IRAQ AND VIETNAM WAR

Iraq and Vietnam war

Iraq and Vietnam War

Introduction

At first glance the contrasts between the Vietnam and Iraq wars would seem to overwhelm the similarities. To begin with, Vietnam in the 1960s was a country with a long national history and powerful national identity forged by centuries of fierce resistance to foreign rule and domination.(Hitchcock,2000) The Communists had successfully mobilized that nationalism against the French (as they were subsequently to do against the United States) and had developed a doctrine of protracted irregular warfare that pitted Vietnamese strengths against Western weaknesses. In contrast, Iraq is a relatively young state plagued by ethnic and religious divisions that threaten national unity.(Anderson,2005)



Discussion

A major contrast between the Vietnam and Iraq wars is the political objectives sought. In the 1960s, the United States was the counter-revolutionary power in Southeast Asia; it sought to preserve the non-communist status quo in South Vietnam by containing the expansion of Communism south of the 17th Parallel that separated the Communist North from South Vietnam. (Hitchcock,2000) In 2003, the United States was the revolutionary power in the Middle East by virtue of its proclaimed intention to democratize Iraq for the purpose of providing an inspirational model for the rest of the Arab world. In contrast to U.S. war aims in not only Vietnam but also in the 1991 Gulf War, containment was rejected in favor of radical regime change. Democracy was not an issue in the Vietnam War. Rather, the United States was prepared to tolerate an absence of democracy in South Vietnam (and in many of its other Third World client states) so long as it promoted policies favorable to U.S. objectives in the Cold War.

There were other differences in war aims. The primary declared objective of Operation IRAQI FREEDOM was to disarm Iraq of its suspected weapons of mass destruction (WMD). Such weapons were not an issue in the Vietnam War, which was a struggle over territory. (Anderson,2005) Additionally, the war on Iraq was justifi ed as part of a larger war on terrorism that was sparked by the horrendous al-Qaeda attacks on the United States of September 11, 2001. Homeland security from external terrorist attack was not an issue in the 1960s, though Vietnamese Communist forces did conduct terrorist attacks against Americans and South Vietnamese government targets in Vietnam, including South Vietnam government officials and U.S. civilian personnel. Such attacks, however, were peripheral to main force Viet Cong and North Vietnamese military operations in the South.

In the short run, if the United States withdraws substantial numbers of its troops before Iraqi politicians and military leaders are willing or able to assume full responsibility for security, political reform and institution-building, the country may descend into chaos, sectarian violence and domination by militant Islamic forces hostile to America. That would be similar to what happened in Vietnam after the American withdrawal, when hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese considered being enemies of the new Communist government were imprisoned or executed. (Hitchcock,2000)

There are other similarities between Vietnam and Iraq: ...