Iraq is no Vietnam
By Jeff Jacoby, Globe Columnist | August 25, 2005
IRAQ WAR skeptics and critics have been invoking Vietnam almost from the day the fighting began. So Senator Chuck Hagel of Nebraska was hardly breaking new ground when he joined the invokers on Sunday. ''We are locked into a bogged-down problem," he said on ABC's ''The Week," ''not . . . dissimilar to where we were in Vietnam."
Run-of-the-mill stuff on the Democratic left, but since Hagel is a Republican, his words instantly leaped to the top of the news cycle. ''GOP Senator Says Iraq Looking Like Vietnam," was the headline on AP's widely reprinted story.
Yet in so many ways, Iraq doesn't look like Vietnam at all. Vietnam was never the central battleground of the Cold War, while Iraq has become the focal point of the war on terrorism. Americans had no reason to feel that their own security was at risk in Vietnam, whereas 9/11 made it clear that the enemy we face today poses a lethal threat here at home as well. The jihadis in Iraq don't have the backing of superpowers; North Vietnam and the Viet Cong were armed to the teeth by China and the Soviet Union. In South Vietnam, the United States was allied to an unpopular and incompetent regime; in Iraq, the United States toppled a brutal tyranny and is trying to nurture a democracy in its place.
But of all the ways in which the Iraq war is not like Vietnam, perhaps the most telling is the attitude of the troops.
''When I was in Vietnam," retired Army Colonel Jack Jacobs, a 1969 Medal of Honor recipient who had just returned from a fact-finding trip to the Sunni Triangle, told NBC News in May, ''if you asked anybody what he wanted more than anything else in the world, he'd say: to go home. We asked . . . hundreds of soldiers, low-ranking soldiers, in both Afghanistan and Iraq . . . the same question. And the response, to a man and a woman, was, 'To kill bad guys.' . . . The morale is just over the top -- just really, really enthused about what they're doing. And I think the reason is they perceive that they're making progress. Success will do a lot to morale."
Indeed it will, as the ''Today" show's Matt Lauer discovered when he visited Baghdad last week. He tried valiantly to coax some Vietnam-style disillusionment out of the soldiers he met, but as NBC's transcript makes clear, the troops weren't having any of that:
Lauer: We've heard so much about the insurgent attacks, so much about the uncertainty as to when you folks are going to get to go home. How would you describe morale?
Chief Warrant Officer Randy Kergiss: My unit morale's pretty good. . . . People are ready to execute their missions, and they're pretty excited to be here
Lauer: How much does that uncertainty of knowing how long you're going to be here impact morale?
Sergeant Jamie Wells: Morale's always high. Soldiers know they have a mission, they like taking on the new objectives and taking on the new challenges. . . . They're motivated, ready to go.
Lauer: Don't get me wrong, I think you guys are probably telling me the truth, but there might be a lot of people at home wondering how that could be possible with the conditions you're facing and with the insurgent attacks . . .
Captain Sherman Powell: Well, sir, I tell you -- if I got my news from the newspapers also, I'd be pretty depressed as well.
Lauer: What don't you think is being correctly portrayed?
Powell: Sir, I know it's hard to get out and get on the ground and report the news. . . . But for of those who've actually had a chance to get out and go on patrols . . . we are very satisfied with the way things are going here. And we are confident that if we're allowed to finish the job we started we'll be very proud of it and our country will be proud of us for doing it. . . .
Lauer: How would you feel about US forces being withdrawn before -- you're shaking your head -- before the insurgency is defeated?
Powell: Well, sir, I would just tell you . . . as long as we continue to have confidence that we are supported and people have our back, there is nothing we cannot accomplish.
Lauer: So you would rather stay here longer and defeat the insurgency then be pulled out earlier . . .?
Kergiss: Yes, sir.
Wells: Absolutely.
Things have gone wrong in Iraq as they go wrong in every war. Bush's strategy of defeating Islamist terrorism by draining the swamps of dictatorship and fanaticism in which it breeds carries a high price tag. Nearly 1,900 US soldiers have been killed and more than 14,000 wounded in Iraq so far. There are more casualties to come.
But another Vietnam? No -- not when such strong support for the war comes from the very soldiers who are in harm's way. Their high morale, their faith in their mission, their conviction that we are doing good -- those are the signals to heed, not the counsels of despair on the TV talk shows. It will be time to give up on Iraq when the troops give up on Iraq. So far, there's no sign they will.
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