Is Iraq going to be another Vietnam? That is entirely up to us

Monday, April 26, 2004

COLUMN: M.D. Harmon

So, is Iraq another Vietnam?

Sen. Teddy Kennedy certainly thinks it is, having used that analogy multiple times in recent weeks. A news magazine displayed photos of the outcomes of battles in various Iraqi cities behind a half-page-high typeface boldly featuring the word, "QUAGMIRE."

Sen. John Kerry rarely makes a speech without mentioning his own Vietnam record (the one in the Mekong Delta, I mean, not the one where he came home to accuse U.S. soldiers of routinely committing atrocities and war crimes).

But Iraq is not another Vietnam. Unless, of course, we want it to be.

For Vietnam wasn't something that happened to the United States. Vietnam was something the United States did to itself.

What isn't often said by those busy reinterpreting the 1960s and early '70s to cast themselves in a better light is that the North Vietnamese and their Russian allies didn't win the war in Vietnam.

The United States and South Vietnam lost it, and they lost it by a series of decisions - almost all of them made in Washington, D.C. - that could well have gone the other way, with vastly different results.

I once spoke to an Army colonel, Harry G. Summers, who was on one of the missions to Hanoi to free U.S. prisoners after fighting ended. Summers told his North Vietnamese counterpart that, after all, the NVA never defeated the U.S. Army in any significant battle in South Vietnam.

The North Vietnamese officer replied, essentially, "So what?"

It was then, Summers said, he saw it takes more than military power to win a war. It takes the willingness to adopt victory as your objective and not let setbacks deter you.

Without the will to win, you might as well not fight, for your soldiers are dying for no good reason. As Summers later pointed out in his book on Vietnam, "On Strategy," the North Vietnamese succeeded because they had a strategy to break our will to win at home, while our strategy was focused on defeating their forces only within South Vietnam.

So, what will it take for Iraq to become "another Vietnam"?

It isn't losses in combat. While each and every life lost is precious, if soldiers die protecting their nation, their deaths certainly aren't in vain. Americans routinely accept 42,000 deaths a year in automobile accidents for the purposes of business and tourism. If the war on terror is worth fighting, Americans (and loyal allies) who fall in that fight are worthy of honor and respect - and are not to be used as political pawns to defeat the current president.

Indeed, that's the key point underlying the current controversy over "photos of coffins." If the point is to pay honor to the fallen, there is no reason not to show some discreet images of honor guards and other ceremonies. It's obvious, however, that opponents of the war intend to dishonor the dead by using their very bodies as political weapons against a president for whom they feel only deep, black, irrational hatred.

It isn't "a war for oil." Oil companies aren't withholding supplies to keep the price high, though some OPEC countries may be. Nearly every analyst says that current high gas prices (which are still cheaper, adjusted for inflation, than those of the '70s) are due to increased demand from China and other growing nations and a world supply hampered by cartels and unrest.

Then there's the crazy-quilt network of regional environmental restrictions that mean one type of gas can be sold in one state but not the one next door, which is one reason why gas is much cheaper in New Hampshire than here.

It isn't a lack of resolution by our leaders. While he is not immune from criticism on specifics (including not vetoing any domestic spending bills and not increasing the active-duty force), President Bush has in general displayed strength and determination in taking this war to our enemies.

Yes, there are equally bad people running Iran and North Korea, but there are other ways to handle them.

We lost in Vietnam because our own demoralized leaders abandoned an ally to the enemy. Our own Congress slashed funding to South Vietnam, allowing North Vietnamese tanks to overrun defenders who ran out of supplies.

So, are Americans today more like the generation that beat both Germany and Japan in the 1940s, or the generation that abandoned South Vietnam to a communist dictatorship in 1975? Will we support a fight, or give up and let the terrorists win?

Hey, other Americans gave up. One of them is running for president.

But I have some hope that this current generation, composed of people who saw the World Trade Center towers fall in fire and agony, who watched the Pentagon burn and listened to the tapes of the heroes who brought down a plane in a Pennsylvania field, is resolved to win.

If we are, we will. But if we aren't, we will pay a price in blood and pain that will go on far into the future.

A victory for terrorism means terrorists get to go on being terrorists. There is no appeasement, no surrender, that will save us - as Europeans are now learning. There is only victory or defeat. The good news is that the choice is entirely ours.

Of course, as Vietnam should have taught us, that's the bad news as well.

- M.D. Harmon, an editorial writer and editor, can be reached at mharmon@pressherald.com or 791-6482.

To top of page