Vietnam's Shadow Lies Across Iraq
September 26, 2003
latimes.com Print
COMMENTARY
By Stanley Karnow,
Stanley Karnow covered Vietnam from 1959 to
1975. He is the author of "Vietnam: A History" (Viking, 1983) and a winner of the Pulitzer Prize in history. His most recent book was
"Paris in the Fifties"
"By God, we've kicked the Vietnam syndrome,"
President George H.W. Bush crowed after his swift
triumph in the Gulf War in 1991. His effusive
proclamation was meant to suggest that the U.S. public
had finally shaken off the memory of the humiliating
disaster in the Far East and would henceforth underwrite
fresh engagements overseas, without guilt or anxiety.
But he was mistaken. His optimism notwithstanding,
Americans remained haunted by the specter of a defeat
in some distant realm, and their uneasiness continued as
President George W. Bush made his plans to invade
Iraq. The younger Bush excoriated pundits who
cautioned that we faced a catastrophe there, and at first
he seemed to have been proved correct, as Americans
witnessed the amazing speed with which our battalions
drove into Baghdad. But it has since become apparent
that Iraq, if not exactly "another Vietnam," could
degenerate into an equally calamitous debacle.
The experiences in Southeast Asia and the Iraq conflict
have many differences but are analogous in some respects. As they oozed into the
region, Presidents Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy and Johnson each justified his
commitment by expounding the "domino theory," the concept that Moscow and
Beijing had chosen Vietnam as the key arena in which to pursue their grandiose
scheme for world domination. Johnson averred that unless we held the line there,
we would be compelled to fight the Communist hordes "on the beaches of Waikiki."
Similarly, Bush - permeated with evangelical fervor - has portrayed himself as a
crusader and Saddam Hussein as the evil genius behind international terrorism
whose influence reached from Indonesia to Algeria, and further insisted that
Hussein was close to possessing a nuclear arsenal. But just as his precursors in the
White House failed to prove their case that Vietnam was indispensable to U.S.
security, Bush has produced no solid evidence to back his allegations.
We deployed a panoply of sophisticated weaponry in Vietnam - supersonic
aircraft, high-tech artillery, napalm and devices that could detect a quivering leaf in
the jungle. Yet we were unable to ferret the Viet Cong guerrillas out of their
concealed village sanctuaries, and eventually we became frustrated, even
paralyzed. In Iraq, our overwhelmingly superior firepower quickly crushed
Hussein's legions, but now we are becoming bogged down as we endeavor to
eliminate fedayeen and suicide bombers prepared to sacrifice themselves in a jihad
against diabolical infidels seeking to eradicate Islam.
We were bewildered in Vietnam by our inability to distinguish between our friends
and foes, both of whom looked like innocent peasants and fishermen. In Iraq, too, it
is hard to separate allies from enemies. Our efforts to reconstruct Iraq's shattered
institutions have deteriorated into a nightmare as the nation's profusion of rival
political and religious factions compete to promote their sundry programs, thwarting
attempts by our troops to impose law and order.
Perhaps the most striking similarity is this: Those of us who covered Vietnam were
regularly inundated by civilian and military bureaucrats with piles of glowing details,
charts and statistics devised to show progress. We spoofed their daily briefings in
Saigon as the "Five O'Clock Follies" and learned from accompanying U.S. soldiers
into battle that they were either distorting the truth or blatantly lying.
Today, as I listen to Bush and his spokesmen deliver euphoric accounts of the
headway being made in Iraq, they remind me of the bulletins from Vietnam that
reassured us that "victory is just around the corner" and that "we see the light at the
end of the tunnel." As the war escalated in Vietnam, members of Congress
privately began to oppose what increasingly seemed to be a futile enterprise. But
they never failed to vote funds for the venture on the grounds that "we can't let
down our boys." For the same reason, they will grant Bush the $87 billion he has
requested.
Former Defense Secretary Robert S. McNamara, one of the prime architects of
our involvement in Vietnam, confessed in a lachrymose book published in 1995 that
"we were terribly wrong" - cold comfort for the families of the nearly 60,000
Americans and more than 1 million Vietnamese who lost their sons and daughters
in the conflagration. If our casualties mount in Iraq, we may ultimately hear a
similarly emotional mea culpa from a Bush administration official, perhaps even
Donald Rumsfeld. |
