By Col. Tom Snodgrass, appearing in The American Thinker
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John Kennedy's and Lyndon Johnson's administrations purposely chose to focus national attention on the Viet Cong insurgents as the cause of the Southeast Asia war, rather than admitting that the true originator of the conflict was the Communist Government in North Vietnam, which was waging a war of aggression. By publicly pretending that the insurgency was homegrown, springing from native South Vietnamese "guerrillas," Kennedy and Johnson were attempting to circumvent a direct conflict with North Vietnam's sponsors, Communist China and the Soviet Union, which were funding and supplying the war in the south.
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So these two presidents purposefully misled the nation and pretended that we could defeat the Communists by simply engaging them in South Vietnam. They called this self-restrained form of warfare "counterinsurgency" and treated it as if it were some sort of exotic war genre, thus diverting public attention away from the northern source of the war. When Johnson was forced by circumstances to finally acknowledge that North Vietnam was the cause of the increasing American GI deaths and the failing of the South Vietnamese government, he compounded his mistaken strategic thinking by limiting the bombing of the North to targets of secondary importance, so as not to anger the Soviets or Chinese. The natural result of Johnson's misguided thinking was that Americans continued to die in large numbers.
The insurgency in South Vietnam was totally destroyed in the failed Viet Cong "Tet Offensive." In that major Communist failure, the Viet Cong was decimated to the tune of 45,000 to 70,000 killed, which was the cream of their force and constituted the bulk of their guerrilla army. Thereafter the North Vietnamese could no longer sustain the fiction that it was a southern insurgency, and they had to infiltrate massive numbers of North Vietnamese Army personnel to continue their war of aggression. However, by this time in 1968, Americans were so "Viet Cong saturated" that they made no distinction between North and South Vietnamese combatants fighting against U.S. GI's.
Consequently, when the Democrat controlled congress cut off military aid to South Vietnamese forces fighting the North Vietnamese Army (similar to how Senator Clinton has just proposed cutting off military aid to the Iraqis who are fighting the Islamic insurgents), South Vietnam was overrun and conquered by a conventional army, not an insurgent force. However the U.S. media and American leftists, both of whom were anxious to continue the fiction of Viet Cong moral superiority and U.S. illegality, heralded the triumph of "the people's Viet Cong" over the "U.S. aggressors." The American people totally bought the left's Viet Cong victory propaganda line and tried to forget the whole sorry affair.
With that preface completed, I would just like to reiterate the truth of Professor Stoker's article. Insurgents lose historically and the Bush administration can reverse the present trend on the battlefield by adopting a different "clear and hold" counterinsurgency tactic as opposed to the past "clear and move on" tactic. The troop "surge" of 20,000+ is aimed at making up for the shortfall of American personnel that has precluded the employment of the "clear and hold" tactic up to the present. Clear and hold is absolutely essential in counterinsurgency because providing security for the indigenous population must be the first order of business in order to separate the insurgents from the people. Much was made in the Vietnam War of "winning the hearts and minds" of the people, but so long as the insurgents are able to menace the people, there will be no winning their hearts and minds.
Therefore, the "Bush surge" is the necessary first step in regaining U.S. momentum in the war. However, just as was the case in Vietnam, the war in Iraq has its impetus outside of the borders where the insurgency is being fought. North Vietnam was the source of the war in North Vietnam. Iran is the source of the war in Iraq. If the source of a proxy war is not destroyed, the war will eventually be lost just as the war in Vietnam was lost. Tactical counterinsurgency victories can redress the dire situation we are in, but unless we are prepared to remain in Iraq indefinitely to fight tactical counterinsurgency battles at the initiative of the Iranians, we must ultimately implement a strategic solution that ends the re-supply to the Islamic insurgents. If we do not, we will simply continue dancing on the end of the strings pulled by the Iranian mullahs, until the American people again lose their will. But who can blame the American people for losing their will when they have a national political leadership that fights the war in such a hesitant way that maximizes American casualties and drags the conflict on indefinitely?
Worthy of a read in it's entirety. This is the most sane analogy of what truly is the only points in common between 'Nam and Iraq offenses.
I, however, would take it a step further. First off, the "who" we are fighting are not necessarily part of "a state". Terrorists don't assimilate as part of their radical belief in thir desired caliphate. They base wherever they are either welcomed, or left alone by a gov'ts "blind eye". And it's obvious from media reports that terrorists "welcomed" in Syria and Iran make up a large bulk of "the enemy" in Iraq. This is not much different that the reality that deceased terrorist superstar, Zarqawi, was welcomed in Iraq since 1998.
Yes, just as Col. Snodgrass said we did in Vietnam... we are fighting a third shadow enemy on Iraqi ground - not just the disgruntled thug/gang Iraqis bent on failure of the elected govt. However the stateless nature of the "shadow" enemy would make this true on any battlefront, and there is no defining "state" to go after as we had with Vietnam.
So it remains that the most important parallel that can be drawn between 'Nam and Iraq is the determination of a pacifist Congress to lose the war by defunding.
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