Vietnam’s ghost hovers over Iraq war

LOS ANGELES – Senator Edward Kennedy needed only one word in a speech the other day to add fuel to a burning national debate: Vietnam.

While Americans tried to shake off days of fierce guerrilla attacks in Iraq and wondered whether their leaders have detoured into a quagmire, the last surviving Kennedy brother tapped into a flood of painful memories by calling the occupation of Iraq “George Bush’s Vietnam”. With the resistance to occupation in Iraq intensifying, with names like Najaf and Fallujah becoming as familiar as Danang and Hue, Vietnam has once again become the ghost hovering over the American political landscape – a decade-long war fought among a hostile population that cost 58 000 Americans lives and those of two million Vietnamese.The questions are starkly simple: has American blundered into another “war of choice” it will not be able to win or get out of quickly? Will this war stir the street demonstration and stark divisions that Vietnam did? Will it send one party packing into the political wilderness come Election Day in November? A Reuters survey of academic experts, former diplomats, Vietnam veterans and activists, supporters of the president and detractors, found that while virtually all agree that Vietnam and Iraq are different wars, the chance of a misadventure based on false assumptions is a real and present danger.Former National Security Agency head General William Odom, the co-author of a new book, ‘America’s Inadvertent Empire’, cautioned: “The problem with analogies is that they always break down but they can be instructive.In many ways Iraq is not Vietnam at all.There is more at stake than what we had in Vietnam.”Odom said that one policy option the government might want to consider is to “get out in boats… but neither the administration nor (likely Democratic presidential candidate John) Kerry are thinking about that because there is a climate now where this thing cannot be discussed in a detached manner.”That level of red hot emotion characterised the Vietnam War for years, paralysing decision makers and obscuring the real choices that Americans had, experts said.Vietnam was the war that America entered with enthusiasm on an ill-fated mission to contain Communism only to reach a tipping point when the generation fighting it turned on the administration waging it.”Forty years we went down the rabbit hole in Vietnam.I fear we’re going down a rabbit hole once again,” said filmmaker Errol Morris when he won an Oscar last February for best documentary for his ‘The Fog of War’.’FALSE ANALOGY’President Bush rejected comparisons between Iraq and Vietnam last week, calling the idea a “false analogy” that sends the wrong message both to the more than 100 000 troops in Iraq and to the shadowy enemy they are fighting.For the president: “A secure and free Iraq is an historic opportunity to change the world and make America more secure.”His pledge was to “stay the course”, a term that, of course, could have come directly from the Vietnam playbook.Like Vietnam, Iraq is a war broadcast daily into a nation’s living rooms.Like Vietnam, it is a war with briefings and body counts, a war where the blood on the street contradicts the optimism at the briefing table.It is once again a battle for “the hearts and minds” of people in a far-away foreign land.And like Vietnam, polls show “silent majorities” in favour of what is being done but, again the word “quagmire” has crept cat-like back into daily use.Talking about this the other day, filmmaker Morris said: “I warned about it at the Academy Awards and I think if anything, the warning is far more resonant now.I don’t think history repeats itself exactly.Iraq is not Vietnam but… the same mistakes we made in Vietnam we are making all over again.”Rand Corporation expert James Dobbins, a former special envoy to Afghanistan, said another issue in both cases “is not whether the war was worth fighting but whether it was fought competently”.He added: “Vietnam was initially less controversial than Iraq because Vietnam was perceived as largely a defensive war.Over time that assumption was reexamined.In Iraq despite having a much less potent adversary and a lower level of causalities, look how quickly we have moved from initial euphoria to whether the current offensive is equal to the Tet offensive.”Several of the experts surveyed said that a glaring problem with Iraq is that like Vietnam people question the truthfulness of why the United States went in.Robert Bellah, Elliot Professor Emeritus at the University of California Berkeley, said: “The clearest similarity (between the two wars) is that we got into both based on government lies.The Gulf of Tonkin resolution (that Congress passed giving President Lyndon Johnson authority to wage full-scale war in Vietnam) was based on an event that didn’t happen.We would never have gotten into the Iraq war if claims about weapons of mass destruction were absent.”Ron Kovic, the paralysed Vietnam veteran who became a symbol of protest with his book ‘Born on the Fourth of July’ said: “There is potential here for the most powerful anti-war movement in the history of the United States and the world.”And he grimly added: “We have no sense of history and we are hurling headlong into a major disaster that will kill countless more American soldiers and countless innocent civilians.(additional reporting by Sarah Tippit) – Nampa-ReutersWith the resistance to occupation in Iraq intensifying, with names like Najaf and Fallujah becoming as familiar as Danang and Hue, Vietnam has once again become the ghost hovering over the American political landscape – a decade-long war fought among a hostile population that cost 58 000 Americans lives and those of two million Vietnamese.The questions are starkly simple: has American blundered into another “war of choice” it will not be able to win or get out of quickly? Will this war stir the street demonstration and stark divisions that Vietnam did? Will it send one party packing into the political wilderness come Election Day in November? A Reuters survey of academic experts, former diplomats, Vietnam veterans and activists, supporters of the president and detractors, found that while virtually all agree that Vietnam and Iraq are different wars, the chance of a misadventure based on false assumptions is a real and present danger.Former National Security Agency head General William Odom, the co-author of a new book, ‘America’s Inadvertent Empire’, cautioned: “The problem with analogies is that they always break down but they can be instructive.In many ways Iraq is not Vietnam at all.There is more at stake than what we had in Vietnam.”Odom said that one policy option the government might want to consider is to “get out in boats… but neither the administration nor (likely Democratic presidential candidate John) Kerry are thinking about that because there is a climate now where this thing cannot be discussed in a detached manner.”That level of red hot emotion characterised the Vietnam War for years, paralysing decision makers and obscuring the real choices that Americans had, experts said.Vietnam was the war that America entered with enthusiasm on an ill-fated mission to contain Communism only to reach a tipping point when the generation fighting it turned on the administration waging it.”Forty years we went down the rabbit hole in Vietnam.I fear we’re going down a rabbit hole once again,” said filmmaker Errol Morris when he won an Oscar last February for best documentary for his ‘The Fog of War’.’FALSE ANALOGY’President Bush rejected comparisons between Iraq and Vietnam last week, calling the idea a “false analogy” that sends the wrong message both to the more than 100 000 troops in Iraq and to the shadowy enemy they are fighting.For the president: “A secure and free Iraq is an historic opportunity to change the world and make America more secure.”His pledge was to “stay the course”, a term that, of course, could have come directly from the Vietnam playbook.Like Vietnam, Iraq is a war broadcast daily into a nation’s living rooms.Like Vietnam, it is a war with briefings and body c
ounts, a war where the blood on the street contradicts the optimism at the briefing table.It is once again a battle for “the hearts and minds” of people in a far-away foreign land.And like Vietnam, polls show “silent majorities” in favour of what is being done but, again the word “quagmire” has crept cat-like back into daily use.Talking about this the other day, filmmaker Morris said: “I warned about it at the Academy Awards and I think if anything, the warning is far more resonant now.I don’t think history repeats itself exactly.Iraq is not Vietnam but… the same mistakes we made in Vietnam we are making all over again.”Rand Corporation expert James Dobbins, a former special envoy to Afghanistan, said another issue in both cases “is not whether the war was worth fighting but whether it was fought competently”.He added: “Vietnam was initially less controversial than Iraq because Vietnam was perceived as largely a defensive war.Over time that assumption was reexamined.In Iraq despite having a much less potent adversary and a lower level of causalities, look how quickly we have moved from initial euphoria to whether the current offensive is equal to the Tet offensive.”Several of the experts surveyed said that a glaring problem with Iraq is that like Vietnam people question the truthfulness of why the United States went in.Robert Bellah, Elliot Professor Emeritus at the University of California Berkeley, said: “The clearest similarity (between the two wars) is that we got into both based on government lies.The Gulf of Tonkin resolution (that Congress passed giving President Lyndon Johnson authority to wage full-scale war in Vietnam) was based on an event that didn’t happen.We would never have gotten into the Iraq war if claims about weapons of mass destruction were absent.”Ron Kovic, the paralysed Vietnam veteran who became a symbol of protest with his book ‘Born on the Fourth of July’ said: “There is potential here for the most powerful anti-war movement in the history of the United States and the world.”And he grimly added: “We have no sense of history and we are hurling headlong into a major disaster that will kill countless more American soldiers and countless innocent civilians.(additional reporting by Sarah Tippit) – Nampa-Reuters