Vietnam/Iraq from the Fifth Avenue Gazette

January 17, 2006

A Mess by Any Other Name
Washington, D.C. – I’m trying to recall exactly how many officials from W’s administration have told us so far that Iraq and Afghanistan are NOT Vietnam. Suffice it to say, it’s been a bunch. I can’t remember back that far, but I’m fairly certain that a bunch of Jack Kennedy’s minions tried to tell us that Vietnam was not Vietnam. I’m getting a bad feeling.

You might recall that while we were mired in Vietnam, Washington called up reserves and extended tours of duty for reservists and regulars. I’m glad we haven’t done that yet. I’m glad that the trickle homeward of dead teenagers and the appearance that the situation in Iraq is unwinnable hasn’t begun to erode the confident edifice even of former supporters of W’s policy. That happened during the war in Vietnam – not at all like the war in Iraq and Afghanistan.

You might also recollect that in that extremely popular war that started four decades ago, the indigenous people were fodder for the guerillas that fought a war of opportunistic sniping, never once engaging US troops in any fixed battle. That’s way different than Iraq, isn’t it? Vietnam, which ultimately claimed nearly 60,000 US lives with a median age of 23.11 years, proved even deadlier for Vietnamese civilians. They paid the hghest price and saw their society dismantled and their economy ravaged as it was overrun by warring extremist factions. The instability spilled out into the entire region, spawning the Kmer Rouge and one of the worst holocausts in human history. Iraq’s not like that one bit.

Robert McNamara got hung out to dry over a pack of lies Lyndon Johnson’s administration kept trying to sell to the American public. George W. Bush didn’t do that to Colin Powell. The puppet government in South Vietnam was so corrupt and so disrespectful of basic human rights that it ultimately collapsed from within, under constant siege by rebel forces that were willing to blow themselves up for what they believed in. That won’t happen in Iraq.

Another thing that happened in Vietnam is that a Republican President and his shadow government decided to pursue targets outside the actual theater of operations, like in Cambodia and Thailand and Laos, for instance. Other than us destroying a village in Pakistan – not Afghanistan, Pakistan – the other day to try to kill an Arab septuagenarian, we haven’t really done much of that. Nor have we tortured any captured combatants, nor have we run any secret facilities to detain and “debrief” them.

I can sort of understand the administration, or at least the soldiers, not knowing the difference between Afghanistan and Pakistan, they both end in “stan” and they sort of sound alike. And guess what other two countries sound alike – Iraq and Iran. Hell they even have the same number of letters in their names.

W dubbed Iran a member of the “Axis of Evil” five years ago. Today he’s talking about their nuclear capacity. Go figure. It’s just coincidental, I suppose, that he’s managed to get a whole shitload of American troops on either side of Iran?

You read it here first – Iran is fucked. I don’t think Syria should get overly comfortable, but Iran – well, those people might as well just hug their families and kiss their asses goodbye because W’s got every intention of blasting that place. It’s all lined up for him – kind of like he planned it.

But he didn’t plan it. He just failed to listen to wise people – including the heads of state of Russia, France, Germany, Mexico and Canada – who told him not to go to war in the first place. They told him that it isn’t winning the war that is impossible, it’s establishing the peace. Actually, I think that also happened during Vietnam, and it was as right then as it is now.