Posted on Tue, Jan. 11, 2005
IRAQ
It's beginning to look like Vietnam
BY STUART HERRINGTON
stuherr@pacbell.net
The drumbeat began within a few months after statues of Saddam Hussein toppled. President Bush and his neocon clique had gotten the United States into a Vietnam-like quagmire. Many of us wrote that the differences between Iraq and Vietnam were vast. Besides, had not the same critics trotted out the ''Q'' word within weeks of the invasion of Afghanistan?
Nearly two years into the war, as the Iraqi elections approach, some unsettling parallels to Vietnam have surfaced. As one who abandoned the hapless South Vietnamese on April 30, 1975, in a helicopter from the U.S. Embassy roof, I have pondered the strategic misjudgments that led to that betrayal for 30 years.
Five lessons
Here are five lessons not well-learned from Vietnam that imperil our chances for success in Iraq:
• Waste valuable time by erroneous strategic thinking, undermining support for the effort. Between 1965 and 1968, we fought a war of attrition against Hanoi, squandering three years striving to reach Gen. William Westmoreland's elusive ''crossover point'' (when we would kill more North Vietnamese than Hanoi could recruit). By the time Washington changed course, public opinion had turned against the war.
In Iraq, after a brilliant attack that unseated Hussein, faulty strategic planning is endangering political support at home as too few troops valiantly pursue a reactive, whack-a-mole campaign against a growing insurgency. A declining number of Americans believe that the war will end favorably.
• Overestimate our ability to create effective indigenous forces to shoulder the burden of fighting, then depart prematurely. Vietnamization was the right approach in 1969, but creating effective Vietnamese forces required more time than we were able to devote.
Urgently reconstituting an Iraqi army that never should have been disbanded is essential, but today's rush to create Iraqi armed forces so that U.S. forces can withdraw as soon as possible bears a disturbing resemblance to our Vietnam folly. It could take five years to build an effective Iraqi military. To pretend otherwise is to court disaster.
• Fail to control borders, thereby permitting the insurgents external support and sanctuaries. Hanoi's generals credited Laotian and Cambodian sanctuaries as critical to victory because they were corridors for reinforcements and delivery of external aid from socialist countries.
Because we have too few forces in Iraq to secure the borders, the insurgents enjoy both sanctuaries and external support. This strategic disadvantage alone could make victory over the insurgents a longer-term operation than the American or Iraqi public can tolerate.
• Make gratuitous enemies among the population. In Vietnam, American firepower and operations often resulted in embittered, hostile citizens. In Iraq, sweep operations have resulted in excessive civilian detainees, some of whom have been mistreated. We have caused extensive property damage and civilian casualties, in the process humiliating citizens who must be on our side if the war is to be won.
• Sacrifice one's ally in the name of a more-critical strategic priority. The Nixon administration believed that the Vietnam War hindered the more-vital strategic aim of engaging China and the Soviet Union. In Iraq's case, the sirens are singing a similar song, that the Iraq war is intruding on the war on terrorism.
Allowed to prevail, this logic could lead to premature troop withdrawals and a failure to stay the course in Iraq. South Vietnamese refugees believe that their country was sacrificed on the altar of the Cold War. Will thousands of Iraqi refugees some day lament that a free Iraq was sacrificed on the altar of the War on Terrorism?
The situation is not beyond retrieval. But history could repeat itself if the president and his team don't get it right going forward. For openers, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld must acknowledge that extensive reinforcements are required to control the borders and provide security.
Mortal peril
Ordering young Americans into harm's way to execute a strategy that requires a far greater investment in forces is wrong, just as it is equally wrong to ask young Iraqis to become police officers, election workers or soldiers while not providing them security from insurgent attack.
Despite these disturbing similarities, one key difference stands out. Vietnam was a regional conflict without global consequences. In Iraq, an unfavorable outcome for the United States and its allies will have catastrophic global consequences.
Does anyone doubt the mortal peril for our nation if we fail in Iraq at the hands of jihadists?
Stuart Herrington, a retired Army colonel, has visited Iraq and Guantánamo Bay to advise the Army on counterinsurgency operations and interrogation of enemy combatants.
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