Kolko on Iraq

<URL: http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2003/11/09/1068329418505.html >

Iraq already looks ominously like Vietnam By Gabriel Kolko November 10, 
2003

There are great cultural, political and physical differences between 
Vietnam and Iraq that cannot be minimised, and the geopolitical situation 
is entirely different. But the US has ignored many of the lessons of the 
traumatic Vietnam experience and is repeating many of the errors that 
produced defeat.

In both places, successive American administrations slighted the advice of 
their most knowledgeable intelligence experts. In Vietnam they told 
Washington's decision-makers not to tread where France had failed and to 
endorse the 1955 Geneva Accords provisos on reunification.

They also warned against underestimating the communists' numbers, 
motivation, or their independent relationship to China and the Soviet 
Union. But America's leaders have time and again believed what they wanted, 
not what their intelligence told them.

The Pentagon in the 1960s had an uncritical faith in its overwhelming 
firepower, its modern equipment, mobility, and mastery of the skies. It 
still does, and Donald Rumsfeld believes the military has the technology to 
"shock and awe" all adversaries. But war in Vietnam, as in Iraq, was highly 
decentralised and the number of troops required only increased, even as the 
firepower became greater. When they reached half-a-million Americans in 
Vietnam, the public turned against the president and defeated his party.

Wars are ultimately won politically or not at all. Leaders in Washington 
thought this interpretation of events in Vietnam was bizarre, and they 
ignored their experts whenever they frequently reminded them of the limits 
of military power.

In both Vietnam and Iraq the public was mobilised on the basis of cynical 
falsehoods that ultimately backfired, causing a "credibility gap".

The Tonkin Gulf crisis of August 1964 was manufactured, as the CIA's 
leading analyst later admitted in his memoir, because "the administration 
was seeking a pretext for a major escalation". Countless lies were told 
during the Vietnam War but eventually many of the men who counted most were 
themselves unable to separate truth from fiction.

Many US leaders really believed that if the communists won in Vietnam, the 
"dominoes" would fall and all South-East Asia would fall under Chinese and 
Soviet domination. The Iraq War was justified because Saddam was alleged to 
have weapons of mass destruction and ties with al-Qaeda, but no evidence 
for either allegation has been found.

There are 130,000 American troops in Iraq now - twice the number Bush 
predicted would remain by this month - but, as in Vietnam, their morale is 
already low and sinking. Bush's poll ratings have fallen dramatically. He 
needs more soldiers in Iraq desperately and foreign nations will not 
provide them.

In Vietnam, president Nixon tried to "Vietnamise" the land war and transfer 
the burdens of soldiering to Nguyen Van Thieu's huge army. But it was 
demoralised and organised to maintain Thieu in power, not win the victory 
that had eluded American forces.

"Iraqisation" of the military force required to put down dissidents will 
not accomplish what has eluded the Americans, and in both Vietnam and Iraq 
the US underestimated the length of time it would have to remain and 
cultivated illusions about the strength of its friends.

The Iraqi army was disbanded but now is being partially reconstituted by 
utilising Saddam's officers and enlisted men. As in Vietnam, where the 
Buddhists opposed the Catholics who comprised the leaders America endorsed, 
Iraq is a divided nation regionally and religiously, and Washington has the 
unenviable choice between the risks of disorder, which its own lack of 
troops make likely, and civil war if it arms Iraqis.

Despite plenty of expert opinion to warn it, the Bush Administration has 
scant perception of the complexity of the political problems it confronts 
in Iraq. Afghanistan is a reminder of how military success depends 
ultimately on politics, and how things go wrong.

Rumsfeld's admission in his confidential memo of October 16 that "we lack 
the metrics to know if we are winning or losing the global war on terror" 
was an indication that key members of the Bush Administration are far less 
confident of what they are doing than they were early in 2003.

But as in Vietnam, when defence secretary Robert McNamara ceased to believe 
that victory was inevitable, it is too late to reverse course and now the 
credibility of America's military power is at stake.

Eventually, domestic politics takes precedence over everything else. It did 
in Vietnam and it will in Iraq. By 1968, the polls were turning against the 
Democrats and the Tet offensive in February caught President Lyndon Johnson 
by surprise because he and his generals refused to believe the CIA's 
estimates that there were really 600,000 rather than 300,000 people in the 
communist forces. Nixon won because he promised a war-weary public he would 
bring peace with honour.

Bush declared on October 28 that "we're not leaving" Iraq soon, but his 
party and political advisers are likely to have the last word as US 
casualties mount and his poll ratings continue to decline.

Vietnam proved that the American public has limited patience. That is still 
true.

The real lessons of Vietnam have yet to be learned.

Gabriel Kolko is professor emeritus of history at York University in Canada 
and the author of Anatomy of a War, a history of the Vietnam War.

This story was found at: 
http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2003/11/09/1068329418505.html


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Michael Pugliese