The novel Anna Karenina begins with the memorable line, "Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." Leo Tolstoy may as well have opened his other opus, War And Peace with its corollary, "Peace and prosperity are all alike in every place; every war torn nation is brutalized and haunted in its own way."
George W. Bush has been trying to stay out of Vietnam since he was in college. A little more than three years ago, during the run up to the 2004 presidential election, he had this exchange with a reporter.
Q Thank you, Mr. President. Mr. President, April is turning into the deadliest month in Iraq since the fall of Baghdad, and some people are comparing Iraq to Vietnam and talking about a quagmire. Polls show that support for your policy is declining and that fewer than half Americans now support it. What does that say to you and how do you answer the Vietnam comparison?
THE PRESIDENT: I think the analogy is false. I also happen to think that analogy sends the wrong message to our troops, and sends the wrong message to the enemy. Look, this is hard work. It’s hard to advance freedom in a country that has been strangled by tyranny. And, yet, we must stay the course, because the end result is in our nation’s interest. ……..
But this month in his address to the Veterans of Foreign Wars National Convention, Bush’s comparison of Iraq to Vietnam stands in stark contrast to the above statement in his 2004 press conference. In his speech he drew parallels between leaving Vietnam more than thirty years ago with withdrawing from Iraq today. Actually, he spoke at length first about Japan, Pearl Harbor (comparing it to 9/11) and South Korea before he touched on Vietnam.
Three decades later, there is a legitimate debate about how we got into the Vietnam War and how we left. There’s no debate in my mind that the veterans from Vietnam deserve the high praise of the United States of America. (Applause.) Whatever your position is on that debate, one unmistakable legacy of Vietnam is that the price of America’s withdrawal was paid by millions of innocent citizens whose agonies would add to our vocabulary new terms like "boat people," "re-education camps," and "killing fields."
But all this is already happening. 2 million Iraqi boat people have left their homes and crossed the desert to live as refugees in neighboring countries. Re-education began with American de-Baathification of the Iraqi political machinery and continues now across the Shia-Sunni divide. And the killing fields? Well…
So why is Bush intent on staying on in Iraq? He routinely labels those who advocate ending the occupation of Iraq as betrayers and defeatists. He warns that they should be held responsible for any chaos that may ensue once the U.S. leaves Iraq now or several years down the road. Is he fighting two wars then? Retroactively redeeming America’s honor in Vietnam which many right wingers believe was lost because Americans gave up their resolve. By invoking Vietnam now, is he betting that the comparison (and the memory of American defeat) will make politicians of both parties nervous about withdrawing their support for his "surge?" Or is he preparing us and future politicians for the day when he goes the way of Lyndon Johnson, handing an inflamed foreign policy mess to his successor?
There are indeed similarities between Iraq and Vietnam, most important being that they are both immoral and unnecessary wars – US interventions based on overarching ambition and hubris. Both are swamps – one was in the torrid and tropical jungles of the far east and the other in the dusty deserts of the middle east. But there are many differences too. Vietnam was divided over political ideology, not religion. North Vietnam had a government in place which was able to assume political power over the whole country once the US left. Also, the Vietnamese battle fields were not the training ground for foreign fighters whose aim was the destruction of America. So what should the US do? Pour money and lives into a lost cause or cut the losses now? There are no easy answers and either way, Iraq is going to go through hell.
Two views on Bush’s mess.
Mr Bush is right to give warning that terrible consequences may flow from an American withdrawal. Sectarian violence, which Mr Bush’s “surge” of 30,000 additional troops into Baghdad and its environs has had some success in dampening, would surely worsen. In the absence of a political accord between Shias and Sunnis, a full-blown civil war would be a real possibility.
What, though, is the alternative? Mr Bush seems to be suggesting that America should not have left Vietnam: that a decade of losses there should have been followed by an indefinite continuation of involvement—in the absence, as in Iraq, of strong and reliable government in the host country, in the absence of reconciliation between the warring parties, and in the obvious presence of outside parties (China in Vietnam, Iran in Iraq) bent on meddling. If that is really what Mr Bush is proposing for Iraq, he will need to be ready for the mother of all political battles. Just ask the shade of Richard Nixon.
Some members of the the 82nd Airborne Division
VIEWED from Iraq at the tail end of a 15-month deployment, the political debate in Washington is indeed surreal. Counterinsurgency is, by definition, a competition between insurgents and counterinsurgents for the control and support of a population. To believe that Americans, with an occupying force that long ago outlived its reluctant welcome, can win over a recalcitrant local population and win this counterinsurgency is far-fetched. As responsible infantrymen and noncommissioned officers with the 82nd Airborne Division soon heading back home, we are skeptical of recent press coverage portraying the conflict as increasingly manageable and feel it has neglected the mounting civil, political and social unrest we see every day. (Obviously, these are our personal views and should not be seen as official within our chain of command.)
The claim that we are increasingly in control of the battlefields in Iraq is an assessment arrived at through a flawed, American-centered framework. Yes, we are militarily superior, but our successes are offset by failures elsewhere. What soldiers call the “battle space” remains the same, with changes only at the margins. It is crowded with actors who do not fit neatly into boxes: Sunni extremists, Al Qaeda terrorists, Shiite militiamen, criminals and armed tribes. This situation is made more complex by the questionable loyalties and Janus-faced role of the Iraqi police and Iraqi Army, which have been trained and armed at United States taxpayers’ expense….
In a lawless environment where men with guns rule the streets, engaging in the banalities of life has become a death-defying act. Four years into our occupation, we have failed on every promise, while we have substituted Baath Party tyranny with a tyranny of Islamist, militia and criminal violence. When the primary preoccupation of average Iraqis is when and how they are likely to be killed, we can hardly feel smug as we hand out care packages. As an Iraqi man told us a few days ago with deep resignation, “We need security, not free food.”
In the end, we need to recognize that our presence may have released Iraqis from the grip of a tyrant, but that it has also robbed them of their self-respect. They will soon realize that the best way to regain dignity is to call us what we are — an army of occupation — and force our withdrawal.
Accidental Blogger 