The Iraq-Vietnam analogy explored
■"A Bad Analogy: The war in Iraq is not another 'Vietnam,'" op-ed by Peter R. Kann, Wall Street Journal, 8 September 2005, p. A18.
Sort of interesting op-ed that says Vietnam is a bad analogy for Iraq (and a horrible platform for Chuck Hagel to try and win the Republican nod in '08), and yet explores the similarities.
First, his quick dismissal of the analogy, to which I agree:
The differences include the fact that America pursued the struggle in Vietnam for more than a decade against a regular North Vietnamese army backed by the Soviet Union and China, and lost more than 58,000 American soldiers, many of them draftees, before we decided to toss in the towel. By comparison, America, now the world's sole superpower, has been fighting a collection of terrorists in Iraq for less than two years and has lost fewer than 2,000 troops-and these from a fully professional and volunteer military.
Okay, how about the similarities.
First, public support is much higher far longer than the critics of the war want to recognize. Kann cites an AP poll this summer with 60 percent expressing continuing support.
Second, this war is being fought as much or more over here than in Iraq, meaning this is a classic Fourth Generation Warfare model where our opponents work to beat down our morale back home through an endless "bloody nose" strategy.
His third big similarity is the fear of wider repercussions if we pull out. In SE Asia it was the domino effect of socialism. Here I would say it's really the opposite: the failure of the Big Bang means continued authoritarianism, not Islamic revolution.
Here's the biggest difference to me: Iraq is tripartite in ethnic make-up and two of the three groups clearly want self-rule with a modicum of federalism. There was nothing like this in Vietnam, and that alone makes it a bad analogy overall.