Why Iraq reminds of Vietnam.

• Author: Jones, David T.

Editor's Note: The author, a retired senior Foreign Service officer, goes beyond superficial comparisons of the United States' experiences with Iraq and Vietnam. He thoughtfully notes similarities in, for example, press reaction to the two confrontations, along with other factors. But he points out dissimilarities, as well. What is the balance he presents? You make the call.

Being of an age when Vietnam was the defining element in the life of a draft age male, I watched closely as developments unfolded in Southeast Asia from 1965-1974. Although I served in the U.S. Army, as well as with the Department of State, during the war, I was never assigned to Vietnam. Now, closer to the end of life than its beginning, we baby boomers attempt to draw from our personal challenge of Vietnam applicable lessons for addressing Iraq. Although every conclusion is personally derived, some observations may be pertinent.

First some differences:

The Vietnam War was a combination of conventional and guerrilla war with major forces on both sides. Our opponents had privileged sanctuaries in the North (where our ground forces never ventured) as well as massive logistic support from great powers such as China and Russia. The forces engaged totaled well over a million U.S. and South Vietnamese troops, and their allies. The resultant casualties were very high (some 58,000 Americans killed) in comparison with anything committed engaged in Iraq. Ultimately, North Vietnam succeeded in a war of conquest to gain control over what had been French Indochina. This control continues to be exercised directly over the South and indirectly over Laos and Cambodia. Iraq has no privileged sanctuaries for the terrorists; no external invasion from Syria or Iran; no major terrorist military units.

Iraq Is Not a Civil War

One can play with definitions, but Iraq is not a war with directly opposed civil/political centers in different parts of the same country. This is not the United States in the 1860s or China in the 1930s-40s or Nigeria in the 1960s. Iraq perhaps is more akin to Europe's religion-driven Hundred Years War in which Catholics and Protestants slaughtered each other until exhaustion was the victor. Perhaps the still ongoing "cleansing" in the shards of former Yugoslavia is brutally dividing a previously integrated population into segments that are ethnic/religious unities. Perhaps, to retool a Latin tag line from Caesar's Gallic War, "Iraq est omnis divisa in partes tres"...