Apples and Oranges Are Both Fruit, But…

CARBONDALE, USA: It's commonplace in the US media and in some policy circles to hear the conflict in Iraq described as "Another Vietnam." As an academic who has done extensive research on Vietnam, including its wars, I recoil from the phrase. Popular as a polemical device, it flunks as an analytical tool. Comparison of different cases is sometimes helpful; glossing over complex differences with a label never is.

And so it is with Vietnam and Iraq. On the level of generalities there are similarities, of course. The parallels most often cited in the US are on the domestic front: fear of gathering threats (communism, terrorism) justify an anticipatory response; initial optimism; faulty intelligence, including ignorance of the potential for nationalist backlash; lack of support from allies; growing casualties; declining military morale; sinking presidential popularity; and rising popular frustration. Such are the parallels, always carefully selected, that come most easily to people for whom "Vietnam" was a street riot or a policy debate. When it comes to the wars on the ground, the tendency is to see a similarity in the frame of guerrilla war, as Orville Schell has done in YaleGlobal (See "Is Iraq Becoming a New Vietnam? - Part One").The polemical objective is to show that the Iraq conflict is like "Vietnam" (whatever that is) and therefore we should expect catastrophe.

I do not see things this way. Sure, there are similarities, and they are worth thinking about. But the differences between the two cases strike me as more likely to affect outcomes.

Start with the difference of histories, societies, and cultures. One does not have to be deeply knowledgeable about either country to know that nationalism has played a different role in each. While Vietnamese quarreled over how to respond to colonial rule, there was never any doubt among them that they were one people. The Communists owed their success partly to their winning of nationalist legitimacy, which solidified around them the more the French and then the Americans tried to prop up putative "nationalist" alternatives.

While an Iraqi nationalism exists, it is by comparison a thin film stretched over deep divisions between the three main ethno-religious groups. Vietnam's regional tensions are trifling compared with the antagonism between Iraqi Kurdish, Sunni, and Shia communities. Nationalism in Iraq also has a pan-Arab dimension that has no parallel in Vietnam. Moreover, deep distrust between Iraqi families and clans, which causes nearly half of all marriages to be between first cousins, is a huge impediment to civic engagement and national allegiance. Comparison of these differences suggests to me that Iraq, easy to conquer, may be much harder than Vietnam for anyone to govern in the post-war, not that the two situations are somehow the same.

Next, consider the strategic context. The Vietnam War was a revolutionary and civil conflict in a divided country, on which the Cold War was superimposed. There is no comparable situation in Iraq or in the world today. When the US intervened in Vietnam, the Soviet Union and China poured arms and supplies into the North, which supplied weapons, equipment, and reinforcements to forces in the South. To be sure, communist forces in the South obtained some of their recruits and supplies locally, but it is doubtful that they could have prevailed without the support only a great power ally could provide. In Iraq, the Baathist remnants and bombers-for-hire attacking American troops are totally isolated from such support. If there is a Southeast Asian analogue, it is not Vietnam; it is the communist insurgencies in Malaysia and Thailand that collapsed once China pulled the plug.

The stakes and therefore the significance of winning and losing are different, too. Southeast Asia was a backwater in the larger currents of global power and interest. Withdrawal from Vietnam lightly dented American prestige and allowed the US to refocus attention and resources on areas of more vital interest, including the Middle East. Apart from Cambodia, Southeast Asia remained at peace and most of it enjoyed an economic boom. In Iraq, however, the consequences of an abrupt withdrawal would carry a high likelihood of chaos, civil war, and intervention by Turkey, Iran, and Syria. The US cannot let this happen, even if it was itself the prime cause of the mess.

As for the prospect of guerrilla warfare and the images of entrapment and quagmire that go with it, the Vietnamese, if they haven't forgotten their own lessons, must be laughing up their sleeves. Guerrillas in Vietnam were one of three categories of armed forces on the communist side, the others being regional and regular main forces that fought mostly in a conventional mode. While the American military wrongly derided guerrillas as fleas, they would not have existed at all if they had not enjoyed a sympathetic environment, created for them by the political agitation and organizational work of local party organs.

Guerrilla warfare is not limited to hit-and-run tactics. It is, rather, a strategy that, to be successful, requires voluntary contributions of food, intelligence, and recruits from the civilian population, and the coordination of forces by a higher politico-military command, usually over a long period of time. At least that is what guerrilla warfare was all about in Vietnam, and this says nothing about the unique economic and political grievances that helped it work there by pushing peasants into communist ranks. None of these conditions are met in Iraq. This is not to dismiss the threat from extremists inside Iraq and Jihadis from outside (who really are fleas by comparison with Vietnam's guerrillas), nor does it rule out the much more ominous threat that could emerge from the Shia militias. But these threats are more like those the US faced in Somalia than like guerrilla war in Vietnam.

The Iraq conflict has been lumped with Vietnam as an unorthodox war, another example of category stretching to fit dissimilar realities. Although one may question the wisdom of the objective in Iraq, it is, unlike in Vietnam, clearly defined - to replace the Baathist regime with one that is compliant with UN resolutions, democratic, and at peace with its neighbors. Moreover, unlike the open-ended war in Vietnam, in Iraq the US has an exit strategy. In fact, it has exit strategy options. One is what the Bush Administration is currently attempting to do and could modify as events unfold. This strategy envisions transferring authority and responsibility from Americans to Iraqis and can be accelerated, as Timothy Carney has suggested (See "Iraq Becoming a New Vietnam? - Part Two"). If a more abrupt exit becomes necessary, the US can transfer authority to the United Nations, while accelerating the development of Iraqi security forces and thinning out the American military presence, as just about everyone outside the Bush Administration would like the US to do. No such option was imaginable in Vietnam, thanks to the Cold War.

History is a treacherous guide to action. People disagree honestly over what it means, policy elites sometimes learn its reputed lessons too well, and generals are famous for preparing to fight the last war. There are many good reasons to question the Bush Administration's conduct of the Iraq war. "Vietnam" is not one of them.