The public debate proliferates, the chickenhawks' denials grow
stronger, the number of dead increases, and reality cannot be avoided:
Iraq is America's second Vietnam!
By Stewart Nusbaumer


"This is not like Vietnam," says Donald Shepperd, retired military
general and now military analyst for CNN. "It's nothing like Vietnam."

The purpose of these military generals turned media military analysts
is not to actually analyze the military situation in Iraq, but to echo
the Bush Administration here in America. Paid by large media
corporations for their access to the Pentagon, if they upset the White
House, they lose their coveted special access to the Pentagon and
their high-paying media jobs. "This is not like Vietnam," the
mouthpiece tries to assure me.

Well, the American media did not report the Vietnam War well either.
The media was in bed with the Johnson, then the Nixon Administration,
not with the truth.

Although for months the Bush Administration has insisted there were
enough troops in Iraq, the U.S. military is now requesting more
troops. How many times during the Vietnam War did the U.S. military
insist it had enough soldiers, and then suddenly request more troops?
How many more troops will be required to pacify Iraq? The answer, like
in Vietnam, is this: there will never be enough troops.

At least 76 soldiers have been killed in Iraq this month and we're not
even half way through April. Although not comparable to the peak
fighting months in Vietnam, this number easily surpasses the first
months of the U.S. presence in Vietnam. Iraq is a supercharged killing
field.

Let's understand, however, that the number of soldiers dying in Iraq
is not the number the Pentagon is telling the public. The Bush
Administration lied about why we had to go to war in Iraq, it lied why
we must remain in Iraq, would you be surprised to learn that they are
lying about the number of U.S. dead in Iraq?

The jungle of Vietnam has reemerged in the urban alleyways and
abandoned buildings of Iraqi cities, the number of American dead are
headed higher, and Americans are asking is this another Vietnam. But
what the public is not asking: who are those Americans that are dying
in Iraq?

They are of course not the children of the wealthy and privileged,
mostly not from the educated middle class. Our dead soldiers generally
had less resources and fewer options. In fact, most of those Americans
in Iraq were drafted. That's right, an economic draft funnels our
rural and inner city youth into the military and allows other young
Americans not to die and lose limbs. Just like Vietnam.

And there are others, those who heard the call and responded to defend
their nation. They are the children of John Kennedy's plea: give to
your country. They are the best, and often the most idealistic,
Americans. And they are dying, some physically, more spiritually, in a
quagmire this time called Iraq.

Although the Bush Administration has been assuring us that the Iraqi
Army is being rebuilt and it would do the fighting instead of our
military, when the fighting erupted throughout Iraq last week, the
Iraqi military ran away or simply refused to fight. Iraqization is
failing, just like Vietnamization failed. There are reasons for this,
regardless of the name of the country, regardless of the location of
the war.

We are told that we "liberated" the Iraq people for "democracy." As
for "those Iraqis not on board," as the U.S. generals in Iraq refer to
them, they fear this freedom and democracy. When these same generals
get worked up, which is often, "those not on board" are called
"terrorists" who "have a different value system from us" and who
"don't respect life." Word for word, this is the rhetoric of Vietnam.
I would have thought they could have written a new script.

And then the biggie comparison: "the people are really on our side."
Sounds great, but it is also irrelevant. Minorities, not majorities
create and fight guerrilla wars. I remember in Vietnam, right up to
the day that North Vietnamese troops walked into Saigon to the
cheering crowds of Saigonese, the United States had the support of
most Vietnamese. Well, that's what U.S. officials said. I say it does
not matter; war, like occupation of a country, is not democracy.
Majorities are irrelevant; many say this has also become true in
America.

People never support occupying forces--the Vietnamese, the Iraqis.
Most people remain on the sideline until the victor becomes clear. But
never expect genuine support when you occupy a people, regardless of
what our media and the Bush Administration claims. Regardless of the
latest wind of who is on top. No one wants to be occupied by a foreign
power, and most wish the occupiers bad. We learned this in Vietnam.

As for U.S. strategy, we went in with "shock and awe" to scare the
beehives out of the "terrorists" and the military continues to rely on
force. The Bush Administration dismisses negotiations as weak and
unproductive. Yet, like in Vietnam, the U.S. military is engaging in
negotiations, negotiating with a powerful cleric, negotiating with
those holding U.S. prisoners. I read this in the newspaper, but don't
hear on CNN, certainly not Fox.

The "carrot and stick" approach is valued by our war planners; it
sounds good. It reminds us of our childhood. So the military rebuilds
a school, but it was U.S. airpower that destroyed the school. People
are not so stupid or blind not to see who blasted the school into
rubble of uselessness. People know those soldiers are not rebuilding
their country when they fix their own destruction. Never forget,
however, the greatest horrors of war cannot be fixed. They are the
dead children that were in that school.

We learned this in Vietnam that when you kill children, parents and
siblings don't forget. They have a lifetime of hate to kill you.

The greatest comparison of Iraq with Vietnam lies in strategy, to be
more accurate, in the lack of strategy. What we don't know about the
people and their history and their thinking is substituted with pure
American arrogance. The hubris that led us into Iraq is fueling a
strategy that is confused and ineffective and will lead to our defeat.
In Vietnam we were clueless, until 1975 when we finally left their
country. In Iraq, we will leave the same way, in defeat by an enemy
and a people we never took the time and effort to understand. If we
had, we would have never gone into Iraq, just like we would have never
gone into Vietnam.

When the fundamental strategy and purpose is corrupt and ignorant,
then what follows cannot be good and effective. What follows, as sure
as night follows day, is defeat. We never learned from Vietnam, so
again we will have Vietnam.

The U.S. is attempting to set up a local government compatible with
"liberation" and "democracy," but the locals call it a lackey
government. Who can forget the long string of "strong" government's in
South Vietnam? To take over a people's government merely throws insult
onto the raging fires of nationalism. To create lackeys and call it
democracy pushes good people to support those using violence against
the foreigners. Hypocrisy plays no better overseas than it does in
America, often worse.

If the Bush Administration's purpose is to lose in Iraq and disgrace
the United States again, it deserves an A for strategic plan, and an
A+ for execution.

And now I'm listening to Henry Kissinger, Richard Nixon's architect of
failure in Vietnam, reassuring us that we are a good people and
everything will work out fine in Iraq. "We are doing this to help the
Iraqi people...we have a fundamental interest...we want to help them
with democracy there....

I turn the television off, but there is not silence. Instead a tired
whisper from the ugly past: "We had to destroy the nation to save it."

Where will this end? I know. We all know. In another Vietnam.