Iraq Is Not Vietnam

Iraq is not Vietnam. Stop drawing the parallel because you are wrong.

America won Vietnam. It is losing Iraq.

I realize that this is not the conventional wisdom regarding the former, but it is true and I will tell you why.

Vietnam

Anyone with half a brain and a minimal knowledge of the "Cold War" understands that many of the conflicts that followed World War II were proxy wars. They are called proxy wars because, behind the scenes of the local fighting, lied powerful nations that provided the money, arms and training to the regional armies. When you have a superpower, you have client states. When you have two superpowers, the client states have a choice of master. Before the fall of the Soviet Union, the big daddy financiers of conflict in the world were the Soviet Union and the United States and it wasn't difficult to figure out who the client states were. Korea was a proxy war, Vietnam was a proxy war, Grenada, Cuba, etc.

The goal of a proxy war is not necessarily to win militarily. Wearing down the other side will suffice as a victory if the defeated opponent's client states ultimately have no choice but to come into your camp.

Vietnam is the perfect example of such a victory. The American public was sold the war with the recycled slogan that it was a fight for "freedom" but America did not see a loss of freedom because of the military defeat. That is, of course, because the war had nothing to do with freedom. It had everything to do with bleeding the Soviets dry. And it worked.

One need only look at the change in dynamics between the Soviet Union and its client states for evidence of this truism. The collective Arab nations went to war with Israel in 1948, 1956 and 1967, with the unflinching support of the Soviet Union. After Gamal Abdel-Nasser died in 1970, a then unknown military general named Anwar Sadat became president of Egypt. Reflecting upon the humiliating defeat by American-backed Israel in 1967 and watching the exhaustion of the Soviet Union in Vietnam, Sadat decided that Egypt's future lied with the U.S., not the USSR. Sadat provoked the point by attacking Israel in October 1973. The Russians were unable to provide the Egyptian army with reinforcement tanks and the Israelis, initially on the defensive, made strong offensive gains into the Sinai. After the U.S. stepped in to call a truce, Sadat declared his desire to make peace with Israel and offered Egypt as a client state to the U.S. The Camp David Accords are a direct result of America's victory in Vietnam.

Other nations around the world followed suit and, without the client states, the Soviet Union began the shrinky-dink process, from empire to nation. The 1982 Russian invasion of Afghanistan was a last ditch effort to maintain military control over strategic neighboring countries, but we all know the ending to that story. CIA training and religious zeal were married into a band of warriors who defeated what had been one of the strongest armies in the world. The Soviet Satellite States knew it was only a matter of time before the wall would come down. It took only eight years.

American military and financial hegemony over the past 25 years is the victory for which hundreds of thousands of American soldiers gave their lives in Vietnam.

Iraq

America remains the 100 pound gorilla of the world, but the war in Iraq, and recently Katrina, are siphoning resources and constraining the stretch of the empire.

All the while, client states and superpower competitors are making interesting moves. China has taken an active role throughout Africa, offering loans (to be paid back with oil and other resources), technical support and protection from the U.N. Security Council. Sudan, Angola, Zimbabwe and Nigeria are welcoming Chinese stewardship with open arms. Iran, backed by Russia and China, remains defiant about its nuclear program and, even Israel, the long-time golden client of the U.S., has been making overtures toward Europe and to the East. Notorious for re-selling the technology it receives from the U.S. to regimes with which the U.S. does not contract, the U.S. recently sanctioned Israel for selling spare parts for attack drones to China.

The American economy is now in the hands of the Chinese Central Bank, which has been purchasing Treasury Bonds that are issued to finance the Iraq debacle. Clinton left office with a surplus and Bush pissed it down the toilet on his war games.

And what do we have to show for this wild expenditure? A bunch of holy-rolling buffoons has the U.S. military bogged down in Iraq and Afghanistan with no end in sight. Sound familiar?

Even if America "wins" militarily in Iraq (whatever that means), she will have been financially bled dry in the process. Bush will cut more and more domestic spending, he will continue to behave like a teenager with a credit card and devalue the dollar while China and Europe stay quietly busy in the background with their new clients. This will do far more damage than any terrorist could do (just ask the last of the Roman Emperors).

Vietnam was a victory. Iraq is an unmitigated disaster.

If you live long enough, you'll see that
every victory turns into a defeat
Simone de Beauvoir