Still trying to turn Iraq into Vietnam

A Washington Post front page article, In Iraq, Military Forgot Lessons of Vietnam, Thomas E. Ricks stretches mightily to make the argument that Iraq is Vietnam, and on that premise goes on to rehash of every criticism ever made about the invasion of Iraq, even touching on Abu Ghraib and prisoner abuse.  The thesis of the article comes in a quote from an unidentified Special Forces lieutenant colonel.

"What you are seeing here is an unconventional war fought conventionally," a Special Forces lieutenant colonel remarked gloomily one day in Baghdad as the violence intensified. The tactics that the regular troops used, he added, sometimes subverted American goals.

Judging from the context of the article, the lieutenant colonel probably made his comment in the fall of 2003, shortly after conventional fighting stopped.  I mention this because it leads me to wonder if those words apply to the situation in Iraq today.

In any case Mr. Ricks seems to think the lesson of Vietnam was that conventional forces cannot defeat an insurgency, but I would guess he's wrong about that, and I would go further and say that's not the real lesson of Vietnam, anyway.  The most important lesson of Vietnam was that it was fought and lost on the CBS Evening News.  That lesson, it seems, was learned very well by factions of the mainstream press.  Their fight against the war in Iraq follows the same tactics used when the media fought against the war in Vietnam. 

For North Vietnam and the Viet Cong, the 1968 Tet Offensive was a military catastrophe but the U.S. media portrayed it as a defeat for the U.S. and Walter Cronkite sealed it with his pronouncement:  The war cannot be won. 

But it is increasingly clear to this reporter that the only rational way out then will be to negotiate, not as victors, but as an honorable people who lived up to their pledge to defend democracy, and did the best they could.

This is Walter Cronkite. Good night.

We know the results.  But sometime after the press learned their lesson of the Vietnam War, many of the rest of us did too, and with it another lesson.  When Walter Cronkite made his famous pronouncement he was considered "the most trusted man in America".  As we have painfully learned, it was an undeserved trust.  Try as they might, his successors on the nightly news desks have never been able to garner that same level of trust enjoyed by Cronkite.  The steady decline in viewer faith has been observed and hastened by the rise of the internet, so that now when the press describes Iraq as a failed venture, a substantial segment of the news consuming public know at least enough to doubt them.

This Washington Post article is a case in point.  Over a year ago Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld went on Fox News Sunday with Chris Wallace.  At that time the reason given for press pronouncements that the war would be lost was that there were too few troops to fight the insurgency.  The press clamored for more troops -- conventional troops I might add.  At that time Mr. Rumsfeld pointed out that insurgencies are not defeated overnight.

I can understand some people would say, "Oh, there ought to be more," or, "There ought to be less." General Abizaid and General Casey are absolutely convinced, and said so publicly, that they would worry if there were more U.S. forces there, because it would require more force protection, more support troops, more targets, a heavier footprint, a more intrusive occupation force that would further alienate Iraqi people from the coalition forces and what they're trying to do.

Second, the implication of the question was that we don't have enough to win against the insurgency. We're not going to win against the insurgency. The Iraqi people are going to win against the insurgency. That insurgency could go on for any number of years. Insurgencies tend to go on five, six, eight, 10, 12 years.

Coalition forces, foreign forces are not going to repress that insurgency. We're going to create an environment that the Iraqi people and the Iraqi security forces can win against that insurgency.

It's as if while Post reporter Ricks was busily critiquing U.S. military efforts as misdirected, somebody forgot to mention to him that the strategy calls the Iraqi Army to take the lead in fighting the insurgency.  How do Ricks and the Post manage to completely overlook the Iraqi Army, then expect readers to accept their disparaging analysis of U.S. strategies?  Perhaps it's in a following article, that we're warned is forthcoming, that the impact of American efforts to build up and train the Iraqi Army will be discussed.  But for the Post today, that army doesn't seem to exist. 

For the rest of us, it does.  And we find that in spite of an improving Iraqi Army, which more and more is taking the lead in the fighting, U.S. troop levels will be increased in Baghdad.  And why, you may ask? 

CAMP FALLUJAH, Iraq -- The top U.S. commander for the Middle East said Friday that the escalating sectarian violence in Baghdad had become a greater worry than the insurgency and that plans were being drawn up to move additional forces to the Iraqi capital.

"The situation with sectarian violence in Baghdad is very serious," U.S. Army Gen. John Abizaid, head of the U.S. Central Command, said in an interview Friday. "The country can deal with the insurgency better than it can with the sectarian violence, and it needs to move decisively against the sectarian violence now."

According to U.S. Army Gen. John Abizaid the insurgency is not as great a problem as sectarian violence.  The sectarian violence is rarely directed at military targets, its object being to kill the largest number of unsuspecting civilians as possible.  Anyway, after apparently missing the fact that our strategy calls for the Iraqis to take the lead in suppressing the insurgency, Ricks and the Post go on to focus their scathing criticism of U.S. military handling of what is no longer the primary problem. 

While we must not forget those lessons of Vietnam, we must also not make the mistake of thinking this war is in any way like Vietnam from the military standpoint.  Nor should we think this Post article is a serious discussion about Vietnam.  It's a mainstream press demonstration of the real lesson of Vietnam, a demonstration of the strategy that won the Vietnam war for the North Vietnamese and the Viet Cong.  Fortunately, those lessons have been learned and learned well, contrary to what Thomas E. Ricks and his editors may think.  And as we watch this war waged in the media it's not hard to see who is on which side.

Comments

[Walter M. Clark]

Vietnam has continued to be misconstrued and used as a weapon against US involvement anywhere. There's a good book out that re-examines Vietnam and determines the war was overwhelmingly won by the US, South Vietnamese and allies, then given away by the Congress in 1975. I'm packing to move soon so I don't have the book right in front of me, but the title is something like "Unheralded Victory." I picked it up at Barnes & Noble last year in paperback and the arguement is impossible to deny.

I just hope and pray the Democrats and the rest of the Left won't be able to defeat democracy in Afghanistan and Iraq like they did in South Vietnam. This time we won't be able to slink away and hide behind our nuclear weapons. The terrorists are on a mission from Allah and want to die for their cause as long as they can take as many infidels as possible with them.

[Tom Bowler]

Thanks. I'll look for that book.