Thursday, November 16, 2006

Outcomes II

The primary error in judgment during the Vietnam War wasn't troop levels or strategy or operational tactics -- it was misinterpretation of the goals and aspirations of North Vietnam's political leadership. The West saw the North Vietnamese as proxies of the Communist Great Powers. It was assumed that the NVA and Viet Cong were wholly-owned subsidiaries of the Soviet Union and China, acting as forward divisions of an expansion through Southeast Asia, all in line with the Domino Theory. Surely, if Vienam fell into the Communist sphere, then all of Southeast Asia would follow.

What the West did not realize, or care to even investigate, was that the aspirations of the Vietnamese Communists were not related to the international Communist movement. They wanted control of their country, and to subjugate their own population economically and politically, but they were not interested in creating a broader sphere of influence in Southeast Asia for the Soviets and Chinese.

The Vietnam War was a true nationalist insurgency. It’s goal was to rid the country of invaders (the US and it's allies) and a corrupt (South Vietnamese) government. This is the reason it spread throughout the civilian population so thoroughly. Women and children strapping themselves with bombs to kill American soldiers is a sign of civilian support. When a movement is not deterred even when 3 million are killed, that signals that something other than a proxy war is taking place.

The question now is: Is Iraq another Vietnam? There are certainly similarities. Like Vietnam, the reasoning for intervention in Iraq was based on an abstract political theory, similar to the old Domino Theory -- but this time it is a democratic seed that would spread. There is the difficulty in separating combatants from civilians, with the resulting huge numbers of civilian casualties. There are even similarities at the tactical level, with what are essentially Vietnam-style search-and-destroy missions that are not designed to hold territory. And Iraq, like Vietnam, is a quagmire -- there is constant violence and loss of life without any sort of visible improvement.

But what of the differences? Vietnam did not threaten military or economic strategic interests of the West. It did not become a base of operations for attacks on the US and it's allies. Even though it became, and remains today, an extremely repressive government, Vietnam has not directly affected the West in any measurable way since the US left.

Now before the US invaded Iraq, a similar statement might have been made, that Saddam Hussein's regime had very little effect on the West. The Iraqis would occasionally shoot at US planes, and there was certainly evasion of sanctions, but Hussein was "in a box", to repeat Colin Powell's famous phrase, and he was staying there.

But with the invasion and the toppling of Saddam, the situation has changed. It is an irreversible process that has occurred. Take a piece of steel and heat it to a high temperature. If the steel is allowed to cool at a slow rate, it will return to it's original state. But if the steel is dipped in a cold water bath and cooled quickly, in a process known as "quenching", the steel will harden with the introduction of martensite -- it cannot return to it's original state. Like quenched steel, Iraq cannot return to it's original state. It is no longer ruled by a weakened dictator. Iraq now contains various factions which have at least the possibility of desiring to support direct terrorist action against the US. So the idea that removing US and British troops from Iraq will increase or maintain our safety is not necessarily correct.

Another huge difference between Iraq and Vietnam is that our opponent in Vietnam was a single entity -- there was no civil war after our exit. Whereas Iraq is experiencing conflict among at least three main ethnic groups with many more subgroups, factions and militias. Various outside entities have their hands in Iraq as well, including Iran, Syria and Al Qaeda, and there will be an additional problem with Turkey if the Kurds decide to become independent.

With all these groups involved, it is impossible to predict what the outcome in Iraq will be if US troops leave. Of course, the predictions of those who began this war were as far off as predictions can be. And, as discussed previously, an even worse error was the Bush Administration assuming that their sole prediction had a 100% probability, ignoring the lessons of Yugoslavia and post-World War II reconstruction among others.

So, given the recent history, every well-meaning rational individual who espouses total troop withdrawal must do the following:
  • Delineate the potential outcomes resulting from withdrawal, i.e., US-friendly democracy, Iran-leaning theocracy, civil war leading to partition, terrorist haven, etc.

  • Supply proof for each scenario by relating to a previous historical situation. E.g., post-Tito Yugoslavia is an excellent example of the "civil war leading to partition" outcome.

  • Assign numbers for the increase or decrease in casualties and money spent that would result from each outcome, in both the short term and long term.

  • Give probabilities for each outcome.

  • Provide contingency plans for outcomes with negative impacts.


See, that's what the Bush Administration should have done in preparation for this war. But if the criticism is not enough planning, or unrealistic expectations, then the critics must provide what they think is missing. And we cannot simply return Iraq to some initial pre-invasion state – unfortunately the Bush Administration has already removed that option.

In Vietnam the US misunderstood our opponents’ intentions, and we paid for it with more than 58000 dead. Although we have paid for our foolish and irreversible adventure in Iraq with almost 3000 dead, we need to now be rational and coldly analytical about whatever future steps we will take there.

1 Comments:

Blogger eyedoc333 said...

It works!

Keep up the good work. I've added you to my blogroll.

8:58 AM  

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