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COMMENTARY
Iraq vs Vietnam: Similarities and
differences
By Ehsan Ahrari
The United States invasion of Iraq is a 24 hours
a day, seven days a week war, which the international
media have been covering on a minute-by-minute basis. In
such coverage, only the performance of the US military
is under severe scrutiny, but not that of the Iraqi
military. That is a source of great consternation for
the Pentagon. But then Iraq is not a democratic polity,
and it is defending its homeland from the world's
foremost military power.
What is also a major
reason for apprehension for the US is that it is not
winning the war for the "hearts and minds" in the
international arena. Increasingly, comparisons between
the Iraqi campaign and Vietnam are popping up. The US
invasion of Iraq resembles the Vietnam conflict in many
ways, while it is also dissimilar in others.
The
most remarkable similarity is that, as a dispatch of Los
Angeles Times noted, "The war with Iraq has begun with
almost the same level of public support that the Johnson
administration enjoyed when it began the concerted
buildup of US troops in Vietnam in 1965." It was only as
a result of three years of bloody conflict and intense
journalistic scrutiny "before popular sentiments turned
decisively against the war in 1968".
Second, in
Vietnam the larger fight was against international
communism and the perceived threat of "falling dominos"
in East Asia, first introduced by president Dwight
Eisenhower in the 1950s, was the rationale for starting
America's military involvement. To quote Eisenhower,
"You have broader considerations that might follow what
you would call the 'falling domino' principle. You have
a row of dominoes set up, you knock over the first one,
and what will happen to the last one is the certainty
that it will go over very quickly. So you could have a
beginning of a disintegration that would have the most
profound influences."
In 2003, toppling Saddam
Hussein is being justified to rid Iraq of weapons of
mass destruction. In addition, President George W Bush
has attempted to link Saddam with the larger threat of
global terrorism and his alleged cooperation with
al-Qaeda terrorist groups. In the aftermath of Bush's
press conference days before the invasion began, he used
a nuanced technique of linking Saddam with al-Qaeda.
Commenting on that technique, The Christian Science
Monitor of March 14 noted, "Bush never pinned blame for
the attacks directly on the Iraqi president. Still, the
overall effect was to reinforce an impression that
persists among much of the American public: that the
Iraqi dictator did play a direct role in the attacks. A
New York Times/CBS poll this week shows that 45 percent
of Americans believe Mr Hussein was 'personally
involved' in September 11, about the same figure as a
month ago."
Third, in the case of the Vietnam
conflict, the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution of 1964 - which
was passed in the aftermath of US claims that a US
destroyer was reportedly attacked by the North
Vietnamese - later proved to be untrue. Bush's assertion
about linkages between Saddam and al-Qaeda also has not
been backed by American intelligence sources. The above
dispatch of the Monitor also noted, "Sources
knowledgeable about US intelligence say there is no
evidence that Hussein played a role in the September 11
attacks, nor that he has been or is currently aiding
al-Qaeda. Yet the White House appears to be encouraging
this false impression, as it seeks to maintain American
support for a possible war against Iraq and demonstrate
seriousness of purpose to Hussein's regime."
Fourth, in the Vietnam imbroglio, the North
Vietnamese relied heavily on guerrilla warfare and did
not follow the conventional principles for the conduct
of war. In a more than week-long war in Iraq, the Iraqis
have established a record of not following the "laws of
war". Referring to the intensity of Iraqi attacks,
General William S Wallace, the army's senior ground
commander in Iraq said, "The attacks we're seeing are
bizarre - technical vehicles [pickups] with .50 calibers
and every kind of weapon charging tanks and Bradleys,"
Wallace added, referring to the M1 Abram tanks and M2
Bradley fighting vehicles used by the army. "It's
disturbing to think that someone can be that brutal."
In fact, Iraq has been quite explicit on this
point. A dispatch of the New York Times of March 30
quotes Iraq's Vice President Taha Yassin as saying, "Any
method that stops or kills the enemy will be used. What
are they doing in our land?," he asked. "Let them pack
and go."
The most surprising aspect of this
development is that the US did not anticipate Iraq's
desperate tactics. It takes no amount of imagination for
the weak fighting force to start using asymmetric
warfare tactics in the earliest possible phase of a
military conflict, since that is the only method left to
convert the speedy battlefield gains of an awesome
military force into a protracted war. And in this
instance, a potential protracted war remains America's
Achilles heel.
Speaking of protracted wars,
Saddam has reportedly studied the battle of Stalingrad
and the Vietnam war at great length. It will be
interesting to find out how much of that interest has
been institutionalized in the curricula of Iraq's
military schools and academies. Regardless of how
prepared the Iraqi regular forces are in protracted or
guerrilla warfare, they are about to use heavily all
tactics of asymmetric warfare in order to level the
playing the field.
The most significant
dissimilarity between Vietnam and Iraq, however, might
be the duration of the conflict. In the case of Iraq,
the actual military action may not last longer than an
additional week or two. Even if the US forces decide to
put Baghdad under siege, as press reports currently
indicate, that siege may not last long, given the
possibility of a combination of air attacks and Special
Forces probing that will follow during the siege to
exploit any openings and thereby minimizing its
duration.
That possibility leads one to think
about the future dynamics of insurgency campaigns in
Iraq. Thus far, a standard American argument is that
Iraqi resistance is the product of fear of Saddam's
potential reprisals in the case of manifestations of
cooperation with the invading forces. As dubious as that
argument is, there is no way of knowing whether such
resistance will disappear during the American occupation
of Iraq, once the current leadership of that country is
wiped out.
All of these developments, according
to the aforementioned Los Angeles Times dispatch, are
generating a number of concerns in the minds of the
American populace. "Americans don't think the Bush
administration explained clearly how much money the war
with Iraq will cost, or even how long the war will last.
And almost three-quarters don't think the president has
clearly explained how many military casualties there
will be."
Such feelings are reviving another
awful phrase of the Vietnam era: "quagmire." Referring
to that phrase, CNN's pollster William Schneider was
quoted as saying, "The fact remains, though, that when
President Bush tells the American people that the war
will last 'as long as it takes', the polls show people
are frustrated with that response. In this case, people
don't think the administration is lying, they just think
it's not answering the question and that's frustrating,
which is potentially dangerous."
If the US
government has learned one lesson from the Vietnam
conflict, it is about being somewhat more up front with
the media. Thus, this variable remains one of the major
points of difference from that conflict. Still, people's
frustrations are likely to remain, since they want this
conflict to be over with minimum American casualties.
From the American perspective, the sooner the
Iraqi campaign ends in a clear-cut victory the lesser
are the chances of comparisons between this conflict and
Vietnam. From the viewpoint of the current Iraqi
leadership, however, the longer the conflict prevails,
the better the chances are for the survival of Saddam's
regime.
Ehsan Ahrari, PhD, is an
Alexandria, Virginia, US-based independent strategic
analyst.
(©2003 Asia Times Online Co, Ltd.
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