The Iraq War: A New Comparison with Vietnam?

Recent violence in the city of Basra had a familiar ring to it, or at least as far as the media was concerned. The doubters and pessimists were out in full force voicing their opinions that, once again, we were being told to be too optimistic by our present administration. America seems to enjoy beating itself up, whether something good or bad is happening. The facts, although hard to get to, can press us to only believe what the majority of doom-sayers will let us hear, let alone believe. Even though the facts and statistics show that we are winning in Iraq, many in the press do not want us to believe it. Perhaps it is because bad events sell more papers and air time than good ones do. Or perhaps it is our collective feeling of guilt with being the most powerful and prosperous nation in the world. Whatever it is, it is difficult to ignore that it all sounds too familiar. Take yourself back to an earlier war; one that Americans have tried to forget but can't. At least not completely. We were told even as recently as a year ago that Iraq was turning in to our modern-day Vietnam. We were told we were losing, mostly because we were losing young men and women, individuals who had all given themselves up to risk their lives for their country. We were suppose to ignore the fact that lives are lost in every war, that war is not a computer game or a board game, and that to gain success in any conflict much is risked. We were supposed to stay negative and blame someone for our losses and we needed scapegoats and nooses to hang those guilty of the crimes. It was only recently that we finally discovered that things were actually going well in the war, that we just may be succeeding and that our troops could be coming home, maybe not as soon as we wanted them to, but soon. Although there is still violence and bloodshed going on, the facts showed that we were doing some good, that positive results were actually being achieved and that the Iraqi people may just be moving forward. Take yourself back and read some of our past history, and compare.

First of all, there are many who say we should never have fought in Vietnam. At the time it seemed impossible to suggest that, looking at international tensions and how Communism was on the march. Perhaps they are right. Perhaps we should never have gone. The same thing can be said of Iraq. It would be easy to say that very few, if any, Americans would be dead today if we had simply ignored Saddam Hussein and left him be. We could also ignore the stories of all the Iraqis losing their lives for some reason or another at the hands of Saddam's captains of abuse. A story comes to mind of an interview from a television special a few years ago. A woman was describing how she was being tortured while she was being forced by one of Saddam's sons to watch her husband being slowly dropped into a wood-chipper, while the son sat hysterically laughing. We can afford to ignore these kinds of stories as long as it is not involving us. Right? Anyway, the Iraqi people would have continued to suffer and we would have stayed home. But we went, as we did to Vietnam. Young people died and many civilians died, and the war escalated. President Johnson continued to send more troops, pushing the war to new levels. Ho Chi Minh and his leading general Giap had decided that depending on infiltration by what was called the Vietcong into South Vietnam was moving too slowly, so it was decided to send North Vietnamese troops south to hurry the process of overthrowing the "free" government of the south and bringing the whole country under communist rule. President Johnson accepted the advice to send more forces, and the battle was on. By 1968 over 540,000 troops would be serving in Vietnam. Overall we hear today how the majority of Americans were against the war. The evidence, however, it to the contrary. In fact, polls of the day suggested that a large portion of the American populace, although grumbling about the casualties, felt that we had a purpose for being there and finishing the job. The blow that jolted American confidence was the 1968 Tet Offensive. Sound familiar? The comparison with the recent Basra battle is not coincidental. At the time we were being told we were winning suddenly the Communists launched a major offensive to try to end the war in their favor. Americans saw cities ablaze and more soldiers dying, and at a time when things were supposed to be gong well. However, what was not being said was that we had utterly "defeated" the offensive and that the North Vietnamese were reeling. In any war, especially a guerrilla-type war, the object of a conventional force is to make the enemy lose more men than they can replace. Even Giap admitted that this moment had been reached. He and Ho Chi Minh had made a grievous error in giving up their strategy of a slow infiltration of the south and openly invading. Most Americans did not hear the casualty reports of the North Vietnamese and the Vietcong. They were only being told that we had lost a battle that we had actually won. Only today we can look back and see the effects of our reporting and how it gave General Giap and Ho Chi Minh a victory they had not deserved. The press is trying that even now with the battle in Basra.

The longterm effects of the Tet Offensive can be understood now with hindsight. Johnson felt politically defeated, as he was now being told that the American public had lost confidence in him. He decided not to run.Richard Nixon won the presidency and thus the roots of Watergate were planted. Nixon gradually pulled us out of Vietnam, but not before great amounts of bombing and shells were expended in various military operations, including secret invasions of Cambodia. No doubt, much propaganda on both sides was printed and traded, confusing facts and viewpoints from every which way. There is no doubt, however, that as North Vietnamese leaders publicly said later, the media and antiwar activists in the U.S. were their greatest allies. It was also said that the Democrats, especially later on in the war, wanted to pull out and cut their losses. It compares with today's opinions of what the Democratic leadership tried to do up to about a year ago. Cut your losses and run, as it is worded today, and whatever it is you have won is lost. If this had been done in Iraq, we definitely would have had a perfect comparison with Vietnam. In 1972, however, a large number of Americans were still supporting the war. This is proven with the results in the 1972 Presidential campaign. Nixon was reelected in a landslide, probably because the Democratic candidate publicly announced that he wanted to immediately pull out of Vietnam and leave the South Vietnamese to themselves. Some may say it eventually happened anyway, that the South eventually was invaded (in 1975) and that we lost. However, would that have been the case if Watergate had not occurred? Public opinion turned sharply against the war after America lost confidence in its government because of Watergate. These events had not taken place yet.

It may be that someday, after we have left, Iraq still may succumb to radical forces that have been trying to sink the democratic process there all along. It may still be necessary to keep a limited presence in Iraq for some time. But to listen to the doom-sayers, those who wish to surrender, to admit defeat, would be a crime to those who have already lost their lives. Yes, war has casualties, and people die. Most Americans feel the same as I do: wouldn't it be great if war was permanently abolished from the planet? Wouldn't it be great if human being halted their conflicting attitudes towards one another and found a way to live together? Yes, it would. It, however, is perhaps not in the genetic makeup of the human existence to be at peace at all times. There are those who wish us to be dead, to perish and cease to exist because they do not see the world as we do. Don't forget that, in the North's invasion of South Vietnam in 1975 that brought the latter's final end, many thousands of civilian South Vietnamese were butchered as they tried to escape the onslaught. The Communists were killing their own people to get what they wanted. In a world like that, how can we let our guard down? We must not let it happen again. We may not like being in Iraq but there are more terrible alternatives. Can we hear the positive, like what the Iraq people are doing to get back their lives, and how the infrastructure is getting back to normal because of the efforts of our troops? We have a lot to be proud of. And a lot more possibly to come. Don't give in to the traditional "pessimists" who wish to lose. We are winning this time, and that is the difference.