Iraq and Vietnam

Jan Berry - Newsletter

May 3

They are two different countries in different parts of the world. What
unites Iraq and Vietnam are American attitudes and actions. After
supporting the disastrous military campaign in Vietnam, a majority of
Americans did the same thing all over again and supported invading Iraq.
Indeed, the war in Iraq was a continuation of the bitter battles here at
home over Vietnam.

As my friend, and fellow Vietnam vet, Ken Campbell, wryly notes in his new
book—Tale of Two Quagmires: Iraq, Vietnam, and the Hard Lessons of War—“Some have said we failed to learn the lessons of Vietnam. This is not
quite true. The United States did, in fact, learn lessons from Vietnam.
The problem is we learned too many lessons, and they frequently contradict
each other.”

Perhaps the most disturbing lesson of all is that Americans are addicted
to war. Even in the current climate of public dismay over what’s happening
in Iraq, there is no civic groundswell to wage a diplomatic campaign to
resolve issues that inflame the Middle East. Despite the horrendous
carnage in Vietnam and its bloody sequel in Iraq, Americans are still
primed to wage war against somebody. So much so, that an unusual coalition
of retired generals, admirals and ambassadors has felt compelled to issue
public warnings about the consequences of military action against Iran.

Is anybody listening to these voices of experience? Previously, a number
of high ranking retired military leaders, vowing to never repeat their
experience in Vietnam, publicly warned against invading Iraq—and were
ignored by Congress, the Bush administration, the news media and the
American people.

And now some of the fiercest critics of the war in Iraq are soldiers who
fought there.

“Americans generals have repeated the mistakes of Vietnam in Iraq,” a
two-tour veteran of Iraq, Lt. Col. Paul Yingling, recently wrote in the
Armed Forces Journal. “No one leader, civilian or military, caused failure
in Vietnam or Iraq. Different military and civilian leaders in the two
conflicts produced similar results,” he concluded in a devastating
critique of the war he fought in. His proposed solution: choose better
trained military leaders. Other veterans are calling for a reexamination
of America’s fixation with finding military solutions to international
disputes and ideological differences.

The Vietnam war, as the late great New York Times reporter David
Halberstam insightfully noted, was a product of America’s “best and
brightest” military and strategic shakers and doers. After Vietnam, the US
military reorganized, retrained and redeployed its best units and
commanders—and came up with the war in Iraq. Consequently, many veterans
of Vietnam and Iraq are seeking a different strategy.

A grassroots perspective that challenged the war policy was drafted by a
group of Vietnam veterans who opposed the invasion of Iraq and issued a
statement in spring 2003 signed by thousands of veterans, from World War
II to the first Gulf War. Based on experience, these veterans said “we do
not believe that the American military can or should be used as the police
force of the world by any administration, Republican or Democrat.
Consequently, we believe that the lives and well being of our nation's
soldiers, sailors, airmen and marines should not be squandered or
sacrificed for causes other than in the direct defense of our people and
nation.”

A year later, as the first wave of invasion troops came home, a new
organization was formed—Iraq Veterans Against the War. The group modeled
itself on Vietnam Veterans Against the War. The sobering legacy of Vietnam
and Iraq, these veterans hope, will be a transformation in America’s
involvement in the world, from sending military expeditionary forces
blundering blindly into other people’s homelands to true international
cooperation and security.

Retired general William Odom, a Vietnam veteran and former head of the
National Security Agency, tried to explain this call by veterans and
others for a different course of action in a recent radio address:

"The challenge we face today is not how to win in Iraq; it is how to
recover from a strategic mistake: invading Iraq in the first place," Odom
said. "The war could never have served American interests. But it has
served Iran's interest by revenging Saddam Hussein's invasion of Iran in
the 1980s and enhancing Iran's influence within Iraq. It has also served
al Qaeda's interests, providing a much better training ground than did
Afghanistan.... We cannot 'win' a war that serves our enemies interests
and not our own. Thus continuing to pursue the illusion of victory in Iraq
makes no sense....

“No effective new strategy can be devised for the United States until it
begins withdrawing its forces from Iraq.... Withdrawal is the
pre-condition for winning support from countries in Europe that have stood
aside and other major powers including India, China, Japan, Russia. It
will also shock and change attitudes in Iran, Syria, and other countries
on Iraq's borders, making them far more likely to take seriously new U.S.
approaches, not just to Iraq, but to restoring regional stability and
heading off the spreading chaos that our war has caused.”