Comparing the Vietnam and Iraq Wars

Defense Secretary Robert McNamara with Gen. William Westmoreland in Vietnam, 1965

Comparisons of the Iraq War to the Vietnam War are becoming more and more frequent. I hope that enough serious work with be done on that particular comparison that the comparison actually increases our understanding, and not just give us another bad historical analogy to use and lead us to more avoidable mistakes.

John Prados addressed the comparison in his essay, "The Drums of War", in The New American Empire: A 21st Century Teach-In on U.S. Foreign Policy (2005) Lloyd Gardner and Marilyn Young, eds. Although the book is dated 2005, Prados refers to writing in the summer of 2003. So his was an early take on the comparison.

Prados quotes one of Robert McNamara's postmortems on the Vietnam War: "Over and over again ... we failed to address fundamental issues; our failure to recognize them was not recognized; and deep seated disagreements among the president's advisers about how to proceed were neither surfaced nor resolved."

But Prados also reminds us that a number of Presidential advisers, including John Kenneth Galbraith and George Ball presented prescient warnings about the risks in remaining involved in the Vietnam War. But they were overruled and largely ignored by other advisers and by President Johnson. Though not entirely by President Kennedy. The evidence is convincing that Kennedy had decided by withdraw the US from Vietnam and had begun the process at the time of his assassination. (See my post JFK and Withdrawing from Vietnam 11/24/2003.)

Prados cites a number of reasons for the bad decision to escalate intervention in the Vietnam War that he finds credible including underestimating Vietnamese nationalism; bad judgments on the intentions of the South Vietnamese regime, the Vietcong and the North Vietnamese; an excessive faith in the ability of the latest whiz-bang technology; deception of the US public about the nature and goals of the war; lack of international support; and, overestimating the power of the US to solve the issues creating the war in Vietnam. Then Prados writes:

Almost every one of these explanations can be applied to the Iraq case. There is no evidence that Saddam Hussein intended to attack the United States. Bush administration authorities misjudged the response of the Iraqi people to an American conquest. Iraqi nationalism and ethnic and religious issues played differently than anticipated by Bush administration officials. The effect of the "shock and awe" Bush commanders expected from their weapons did not deter people from using their simple rifles to oppose America. President Bush deliberately attempted to avoid insofar as possible any "great debate" on attacking Iraq, hiding estimates of forces, costs, and international support behind platitudes. Obviously there have been unanticipated events that have changed the course of the occupation. And most clearly, the Bush people went into Iraq with the specific intention of remaking that country along lines they had selected.

These propositions fit Iraq very well, but they are largely second-order explanations. Why is still the question. The answer lies in President Bush, Vice-President Cheney, and the people around them. They, too, assumed themselves to be "the best and the brightest." They had the answer to terrorism - make an example of some other country. They knew how to solve the Palestinian problem - start a democratic revolution in Iraq. The ideological blinders were on tight, not only did the neocons refuse to deal with any objections to their intended course, but administration officials and their political allies often responded to questions raised about their course by impugning the patriotism or motives of the questioner. They knew how to fight a "light" war, and how to conduct an occupation of Iraq; they had foreseen everything. Except that they had not. Just like Vietnam. These were proud, arrogant men and women. The quandaries George W. Bush faces in Iraq today are purely of his own making. (my emphasis in bold)

And the same is true here three summers later.

He elaborates on that particular point, reminding us that there were substantial warnings of the risks in invading and occupying Iraq, risks that Cheney and Bush managed to simply brush aside:

In summary, President George W. Bush was far from ignorant. The obstacles to war with Iraq at the international level were apparent long ID advance. Flaws in war plans were pointed out in good time by U.S. military officers, as were the dangers in the postwar occupation (NSC officials from the White House actually bragged about how well they had prepared for an occupation of Iraq). Political opposition to Bush's desired course was obvious. The president proceeded purposefully, carefully structured the evolving situation to provide the option he desired, and then ordered the war and subsequent occupation of Iraq. All of this shows startling similarities to the process of U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War ....

Tags: iraq war, john prados, vietnam war