Iraq Is Not Another Vietnam - Yet

Joe Bell

Opponents of America’s policy in Iraq have offered a number of rationales to support their resistance.

First, they said America eliminated Saddam Hussein to obtain Iraq’s oil. They were wrong. Since June 2003, oil sales have generated more than $5 billion in revenue for Iraq’s reconstruction, not for U.S. plunderers.

Then opponents said America was led to war by an administration that manipulated reports regarding Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction to justify Saddam Hussein’s removal. The allegation is refuted by the January 2004 testimony offered by Dr. David Kay, head of the Iraq Survey Group. Speaking before the Senate Armed Services Committee, Dr. Kay said he had spoken with numerous analysts about Iraq’s WMD programs.

He said, “I did not come across a single one that felt it had been, in the military term, ‘inappropriate command influence’ that led them to take that position that they existed.”

Dr. Kay also spoke about making policy based upon threats to national security.

He said, “It seems that any president, when he’s presented with intelligence, has got to make a choice about how much risk he’s prepared to run for the nation that he leads. It is my belief that regardless of political party, after 9/11, the shadowing effects of that horrible tragedy changed, as a nation, the level of risk that all of us are prepared to run …”

Dr. Kay said, “If you read the total body of intelligence in the last 12 to 15 years that flowed on Iraq, I quite frankly think it would be hard to come to a conclusion other than Iraq was a gathering, serious threat to the world with regard to WMD.”

Now a new argument to discredit U.S. policy is presented: Iraq is Vietnam. It is false. The only similarity between America’s experience in Vietnam and Iraq is the media’s near singular criticism of America. Not only was Dr. Kay’s January 2004 testimony largely overlooked but so was his October 2003 testimony before a House subcommittee.

Dr. Kay said, “We have discovered dozens of WMD-related program activities and significant amounts of equipment that Iraq concealed from the United Nations during the inspections that began in late 2002.”

The discoveries included, “A clandestine network of laboratories and safehouses within the Iraqi Intelligence Service that contained equipment subject to U.N. monitoring and suitable for continuing CBW research” and “reference strains of biological organisms concealed in a scientist’s home, one of which can be used to produce biological weapons.”

Iraq is not Vietnam. In Vietnam, America confronted triple canopy jungles, which provided excellent concealment for guerillas. Iraq is a desert and while terrorists and Ba’th Party remnants can hide in cities they are reviled by most of the population. If they were widely supported there would be violence throughout Iraq, not mainly in the Sunni triangle.

In Vietnam the United States fought a guerilla movement and also the North Vietnamese regime, which was supported by the Soviet Union and China. Vietnam was a war against communism. Instead of a battle between superpowers it was fought within Vietnam. In Iraq, coalition forces are not fighting a proxy enemy.

Neither North Vietnam nor the Vietcong, nor any of their supporters, ever attacked America directly. Saddam Hussein tried to assassinate a former U.S. president and on September 11, 2001, America was hit. Iraq was a refuge for terrorists. Those who say Saddam Hussein was not responsible for 9/11 overlook his multiple transgressions. They also ignore that the terrorist network stretches worldwide. It is critical that we not only dismantle it but also ensure that transnational groups find no refuge in rogue states.

A guerilla insurgency will not win a war unless its opponent loses its will and withdraws. Those who make the “Iraq is Vietnam” analogy should remember what happened after U.S. forces left Vietnam. President Gerald Ford watched while the effort to deliver freedom to that ravaged land expired. By the end of 1973, after aid to South Vietnam dropped, North Vietnam was so confident it launched an invasion, in contempt of the accords that had been signed.

In his book, “A History of the American People,” Paul Johnson wrote, “Bound hand and foot by Congress, Ford felt powerless to act and simply made verbal protests. In January 1975 the whole of central Vietnam had to be evacuated and a million terrified refugees fled towards Saigon. In an appeal to Congress, Ford warned: ‘American unwillingness to provide adequate assistance to allies fighting for their lives could seriously affect our credibility throughout the world as an ally.’ Congress did nothing.”

On April 21, Marine helicopters lifted American and Vietnamese officials from the rooftop of the U.S. embassy. The image remains engraved in the minds of those who watched on television. Less than two weeks later communist tanks entered Saigon and the execution of America’s forsaken allies began. Tens of thousands of South Vietnamese boat people would die trying to escape their “liberators.” In Cambodia about 1.2 million people, one-fifth of the population, were put to death by Pol Pot’s murderous regime.

Is Iraq another Vietnam? Not yet.

The West’s enemy is not only al Qaeda but the many terrorist groups that are linked not by a formal central command but by ideology. We cannot wish the danger away, although we tried. Following the Iranian hostage takeover in 1979, America was repeatedly struck: at Khobar Towers, the USS Cole, the 1993 attack on the World Trade Center, U.S. embassies in Africa. Our tepid responses provoked more assaults. America did not rush to war but spent a quarter of a century trying to avoid it.

Iraq is not a distraction in the war on terrorism anymore than America’s war against Nazi Germany was a distraction from Pearl Harbor. The principles of freedom, security, justice and tolerance are being challenged. If we do not defend them abroad we invite further carnage at home.

The work in Iraq is difficult because the stakes are high. If a democracy based upon justice and human rights emerges in Iraq it sends a message of hope to the oppressed people of the Middle East. If it does not, it will send the message that terrorism cannot be defeated and the next time there is an attack on America’s interest Washington will merely express “outrage” and offer speeches about “states of concern.”

America is fighting terrorism in Iraq, but it is laboring to do much more, that is, to help the Iraqis create a new political model in the Arab world. It is the most difficult foreign policy challenge America has shouldered in a generation. Defeating tanks and troops was simple compared to helping reshape a political culture.

In “The Future of Freedom,” Fareed Zakaria pointed out that America can leave Iraq quickly or nourish democracy, but it cannot do both. That isn’t because the Iraqis reject democracy or because they are incapable.

“But wanting democracy and achieving it are two different things,” Zakaria warns. “Over the past decade the developing world has been littered with examples of quick transitions to democracy that have gone badly awry.”

Many fail to realize that democracy is about more than holding an election. That is a shallow understanding of democracy. Voting is the conclusion of a democratic process, not the beginning. Prior to voting citizens must have a respect for and access to a process where common interests and a regard for their interdependence overcome personal interests. That is the disposition America and its partners are trying to help the Iraqis develop. If we fail the terrible consequences will resonate worldwide.

Iraq is not Vietnam. But it could be.

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Joseph Bell has hosted a radio talk show and is a former editorial writer/columnist for several Connecticut newspapers. A former liberal Democrat, Bell has not been on the conservative side of the aisle for very long. He voted for Clinton/Gore in 1992. Abandoning the convictions that he had held and defended through adolescence and into adulthood was not easy. Sincere soul-searching and a commitment to distinguish fact from fiction compelled him to accept that liberal ideology was bankrupt.
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