GZ -- only an idiot like Kerry would try to put Iraq & Nam in the same sentence;
Iraq is Not Vietnam, It's Guadalcanal
Friday, September 24, 2004
By Powl Smith
Pundits these days are quick to compare the fighting in Iraq (search) with
the American loss in Vietnam (search) 30 years ago. Terms like "quagmire"
evoke the Southeast Asian jungle, where America's technological advantages
were negated and committed Vietnamese guerrillas wore down the U.S. will to
fight.
People love to draw historical analogies because they seem to offer a sort
of analytical proof—after all, doesn't history repeat itself? In fact, such
comparisons do have value, but like statistics, it's possible to find a
historical analogy to suit any argument. And Vietnam's the wrong one for
Iraq.
In fact, World War II is a far more accurate comparison for the global war
we are waging to defeat terrorism. Both wars began for the United States
with a catastrophic sneak attack from an undeclared enemy. We had many faint
and not-so-faint warnings of the impending Japanese assault on Pearl Harbor
(search), not least the historical precedent of Port Arthur in 1904, when
the Japanese launched a preemptive strike against Russia.
We had similar ill-defined warnings and precedents about Al Qaeda (search)
and Islamist terrorism (search) (the East Africa embassy bombings (search)
in 1998; the USS Cole bombing (search) in 2000), but in 2001 as in 1941, we
lacked the "hard" intelligence requisite to convince a country at peace that
it was about to pitched into war.
Historical apologists say that the Japanese were "forced" to attack us
because we were strangling their trade in Asia. Sound familiar? American
foreign policy in the Middle East is responsible for the anger and rage that
has stirred up Al Qaeda, right? In fact, there is a crucial similarity
between the Japanese imperialism (search) of 50 years ago and Islamic
fundamentalism of today: both are totalitarian, anti-Western ideologies that
cannot be appeased.
As Japan amassed victory after victory in the early days of the war, America
and our allies could see that we had a long, hard slog ahead of us.
Americans understood there was no recourse but to win, despite the fearful
cost. This was the first and foremost lesson of World War II that applies
today: Wars of national survival are not quick, not cheap, and not
bloodless.
In one of our first counteroffensives against the Japanese, U.S. troops
landed on the island of Guadalcanal (search) in order to capture a key
airfield. We surprised the Japanese with our speed and audacity, and with
very little fighting seized the airfield. But the Japanese recovered from
our initial success, and began a long, brutal campaign to force us off
Guadalcanal and recapture it. The Japanese were very clever and absolutely
committed to sacrificing everything for their beliefs. (Only three Japanese
surrendered after six months of combat—a statistic that should put today's
Islamic radicals to shame.) The United States suffered 6,000 casualties
during the six-month Guadalcanal campaign; Japan, 24,000. It was a very
expensive airfield.
Which brings us to the next lesson of World War II: Totalitarian enemies
have to be bludgeoned into submission, and the populations that support them
have to be convinced they can't win. This is a bloody and difficult
business. In the Pacific theater, we eventually learned our enemies'
tactics—jungle and amphibious warfare (search), carrier task forces, air
power—and far surpassed them. But that victory took four years and cost many
hundreds of thousands of casualties.
Iraq isn't Vietnam, it's Guadalcanal—one campaign of many in a global war to
defeat the terrorists and their sponsors. Like the United States in the
Pacific in 1943, we are in a war of national survival that will be long,
hard, and fraught with casualties. We lost the first battle of that war on
Sept. 11, 2001, and we cannot now afford to walk away from the critical
battle we are fighting in Iraq any more than we could afford to walk away
from Guadalcanal.
For the security of America, we have no recourse but to win.
Lieutenant Colonel Powl Smith, U.S. Army, is the former chief of
counterterrorism plans at U.S. European Command and is currently in Baghdad
with Multi-National Forces-Iraq. |
