When the war in Iraq is discussed on JU, many times the debate will devolve into a discussion about the US involvement in the Vietnam War, and then a debate will begin about the pros and cons of that situation.
One fellow JUer, in a discussion about protest, pointed out that he wanted to keep the discussion on his thread in the "now", but since I had mentioned Vietnam in my comment, he’d support me on it.
It is my feeling that such a comparison between the two wars is not only correct, but inevitable. After all, the divide between Americans on the subject of this present war often seems to stem directly from the hurts and differences of opinion from 30 years ago. The voices that would today shout their desire for peace at any price are merely echoes of those that rebounded across campuses and city streets in the 1960s and 70s.
Not only that, but the divide we presently observe has no other real parallel in all of our history, but that one caused by the Vietnam War. The rift that exists in our society now has no other reflection but that one, so it is only natural that we hark back to it for reference.
"Support for the troops", to me, involves at least tacit support for the war, by the way. It’s not possible, and is in fact pointless, to support one but not the other. Could you support the upholding of laws, but not support the police, too, at least in some way? The extinguishing of fires, but not the Fire Dept.?
Dissent and protest are perfectly understandable and of course perfectly legal. Correctness of the protest, however, depends upon how it is undertaken. If the protest is tasteful, controlled and positive, then no problem. Protest away. It is, after all, one of the very things we now fight to bring to Iraq; the right to dissent.
If, however, it is an undisciplined, virtually uncontrolled disturbance full of screeching calls for impeachment (at best, murder at worst) and arrest for war crimes, immediate withdrawal of the troops, and the yelling and waving of obscene signs and slogans and gestures, then no….it’s no good for anyone. News of it damages troops morale, no matter what some may think, and just causes hard feelings and a bigger divide here at home.
Often, I’ve seen that those who oppose the war will point out the various shortcomings of the US as revealed by the Vietnam War. They then try to draw some parallel between a jungle war against a disciplined, uniformed foe, and a desert war against ragtag, loosely-banded terrorists, to point out the shortcomings of the US today.
Let me just say this to those who want to draw such a parallel:
In Vietnam, despite a supposed lack of proper training, flaccid to no support from on high, and attitudes at home ranging from mild support to blase indifference to raging opposition, our forces held the Communist North Vietnamese at bay for 16 long and very bloody years, from 1959 to 1975. We defeated them soundly on every field of face-to-face battle on which we met.
The North made no significant territorial gains, as I pointed out on another thread, until 1973, when we started to withdraw. Even then, with our much-reduced involvement, it still took them two years to conquer a country about the size of Vermont. Our troops then did a terrific job, and I applaud them. Just as I do now.
I have also, at some points, seen moderately hysterical comparisons of body counts between the two wars. How this is even possible, I do not know.
Between the years 1959 and 1975, our nation lost approximately 58,000 young men and women to the war in Southeast Asia. That’s about 3,625 a year. That’s a lot of lives cut short, isn’t it? Yes it is.
Especially when compared to the loss of life so far in our present conflict. Losses of any type in a war are tragic, of course, but though our military’s Iraq body count now stands at well over 2,000 at just under three years of war, the terrorists in Iraq are providing nowhere near the sausage grinder utilized on us by the North Vietnamese. Or the North Koreans and Chinese, for that matter; 57,000 combat deaths in just three years.
The difference, as if I have to point it out, is that we’re looking at two completely different types of wars, no matter what comparisons one may wish to make.
The Viet Cong were terrorists in a way, using similar tactics then as our enemies today in Iraq; suicide bombings, booby traps, sudden attacks on civilian areas and other crowded targets. But, though committed and admittedly menacing, our main enemy was the North Vietnamese Army. We’re not facing a cohesive, disciplined force here. We’re only facing the "VC"----partisans that may fight well enough, but fight disjointedly.
Another difference is that our government seems committed to some kind of victory here, despite its oft-touted questionable reasons and beginnings.
Iraq lost a dictator and now has its own fledgling democratic government. For the first time in its history.
That’s another difference; in Vietnam, we supported a brutal, pissant dictatorship against a bigger, more brutal and more organized type of dictatorship….in Iraq, we toppled one. We seek now to defend and nurture it against the towel-headed tyrants that surround it, and who would deny the dangerous growth of democracy in their midst.
May we be as successful in that goal as we were in keeping the North at bay, until we gave it all away, that is.
Something tells me that we won’t be seeing that this time, however.