Lessons of Vietnam

Despite what Christopher Hitchens says (repeatedly and ad nauseum) there are comparisons to be made between Iraq and Vietnam. If you don't believe me, simply look to the words of Melvin Laird, former Secretary of Defense under Nixon, who writes in this month's edition of Foreign Affairs of the lessons still to be learned from our experience in Vietnam.

I disagree with some of his points, but it is well worth listening to the views of the man who himself oversaw the "Vietnamization" process, and can give us pointers on how to pursue "Iraqization" now.

Generally, Laird agrees with the process of bringing American troops home and turning over more and more of both the daily security functions and active combat operations to the Iraqi national army. Like many proponents of gradual withdrawal, he sees the presence of large numbers of American combat forces as a de-stabilizing element in the war.

"Likewise, in Iraq, the United States should not let too many more weeks pass before it shows its confidence in the training of the Iraqi armed forces by withdrawing a few thousand U.S. troops from the country. We owe it to the restive people back home to let them know there is an exit strategy, and, more important, we owe it to the Iraqi people. The readiness of the Iraqi forces need not be 100 percent, nor must the new democracy be perfect before we begin our withdrawal. The immediate need is to show our confidence that Iraqis can take care of Iraq on their own terms. Our presence is what feeds the insurgency, and our gradual withdrawal would feed the confidence and the ability of average Iraqis to stand up to the insurgency."

Of course this point returns us to a very basic question. Would the withdrawal of American troops sap the insurgency of some of it's momentum? Is so (or even if not) can the Iraqi military suppress the insurgency successfully on it's own? I would agree that early in the insurgency, it seemed that most insurgents and foreign jihadists were motivated largely to drive American soldiers out of the country, and most suicide bombings and military attacks were directed at American troops. But over the last two years the aim of the insurgency seems to have evolved, beyond simply attacking American troops, to attempting to bring down the Iraqi national government by attacking it's soldiers and any civilians who dare to associate themselves with it. Where American troops fit in this new equation is a difficult question to answer. It seems to me that even a gradual withdrawal would leave the Iraqi government to battle an insurgency whose motivation will not be sapped by the loss of American targets. It appears increasingly likely that the insurgents will only turn their full strength on the Iraqi government. Can the Iraqi government withstand such an onslaught? This is also a difficult question to answer. The destruction or weakening of the Iraqi government would not produce a government of the insurgents. Rather, it would only create a civil war in which all sides battle it out for ultimate control. To think that the fledgling experiment in democracy in Iraq would survive such a civil war is a pipe dream.

For these reasons it's difficult to apply the strategic lessons of Vietnam to Iraq. There are too many differences. The Iraqi insurgency is not the Viet Cong. At the same time, the national government is not the corrupt governments of South Vietnam, in that it at least appears to have the support of a significant element of the population, the Shiites. So we have a weaker insurgency, not supported by an openly hostile patron (who was in turn supported by a world power), and a stronger national government. But we also have a fractured ethnic situation, in which participants in the war are likely to ally themselves based on their ethnic or religious affiliations. And in those groups, we have even further division.

Laird also points out another way in which we've both repeated the mistakes and applied the lesson of Vietnam:

"Vietnam, however, should be a cautionary tale when fighting guerrilla style, whether it be in the streets or in the jungle. Back then, frightened and untrained U.S. troops were ill equipped to govern their baser instincts and fears. Countless innocent civilians were killed in the indiscriminate hunt for Vietcong among the South Vietnamese peasantry. Some of the worst historical memories of the Vietnam War stem from those atrocities. Our volunteer troops in Iraq are better trained and supervised, yet the potential remains for a slaughter of innocents...

For me, the alleged prison scandals reported to have occurred in Iraq, in Afghanistan, and at Guantánamo Bay have been a disturbing reminder of the mistreatment of our own POWs by North Vietnam. The conditions in our current prison camps are nowhere near as horrific as they were at the "Hanoi Hilton," but that is no reason to pat ourselves on the back. The minute we begin to deport prisoners to other nations where they can legally be tortured, when we hold people without charges or trial, when we move prisoners around to avoid the prying inspections of the Red Cross, when prisoners die inexplicably on our watch, we are on a slippery slope toward the inhumanity that we deplore."

The irony of our current situation is that while we have learned the lesson of the moral and strategic wrongness of indiscriminate warfare against civilian populations, we also seem to have unlearned the lessons about how to treat captured enemies. What moral legitimacy we've gained with the careful application of firepower to prevent civilian casualties, we've thrown away by boldly proclaiming in public our right to torture, imprison for life in Cuba, or "render" to friendly dictatorships, our enemies. If anything, it is the latter that has undermined not only the war in Iraq, but the entire "war on terror." We've alienated allies and the Iraqi civilian populace by exempting ourselves from our own moral practices and law. What advantage we gain over our enemies in being able to lock them up forever, we lose when we add to their ranks those enraged at our practices.

I disagree with Laird about some of his other conclusions, especially concerning the "rightness" of the war in Vietnam and the war in Iraq in the first place, and the ability of the South Vietnamese government to sustain itself even if we had continued funding it. But I agree with him overall, that if there is to be withdrawal, it must be done because it will strengthen the Iraqis, and not simply because we are running away from a conflict that we think we cannot win. Laird believes that Vietnamization was working in Vietnam, until it became clear that it was more about washing our hands of a conflict then making it possible for the South Vietnamese to defend themselves without us. The same holds true in Iraq. What I fear is that a combination of the public's tiring of the war, Bush's desire to be seen as securing "victory" in Iraq before his term ends (victory now refind down to no more American lives lost), and the cries of those who want our troops to come home regardless of the cost to the Iraqis, will produce in Iraq exactly the same result in produced in Vietnam, leaving us with yet another record of our shameful willingness to abandon those whose conflicts we've helped create. A continuous, vigorous and honest public debate about this issue is the only possible way to prevent this.