Is the Iraq War Like the Viet Nam War?
The U.S. wars in Iraq and Viet Nam bear little resemblance in my opinion. The North Vietnamese were fighting for reunification and were supported by two world powers, China and the Soviet Union. The Iraqis seem to be fighting to settle old scores. But since President Bush made the analogy, lets think about it.
Why were these wars started?
In the case of Viet Nam, the war was started by the French to protect French economic interests and taken over by the U.S. for idealogical reasons, to fight the spread of communism. In the case of Iraq, the reasons given keep changing. The only one not mentioned, to protect U.S. oil supplies, seems the most likely. We may never know the real reasons behind this war.
How were the wars sold to the American public?
In both cases through lies. In Viet Nam, it was the Gulf of Tonkin attack on an American Navel vessel that never actually occurred. For Iraq, it was weapons of mass destruction that threatened Israel, Europe, and the United States. It often takes lies to get the public to agree to war, the truth is usually not bad enough.
What are the consequences of these wars?
The U.S. costs in lives and dollars are well documented. The costs to the Vietnamese and Iraqis are not as well documented but are in any case, immensely higher.
The domestic consequence of the Viet Nam war was a generation of Americans with a very deep distrust of government. In Southeast Asia, U.S. presence may have been responsible for the rise of the Khmer Rouge who killed 1.5 million people. The predicted consequence of all Southeast Asia falling to the communists never happened. In fact, it was the Vietnamese communists who went into Cambodia to stop the killing by the Kmer Rouge. It also proved that even a super power could be defeated in a war they could not justify to their own people – a situation later repeated by the Soviets in Afghanistan.
We don’t know what the long term consequences of the War in Iraq will be. Regardless of when we pull out, there is little to make me believe any good will come of it. The U.S. has seriously damaged its reputation in the world and we may have created another generation of political cynicism. We have allowed ourselves to be distracted from the real threats to our security and damaged our economy in ways that might not be evident for several years.
The question now is not should we withdraw. It is how to withdraw while causing the least amount of harm to Iraq and ourselves. The answer is not clear. There seem to be no good options, leaving us to choose among the bad ones.