Free elections took place in Iraq last Sunday, but some people are still not happy.
For those people, Iraq is still a “quagmire”, still a “wrong war”, still “another Viet Nam”.
Why? Simple. Bush lied about WMD. It doesn’t matter that the murderous regime of Saddam Hussein was removed and Iraqi people are set free. Bush LIED! If only he used strictly the noble cause of liberation and didn’t talk about WMD threat, everything would be just. But he didn’t, so the invasion isn’t just. So it’s a Wrong War. Another Viet Nam.
Let’s entertain that line of reasoning.
Well, then, what was “wrong” with Viet Nam? Kennedy and Johnson didn’t lie. They said outright that Viet Nam was a battle against Communism. The History vindicated them. Everybody is proud of winning the Cold War nowadays. Cold War was against Communist threat. Viet Nam was a part of Cold War. Viet Nam battle was lost, but many years after that the War was won. The reason was noble and conduct was honest. So, why was it a Wrong War? Why was it “just like Iraq”?
Or is there something else in common between Viet Nam and Iraq that makes some people unhappy?
:dubious: The Vietnam (not Viet Nam) War was a waste of the lives of 58,000 Americans and more than 3 million Vietnamese. In the end, the result was the same if we’d let the all-Vietnam elections go forward in 1956, as specified by the Geneva Conference of 1954 – only worse, because of all the fighting and dying. And the Vietnam War did not hasten the collapse of the Soviet Union appreciably. Our presidents during that time did lie, or swallow their generals’ lies and pass them on to the people. Nixon, it is now known, lied when he ran on a peace platform in 1968; he never intended to end the war on any terms that could not be considered an American victory.
As for the Cold War itself, it was not noble and America’s conduct in it was not honest. It led us to do really horrible things, like sponsoring the 1974 coup in Chile in which an elected Marxist president was overthrown by a brutal and murderous military dicatorship. And then there’s our conduct in El Salvador, Nicaragua and – too many national shames and disgraces to list. The world would be better off if the U.S. had stopped at guaranteeing the safety of Western Europe and never tried to engage the USSR in an arms race or a contest for global leadership – better off, even if the USSR still existed today.
The differences are more striking, and daunting, than the similarities. You could make a case that the Vietnam War was a front in the global struggle against Communism. You cannot make a case (unless you’re a shameless liar like the neocons) that our invasion of Iraq was part of a global struggle against terrorism, proliferation of WMD’s, or anything else. Furthermore, Iraq is located in an even more dangerous and volatile neighborhood than Southeast Asia ever was. Our actions are raising up a generation of millions of Arabs and Muslims in dozens of countries who will hate America for the rest of their lives – assuming they get a chance to grow up at all.
There are many lessons to be learned from Viet Nam. Yes, the leaders of the west thought that it was a battle against communism. To some extent it was, but that is a vast oversimplification. Looking at what happened in Viet Nam after the expulsion of foreign powers, it is clear that the brand of communism practiced in there was not the revolution exporting type, but the more pedestrian brand of socialism and nationalism. You can go there now and see that for all practical purposes, Viet Nam’s economy is a strange hybrid of capitalist and communist that is more free market in nature. Yet the country is still organized into communes and there is sufficient socialism in force to ensure that the agrarian parts of the country are not left behind in the stampede toward capitalism. The people are clearly Vietnamese first and communists second, so it was really not a war against communism but a war against the Vietnamese. More than anything they wanted self-determination and an end to colonial rule.
So by that summary, Viet Nam was the wrong war. It was a war against people who had Vietnam’s best interests in mind, and had no aspirations of world domination. But it was for the right reason, to counter the expanding threat of Soviet and Chinese communism. Not that the “right reason” is consolation to those who lost lives and limbs there, but apology demands explanation, and a weak explanation is better than none.
Iraq is a different from Viet Nam in that the Sunni (AKA post-Hussein Baathist) insurgents are, by demonstration of their past history, are neither in the majority nor are they people who have Iraq’s best interests in mind. It’s clear as the ink on a thumb that the majority in Iraq welcome the possibility of self-determination that the insurgents want to stamp out.
I don’t intend to thrash out the whole Iraq thing again, but having just returned from Viet Nam I wanted to share my impressions on that conflict.
I was unaware that everything is perfect now in Iraq simply because an election has been held.
Sorry, but I’m unaware of anyone on this board who has used that specific argument, as you have framed it. A link would be helpful.
BrainGlutton hit most of the high points, most notably that millions of Vietnamese, and more than 50,000 US lives were lost essentially for nothing. Beyond that, there have been several debates on this board concerning presumed tactical and strategic similarities between Iraq and Viet Nam, and as best I can remember most people have agreed that there are far more differences than similarities. In terms of lives lost, they are of course not even in the same ballpark, but these are early times for Iraq yet. I of course hope Iraq doesn’t turn into another Viet Nam, but this will be impossible to judge at least until elections for a real government have been held and the US has withdrawn its occupation forces.
New Iskander, it would be good if you would stop pretending that the only arguments against the US invasion were sour grapes based on the wonderful ‘success’ (the Iraqis were not in fact voting in a new government, and the votes haven’t even been counted yet) of last weekend’s election. For me the problem with the invasion is simply this: we are directly responsible for killing many thousands of Iraqis who would not have died if we had not invaded. It is simply unacceptable, in my view, to refuse to recognize this responsibility. It seems pretty clear from your post that you prefer not to think about this responsibility, and I’m sure that the many dead are complete abstractions to you, but I do not care to take the same attitude. Sorry again, if that bugs you for some reason.
Rent The Fog of War for some perspective on Vietnam. Iraq is never mentioned in it, but I couldn’t help sensing some parallels between the two while watching this documentary.
Uh, there are other ways to fuck up the high road in a war than lies. But telling lies that get governments deposed and human beings killed is way up there on the “bad thing to do” and “renders all other actions suspect” list.
The parallels between Vietnam and Iraq lie in us (trying to, in Vietnam) overthrowing a government that has not attacked us. Most countries, through history, have tried to recognize the soverignty of other countries and use diplomacy to negotiate and warfare to defend themselves or expand their borders (and the latter is generally looked down on). It sets a good precedence and allows for Internation relations and cooperation to occur. The US just said “Fuck that, we don’t like their government and we’re taking it down”, which is a really unusual move and worries a lot of people.
People are also worried that the fighting will drag on indefinately, and will ultimately lead to nothing but a lot more dead people. They are worried that no exit plan has been made public, and the war has clearly been a lot longer and rockier than what it was sold to be (go check the Iraq prediction thread- many people said it’d be a two week affair). People want a clear mission, a clear goal, and clear way to know when the thing is over and when to end it. “Eliminating terrorism” just doesn’t cut it.
Then again, I’m not sure what bizarro planet you are from when you state that our conduct in Vietnmam was honest and we won a few years later.
I was skeptical of the article, but it’s authentic, according to Snopes
Of course I don’t buy into the Vietnam/Iraq comparison because the situations are too different to anyone possessing any depth of knowledge about the respective situations.
Pleeez, give us a cite For instance, who were these countries defending themselves from? Just give a date when there was no wars being waged and the name of the international body that was doing all this good stuff.
Sounds very similar to “Inquiring Minds Want To Know” It sounds rather simplistic, but I just said that.
It’s enough to make anyone possessing any depth of knowledge about the respective situations wonder whether they’re cleaving as closely to the truth this time as they did last time.
Not quite, the only parallel is that they held a vote. The VC were just continuing their war against the US sponsored S. Vietnamese govt. Not to mention that the VC actually had a fairly obvious and attainable set of goals. The VC didn’t attack to create chaos as in iraq, but as part of their ultimate aim to unite vietnam, also, as a side note, the S. Vietnamese premiers were all incredibly brutal and corrupt and few lasted more than a year.
You’d have to find evidence to say that either the Iraqi politicians are as bad as the Vietnamese ones. The Vietnam situation was different due to the circumstances by which the US became involved and that the type of war was much different as it contained more widespread fighting as well as traditional terrorism, whereas Iraq’s only got the terrorist aspect. I mean, you don’t see battalions of insurgents, do you? In Vietnam the VC was organised along military lines and did have a large base of popular support as well as foreign backing, this one largely doesn’t, and is somewhat confined to one ethnic area of Iraq.
Iraq has taken one step toward a better, freer society. Whether it gets there or not is anyone’s guess. Even if it does, one can question whether the end justifies the means. The means were that the US government used military force in an irresponsible manner, killed tens if not hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqis, and is committing war crimes by torturing captured suspected terrorists. One can applaud the courage of the Iraqis in voting and wish them well without then concluding that the invasion was justified. It was not.
As pointed out, the Gulf of Tonkin was a lie leading to another quagmire. Once the US decided it didn’t particularly care which band of thugs controlled Vietnam, pulling out was comparatively easy. The permanent damage to US image abroad and the potential for destabilization of the political world is infinitely greater in Iraq than in Vietnam. Sure both were started on lies, but the Iraq war is of far greater potential for disaster.
Vietnam at the time was justified in the domino theory- that Communists were going to slowly take over the world one country at a time and that stopping them early was the key to stopping them at all. As we found out, the domino theory was mush and communism collapsed of its own accord. Now there is a new domino theory, the “freedom is on the march” and that a democratic Iraq will lead to other democracies in the region. I believe the Iraq domino theory to be just as false as the Vietnam domino theory turned out to be.
I thought so. At least in theory, Vietnam doesn’t suffer from economic slavery like in the US. Most likely, things in Vietnam are as evil as in the US.