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From: David Marr
Date: Jun 21, 2006 8:29 PM
Subject: [Vsg] Vietnam/Iraq
VSG members versed in the history of the 2nd Indochina War and wishing to
compare it with Iraq should read George Packer, "The Lesson of Tal Afar: Is
it too late for the Administration to correct its course in Iraq?", The New
Yorker, 10 April 06, pp.48-65. (Sorry I'm a bit late reading here in Australia)
The hero of the story, Col.H.R.McMaster, commander of the 3rd Armored
Calvary Regiment, wrote a 1997 PhD dissertation that condemned senior US
military leaders for failing to speak their minds when, in the early years
of Vietnam, they disagreed with Pentagon policies. In Iraq, McMaster
applies counterinsurgency tactics in the city of Tal Afar, and seems to be
making some progress, but Packer arrives just as the regiment is preparing
to go home, replaced by a unit with no experience in the area.
By the end of Packer's essay, it looks like counterinsurgency proponents
are going to lose out to advocates of big fortress bases, from whence tanks
and aircraft can launch hi-tech strikes. US troop numbers can thus be
reduced, the Iraqi Army assigned more duties (ready or not), and Bush can
claim success, even though the result is likely to be a bloody stalemate.
Much of the Iraq counterinsurgency discourse sounds like Vietnam 1963-65,
before Gen.Westmorland sidetracked such efforts in favor of large-scale
search and destroy operations. The difference is that Vietnam went from
counterinsurgency to conventional warfare, whereas in Iraq Col. McMaster
and comrades want to do the reverse. However, counterinsurgency would
require a further 5-10 year major troop commitment to Iraq, at a time when
political capital at home is being steadily eroded.
Sadly, America has learned nothing about the limits of its power.
David Marr
From: Adam @ UoM <fforde@unimelb.edu.au>
Date: Jun 21, 2006 9:12 PM
Subject: RE: [Vsg] Vietnam/Iraq
Somebody said that if there were conscription in the US they would not be in
Iraq. But even so by refusing to accept a draft in peacetime Americans have
I think learnt from Vietnam. Surely the basic difference is that there can
be no Westmoreland, as the troops are simply not there? And there are
reasons for that, some to do with what David got up to when he still lived
in the US.
Fisk's book on the Middle East reports that the British went in to
Mesopotamia with 600,000 men - at a time when there were no RPGs. This was
based upon a conscript Army. And between the wars to save on troop
commitments we used the RAF to keep them under.
There was a perceptive article in the Financial Times a few months ago
arguing that Americans would neither fight nor pay the taxes needed to be
true Imperialists. This seems near to the mark.
Adam
From: Chuck Searcy <chucksearcy@yahoo.com>
Date: Jun 21, 2006 10:19 PM
Subject: RE: [Vsg] Vietnam/Iraq
Adam,
The Robert Fisk book is the best, most comprehensive, and sensible -- as well empathetic toward the unfortunate Arab peoples -- as anything I have read about the tragic history of the Middle East. As a non-academic and a not very scholarly observer, I strongly recommend it to anyone.
Chuck Searcy
From: Ashley Carruthers <Ashley.Carruthers@anu.edu.au>
Date: Jun 21, 2006 11:30 PM
Subject: RE: [Vsg] Vietnam/Iraq
Nice posts. Michael Mann's "Incoherent Empire" basically makes this same
argument, i.e. that the US is a "bad imperialist" because it doesn't
have an overall strategy, and lacks the resources and the commitment to
sustain the kind of militarism we are seeing in Iraq. He compares
American imperialists unfavourably with British ones, in part because
troops who grew up in America's tolerant multi-culti society don't have
the same will to endure bloodletting as did Britain's imperial armies,
who were inculcated with strong ideas about their own racial supremacy
in that nation's institutions.
Although, with what's emerging now about atrocities committed by
American troops, one wonders...
Ashley
From: Adam @ UoM <fforde@unimelb.edu.au>
Date: Jun 21, 2006 11:59 PM
Subject: RE: [Vsg] Vietnam/Iraq
One of the recent books on English politics quotes some senior civil servant
as commenting so cleverly that the Brits were basically there to stop the
Americans shooting the prisoners.
Adam
From: William Turley <wturley@siu.edu>
Date: Jun 22, 2006 8:21 AM
Subject: Re: [Vsg] Vietnam/Iraq
can't disagree with any of this. However, one "lesson" of Vietnam seems to have been internalized rather well, so well in fact that no one seems to notice its effect on the current debate. I refer to the argument, presently heard more from Democrats than Republicans, that the U.S. should set a date for "redeloyment" or withdrawal in order to put Iraqis on notice that they had better start behaving responsibly in running their own country. If the U.S. doesn't do this, the argument goes, the Iraqis will remain psychologically as well as materially dependent on the U.S., sapping the Iraqi government of initiative, coherence, and legitimacy and prolonging the agony for the U.S. Ironically, Donald Rumsfeld has used exactly the same reasoning to justify keeping American forces small and has mentioned Vietnam in doing so. Thus it would seem there is a basis for agreement across the aisle on some sort of wind down rather than "staying the course," if only our idiots were more aware that they have learned the same lesson.
Bill Turley
From: Adam @ UoM <fforde@unimelb.edu.au>
Date: Jun 22, 2006 2:50 PM
Subject: RE: [Vsg] Vietnam/Iraq
What do polls say about Americans self-perception and sense of superiority?
I would imagine that most of those done on serving troops would report that
they felt they were different from others, and in many ways better. Moral
superiority based upon their freedom, amongst other things. Of course with
great variation, though.
Janis Kapinsky was on the BBC world TV a few days ago, saying that nothing
had been done in the US Army in a systematic way to address the problems
that had been revealed in Iraq. Surely this points to identity issues that
cut against pragmatism?
I can't see how being racist per se makes it easier to bear punishment; the
reverse, yes.
Adam
From: William Turley <wturley@siu.edu>
Date: Jun 22, 2006 3:03 PM
Subject: Re: [Vsg] Vietnam/Iraq
See Andrew Kohut and Bruce Stokes's book, America Against the World. An excerpt is available at http://pewresearch.org/obdeck/?ObDeckID=23.
Bill Turley
From: Adam @ UoM <fforde@unimelb.edu.au>
Date: Jun 22, 2006 4:15 PM
Subject: RE: [Vsg] Vietnam/Iraq
I had a look. Interesting spin. It tends to avoid discussing just what characteristics are identified as American, and how these specifically differ from others, in favour of a discussion about how apparently many Americans think that whilst they are better than others they also think that they don't seek to impose. And of course this is an old argument about why America is better. This would produce roars of laughter in many parts of the world. Wanting to have one's cake and eat it is a very common human trait.
More seriously, and related to the way this thread is opening up discussion about the longer-term effects of the Vietnam war, we seem to have come to things such as the absence of conscription and attitudes against its possible imposition, and the desire to signal that the US will leave, so host forces better prepare for it. But surely, judging from nothing more than random observation, there is far more deeply the sense that the US military, let loose, will neither do nice things, nor what it is told, and that 'Amerika', as it used to be called, is still there. Of course opinion differs, but VSG itself reflects this - we foreigners sit and watch a continual American concern, amongst VSG people from the USA, that whatever it was is still there. You keep coming back to 'the War'. 'Whatever you do, Talk About The War'.
The range and centre of gravity of US opinion in VSG is itself for me revealing. My guess would be that it is probably more anti-war than non-US opinion and better informed about American military and political history. This must mean something for the way in which the Vietnam war is taught in the US, with effects that one can only imagine on how US history is as a result appreciated by students, their families when they talk about it, and so on. America's Ireland? I recall a Vietnamese student I taught in Singapore who was totally blown away (in a positive sense) by the quality and range of English-language research on her country.
And of course this thread was started by an ex US Marine Officer. Semper fidelis.
Adam
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