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Iraq of '08 Eerily Like Vietnam of '68
The last time the United States lulled itself into thinking that a military surge was working was January 1968, just before the Tet lunar New Year ushered in the Year of the Monkey. Gen. William Westmoreland, commanding America's half million troops in Vietnam, assured President Johnson that 65 percent of the South Vietnamese population was living in secure areas, with "victory in sight."
America was shocked when it got the news that early on the morning of Jan. 31, 1968, a hole had been blown in the wall of the United States Embassy in Saigon. The compound was occupied by Communist forces, while other targets throughout Saigon and a hundred other cities in South Vietnam were under attack.
The last of the communist offensive was repulsed by Feb. 23. That allowed the U.S. military to claim victory, but the Tet Offensive was a major blow. Only when the cable traffic was released after the war did we learn that U.S. commanders had contemplated using nuclear weapons to counter the attacks. The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff called it "a near thing," while advising Johnson that this "major, powerful nationwide assault has by no means run its course."
This was indeed the case when the Communists launched another mini-Tet offensive three months later, shelling Saigon with 122 mm Russian rockets and driving American casualties back toward their February level of 500 a week.
In March 1968, after squeaking out a narrow victory in the New Hampshire presidential primary over anti-war challenger Eugene McCarthy, Lyndon Johnson quit the race and partially halted the bombing of North Vietnam. In May, the Paris peace talks began, inaugurating the torturous process that would end, seven years later, with America's disorderly retreat from Vietnam.
Claims that victory is at hand in the Iraq war are as fatuous and unsubstantiated as Westmoreland's belief in 1968 that he was seeing "the light at the end of the tunnel." In spite of the optimistic talk coming from Baghdad that "civilian deaths have decreased by 62 percent," the metrics measuring progress in Iraq are no more believable than they were 40 years ago in Vietnam. In fact, America's military adventure in Iraq is even less sustainable than it was in Vietnam.
In 1968, the United States had a military draft and a surplus of 18-year-olds, and it had yet to commit any of its Reserve or National Guard units to the war. Today, the United States has 160,000 troops in Iraq, many of them reservist and national guard forces (not counting Blackwater and other hired guns). Regardless of the situation on the ground, these troops will soon be coming to the end of their 15-month tours of duty. There is no draft and no possibility of instituting one, and there are not enough fresh units to replace those in the field. The military is finding it hard to keep up enlistments, even with lowered standards, and junior officers are refusing to re-up.
U.S. military commanders are aware that maintaining, never mind increasing, U.S. forces in Iraq is a logistical impossibility. And so are the Iraqis. Iraqi forces opposed to the U.S. occupation have not been eliminated, but are merely lying low. The media focus on al-Qaida is misleading, since it is a minor component in this war compared to the various Sunni and Shiite militias, who for their own reasons have temporarily suspended attacks on U.S. forces and each other's civilians.
Borrowing a page from the playbook of Lawrence of Arabia, the United States has put the Shiite militias and Sunni tribes on the U.S. payroll. Infusions of cold cash, in a conflict already costing more than $2 billion a week, have created a welfare warfare state, with many of Iraq's insurgent forces being fed, trained and equipped by the United States. But incorporating one-time insurgents into U.S.-backed paramilitary groups guarantees neither their future loyalty nor the future stability of Iraq. Leaders of the Shiite and Sunni militias know full well that the number of U.S. boots on the ground will be going down later this year, which is when the real battle for control of neighborhoods, cities, regions, and oil will begin in earnest.
On Jan. 5, the U.S. military command in Baghdad revealed that an Iraqi soldier had opened fire on the Americans in his joint patrol, on the day after Christmas, killing two soldiers and wounding three others. We can expect more incidents like this as American forces begin to dwindle next summer. In the meantime, the calm prevailing over Tet in Iraq has the same eerie unreality that it had 40 years ago in Vietnam.
Welcome to the Year of the Rat.
Thomas Bass teaches at the University at Albany. His book on Vietnam, "The Spy Who Loved Us," will be published later this year. Maurice Isserman teaches at Hamilton College. He is co-author of "America Divided: The Civil War of the 1960s."
copyright 1996-2008, Capital Newspapers
22 Comments so far
Show AllWe will lose the only question is when and at what cost...and we deserve to lose.
I agree with dlnelson7, we deserve to lose this immoral, illegal war. And then we need to focus on leaving Afghanistan, which is more and more like the Korean War every day: drawn-out, fractious, and all but forgotten.
May we each walk a Happy Trail.
Lilleth
The difference is that in 1968 there was still a free press that wasn't entirely corrupt, and the people of this country could still think, Since then, the minds of Americans have been destroyed by poor education, idiotic television, and a general famine of the intellect. In 1968, people had access to good information, and could reason and analyze. Today, they are driven by appearances and celebraty, and therefore if they are told that the war is good, then it is good.
Fool me once, shame on me. Fool me a hundred times, I'm a Democratic Party supporter.
Vote Green.
Let's hope 2008 is not anything even remotely like 1968. You may recall that we elected Nixon that year after the assasination of the real leader, Robert F. Kennedy.
Bush was born on third and thought he hit a triple.
Sadr calls a truce during the surge and Bush calls it victory.
This thing is far from over. The Shiite miitias have been laying low in order to regroup while Bush surged more troops in.
Is it true that western oil compnaies offered $5 million dollars to each Iraqi legislator if they voted for the new oil law that would grant the oil companies access to the vast oil reserves.
We also sent a lot of money into the Palestinian territories to swing the election that ended up being won by Hamas.
Is this the type of democracy we want our troops fighting and dying for?
peace coup,
You asked: "Is this the type of democracy we want our troops fighting and dying for?"
I think the "democracy" you described:
"...western oil companies offered $5 million dollars to each Iraqi legislator if they voted for the new oil law that would grant the oil companies access to the vast oil reserves"
is exactly what Bush had in mind when he said he wanted to spread democracy across the globe. And I think past US presidents held similar ideas about democracy. What is surprising?
I know! Let's elect someone with a Secret Plan To End The War!
mlee says it all.
kivals adds to it.
Y'all took the words out of my mouth.
A very good article. Of course what is written in this fine article when comparing the similarities of Vietnam with Iraq, pretty much ends there.
The war with Vietnam was more like the Korean war, each with a northern barrier, our troops were not allowed to cross those borders. Bush's war with Iraq could be more likened to Hitler's war with Poland, Holland, Belgium and France, fast military blitzes and occupations.
Iraq is not divided by an imaginary line and the Chinese and Soviet Union do not supply the northern Iraqis with jet fighters, rockets, Sam missiles, radar sites, thousands of antiaircraft guns and other military equipment. We haven't lost 50,000+ troops in Iraq, ___ not yet anyway. But we have managed to utterly destroy a country, forever contaminate their land with atomic waste and have killed about a million Iraqis. And for what?? __ Cindy Sheehan could tell us "for what", __ and she does. Our Congress and our president however, do not pay any attention to her.
And our bought and paid for, disgusting press and media, are the shame of the century. I do not know how the newcasters, reporters and their editors can sleep at night.
There is a major difference between Vietnam and the present neo-colonial adventure.
The Saudi government is pouring cash,weapons, and fighters to counter the Shiite government and militias. How often do you hear the US military stopping them? The fighters who aid Sunni militias in targeting US soldiers. No, we see Bush hand in hand strolling through the garden.
I can't believe with all the possible courses of action they could take, Bush has decided on the Balkanization of Iraq.
The Awakening councils allied with other Saudi backed militias versus the Iraqi government, Badr Corps and Mahdi army with Iran in support.
The Bushies plan on letting them fight it out, and after a few years the contingency of civil war will result in tactical battle lines which will serve as political demarcations for a separate state solution with the Kurds keeping the oil of Kirkuk.
Out of office, Bush will go to work for one of his fathers venture captial and law firms which will do business with the Saudi's and dictate policy in that region to cowering democrats.
You're all looking at it wrong; the war is a stunning, better-than-their-wildest-dreams success for BushCo. Military spending is way up, the privatization of the government is going full speed ahead, and it's distracting attention from all their domestic looting, just as planned. They don't give a damn about your quaint old conventional notions of "winning" and "losing" - there's money to be made, and it's all good.
"The only way to 'win' is not to play this game."
I'm not sure it is all about money to be made considering the fact that everyday spent there costs the U.S. close to $275 million. But I suppose Bush figures there is some money to be made back. I wasn't alive during the Vietnam but from what I've learned about it, this war does closely resemble Vietnam. Both are guerrilla wars that don't acknowledge the thousands of innocent civilian casualties. In both wars protesters have gotten beaten up or thrown in jail for standing up for what they believe in and today's war seems never-ending, just as Vietnam
Rat on, bro
I remember the Vietnam years. Every night as a teenager I watched Walter Cronkite covering the war along with nightly battle footage. Always in the back of my mind was the question "Will I have to go over there?"
Our high school was divided between the "heads" and the "jocks" who either opposed the war or supported it. while studying and school activities continued as normal, the spectre of the Vietnam War was always with us; a tangible, and measurable, reality check lest we become too absorbed in the joys of youth.
Today, the lower socioeconomic half of the classroom is on Ritalin and being sent to Iraq might constitute a step-up from working at McDonald's.
My question is when are the American people going to demand a legal accounting of the domestic political and corporate war criminals that have successfully staged a coup much like the Nazis in 1930s Germany - or is it too late? Is the populace that dumbed down? You steal 2 elections, you change laws to make your criminal enterprises legal, you violate all international law, the US Constitution is in shreds and everyone is scratching their heads about which corporate lackey to vote for this year. The lunatics are truly running the asylum - I guess a nation gets what it deserves but does the world deserve "the new amerikan century?"
contrary to daniel david and others, i think that we could stand a year much more like 1968 - prague, paris, chicago each were monumental and needful and the first stones dropped in a very large and colonized pond - soon those ripples will reach our shore.
Your right, its all about money and power. If you spend so much money on the war, it means that Gov. won't have anything left to spend on domestic public benefit programs. At some point, I'm not exactly sure when, I believe sooner then later, our dept will be so great that all our money will go to service the debt. There will be no social services available because there will be no money. That's the conservatives strategy, smaller Gov. This war could go on for a hundred years or one year, just depends on how long it will take to break these gov. programs.
I thought this article would contain some mention of what I thought was a leaked intelligence report that there is indeed a "repeat Tet offensive" being planned by insurgents for sometime this summer.
It is outrageous to watch McCain and Romney debate which one of them is more behind "the surge," as if that wins them any points with the vast majority of voters. If I were one of the strategic planners for Al Queda, I would certainly take a page from the Viet Cong playbook and launch a major uprising and series of suicide bombings as soon as the worst of the hot weather passes.
This may turn out to be another version of the "October surprise" Americans hadn't been counting on.
I love this line from peace coup's post: "Bush was born on third and thought he hit a triple." That's true of all inherited wealth and status.
let's please just stop talking about Vietnam is like Iraq etc. It isn't, and people need to focus on the horrors of the wars we have and stop drifting back to the old ones. These are plenty bad enough. a lot of what has been going on in Iraq is getting lost in the campaign blather- pay attention america. last week it was about dropping 100,000 pounds of bombs on some town in Iraq, about servicepeople suicides, stop loss, and even more mayhem in Afghanaistan. I know it is unusual to talk about Afghanistan, but does anyone remember why we went there? Give up? ok there was no reason. And there still isn't.