called the conventional narrative into question. They and others have shown that Hanoi, as Clausewitz would have predicted, responded to American actions. Moyar's thesis is that the U.S. defeat was far from inevitable; the United States had ample opportunities to ensure the survival of South Vietnam but failed to develop the proper strategy to do so. By far the greatest mistake the Americans made was to acquiesce in the November 1963 coup that deposed Diem, a decision that "forfeited the tremendous gains of the preceding nine years and plunged the country into an extended period of instability and weakness."

Sorley argues along the same lines. Building on his excellent biographies of Army generals Creighton Abrams and Harold Johnson, Sorley examined the largely neglected later years of the conflict and concluded that the war in Vietnam "was being won on the ground even as it was being lost at the peace table and in the US Congress."

The fact is that the outcome of a war is not predetermined. Who wins and who loses are determined in the final instance by the respective actions of the combatants. Victory or defeat depends on decisions actually made and strategies actually implemented. We came close to victory in Vietnam, but then threw it away.

The 1972 Easter Offensive provided the proof that Vietnam could survive, albeit with U.S. air and naval support, at least in the short term. The Easter Offensive was the biggest North Vietnamese offensive push of the war, greater in magnitude than either the 1968 Tet offensive or the final assault of 1975. Despite inevitable failures on the part of some units, all in all, the South Vietnamese fought well. Then, having blunted the Communist thrust, they recaptured territory that had been lost to Hanoi. Finally, so effective was the eleven-day "Christmas bombing" campaign (LINEBACKER II) later that year that the British counterinsurgency expert, Sir Robert Thompson exclaimed, "you had won the war. It was over."

Three years later, despite the heroic performance of some ARVN units, South Vietnam collapsed against a much weaker, cobbled-together PAVN offensive. What happened to cause this reversal?

First, the Nixon administration, in its rush to extricate the country from Vietnam, forced South Vietnam to accept a ceasefire that permitted North Vietnamese forces to remain in South Vietnam. Then in an act that still shames the United States to this day, Congress cut off military and economic assistance to South Vietnam. Finally, President Nixon resigned over Watergate and his successor, constrained by congressional action, defaulted on promises to respond with force to North Vietnamese violations of the peace terms.

Of course the president's reference to Vietnam did not have to do with operational art or strategy but with the consequences of defeat: the abandonment of allies to the tender mercies of Vietnamese and Cambodian Communists, resulting in the death of millions in Cambodia and thousands in Vietnam, the "boat people," and re-education camps. This abandonment of our Vietnamese allies was a massive moral failure on the part of the United States. It is one we should not repeat in Iraq.

Anonymous (September 4, 2007 @ 9:38am):

Let the Iraqis wallow in their mess. If they want security and freedom, they will fight. If they want to be ruled by Islamic facists, then we can't help them anyway. Iran wants to fill the power vacuum. Let the Iranians lose some troops for a while. The world would only be safer if Iran were weakened.

I've said it many times, the only mistake Bush made was assuming that Iraqis wanted freedom. Clearly, they don't. I think the idea of freedom and democracy is unique to the West. We started our revolution because we didn't like paying high prices for a box of tea. But in other countries--North Korea, Iraq, Iran, Vietnam, Venezuela, Cuba--they let dictators imprison citizens for having a bad haircut (Iran, true story). They would rather be ruled by tyrants, whether it be communists or Islamists. If they want freedom, they will fight for it.

Anonymous (September 4, 2007 @ 4:14pm):

Like a pig in muck, the left loves to wallow in Vietnam. But only in their "Vietnam." Not in the real Vietnam war.

http://weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/014/016tnyms.asp?pg=1

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