" The most shocking fact about war is that its victims and its instruments are individual human beings, and that these individual beings are condemned by the monstrous conventions of politics to murder or be murdered in quarrels not their own:" Aldous Huxley - English novelist and critic, 1894-1963
As we rapidly sink deeper into the quagmire of Iraq ~ the specter of our humiliating defeat in Vietnam becomes too hard to ignore ~ yet the President and the Generals continue to lie and evade the true costs of this illegal occupation of a sovereign country under false pretenses.
' Staying the Course ' is once again, like in Vietnam, an empty slogan to justify a failed policy.
The Progressive lists the things Iraq and Vietnam have in common ~ but what is not mentioned is the incredible loss of innocent human beings in each conflict .
1. Both wars were illegal acts of pre-emptive aggression unsanctioned by international law or world opinion.
2. Both wars were launched with deception. In Iraq it was the now proven phony WMD threat and contrived Saddam-Osama connection. In Vietnam, it was the fabricated Gulf of Tonkin incident and the elections mandated by the Geneva agreement that were canceled by Washington in l956 when the U.S. feared Ho Chi Minh would win
3. The government lied regularly in both wars. Back then, the lies were pronounced a "credibility gap." Today, they are considered acceptable "information warfare." In Saigon military briefers conducted discredited "5 O'Clock Follies" press conferences. In this war, the Pentagon spoon-fed info at a Hollywood style briefing center in Doha.
4. The U.S. press was initially an enthusiastic cheerleader in both wars. When Vietnam protest grew and the war seen as a lost cause, the media frame changed. In Iraq today most of the media is trapped in hotel rooms. Only one side is covered now whereas in Vietnam, there was more reporting occasionally from the other. In Vietnam, the accent was on progress and "turned corners." The same is true in Iraq.
5. In both wars, prisoners were abused. . .
6. Illegal weapons were "deployed" in both wars. The U.S. dropped napalm, used cluster bombs against civilians and sprayed toxic Agent Orange in Vietnam. Cluster bombs and updated Mark 77 napalm-like firebombs were dropped on Iraqis. Depleted uranium was added to the arsenal of prohibited weapons in Iraq.
7. Both wars claimed to be about promoting democracy. Vietnam staged elections and saw a succession of governments controlled by the U.S. come and go. Iraq has had one election so far in which most voters say they were casting ballots primarily to get the U.S. to leave. The U.S. has stage-managed Iraq's interim government. Exiles were brought back and put in power. Vietnam's Diem came from New Jersey, Iraq's Allawi from Britain.
8. Both wars claimed to be about noble international goals. Vietnam was pictured as a crusade against aggressive communism and falling dominos. Iraq was sold as a front in a global war on terrorism. Neither claim proved true.
9. An imperial drive for resource control and markets helped drive both interventions. Vietnam had rubber and manganese and rare minerals. Iraq has oil. In both wars, any economic agenda was officially denied and ignored by most media outlets.
Allen L Roland is a practicing psychotherapist, author and lecturer who also shares a daily political and social commentary on his weblog and website more...)
The views expressed in this article are the sole responsibility of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of this website or its editors.
What? The Tet Offensive? That was a defeat for the VC. Cronkite spun it into a US defeat cementing himself as the fathers of media control.
BTW, DU is not illegal. Nor was napalm. Sorry Slappy. No matter how much you want it to be, it ain't Nam.
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TGC (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 21 comments) on Tuesday, Oct 24, 2006 at 12:35:40 AM
Thanks to the McCarthy Era, all of the real experts on southeat Asia had been purged from the State Department and from our intelligence services -- they had ties to communists because of the work that they had done during WWII with the communist resistance fighters who were then our allies. Their analysis and advice went unheeded because they were tainted. They were all either commies or com-symps.
Their unheeded advice? Never under any circumstances become involved in a land war in the region against an intrenched indigenous foe, which would have the support of a large portion of the population, would be able to melt in to the landscape and wait out their highly visible sitting-duck enemy -- us -- in a guerilla-style war in which we would take it in the shorts.
It happened just that way in Vietnam -- a war that I opposed , not because it was immoral or illegal or anything of that sort, but because it was incredibly ill-conceived. It was willfully stupid.
The same happened to the Soviets in Afghanistan. Many in the US were happy to see the USSR have its own Vietnam-style experience. But we did not learn from it.
Now it is happening to us again, and for exactly the same reasons: an intrenched indigenous foe, with the support of a large portion of the population, able to melt in to the landscape and wait out their highly visible sitting-duck enemy -- us again -- in a guerilla-style war, is doing its level best to give it to us in the shorts.
And once again, the worst part about it is not that it is immoral or illegal -- it's the deliberate stupidity. After our experience in Vietnam and the Soviet experience in Afghanistan, we should know better. That our government chose this course of action anyway -- and lied and who knows what else to make it happen -- boggles the reasonable and intelligent mind.
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Robin in the 'Dale (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 12 comments) on Wednesday, Oct 25, 2006 at 4:35:36 AM
Remember, this occupation was and still is all about OIL and Bush and Cheney will never remove their hands from the Monkey Trap until we force them to.
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Allen L Roland (1045 articles, 7 quicklinks, 44 diaries, 420 comments [15 recommended, 0 rejected]) on Wednesday, Oct 25, 2006 at 10:45:57 PM
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