Nbadan
01-02-2005, 04:37 PM
Having never learned why we lost the Vietnam War, America is now losing another Asian war.
By Stewart Nusbaumer
With the proliferation of the Internet and the spread of political polarization, there has been an explosion of know-it-alls in America engulfing ambivalence and obliterating uncertainty. Everyone seems to know what America should and shouldn’t do, what will happen tomorrow and what won’t happen next year. And they know this with certainty.
Yet, those who claim the greatest certainty can be those possessing the least knowledge. It was the Neocons who insisted the Iraq War would be “quick and easy,” so it was they who couldn’t be bothered to plan for a protracted war. Now, approaching two years into a war that has no end in sight, Americans are becoming bothered there is no plan to win the war.
First we were told that when Saddam Hussein was overthrown, the fighting would stop. That was twenty-one months ago. Then, when Saddam Hussein the fugitive was captured, the insurgency would collapse. He was captured over twelve months ago. Then, when authority was transferred to the Iraqi government, the Iraqi military would take over the fighting. That was nearly ten months ago. Then, when Fallujah was occupied, the resistance would be defeated. The city was destroyed over two months ago, yet the insurgency is stronger than ever.
From defeating the Iraqi military to capturing Saddam Hussein to leveling to Iraqi control to Fallujah destruction, each promise has evaporated in a fresh pool of American blood.
Now desperately the U.S. is pinning its hope on Iraqi troops becoming the security forces and the January 30th election creating a credible local government. But Iraqization has shown itself to be an utter failure, as Vietnamization was an utter failure. And elections under the control of foreign occupiers never deter exploding resistance movements.
“There was no adequate operational plan for stability operations and support operations,” writes Major Isaiah Wilson, a former researcher for the Army’s Operation Iraqi Freedom Study Group and later the chief war planner for the 101st Airborne Division in Iraq.
At Cornell University, discussing his study on the Iraq War, Major Wilson said: “U.S. military planners, practitioners and the civilian leadership conceived of the war far too narrowly.” Scheduled to teach at the U.S. Military Academy next year, the historian and strategist believes that the top war-planners viewed the war too narrowly because they suffered from “stunted learning and a reluctance to adapt.”
“Stunted learning,” is generous, in my opinion, for those too hubristic to see that Iraq would not be “fast and easy.” Lots of us saw the war would be slow and bloody.
“Similar criticism has been made before,” writes Thomas Ricks in the Washington Post, “but until now [has] not been stated so authoritatively and publicly by a military insider positioned to be familiar with top-secret planning.”
The Roots of the Problem
“There was too much of an analogy with the occupation of Germany and Japan,” former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger complained to Wolf Blitzer on CNN. Henry Kissinger did not complain, however, that among those who planned the Iraq War, there was too little discussion of the Vietnam War, and how that past quagmire could be reproduced in Iraq. For Henry Kissinger and the Neocons of today the Vietnam War is forgotten history.
“Sir,” an email to me began:
As a Canadian I am totally puzzled why Americans never learn from their past mistakes, unless Americans cannot admit their mistakes. Has anyone in Washington come out publicly and said the Vietnam War was a mistake, beside the mothers who lost their sons and those who came home minus an arm or leg? What was that war all about anyway? To this day I still have not heard a satisfactory answer.
More than 58,000 Americans killed in a losing war against “a rag-tag 3rd rate military force,” as the Vietnamese resistance was often described, yet the post-war discussion in America was obscurant, distorted, and terribly short. Instead of a dialogue to understand why 58,000 Americans died in vain in Vietnam, Americans were witness to a vicious blame-game to obscure the reasons for these deaths. Instead of accountability, they got obfuscation; instead of truth, only scapegoats.
It was claimed that those long-haired antiwar demonstrations, “the war at home,” brought about our defeat in Vietnam. And that the press was complicit: the liberal press was defeatist, and this defeated our noble effort in Southeast Asia. And the politicians, those back-stabbing Washington politicians, they refused to allow our military to win the war.
In this post-war discussion in the 1970s, not blamed: were those who advocated the failed U.S. intervention in that far-off civil war; those who failed to design a strategy to counter the political and guerrilla war of the Vietnamese and those who hubristically ignored the fact that U.S. intervention would stimulate the great power of Vietnamese nationalism, which in the end defeated our internationalism, or if you prefer our imperialism.
It was irrelevant that the U.S. military won nearly every military battle, since we lost the psychological and strategic wars to the Vietnamese, to the North Vietnamese and to the Viet Cong, It was their country and they outlasted us in their country. Never underestimate the power of nationalism, even in this global world, to ignite “rag-tag armies.”
George Santayana wrote, “Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it.” It is an old adage, yet one that applies to an arrogant nation that continues to overestimate its own power and underestimates the power of “rag-tag armies” seems incapable of learning.
Santayana, however, was too kind for German philosopher George Wilhelm Hegel. “What experience and history teach is this: that people and governments never have learned anything from history, or acted on principles.”
As we look at the unfolding disaster in Iraq, we see that America never learned from the Vietnam War, including that it is unacceptable to commit troops to a war that was never thought through. For Hegel this is not principle, but a crime.
Back to Vietnam
The U.S. war planners underestimated the Iraqis’ will to resist and they underestimated the insurgents’ ability to develop a viable strategy. After “shock and awe” the resistance would surely be reduced to a “rag-tag resistance,” right? And the planners overestimated the U.S. military’s technology and firepower, which they always do. So twenty-one months into this war, the world’s most powerful military is stymied, unable to halt the expanding Iraqis insurgency and the rising number of American dead.
Those who planned this war knew as much about Iraq as those who planned the Vietnam War knew about Vietnam, which is why Iraq will end the same as Vietnam. For those of us who fought in Vietnam and reflected on that disastrous war, we knew America would be beaten in Iraq. Many Americans came to that conclusion without having served in Vietnam. But not the Bush Administration's Neocons, and not most Americans. For them the Vietnam War never happened.
If the nation had seriously reflected on the disaster of Vietnam, if more Americans had the courage and taken the time to learn the terrible lessons of that war, then today America would not be in Iraq. Americans never understood the jungle could grow in the desert, because they never understood the jungle in the jungle. Horror comes in many forms, but none is worse than a nation that refuses to learn and again sacrifices its patriots and its young.
The Canadian asked, “What was that war all about anyway?”
Major Wilson said, the Iraq War planners had “stunted learning and a reluctance to adapt.”
And now retired Army General Donald Shepperd, speaking on CNN, awakens the ghost of Vietnam in the war in Iraq, when he says: “It doesn’t look like there is light at the end of the tunnel.”
Yes, the Iraq tunnel is dark.
-------
Stewart Nusbaumer is editor of Intervention Magazine. He served with the U.S. Marine Corps in Vietnam on the DMZ. You can email him at [email protected]
By Stewart Nusbaumer
With the proliferation of the Internet and the spread of political polarization, there has been an explosion of know-it-alls in America engulfing ambivalence and obliterating uncertainty. Everyone seems to know what America should and shouldn’t do, what will happen tomorrow and what won’t happen next year. And they know this with certainty.
Yet, those who claim the greatest certainty can be those possessing the least knowledge. It was the Neocons who insisted the Iraq War would be “quick and easy,” so it was they who couldn’t be bothered to plan for a protracted war. Now, approaching two years into a war that has no end in sight, Americans are becoming bothered there is no plan to win the war.
First we were told that when Saddam Hussein was overthrown, the fighting would stop. That was twenty-one months ago. Then, when Saddam Hussein the fugitive was captured, the insurgency would collapse. He was captured over twelve months ago. Then, when authority was transferred to the Iraqi government, the Iraqi military would take over the fighting. That was nearly ten months ago. Then, when Fallujah was occupied, the resistance would be defeated. The city was destroyed over two months ago, yet the insurgency is stronger than ever.
From defeating the Iraqi military to capturing Saddam Hussein to leveling to Iraqi control to Fallujah destruction, each promise has evaporated in a fresh pool of American blood.
Now desperately the U.S. is pinning its hope on Iraqi troops becoming the security forces and the January 30th election creating a credible local government. But Iraqization has shown itself to be an utter failure, as Vietnamization was an utter failure. And elections under the control of foreign occupiers never deter exploding resistance movements.
“There was no adequate operational plan for stability operations and support operations,” writes Major Isaiah Wilson, a former researcher for the Army’s Operation Iraqi Freedom Study Group and later the chief war planner for the 101st Airborne Division in Iraq.
At Cornell University, discussing his study on the Iraq War, Major Wilson said: “U.S. military planners, practitioners and the civilian leadership conceived of the war far too narrowly.” Scheduled to teach at the U.S. Military Academy next year, the historian and strategist believes that the top war-planners viewed the war too narrowly because they suffered from “stunted learning and a reluctance to adapt.”
“Stunted learning,” is generous, in my opinion, for those too hubristic to see that Iraq would not be “fast and easy.” Lots of us saw the war would be slow and bloody.
“Similar criticism has been made before,” writes Thomas Ricks in the Washington Post, “but until now [has] not been stated so authoritatively and publicly by a military insider positioned to be familiar with top-secret planning.”
The Roots of the Problem
“There was too much of an analogy with the occupation of Germany and Japan,” former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger complained to Wolf Blitzer on CNN. Henry Kissinger did not complain, however, that among those who planned the Iraq War, there was too little discussion of the Vietnam War, and how that past quagmire could be reproduced in Iraq. For Henry Kissinger and the Neocons of today the Vietnam War is forgotten history.
“Sir,” an email to me began:
As a Canadian I am totally puzzled why Americans never learn from their past mistakes, unless Americans cannot admit their mistakes. Has anyone in Washington come out publicly and said the Vietnam War was a mistake, beside the mothers who lost their sons and those who came home minus an arm or leg? What was that war all about anyway? To this day I still have not heard a satisfactory answer.
More than 58,000 Americans killed in a losing war against “a rag-tag 3rd rate military force,” as the Vietnamese resistance was often described, yet the post-war discussion in America was obscurant, distorted, and terribly short. Instead of a dialogue to understand why 58,000 Americans died in vain in Vietnam, Americans were witness to a vicious blame-game to obscure the reasons for these deaths. Instead of accountability, they got obfuscation; instead of truth, only scapegoats.
It was claimed that those long-haired antiwar demonstrations, “the war at home,” brought about our defeat in Vietnam. And that the press was complicit: the liberal press was defeatist, and this defeated our noble effort in Southeast Asia. And the politicians, those back-stabbing Washington politicians, they refused to allow our military to win the war.
In this post-war discussion in the 1970s, not blamed: were those who advocated the failed U.S. intervention in that far-off civil war; those who failed to design a strategy to counter the political and guerrilla war of the Vietnamese and those who hubristically ignored the fact that U.S. intervention would stimulate the great power of Vietnamese nationalism, which in the end defeated our internationalism, or if you prefer our imperialism.
It was irrelevant that the U.S. military won nearly every military battle, since we lost the psychological and strategic wars to the Vietnamese, to the North Vietnamese and to the Viet Cong, It was their country and they outlasted us in their country. Never underestimate the power of nationalism, even in this global world, to ignite “rag-tag armies.”
George Santayana wrote, “Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it.” It is an old adage, yet one that applies to an arrogant nation that continues to overestimate its own power and underestimates the power of “rag-tag armies” seems incapable of learning.
Santayana, however, was too kind for German philosopher George Wilhelm Hegel. “What experience and history teach is this: that people and governments never have learned anything from history, or acted on principles.”
As we look at the unfolding disaster in Iraq, we see that America never learned from the Vietnam War, including that it is unacceptable to commit troops to a war that was never thought through. For Hegel this is not principle, but a crime.
Back to Vietnam
The U.S. war planners underestimated the Iraqis’ will to resist and they underestimated the insurgents’ ability to develop a viable strategy. After “shock and awe” the resistance would surely be reduced to a “rag-tag resistance,” right? And the planners overestimated the U.S. military’s technology and firepower, which they always do. So twenty-one months into this war, the world’s most powerful military is stymied, unable to halt the expanding Iraqis insurgency and the rising number of American dead.
Those who planned this war knew as much about Iraq as those who planned the Vietnam War knew about Vietnam, which is why Iraq will end the same as Vietnam. For those of us who fought in Vietnam and reflected on that disastrous war, we knew America would be beaten in Iraq. Many Americans came to that conclusion without having served in Vietnam. But not the Bush Administration's Neocons, and not most Americans. For them the Vietnam War never happened.
If the nation had seriously reflected on the disaster of Vietnam, if more Americans had the courage and taken the time to learn the terrible lessons of that war, then today America would not be in Iraq. Americans never understood the jungle could grow in the desert, because they never understood the jungle in the jungle. Horror comes in many forms, but none is worse than a nation that refuses to learn and again sacrifices its patriots and its young.
The Canadian asked, “What was that war all about anyway?”
Major Wilson said, the Iraq War planners had “stunted learning and a reluctance to adapt.”
And now retired Army General Donald Shepperd, speaking on CNN, awakens the ghost of Vietnam in the war in Iraq, when he says: “It doesn’t look like there is light at the end of the tunnel.”
Yes, the Iraq tunnel is dark.
-------
Stewart Nusbaumer is editor of Intervention Magazine. He served with the U.S. Marine Corps in Vietnam on the DMZ. You can email him at [email protected]