THE HANDSTAND

AUGUST 2004



A Comparative view of Iraq-Vietnam Wars

By Richard Pelto

Al-Jazeerah, July 9, 2004
editor@aljazeerah.info


A few years ago, I traveled to Washington D.C. three years in a row. The first trip involved a naive expectation that facts and reason are persuasive. The second year I held on to that hope, and thought that reinforcement of those facts and rationales would at least be retained in the memory of the elected representatives from my state. After my third trip, I knew that facts and reason are clearly subordinate to money and power.

My experience on those trips may say something about how the uses of power influence mankind’s capacity to understand what most affects lives. The first priority of thought processes of those with power is the security and stability of whatever they have managed to acquire, or what they seek to acquire in order to add to that power; if ideas threaten that sense of "stability," they become mentally poisonous, necessitating a process of selective perception. Those congressmen probably came to the realization that acting on all the facts I presented them with would jeopardize their ability to continue wielding what power they had.

My Vietnam class and what is now occurring in Iraq illustrate many parallels of power’s inability to take into account the human factors resulting from conquest.

History has a difficult time putting "right" or "wrong" into a frame of reference when considering the rationales of those who hold or seek power when they perform some kind of action that involves unthinkable human consequences.

The personal experiences of individuals must be looked at rather than the historical review of rationales in order to gain insight into what has occurred, and it is important to realize that "policy" decision-making may ignore what is most important: consequences.

In fulfilling a probable policy, Bush recently announced the arrival of "freedom" in Iraq with the transfer of power to an American-appointed governing council. But for some reason the media reports no celebratory crackle of automatic gunfire as occurred when news was released of Saddam Hussein’s capture. No news can be found of people flooding the Baghdad avenues showing new-found patriotism. Instead American tanks and humvees are described rumbling down boulevards where concertina wire and concrete walls block roadways. In other words, there is a gap between how people act and the way they ideally would act if Bush’s words had any credibility.

These moments in Iraq remind me of riding a bicycle through the streets of Saigon in 1967, just after a "democratic" election had created a new "democratic," American-manipulated, Vietnam government. From an American point of view, some one should have been celebrating. But there was the same quiet along with barbed wire and armed guards warily watching the many passersby moving silently through the sultry heat. There were many roadside signs with skull and crossbones in front of buildings to indicate mines had been planted. But there was no sign of celebration.
Iraq and Vietnam silences reflected common knowledge that nothing had really changed. The U.S. is continuing to pour money into Iraq to establish apparent evidence that what it sought to gain had been gained, just as it did in Vietnam in 1967, a half year before the Tet offensive. As Ashjan al-Akuli, an employee in a cramped computer store in Baghdad’s Jamas neighborhood , described in the New York Times the new sovereignty: "They (the newly sovereign governing council) may have some independent thought, but they don’t have independent action. Bremer (the American adminstrator) has left but the strings attached to the new government are very long and they can be pulled from Washington D.C."
The parallels between Vietnam and Iraq are many.

In Vietnam, torture and arrests withoout judicial process were occurring in a prison near Saigon, at Poulo Condon Island where the Con Son Tiger pits were used for torture. In Iraq, fate allowed the U.S. public to become aware through pictures of the same type of thing at the Abu Ghraib prison. In neither case was the U.S. administration happy about whatever knowledge the public was able to gain about what went on in those prisons. As the New York Times wrote editorially, "While piously declaring its determination to unearth the truth about Abu Ghraib, the Bush Administration has spent nearly two months obstructing investigations by the Army and members of congress. It has dragged out the Army’s inquiry, withheld crucial government documents from a Senate committee and stonewalled senators over dozens of Red Cross reports that document horrible mistreatment of Iraqis at military prisons." It is clear that the Bush Administration wants the American public to know as little as possible of the human consequences of its use-any-means-to-achieve-an-end Iraq policy.


When a widespread uprising occurred in April in both Sunni and Shiite areas, Iraqi police and soldiers recently trained by the U.S. refused to fight their countrymen for the American cause. It was necessary for American soldiers to put their lives on the line. In battle after battle in Vietnam, South Vietnamese soldiers proved "unreliable." The natives appeared to see no reason to put their lives on the line in order to protect a puppet government in Vietnam, and Iraq’s average citizen apparently is unwilling to do so now for an occupying power, and despite traditional sectarian differences, the Sunnis and Shiites there achieved a rare confluence of anti-American interest when fighting flared in April and May.

Little news of this kind gains much play in American media, and all the characteristics of "group think" are involved in the decision-making of those making policy. Here are the symptoms of that: those pursuing "policy" goals in both Iraq and Vietnam would find ways to avoid expert opinion that might discourage the ends they set out to achieve. They do so believing they are exhibiting some kind of divine and inherent morality. At the same time, they are being highly selective in gathering information, while protecting themselves from negative views or information, and exuding an illusion of invulnerability which is probably encouraged by having the capacity to wield so much power. In addition, the "realism" behind policy in Vietnam meant "facing" and not allowing questions of the spectre of voracious Communist expansionism and a probable domino effect; "realism" in Iraq means calling anything associated with Saddam Hussein "terrorism," "Hitlerish," or "Ba’athist dead-enders," and connecting this with the "terrorism" of 9-11, calling anyone who questions the "war" as being soft on terrorism, and ubiquitously planting in the American mind the words: "WEAPONS Of MASS DESTRUCTION!. As Vice President Cheney put it, "We don’t negotiate with evil; we defeat it."
An either/or, good-bad world is perceptually created by policy-makers in both cases.

What is happening to people is secondary, especially if what is occurring may create doubts about U.S. policy’s moral purpose. In Iraq, what has to have been highly motivated people gave, and continue to give up their lives in frequent suicide bombings. In Vietnam, Buddhists gave the ultimate sacrifice by self-immolating themselves in public protest because of the actions of the American puppet government headed by President Diem. A North Vietnamese described such sacrifice in this way, when noting the self-immolation of an American, Norman Morrison, who sacrificed his life to protest the Vietnam war: "He sacrificed himself for justice, not for economic self-interest." Willingness to die for a cause gains almost reverent awe in any society, but when the actions are directed against America, the U.S. dismisses them as "terrorist acts," rather than attempts to desperately make a statement, to communicate something.
In both Vietnam and Iraq, disparate groups are congealed in purpose by the acts of the United States. In Iraq there is a fusion of nationalist and Islamic sentiments that includes many disparate social and religious factions. In Vietnam, nationalism and anti-foreign-control passions fused together a wide net of groups into resistance to U.S. goals. In both cases a broad spectrum of people converge in the resistance effort. Both resistance efforts have a strong populist component. Wide-spread bands of 20 people may be confronted by overwhelming American fire power, but disperse easily into the protective embrace of alleyways, farms, or countryside if support for their efforts is strong. In Iraq, there is the added sting of hitting vulnerable strategic sites like power stations and oil pipelines.

In Saigon, a girl would ride on the back of a motor scooter and the driver would pull next to an American standing on a corner. The girl would shoot him, and then the busy streets would part magically as the scooter scuttled for safety, and the crowd would then converge and frustrate any police or military pursuit. I have read of no Iraqi attempts to stop or hinder hit and run attacks on Americans or American civilian interests in the congested Iraq cities. As Capt. Travis Van Hecke, an artillery commander in Iraq put it, "People are reluctant to help us." In both countries, the insurgents know that the center of gravity in the war lies in the support of the people. Polls in Iraq show that a significant majority of Iraqis now want the U.S. to leave. In one town in Iraq, Baquba, resistance fighters distribute fliers hours before an attack in order to tell people to stay off the streets or close their shops.
Sheik Shehab Ahmed al-Badri, imam of the main Sunni mosque in Baquba, put it this way: "Is there a country that is subjected to occupation, abuse, looting and the stealing of its fortunes and killing of many of its people that doesn’t raise its voice and shout, ‘no!’ But the U.S. calls such resistance ‘terrorism.’ We simply call such resistance a need for non-occupier sovereignty."

Soon the new puppet government in Iraq may face the same kind of problems that arose in Vietnam after the U.S. had established its fraudulently-filled, so-called elected government in Saigon. A student of mine in Saigon, NguyenVan Minh, described it this way: He said the Americans subsequent to the elections sanctioned the elimination of those not in step with the Saigon government. Thus, he said, those who dared to say something, to do something to advance their beliefs, were threatened with jail--at minimum one year--at maximum the gamut from execution to life imprisonment and being shipped to Poulo Condon Island for 10, 20, 30 years’ hard labor-- and American promises of freedom of speech, assembly and petition disappeared in the shadow of new-found necessity. Wide ranges of people were jailed from Army officers, police, civil servants, students, laborers, to the old and female. Brutality and unconcern for judicial justification became indelibly associated with U.S. policy in Vietnam. In Iraq, the conditions are ripe for the same being true, and may now be evidenced by newly-passed intrusive laws that in effect allow martial law control of the populace.
Thus history that deals with grand strategies involving "great" powers’ rationales for war may not be nearly as eloquent as the words of an Iraqi taxi driver.

According to the New York Times, Ismael Saddam, a 32-year-old driver, glared at a tank and Humvee rolling past a long line of cars waiting to refuel in ovenlike heat when he described his national concern: "It’s for sure I feel national pride kindle in my heart because of this. We reject occupation. So we accept an Iraqi ruler (referring to someone like Saddam Hussein). It’s much better than the occupiers."
After the elections in Vietnam, General Wheeler went to the White House to ask that another 100,000 troops be sent into the war. After the "handing-over-of-sovereignty to Iraq, the U.S. has extended enlistments both for active and non-active soldiers, and called for 30,000 more "peace" keepers.

Ly Chanh Trung, a professor of philosophy at Saigon University, wrote Februarry 25, 1969, "We must recognize the horrible consequences of war, describe the bloody wounds the war has caused to the body and soul of our people, and then we can write moving words to call for peace. Only war victims and those who have endured directly the consequences of war can speak these agonizing words. Because only they can call for peace, and be entirely sincere because peace is a demand from the depths of their souls...I want peace because I am Vietnamese. As I am Vietnamese, I cannot endure seeing the blood of my people flow more and more---not the blood of armies, but that of the innocent population, old men and women, young wives and children. I cannot endure seeing foreigners indifferently devastate our country by the most modern and terrible means and speak of the so-called "protection of freedom."

Out of the human suffering Ly describes come romantic inspiration like the following excerpts from a poem written by Vietnamese communist, Le Duc Tho:

"The enemy there
Spread webs everywhere...
"Sickle, gun combined
Under fire we fought as though one,
We hid in reeds and sun,
Our home was fog nets and soil mats,
The wind, rain, the gnats
We planned our attack.
Their blood dyed the field..
"The South rose with us in her might,
Our flag was red as blood.
"Now the dream of victory floods."
Iraq, too, may experience the kind of victory that comes from human suffering but the policy that led to it will probably be repeated when power is again challenged by inevitable unsustainability of its social structure arising when policy is distant from human experience.

By Richard PeltoŠJuly 9, 2004
Al-Jazeerah,
editor@aljazeerah.info