Iraq is another Vietnam

I know my fair share about Vietnam. True, I wasn't there, but not only did I take a class at the University of Utah about Vietnam (and if any Utes are reading, take this class from Professor Gunn, he is great), I also did my senior thesis on the chemical warfare in Vietnam. Basically, I have done quite a bit of research on Vietnam.

And looking at the current war in Iraq, I see a lot of similarities between the two.

The first contradiction that Republicans will blurt out is 'well, in Vietnam, we lost over 50,000 troops. In Iraq we have only lost over 2,000.' Yes, this is true. And this seems to be the only stat that Republicans use to compare Vietnam and Iraq. Again, like most issues, they only look skin-deep and not look at the total argument.

But that is where the differences end.

In Vietnam, many said that the war was 'run by the politicians and not the generals'. People said that this was Johnson's and McNamara's war. I think it can easily be said that this is Bush's and Rummy's war. Hell, Bush said himself he was a war President. (note to self, don't elect any more Texans, they like war). Sorry to my Texas readers :)

Another similarity is that we have a strong insurgency, and it is only getting stronger. The Vietcong started off as a small group, but quickly grew. This is exactly what we are seeing in Iraq as well.

Similarity number three is that we do not understand the Iraqi people, just like we didn't understand the Vietnamese. In Vietnam, there was a general rule that applied to small villages that said "the government's laws stop at the village door." Of course, we didn't apply this rule to our fighting. We assumed that all small villages were supportive of the Vietcong (and many might have been). But still, we burned down the villages and killed their women and children. In Iraq, we see the same thing. We see that we didn't understand the Iraqis as well as we thought we would. The whole 'they would welcome us as liberators' idea didn't really hold water in hindsight.

All of this leads to point number four. We should have KNOWN we were in trouble when Rummy said "we need to win the hearts and minds of the Iraqis." WHAT!?!?! That is right out of McNamara 101! The second we heard that, we should have known 'oh shit, this isn't going to be good.'

The final point that I am going to mention is the fighting styles of the two. In Vietnam, they believed in attrition. They knew that, if the wear their enemies down and slowly take the fight to them, that the public in the U.S. would turn against the war and the American soldier morale would decrease. They have been fighting like this for centuries, they never look for a quick knock-out. The Iraqis might be using this same tactic. The public is turning against the war, and we see our soldier's morale starting to decrease as well.

There are also a lot more similarities between the two wars. Insurgency being supported by other countries, supporting a government who is corrupt and more worried about money than the well being of their citizens, we can't tell the difference between enemy and friend, and so on.

But the Republicans would make you think that these two wars are totally different just by the amount of Americans killed. Don't let them fool you my friends, they are one in the same.

The Americans won most of the battles (they were victorious during Tet and other NVA and VC offensives), but the Vietnamese won the war.