Even as millions of Vietnamese and tens of thousands of Americans were dying, there was a certain starkness to that terrible warfare. There was, in the language of the time, a puppet government vs. an insurgency.

Actually the U.S. did rather well defeating the insurgents (Viet Cong). They didn't have as much luck with the North Vietnamese (Viet Minh).

The "civil war" in Iraq looks a whole lot more like the anarchy in Somalia.

Best, Terry

Somalia.  Bush Sr.'s 1992 Christmas present to Bill Clinton.

Another difference from Vietnam is that the avowed purpose of getting into the Vietnam war - to prevent Communists from taking over South Vietnam - was really the purpose. (Whatever untruths may have been involved with the Gulf of Tonkin incident, this was only a trigger, and no one was in any doubt about the main goal.) In Iraq, one can say no such thing - democratization was an ex post facto rationalization, and it surely is no reason to stay now.

But can the kings men help take Iraq apart - some variation on the Biden plan? Can we help negotiate the division of Iraq into more stable, more local states? Kurdistan seems obvious; get the EU to offer Turkey early admission if it goes along with this. Shia Iraq should be governed out of Iran; let them give up their nuclear programs entirely in exchange for this gift. And as for the Sunni regions, put Saudi Arabia and Syria jointly in charge. That'll soak up much Saudi money, and divert the attentions of the Syrian army away from Lebanon. Since Syria has a Shia government over a Sunni majority, the last thing they need is a radical Sunni state on their border; and since the Saudis have an interest in protecting the Iraqi Sunnis against the worst of Syria acting alone, and can afford it, they should be brought in too.

Not to blow my own horn but I blogged this before the break. This does not do anything to deflate my sense of the superiority or equality against the pundits--in the traditional media or TPM.

Train them for 24 months and they will be the terror of the Earth. Harold Meyerson

Okay, guys. This trope is an allusion to one of -- if not -- the most famous crazed rants in English literature.

Identify the allusion.

Is Myerson employing irony, and if so, are there equivalences between the power and dominion of the United States and that of the original speaker?

Please use recto side, only. 

While Parkinson's Law and the Peter Principle come to grief meeting the Law of Diminishing Returns in IraqNam, let us idly entertain ourselves -- while the shit hits the fan again -- speculating about the recent history which explains it all. Thus:

"Boobie Official Mendacity"

The characters in government
Will change from time to time
As fashion colors change from green
To slightly lemon-lime
But lying never changes, like
The meter of this rhyme

The former Clinton government
Once wanted to inflict
The normal needless bombing on
A country it had picked
Because its petty potentate
Our boots had never licked

It seems that of the suspects whom
We normally accuse
One stood apart in infamy
Thus him we would abuse
Because he could not stop us so
That made him great to use

Inspectors roamed across his land
Discovering not much
Of mass-destructive weaponry,
And gas, and germs, and such
Thus did Saddam Hussein refuse
To come through in the clutch

So in frustration Bubba Bill
Turned Madam Albright loose
To use up some "diplomacy"
Much like a hangman's noose
To threaten peace with war until
War seemed our only use

A decade’s worth of sanctions failed
To bring the tyrant down
But only starved his children which
Caused few of us to frown
If hungry Arab kids can’t swim
We say: “Then let them drown”

“We think the price is worth it,” said
Ms Albright in her way
Yet glib and airy phrases left
No food upon the tray
Just surly scorn for diplomats
Who never have to pay

But still those damned inspectors caused
Our President to pout:
To bomb might make them hostages
Which could extend the bout
To something more than half a round
And not the hoped-for rout

This Bubba Bill could not abide:
So he asked the UN
To have its people leave and tell
Him where and how and when
So he could blame their absence on
Saddam and all his men

To pull off this duplicity
He needed lies to spout
And so he took the muzzle off
Of Madam Albright’s snout
So she could lie and say Saddam
Had forthwith “kicked them out”

And so with the inspectors gone
And nothing more to say
The bomber pilots got to fly
Three miles above harm’s way
And blitz some helpless cities
Just to earn their monthly pay

Just so with Boobie Bumbler George
Who also wanted in
To knock about the whipping boy
And all his clan and kin
Yet once again inspectors proved
An obstacle to spin

They’d gone ahead and done their jobs
And found no smoking gun
Which vexed another President
Who so much needed one
To validate more lies and his
Vendetta left undone

“He tried to kill my daddy!” swore
The vengeful Boobie Bush
“I know because the CIA
Has searched the Hindu Kush;
And found out lots of things, so now
I say shove comes to push”

So Boobie George told the UN
That its men hadn’t found
What Boobie George and Dick and Don
Knew lay somewhere around
Someplace where only they could see
On undiscovered ground

And Boobie Condoleeza Rice
And Colin Powell, too,
Proved once again that Black folks lie
Just like the White ones do
Repeating what no one believed
Exactly right on cue

With summer coming on so soon
And springtime cool so short
The bombing had to start at once
Lest hot weather abort
Mad plans to land upon a ship
Sent steaming back to port

And so once more the snoops and hounds
Packed up and left Iraq
The UN wished to take no part
In Bush’s planned attack
Yet still the obvious and bald
Required a little slack

To cover for their rush to war
The Bush Bunch needed spin
They claimed they had no choice because
They wanted so to win
And bad Saddam had not allowed
Inspectors to come in

Thus here we have a sorry tale
Of two groups sworn to tell
No truth if they could help it
And they could, so what the hell?
And Boobies, anyway, had grown
Accustomed to the smell

Saddam Hussein had let a host
Of spies stay at his inn
But yet it didn’t change a thing
Or mitigate his sin
Bill lied about the "kicking out"
And George the "letting in"

The Presidents who work for us
Decline to let us know
The things we need to supervise
Their fumbling tell and show
So wars begin on schedule and
The piles of bodies grow

Bill Clinton swore one type of lie;
George Bush another kind
They both had lied so much that each
Thought none would ever mind
With Boobies all so fast asleep
The bland could lead the blind

If once their lips commence to move
A lie we should suspect
And if their lips should move again
We should at once reflect
That we can -- in their moving lips --
A naked lie detect

Their lying we should not expect
To bother them that much
To make them tell the truth would be
To rob them of their crutch
If they could choose, they'd lie so that
They wouldn't loose their touch

Michael Murry, "The Misfortune Teller," Copyright 2005

They mean chicks right? Terror of the Earth?

I hate Willy S., so overrated.

Anything that complicated requires competence.

But won't Daddy Bush's friends bail out Dubya from this, the biggest failure of his life, his remaking of a the Middle East through lies and fear mongering, shock, awe, invasion, torture, a trillion or so $$, creating a new Iraq as the not so shining example of democracy??

Poppy's buddies did it for all his other mess ups!

The other factor is implicit racism and/or xenophobia -- a presumption that Americans are so vastly superior to other peoples that while governing 'here' is unnecessary, governing 'there' is always an easy matter.

global citizen

If the U.S. pulls out of Iraq its a good bet that it will explode into a regional conflict in the Middle East. As much as it pains me to say - because of the many innocent folks who live there - perhaps it is best to pop that pimple now, before Iran has its nuke.....It will create havoc in the world oil market, but the U.S./Wall Street needs an oil enema to prompt us to invest in alternative energies that will eventually make the Middle East an after thought. In the meantime, when we withdraw our forces from Iraq we should redeploy in Afghanistan, Turkey and Kuwait so we have a good vantage point.

I’m watching an interesting discussion on Scarborough with Joe Klein, Pat Buchanan, and Michael Crowley. All three agree that the events today in Amman are profoundly significant and presage, not only a coup de tat, but a Bush plan to go after Sadr. Klein points out that 20K troops are coming from Mosul, never mind the two divisions from Anbar. All three are certain that a sitting U.S. President has NEVER been snubbed at a planned summit. Buchanan points out that the Hadley leaked seemed timed and planned to kill Malaki’s credibility.

Is something about to happen as there?

As Klein asks, who is the alternative to Malaki?

Today, it’s obvious that instead of a puppet there’s a whole puppet show—Punch and Judy, but with an unsupporting cast of thousands.

[stuff deleted]

It's long past time for "them" to stand up as "we stand down." There is no "them."

Man, that made me smile. I keep telling people that there's no "them" but they look at me like I'm crazy.

My g-ma watches CNN like it was a soap opera and refuses to interalize the notion that we're in Iraq for oil and nothing else and, therefore, the Iraqi's have the right to fight against the US thieves.

I'm not a historian but wasn't Vietnam centered around defeating russian imperialism whereas Iraq is centered around pilfering resources?

Another test case is my uncle who blames everything on "muslim extermists" and, as a retired veteran, he seems to insist that the fight in Iraq is making life better by eliminating extermists.

In the future, when Americans start retiring on Wal-Mart wages, I expect them to realize that "the US economy was only efficient at picking pockets."

Viet Minh was a revolutionary national liberation movement formed by Ho Chi Minh in 1941 to seek independence for Vietnam from France as well as to oppose the Japanese occupation. (Wikipedia).

Regarding the American War, VN General Giap was quoted as saying something to the effect that "we were prepared to lose for longer than you were prepared to win."

The Vietnamese did not divide their own country. Opposition to foreign occupation against France, against Japan, against America and for nearly 2000 years against Chinese occupation, came from both north and south of the 17th parallel.

To us they might have been a communist insurgency but they saw themselves as fighting to liberate their country from foreign invaders.

The Vietnamese did not divide their own country. Opposition to foreign occupation against France, against Japan, against America and for nearly 2000 years against Chinese occupation, came from both north and south of the 17th parallel.

Well yes and no.

A South Vietnamese could easily spend an hour telling you what bad people those North Vietnamese were. A North Vietnamese could do the same about the South Vietnamese. The dialects were quite different.

A Chinese ethnic in Cholon was a most interesting fellow, who spoke numerous languages. One language he did not speak was Vietnamese (North, Middle or South dialects).

If that Chinese managed to get on a boat and end up in the U.S. with some of the other ethnic Chinese in Cholon, he would be known here as Vietnamese.

Vietnam is composed of many different ethnicities and religions. The mountain tribes were particularly friendly to Americans as well as French because of their hatred of the flatlanders, who regarded them in turn with contempt.

We did a great deal to unify Vietnam for the North Vietnamese takeover. We really are uniters.

Please note I don't disagree that the country's division was artificial. In fact there was a Vietnamese republic under Ho Chi Minh for a short time under Ho Chi Minh before we aided the French in attempting to regain the colonies it abandoned to the Japanese in WWII. During that war, Ho Chi Minh was an ally.

Pity Truman knew no more about Vietnam than Bush knows about Iraq.

Best, Terry

Steve Kyle

or to put it more concisely, they live there. they arent going to lose because they will never leave. we are going to lose because we obviously cant beat them with the forces we have and will eventually leave.

unless of course, we want to win by nuking the entire country. I bet there are some who would actually go for that if it werent that it would make the oil glow.

Terry, you say, "Actually the U.S. did rather well defeating the insurgents (Viet Cong)."

Where did you read this? [I don't doubt that it has been written. Do you believe the action statistics provided by the Pentagon? Do you believe the body count numbers? ]

When did the VC quit attacking US forces? When did they quit inflicting casualties at a rate that the American people, and the American troops, judged to be unacceptable? Can a force that continues to fight and which ultimately achieves its objectives be considered defeated. What does "largely defeated" mean compared to completely defeated and sent home?

When did the VC go back to village life and quit being a threat to America? I know it hadn't happened by the end of 1968. I believe it began when American troops were pulled back to more secure bases and not sent out to "secure the area". I believe it only stopped completely when all American forces were gone from Viet Nam.

Terry, you say, "Actually the U.S. did rather well defeating the insurgents (Viet Cong)."

Where did you read this? [I don't doubt that it has been written...]

Sure has been. I wrote it up above. :-)

When I was in Vietnam from 1957 to 1959, the main action was in the Mekong Delta. That was the heart of the Viet Cong insurgency. Later the region was relatively quiet.

North of us in Saigon and to the west, there were occasional relatively large-scale attacks but there was not the continuous activity of the Mekong Delta. Large forces would appear out of nowhere and then disappear.

I haven't read accounts of the war after my time beyond the usual headlines and an occasional article.

There were only 500 of us in Vietnam at the time as "advisers." For the first year and more, the Viet Cong went out of their way to avoid American casualties. Later they actively sought out Americans. One friend became the first to make it to The Wall in 1959. I was really surprised that they had done that for us "peacetime soldiers."

Should take a look at what Webb wrote but...

There was nothing I could do about what was coming with Kennedy. Nixon had been actively campaigning for an expandhed war. And I had no use for those praising the dictators in the north in opposing the war. The only real heroes I know were Senators Morse and Gruening who voted against the Tonkin Gulf Resolution and were soundly defeated first chance the voters could do so. They had been untouchable mavericks. Even then it was damnably late with Kennedy's expansion of the war.

Best, Terry

True enough Terry. There are around 50 to 60 various ethnic groups in Viet Nam. There are also many ethnic (hill tribe) people in neighboring Laos, Cambodia and in Thailand.

I think people tend to generalize too much and come to the conclusion that the tribal peoples all sided with the Americans.

Many of the tribal people live in the northern part of the country. Some of the southern ethnic groups fought with the Americans. In the area I am most familiar with the Bru people did but others such as the Pakos who lived in and around the A Shau Valley and the Katou in the mountains west of Da Nang opposed the US.

I've spoken with some of the Bru people and they did not speak Vietnamese well, however all of the Chinese Viets that I've known did. Admittedly small samples of both groups.

Considering the Vietnam context of late, andfantastic dialog at the café (in particular, the Somalia/Bosnia parts), I’m surprised no one has cut to the chase: Vietnam and Iraq are apples and oranges based on much more than just tactics or strategy, even if President George tries to pack ‘em in the same crate. Vietnam was a colossal tragedy, I do not try to minimize it. Please allow me to induldge in some oversimplification. Just like absurdity, it can help the clarity better than endless over-intellectualizing.

Vietnam was limited in scope compared to Iraq - who were we going to truly piss off (in comparison to the stakes of Iraq)? Sure, nuclear war was a risk with China and the U.S.S.R., but all sides proved rather ‘adult’ (to borrow some 21st century sarcasm) and the checks and balances were in place (better or worse). As opposed to the world we now face, in which nuclear material will find their way into the wrong hands, terror will revisit us many times over, and diplomacy won’t mean a lick – just vengeance.

The Viet Cong were never going to deliver a punch on the West or America like Al Qaeda, and certainly not the NVA, the Vietnamese were not sitting on top (or remotely connected regionally) to America’s fix for oil consumption, and thus, certainly were not related to as volatile an ethnic-religious cluster as Sunni-Shiite-Arab-Muslim-Jewish-Western-Middle Eastern conflict. And all the while, we've seen our freedoms eroded back to pre-Progressive Era standards, torture is Kafka-codified, and America's government openly turned theocratic, plus, authoritarian beyond Nixon’s drunkest dreams. At least America had the ‘anti-communist’ aura to romance the world with. Today, we have no respect whatsoever (OK, except Australia?).

Vietnam was was a ‘quaint’ little f-up. Iraq is the geo-political equivalent of America pissing on the worldwide third rail.

And yes, I am considering the Khemer Rogue, the horrors on both sides, and the worldwide significance. We’ve only just begun to circle the drain when it comes to being sucked into this vortex in Iraq and the region. I’m disgusted to see how we top Vietnam’s horrors, I want to be wrong.

Additionally, we had a naïve cultural and historical perspective for Vietnam when compared to Iraq. The collective understanding about Vietnam’s lessons and mistakes were established unlike any other lesson for a country, its media, politicians, and its leaders to utilize in making the important decision to remocve Saddam. There is no excuse for this current disaster when you account for the overwhelming amount of proof we had. (I know, I know: there is no reality like the denial of reality for the neo cons)

This country learned from Vietnam, we applied those lessons and the success was seen in Desert Storm. As a sophomore at Penn State, my Vietnam 183 Prof had us read ‘On Strategy’ by Infantry Col. Summers – at the same time, my best friend at West Point was reading it... his WHOLE class had it as required reading and they were dissecting it (wonder if it is still on the syllabus?). This book, beyond any reasonable doubt, was the blueprint for the first Iraq success and proved how great our military was – since they obviously learned and adjusted like no other organization. It is a fantastic read when you compare it to the first Iraq war and a death knell when you apply it to the present. Besides, there have been mountains of books published, like Loren Baritz’s ‘Backfire’, that pushed our socio-historical understanding to new levels of what led to Vietnam and explained how to protect against those missteps.

We blew it and we knew better this time – not something the country necessarily had going for it the first quagmire around. This is bigger than we ever imagined and every Republicans politician should have the scarlet letter ‘I’ branded onto their heads for the next generation’s worth of elections: THEY LET THIS HAPPEN, carte blanc. No hiding.

PS. Here is the book – and the first reviews sum it up better than I can: http://www.amazon.com/Strategy-Critical-Analysis-Vietnam-War/dp/0891415637

Backfire was just reissued not too long ago, it is a classic.

Thanks for reading this post, just a vent...
sj

My concern is the arc of this disaster and its ramifications - so I'm attempting to frame the context more than a detailed analysis. Apologies if I failed in my sketch, I'm thinking aloud more than writing an authoratative thesis and perhaps the subtleties didn't come through.

I did mention the Soviet/China threat and believe the brinkmanship and consequences were very real. But there are no equivalent rational channels controlling the threats we are unleashing in this century, which are combined with a higher risk factors which create a much higher geopolitical octane than ever before.

There is no dismissing the numbers from Vietnam and that is not my intention. Yes, Iraq will not surpass Vietnam in that respect. On the other hand, the numbers are staggering for the war crimes, brutality, and displacement we have vunleashed upon the region (more than tens of thousands, for sure), and that has only just begun. Once again, I am fearful this will surpass Vietnam. Overall, my original post is about the even larger impact on the nation, worldwide and the region.

I am trying to express the greater risk and ignorance of the Bush administration and those who enabled them. The fear is that the odometer is still spinning on Iraq. We will never hit the sheer number of deaths from Vietnam, but the serious casualties inflicted thus far are staggering and will be a national shame for decades to come as more truths come to light and the reprecussions continue. Besides, the fact we have not crossed tens of thousands of deaths does not lessen the harsh reality of tens of thousands of Johnny's getting thier guns (we all know how today's medicine and technology have thankfully averted death but created new issues to tackle - or ignore).

Thanks for the points. Take care.

One other point. 55,000 Americans died in Vietnam and untold tens of thounds of Vietnamese, Laotians and Cambodians. In Iraq about 3,000 Americans who were professional soldiers have died so far.

Not to mention the unparalleled horror of Cambodia but smithersjones has a powerful point I think.

Vietnam was the result of a horribly misguided effort to halt the spread of the Communist ideology.

Iraq was a raw grab for oil resources cloaked in specious talk of a War on Terror.

As with Hitler's plan to use Jews as a means to defeat Communism, the Frankenstein effect took over. A rampaging monster was born who destroyed its creator.

Thanks to both of you.

Best, Terry

There seems to be a certain consensus here on the nature of the failure, (hubris, structural incompetence,idealism,it matters little really) and on the outcome (failed state, regional instability, increased risk) but not much about what needs to happen to keep those guilty of the falure, the policy people, from dodging their responsibility. There must be a process whereby they admit their failures in a way which will help us in avoiding the next debacle. The ducking out and burrowing and covering is already underway and I fear political considerations will prevail and accountability will not be enforced.

This entire affair needs to be exposed from the Bush 1 period to the present or all died in vain.

Terry, I’m slow to get back to this because I decided to do a little research. I realize that I might have been dropped into a small grove of trees and thought I knew what the forest looked like [to torture an analogy] but I have seen in several places recently statements to the effect that the Vietcong were mostly destroyed in ‘68 during Tet and were insignificant as a fighting force for the remainder of the war and that just did not ring true to me.
I have been reading H. G. Summers Jr.’s book “On Strategy, a critical analysis of the Vietnam War“ because I have seen it cited as an authoritative work and because his thesis relies largely on his contention that the VC were, in fact, destroyed in Tet and were never again a serious component of the forces aligned against the U.S. and the S. Vietnamese forces. He gives very little information to back up this premise. I think the book is weak and largely wrong.

Anyone interested in a good article about the strength of the VC after Tet should check out the following link.

http://www.library.vanderbilt.edu/central/brush/brush.htm#articles

The autor,”Peter Bush says of the article: “In a previous article I wrote for Vietnam magazine (see preceding entry), the magazine's editor said it was a valuable contribution even though my conclusion ignored "last seven years of the war during which guerrillas played an insignificant part . . . ." To defend myself I wrote another article describing how the Viet Cong did indeed play a significant role in the later years of the war. The editor, Col. Harry Summers, Jr., refused to publish this second article, so I sent it to JTWS, who did. I was quite pleased when Hixson included it in his series of significant scholarly articles.”