All wars are unique. The Iraq War is like the Vietnam war in many ways. Here are two ways it is unlike Vietnam.
At almost the same time {Spring 1965} Phil Geyelin, a White House correspondent who knew Southesat Asia well, found himself troubled by the same kind of doubts about he direction of American policy and turned to William Bundy {Assistant Secretary of State for Far Eastern Affairs}. Did we really know where we were headed? he asked. Did we really know what we would do if the bombing failed, if he other side decided to match our escalation with its own?
Bundy reassured him; he said he had never been so confidient about any undertaking before. Vietnam was no Bay of Pigs, he emphasized; he had never seen anything so thoroughly staffed, so well planned. It reeked of expertise and professionalism, it all gave one a great sense of confidence.
From The Best and the Brightest by David Halberstan, chapter 23
The Pentagon Papers corroborate Bundy’s view. The war was lost, but not due to lack of professionalism or inadequate planning. The Iraq War has been, by all accounts, astonishingly poorly planned — but planning is no panacea.
Another difference is far deeper, although I do not know what it means.
In late 1964 Wally Greene {Commandant of the Marine Corps} was going around the the various service schools, Army and Marine Corps, and talked to the officers, giving a very militant lecture, saying that we should go in there and get the job done, use everything we had. This was the job to do and we ought to do it. It was all very upbeat and at the end he would turn to his audience and ask who was with him, and there would be a roar. A show of hand, he would say, let’s have a show of hands of those who want to go. Lots of hands up. And those who don’t want to go? Always fewer hands. Always, it turned out, the hands of men who had served there recently as advisers.
From The Best and the Brightest, Chapter 22.
That differs from the apparent support for the Iraq war among American officers who have served there. Of course, in 1964 most of these officers had served as advisers in Vietnam, working closely with the locals (large numbers of combat troops arrived in 1965). They saw the war in a different way than most of our troops in Iraq, who are relatively isolated from the local society. Still, whatever the cause, this is an important difference — probably with large effects.
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Click here to see an archive of my posts about the Iraq War, plus some relevant articles by Niall Ferguson.
