Some Analysts See Iraq War Eclipsing Toll from Vietnam
WASHINGTON — President Bush recently said that “there’s a lot of differences” between the current war in Iraq and the Vietnam War.As fighting in Iraq enters its fifth year, an increasing number of specialists in foreign policy and national strategy are contending that the biggest difference might be that the Iraq war will inflict greater damage to US interests than Vietnam did.
“In terms of the consequences of failure, the stakes are much bigger than Vietnam,” said William Cohen, a former defense secretary . “The geopolitical consequences are . . . potentially global in scope.”
About 17 times as many US troops died in the Vietnam War — the longest war in US history — as have been lost in Iraq, the nation’s third-longest war. Also, despite widespread public dissatisfaction with the Iraq war, the debate over it has not convulsed American society to the extent seen during the Vietnam conflict.
However, Vietnam does not have oil and is not in the middle of a region crucial to the global economy, nor is it festering with terrorism, analysts say, leading many of them to conclude that the long-term effects of the Iraq war will be worse for the United States.
“It makes Vietnam look like a cakewalk,” said retired Air Force General Charles Wald, a veteran of the Vietnam War. The domino theory that nations across Southeast Asia would go communist was not fulfilled, he added, but with Iraq, “worst-case scenarios are the most likely thing to happen.”
Iraq is worse than Vietnam “in so many ways,” agreed Andrew Krepinevich, a retired Army officer and author of one of the most respected studies of the US military’s failure in Vietnam. “We knew what we were getting into in Vietnam. We didn’t here.”
Also, President Nixon used diplomacy with China and the Soviet Union to exploit the split between them and minimize the fallout of Vietnam.
By contrast, Krepinevich said, the Bush administration has magnified the problems of Iraq by neglecting public diplomacy in the Muslim world and by not developing a domestic energy policy to reduce the significance of Middle Eastern oil.
In strategic terms, the Vietnam conflict was understood even by many opponents as part of a global stance of containment, a policy that preceded the war and endured for 15 years after Saigon fell, noted retired Army Colonel Richard Sinnreich, a veteran of two Vietnam tours of duty.
“I’m not sure we can count on a similarly prompt strategic recovery this time around,” he said.
Not everyone agrees that Iraq’s damage to the United States will exceed that of Vietnam’s.
Cornell University historian Fredrik Logevall, who has studied the origins of the Vietnam War, said he hears the argument frequently from both supporters and opponents of the Iraq war, but he doesn’t agree, because it is based on predictions rather than facts.
Although both conflicts were “wars of choice” that frustrated and angered Americans, Vietnam caused far more death and destruction, he said. “It’s hard to see how it’s worse at present.”
But those on the other side say their view is warranted.
“I think the hangover from this war will be at least as bad as Vietnam and wouldn’t be surprised by a growing movement toward retrenchment and isolationism,” said Erin M. Simpson, a counterinsurgency specialist at Harvard University.
© Copyright 2007 Globe Newspaper Company.
$2.5 TRILLION ACCRUAL COST
One only hopes that the horrendous implications of the $2.5 TRILLION accrual costing of the Iraq War for the US tax-payer (as estimated by Nobel Laureate Professor Joseph Stiglitz, Columbia, and his Harvard colleague Professor Bilmes) will finally register with American and British voters….
If the accrued cost of the Iraq fiasco is going to be around 2.5 TRILLION…..Wouldn’t have been cheaper to BUY Iraq’s OIL with no loss of lives or additional cost of rebuilding the broken US Military machine and Iraq’s infrastructure etc….
Since BUSH, NEVER apparently studied Opportunity Cost Theory in his MBA…Maybe he got his MBA out of a “corn flakes packet” along with his National Guard service record….
http://www.king-george.biz/
Bush would never have appreciated the cost of the alternative that was forgone in order to pursue his STUPID little war. Bush never realized the benefits he could have received by following his Father’s example….
by staying the
HELL OUT OF MESS-O-POTAMIA….
Deceitful leadership has dug a deep hole for the nation.
Nothing good will come out of the Idiot’s Iraq policy, and since our presence there is the cause of so much death and destruction, we just ought to get out.
The name of this game is to spend money. There spending the money on there friends company’s Blackwater, Halliburton etc etc etc
They have destabilized the world’s oil price jump in next set of friends ExxonMobil, Shell etc etc etc
See how it makes prefect sense
You took the words right out of my mouth, Dave Rabbitt. It’s not about what’s good for US energy, or safety. It’s all about trickling trillions of dollars to all the special interest groups that funded Bush’s campaign. It’s not just Iraq though. Lockheed Martin’s anti-missile warning system in Poland is destabilizing relations with Russia in the region. It’s sad when the current administration is forfeiting the safety of its citizens (and the people around the world) only to return the favor to a few multi-nationals. Bush should be jailed for treason…
Why bother with the comparisons? VietNam was an avoidable tragedy foisted on the world by deceitful US leaders, and so’s Iraq. The underlying justifications, “The Domino Theory” and “Saddam = 9/11″, were both farsical. The only good comparisons serve is to prove how stupid we were both times, and how we have learned nothing from the lessons of the past, no matter how recent or relevant. Did the Bush brain trust (oxymoron intended) think we’d fare any better in Afghanistan and Iraq than the Soviets, who were better armed and more committed than we were?
I did not believe the “War for Oil” protests in the beginning, but I can see no other answer now. The proposed Iraqi law parcelling their oil to foreign corporations can lead to no other conclusion. Had we held to Carter’s emission standards reductions after the “oil crisis” of 1973 we wouldn’t be as nearly as dependent on the Middle East and Exxon/Mobil as right now. But along came Reagan and the rise of CEO/government marriage, deregulation, SUVs, and thirty years of leadership by idiots, leaving us in the bind we now find ourselves.
In light of the report from Joe Stiglitz and Professor Linda Bilmes, which estimated the economic cost of the Iraq war to 2015, I thought it would be a good idea to estimate the human cost of the war, so I did some number crunching in the last week. My projections have been summed up in written, table and graph forum in the following article: Iraq and American Death Count to 2017.
http://www.chycho.com/?q=2017
The numbers from this estimate are devastating. It is expected that over 8 million Iraqi civilians and well over 27 thousand coalition troops will be dead by March 2017. The monthly death rate for coalition troops will increase to approximately 300, while Iraq’s monthly death rate will increase to close to 95 thousand. These number should be a good starting point for a discussion, especially considering that this week the White House has again suggested that the increased numbers of American troops in Iraq will remain longer then expected.
The majority of Americans did not vote for Bush, and some polls show that the majority feel we should pull out of Iraq. We’ve been plagued with a leadership tradition that has reached a saturation point of exploitation within, and is now looking for faster/better/cheaper ways to export it abroad. Or, as someone earlier suggested, any excuse at all to funnel more money to well-connected vendors.
Bush & Co. hosed our economy, distorted science, wrecked what was left of our international reputation and our own trust in civic duty, weakened the military, dismantled habeas corpus, had 9/11 occur on their watch, etc. Americans by and large didn’t really ask for any of this. In the final analysis, Bush & Co. may mainly be analyzed as a dynastic family with corporate interests, perhaps not really interested in improving any particular nation’s well-being. Strictly their own?
The neocons have succeeded admirably in their plan to destroy the government. As Horowitz? said, “to make it small enough to drown in a bathtub”. To privatize everything. It didn’t occur to me that “everything” at the time meant our armed services too.
I called it fascism before it became mainstream and some patriots thought I had lost it. But it’s not just in the US, though we are also the world’s greatest fascists, but anywhere in the globe that competing multinational oligarchies exploit.
Having an alternative to global fascism is another good reason to join the international third party, the grassroots party of peace, the Green Party.
We can’t afford another month of “leadership” by these Moron-Americans. They must be impeached, and Kucinich has the right idea by starting with Cheney.
There are loose Cold War suitcase sized nukes floating around.
America has so deeply peeved so many people all around the globe that “it’s just a matter of time” comes to mind.
Will it be worse than Vietnam then?
One other thought. The “experts” consistently act like tomorrow will look like yesterday. For example, at the end of the article “counterinsurgency specialist” Erin Simpson opines that we may return to “isolationism.” But the US is 50 trillion dollars in debt and has about 15% of its original petroleum endowement left, while world production is about to peak (in fact for the moment it peaked in October of last year). The ground is shifting dramatically under our feet and all the “experts” can think about is their their own small area of “expertise.”
wouldn’t be surprised by a growing movement toward retrenchment and isolationism,” said Erin M. Simpson, a counterinsurgency specialist at Harvard University.
“Also, despite widespread public dissatisfaction with the Iraq war, the debate over it has not convulsed American society to the extent seen during the Vietnam conflict.”
We have to remember that at the time of the Vietnam War the media was not controlled by G.E and Murdoc and the press was more diligent in their role to criticize and question the government. Public dissent was also in fashion and people were not afraid to publicly question the President’s actions. This is a lesson our corporate owned government learned from Vietnam and has since that time sanitized the media. If the images of dead and wounded Iraqi children were shown on the evening news on a daily basis as well as running tally on the loss of Iraqi lives there might have been a “convulsed American society”.
Friends that travel outside of the U.S. always hear a more critical view of the state of Iraq from international news agencies. They see the current images of an Iraq that continues to deteriorate.
I guess the only comparison that should be made concerns the amount of human lives lost. CNN states that 3,622 of U.S. and coalition forces (not counting the 770 Blackwater mercenaries) have died and a recent study estimates 655,000 Iraqis have died in four years of conflict. I guess if Iraq war continues for another six years at its current rate it may equal Vietnam’s total human casualties.
We are simply funding with our tax dollars the founding of of permanent commercial mercenary forces which now service our regular forces, but with OUR money will soon supplant them. Another victory for “free enterprise” who couldn’t do it without us. Just watch how those beneficiaries of OUR reocrd-breaking corporate welfare will treat us even as our grandchildren continue to pay down their seed money.
We are simply funding a non-accountable, secretive for-profit fighting force that will protect the interests of those who take our rights away.
Yet which of our “leaders” or newsmakers will point this li8ttle dirty deed out?
Are we witnessing the suicide of America?
This is the video that MoveOn.org and VideoVets.org did not want you to see
The mom in this short 2 minute video expresses her heartfelt feelings about underage recruiting tactics and MoveOn and VoteVets did not want you to see it becuse it makes THEM feel “uncomfortable.”
Near the end of the war in Nam it occured to McNamara (sec def) that no matter how many of the enemy we killed more continued to show up to carry out operations against our troops and those of our South Viet Nam allies. The sec def had the geostatisticians in the pentagon do some numbers crunching and guess what? The enemy were multiplying faster than we were knocking them off. Since the Cambodians, Laotians and Chinese were not rushing across the border to fight us in Viet Nam it was just us against Viet Namese.
The situation in Iraq is much different. The world Muslim population is about 1.2 billion and they will travel to Iraq to defend their brother Muslims. Saudi Arabia is already ticked off that we are favoring the Shia over the Sunni and are letting the Shia government kill Sunnis with death squads as well as members of the regular army and police. At some point Saudi Arabia, Syria, and Iran will give the green light to larger, better trained and equipped forces into Iraq to help their brothers be they Shia or Sunni. Turkey is on the verge of attacking the Kurds in force. Among the Muslim fighters killed in Iraq have been found Indonesians, Lybians, Chechneyans, all the Stans, etc. It will only get worse for the US as the war grinds on and Al Queda is recruiting hordes of fighters.
This is definitely not a problem that we faced in the Nam!
Rummy and his merry band of neo cons thought that we could fight this war on the cheap in the sense that it would be fast, high tech, and few boots on the ground. When General Shensiki, General Odom and many others tried to tell this group of morons with Harvard degrees that they were wrong, they were fired for their efforts. The grab for the brass ring (oil in Iraq) failed and now we have a broken military, dollar sinking like a rock, no friends left in the world, a very good chance that the economy will enter recession in the last quarter of this year, and a Fed that will be forced to raise interest rates to stop the dollar slide and inflation, and a no growth economy which = stagflation, no housing recovery, and a falling standard of living.
When all the consequences of the decisions of Cheney, Feith, and the other neo con idealogues are totaled up is this mess as bad as the Nam? I believe it will be much worse.
Wonder why it is that disaster reports list so many dead, and so many displaced, evacuated, wounded — but in wars we apparently only count the dead.
I read that there already are 25,000 wounded, many of them severely. Because, the article said, our body armor is better than ever, and medicine has advanced.
The medical cost of keeping some of these wounded functioning maximally will be a hundred thousand dollars, and more, each, a year for the rest of his or her life.
All the way back, nine-eleven — the president continues to remind us of the event that shook the world, When the president reminds us of nine-eleven it is the horror, the enormity, the fear we all felt.
At final count there were fewer than 3000 dead, that is about the number that are killed in automobile accidents each month.
I bet we have spent ten, a hundred times more that what it would have cost to rebuild the twin towers. The war we never talk millions any more, billions, trillions even. How much would it cost to rebuild two (or more) buildings? A billion, two? That keeps the Iraq war going for a few days.
In VietNam there was a goal, as the article said
What does “victory” mean in Iraq?
We have never been told, and nobody seems to ask.
Bringing democracy to the Middle East? No, that is a new goal.
What were we told about why we had to go to war in a hurry in Iraq. Shock and Awe.
In the end it will be we who feel the shock and awe that we let it happen.
The Buddhists have known for 1000’s of years….
What I do to another; I do to myself….
Just thought I’d make a couple of corrections to mistaken facts. The US is in debt $8 trillion+, not $50 trillion and the 1,000,000+ Iraqi death count is the highest estimate from the survey which was done which placed a mid-range figure at around 650,000. Of course the US military and Iraqi government contend around 150,000 have died which is clearly not accurate.
I think one important aspect about the difference between Vietnam and Iraq which is never stated anywhere is the fact that the repercussions of Vietnam were heavily cushioned worldwide due to the fact that the Soviet Union represented a real global threat which made it necessary for democratic countries to remain close and subservient to the US in an alliance. And of course the Soviets and China were concerned with each other. But with the emerging multipolar system the Iraq war calamity is more likely to isolate the US, seen as the aggressive power seeking global superiority. Economically this could have a devastating impact if oil states decide to trade oil in Euros as the US dollar would lose tremendous value and inflation would soar. In fact Saddam had toyed with the idea himself.
And of course there is the vastly increased threat of terrorism as the mess has created very convinving justifications for all of bin Ladens preaching amd Iraq is one large training camp. And the threat of regional war.
Ultimately the bipolar system of the cold war made for a far more stable environment and the enemy itself was nationalist whereas the Islamic fundamentalists are global in perspective.
The fact is that neither party will actually pull out anyway and the Dems are only grandstanding. If the US does pull out then the reprecussions will be much worse than the current situation. Think Balkans only with oil and the religious fundamentalism. The Shiite and Sunni (pushed by the now real global force of al Qaeda) will escalate the civil war which forces the Saudis to escalate support to the Sunnis (mostly al Qaeda)and the Iranians to escalate support for Shiite. Eventually the country will fracture with Iran controlling much of the oil reserves in the south and becoming a real powerhouse and Saudi Arabia doing the same to a lesser extent. Both regimes are quite fundamentalist (in reality the Saudis are far more fundamentalist)and the US loses influence in the region. At a recent arms convention in the UAE, the Gulf Arab states increased military spending quite significantly in preparation for confrontation with Iran.
Best solution is for the US to stay and even significantly increase troops so that the situation can be stabilized and an infrastructure built, isolate al Qaeda from nationalist Sunnis and bring in the UN eventually.
Tough plan and a serious commitment but hasty unplanned withdrawl is almost as ridiculous as the hasty unplanned invasion.
Ketua, for the first time General Petraes recently stated that democracy is no longer a primary goal in Iraq.
The unfunded US debt is indeed in the vacinity of 53 trillion dollars and this is from a USA TODAY estimate made in 2004. This amount works out to about $473,000 per household and represents the unfunded obligations of federal, state and local governments to social security, medicare, medicade, retirement funds, and other benefits. This 53 trillion dollar figure was before shrub really started spending big bucks on Iraq and Afganistan. See link below.
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2004-10-03-debt-cover_x.htm
The number of Iraqis killed in the war as provided by the joint Johns Hopkins - MIT studies put the death toll at over 600,000 by Oct. 11, 2006 as reported by CNN. See link below. This is in line with the Lancet figures given earlier and does not include the more than one million Iraqi dead caused by sanctions in the period between the two gulf wars. Over four million Iraqis have been displaced.
http://www.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/meast/10/11/iraq.deaths/
As far as a ‘winning strategy’ in Iraq, I have yet to hear any politician put one forward. Strategy and strategic are synonomous. It is possible to win countless tactical battles and lose strategically. We proved that fact not so long ago in Viet Nam and seemingly learned nothing from the outcome of that encounter. Our military used second generation tactics in the Nam and are continuing to use them in Iraq. It is not possible to defeat a third or fourth generation insurgency with second generation tactics unless the ’strategy’ includes long term and nearly complete genocide. Alexander the Great knew this fact long ago and acted accordingly. If we kill all the Iraqis does it mean that we have won? Not necessarily. Contrary to what most Americans seem to realize is that there are other countries in the world and they do not see a unipolar world dominated by the US as in their best interests. Other Muslim nations will intervene to stop the genocide in Iraq and they will do it on many levels. Then there are China, Japan, the Koreas, Tiawan, India, and a host of other nations that will take a dim view of a US war that disrupts their oil supplies and wrecks their economies. The war in Iraq is a complex issue that defies simplistic solutions. But, since we are currently led by a bunch of simplistic neo cons that think killing people is the solution to everything we are temporarily stuck on the wrong strategic road. We need a real leader with some brains and a vision to get us out of this mess. I dont see one on the horizon.
Iraq is but a symptom … of a broken system of government.
In Viet Nam, I remember the catch phrase “If we don’t stop the communists here, we’ll have to stop them at home.” However, to pull out now is, to me, unjustifiable. As much as I deplore GW’s policies, I can’t, in all good conscience, say we ought to get out.
They were better off, and a lot less folks were dying, under Hussein. We have only succeeded in keeping the battlefield hosted by someone else. To bring stability to that region will be a very long and costly endeavor, I believe, but one that we owe the Iraqi people for the horrendous transgretion that we have commited upon their soil.
American arrogance has us in a position in the world and under leadership that is guided by what … religion and morals?
There’s nothing more immoral than war … and no cause LESS justified than one’s particular religious beliefs.
But, that’s just my opinion.
“In terms of the consequences of failure, the stakes are much bigger than Vietnam,” said William Cohen, a former defense secretary . “The geopolitical consequences are . . . potentially global in scope.”
Who is this jerk? During the Vietnam War, we had the domino effect and the the threat of global domination by the communists rammed down our throats. We were told to be terrified as the communists would sweep through all of Asia. Now we hear the same, tired rhetoric, but this time we are told to fear small zero-financed rag-tag extremists with rusty Kalishnikov’s.
More typical fear-mongering by the pro-war hawks who likely have stock in the industrial-military complex.
By invading Iraq we have exposed our practical limitations, both militarily and economically, to change the world to suit the claimed ideals of the neo cons: ‘to spread democracy around the world to limit the expansion of terrorisim.’ The real objectives of the neo cons, control of world oil, is a subject for another discussion.
No amount of ’stay the course’ or ’surges’ in Iraq are going to change the eventual reality that will be ‘Iraq after the US leaves.’
The real challenge of US foreign policy is how to maintain some influence in the world after we have mangled Iraq and let our economy tank. Americans seem to think that we will always remain revelent to the rest of the world but we are becoming less so. We are becoming economically weaker by the day. The world has seen the US military at work and are not impressed. The world has seen Condi flitting hither and yon, accomplishing nothing on the foreign policy front, and the world is not impressed.
For one to maintain that we should stay in Iraq even if ‘it is a long and costly endeavor’ is ludicrous. Where will we get the money for such a ‘long and costly endeavor?’ We are already the worlds largest debtor nation. Europe has a bigger economy than the US. SE Asia has a bigger economy than the US. Does anyone out there think that Europe or SE Asia will continue to loan the US 2.5 Billion dollars a day to carry on a ‘long and costly endeavor’ in Iraq that will at some point threaten their oil supplies? I think not. We can ‘uninvade Iraq’ on negotiated terms that will leave us some influence and credibility in the mid east or we can ‘uninvade Iraq’ like we ‘uninvaded Viet Nam.’ Standing on the top of the Siagon embassy scrambling for the last helicopter out.
how much longer is this bubble going to last before bursting.combine this mess with the fact that our climate will be changing so dramatically,much faster than any government cares for its people to know, that there will be a worldwide currency collapse.buy gold!
If we “uninvade” on negotiated terms, who will be the negotiater … Condi? My point is simply one of conscience and experience. We, as a nation, have been very proficient in battling in other folk’s backyards and I think that we, as a nation, would feel much differently if the battle that’s going on there … was here.
I believe the point of economics is a sound one … very much so, in fact.
It may be because I was “in the neighborhood” when the roof was being evacuated that I feel the way I do, but I just have a tough time getting past how there seems to be not much sentiment for the “host-victims” of this conflict.
In the beginning, the Iraqis were fearful that we’d do what we had done before … stir it up and leave ‘em hangin’ … I don’t want that to be the case … again.