I just finished my 3rd class, this one on the Vietnam War, as a graduate student in Military History at SHSU, and it was just a little bit too timely a topic. Dr. James Olson, who taught the class had some valuable insights, which I received mostly in the form of email responses to the eleven writing assignments. What I noticed, and he later confirmed, was the frightening similarities between the two wars.
I'm not talking about the obvious here. That would be the easy way out. what's the obvious?
1. We had overwhelmingly superior firepower in both conflicts. Any time we decisvely engage the enemy, that firepower makes it no contest.
2. The use of our firepower was largely counterproductive. In Vietnam the indiscriminate use of artillery and air power killed 400,000 civilians in the South. Iraq II didn't reach that level, but he cavalier dismissal of civilian casualties still had a detrimental effect, especially after all of the talk about "smart" weapons. just like in Vietnam, if you attack a bogus target, you kill innocent people.
3. We didn't enjoy the popular support of the people in South Vietnam, and we don't in Iraq. Both groups see us as invaders. We did little of the "hearts-and-minds" stuff in Vietnam (except in the I Corps area of the Marine Coprs), and we do little of it in Iraq.
4. We tried to fight the last war. In Vietnam, we expected another Korean War, with horrific results in terms of misunderstanding the political, cultural, and military environment. There is no reason to expect Korean and Vietnamese peasants to be the same type of people.
That's just the obvious stuff. It doesn't really represent the problem. The real problem is in the assumptions of our political and military leaders.
1. In both Vietnam and Iraq, we looked for a military solution to a perceived problem. In Vietnam, JFK wanted to save face after his Bay of Pigs debacle, and our hysteria of the threat of international Communism led us into some pretty big policy mistakes. Thank you Senator Joe McCarthy and Congressman Nixon (ok, so Nixon did really catch a Communist) for playing to our fears. LBJ didn't want to look weak on Communism and South Vietnam couldn't protect itself, so American boys went to fight a war that Asian boys didn't even want. With Iraq, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, and George W. Bush used our anti-terrorist, anti-Islam hystria to finish a previous war. Glad to kow we can still be led around by our fears.
2. We tried to build "democracy" in South Vietnam by supporting a guy who wanted to found his own dynasty in the China/Vietnam style based on the Mandarin system, knowing full well that he didn't support popular government, and that if he did, he'd lose to Ho Chi Minh. In Iraq, we're claiming to want to build democracy, but are deposing localy elected leaders for our own flunkies. If we want to promote "democracy" in Iraq, we have to accept that some of the people elected are not going to be friendly.
Vietnam was pretty depressing. Just read the government documents about My La to get the picture.
Posted by Chris at July 9, 2003 08:44 AM