The Real Iraq-Vietnam Connection

[babylonsister]

http://www.prospect.org/web/page.ww?section=root&name=ViewWeb&articleId=12745

The Real Iraq-Vietnam Connection
The key similarity between the two wars is how they profoundly eroded the American people's trust in their government and leaders.

By Terence Samuel
Web Exclusive: 05.04.07

After he is permanently back at the ranch in Crawford, George W. Bush's presidency will bequeath us a legacy rich in bold policy choices that have spawned a series of odd and unintended consequences. Among the most ironic of these will be the fact that the 43rd president, of all people, will have been responsible for resurrecting in the American psyche a weary outrage and painful second-guessing that came to be known disdainfully as "Vietnam syndrome."

If the failures in Vietnam produced a generation of Americans who no longer took the word of the government at face value, they also generated a conservative -- small "c" -- backlash among some who saw in this ethos of questioning and mistrust the dangerous seeds of American weakness. Such self-examination, introspection, and -- much worse -- acknowledgment of mistakes were roadblocks to bold and decisive action.

snip//

The Bush administration has gone to great lengths to discredit any kind of parallels between Iraq and Vietnam. In 2004, before the presidential election, Condoleezza Rice told Bill Sammon of the Washington Times that those hippies and baby-boomers have wrongly internalized the whole Vietnam thing: "For people of that generation, it became the lodestar for the questioning of authority. And authority was never to be trusted again," Rice said. "And so whenever people say 'Vietnam,' what they mean is 'Authority is not to be trusted.' Because the government had lied about the Gulf of Tonkin, they must be lying about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq."

Maybe yes, maybe no. I think the more important calculation that the American people have made, and not just those with calcified Vietnam-era disgruntlements, but a majority -- is that we are blowing it in Iraq. We are over-invested with too much exposure to disaster and with no hope of a reasonable return on the investment. Our purposes have grown too ambiguous.

"The thing about the Vietnam War that troubles me as I look back," Bush told Russert in 2004, "was it was a political war. We had politicians making military decisions, and it is lessons that any president must learn, and that is to the set the goal and the objective and allow the military to come up with the plans to achieve that objective. And those are essential lessons to be learned from the Vietnam War."

Americans may not think Iraq is Vietnam, but they are now convinced that it, too, is a political war.

[dave_p]

1. Funny you should say that, Condi

"Because the government had lied about the Gulf of Tonkin, they must be lying about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq"

Well, now that you mention it...

[Monkeyman]

2. hmmm right