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Subject:
Why Learning From the Lessons of Vietnam is Crucial
IlovetheUSA
9/19/2004 10:54:07 AM
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Robert McNamara learned too late how off-base the United States had been in its approach to Vietnam and has some useful things to say in this regard in his valuable memoirs entitled 'In Retrospect: The Tragedy and Lessons of Vietnam'. McNamara said that there were several major causes for America's disaster in Vietnam and he listed them thus: To quote his own words:
1. We misjudged then - as we have since - the geopolitical
intentions of our adversaries (North Vietnam and the Vietcong,
supported by China and the Soviet Union) and we exaggerated the
dangers to the United States of their actions.
2. We viewed the people and leaders of South Vietnam in terms of
our own experience. We totally misjudged the political forces
within the country.
3. We underestimated the power of nationalism to motivate the
people to fight and die for their beliefs and values - and we
continue to do so today in many parts of the world.
4. Our misjudgements of friend and foe alike reflected our
profound ignorance of the history, culture and politics of the
people in the area...
5. We failed then - as we have since - to recognise the
limitations of modern, high-technology military equipment, forces
and doctrine in confronting unconventional, highly motivated
peoples' movements. We failed as well to adapt our military
tactics to the task of winning the hearts and minds of people from a totally different culture.
6. We failed to retain popular support in part because we did not
explain fully what was happening and why we were doing what we
did.
7. We did not recognise that neither our people nor our leaders
are omniscient. Where our own security is not directly at stake,
our judgement of what is in another' people's or country's best
interest should be put to the test of open discussion in
international forums. We do not have the God-given right to
shape every nation in our own image or as we choose.
8. We did not hold to the principle that U.S. military action -
other than in response to direct threats to our own security
should be carried out only in conjunction with multinational
forces supported fully (and not merely cosmetically) by the
international community.
9. We failed to recognise that in international affairs, as in
other aspects of life, there may be problems for which there are
no immediate solutions. For one whose life has been dedicated to
the belief and practice of problem-solving, this is particularly
hard to admit.
10. Underlying many of these errors lay our failure to organise
the top echelons of the executive branch to deal effectively with
the extraordinarily complex range of political and military
issues....
What McNamara has said about the Vietnam War holds true about the Iraq War, and it is painful. If we are to win the Iraq War, it is absolutely crucial that we do not make the same mistakes that we made in Vietnam. If one were to judge the war in Iraq by the news reports that come in daily, it would appear that the lessons of Vietnam are being largely ignored. To quote from an article entitled "Why the Military Never Learns" by Vietnam-vet, Ret. Col. David M. Hackworth:
"We have such enormous firepower and intelligence ability in terms of finding targets that right now nobody on planet Earth can go toe-to-toe with the U.S. military. No one could take us out in a conventional fight. But in Iraq, as in Vietnam, we're not fighting Soviet tank armies; we're fighting a hit-and-run opponent in a war of haves versus have-nots. And there's an important underlying similarity between jungle fighting and city fighting: Both are advantageous to the guerilla. In Vietnam we had a huge fist and we clobbered everything in sight without considering our goals. And in Iraq, as in Vietnam, we don't seem to have a well-thought-out overall strategy or meaningful objective.
Of course, we still have the big stick, and we're great at swinging it. So far we've won every tactical battle in Iraq. There's no way we can suffer a large-scale tactical defeat. But guess what? In Vietnam we won every large-scale battle and lost the war. We never figured out the nature of the war or of the enemy we were fighting. And the way we're going in Iraq, we may find ourselves faced with the same unhappy ending unless we realize we're in a knife-fight. That's where we have to be proficient.
Apart from actual fighting tactics, the key to winning a guerilla war is having the people on your side. That's the bottom line. Mao Tse-tung said the guerilla is like a fish and the people are like water. To destroy the guerilla, you must remove the water. Then the guerilla will flop up on the bank, ready to be thrown onto the barbecue. But what we're doing with our ham-fisted approach is polluting the water and firing up the fish. In Vietnam we became Ho Chi Minh's best recruiter. A gunship would fly by a village and an enemy would shoot off a few rounds; the bird would swing a 180 and retaliate by hosing down the village and killing innocent civilians. We just helped the guerillas move that village's allegiance from Saigon to Hanoi. That was their goal, and we fell for it time and time again.
I remember being in Somalia in 1992, watching a Marine Cobra helicopter come in to take out a pickup truck with a machine gun in the back--the type of target called a "technical." The gunship came in and hovered maybe 500 feet and then blew the s.hit out of it with rockets. Playing Vietnam in my mind, I thought, "You can get away with this once or twice. But these guys are going to catch on and realize that bird is an easy rocket-propelled-grenade target or one for a couple of automatic weapons. And they are going to take that sucker down." Guerillas learn. When we lost two choppers in Somalia on October 3, 1993, that's exactly how we lost them. They hovered. They got blown out of the sky. We had given the guerillas the opportunity to study our MO, and they had learned.
We rarely bother to learn, probably because we've won most of our wars in the past, except Vietnam, because of our massive power. We walk away this arrogant, muscle-bound dude, but we seldom critique the exercise. And once again that won't serve us well in this war against an agile, cunning guerilla foe. Out of necessity the guerilla is fighting a war of economy of force while we're fighting a war with an unlimited checkbook. Again, as in Vietnam, we're using the big hammer instead of the scalpel, brawn rather than brains. For example, we used a billion-dollar bomber to drop million-dollar missiles on a diner where Saddam was supposed to be breaking bread. He was eating elsewhere. How many innocent Iraqis in how many kebab shops can we blow up without losing hearts and minds and going broke? It's time to ditch shock and awe. Boots on the ground and winning trust and confidence are what count.
Another lesson not learned from past experience: When you go in, know how and when you're going to get out. In Vietnam, as in Iraq, we went in without an exit plan. President Richard Nixon and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger finally cobbled one together called "Vietnamization." They planned to replace U.S. forces with the South Vietnamese army, known as ARVN. The plan was designed to show the world that the South Vietnamese could defend themselves. In what the Nixon gang called "peace with honor," we would then leave under cover of the shield we would have helped build. And we conned ourselves into believing that shaky shield would hold. When I sounded off in Vietnam in 1971, I told the American people that Vietnamization was a big lie: ARVN was so addicted to U.S. firepower, there was no way it could stand on its own against the much superior North Vietnamese army.
I see the same thing happening with the Iraqi army. After one year and more than $1 billion in expenditures, Major General Paul Eaton, the first U.S. general in charge of training the new Iraqi army, said the Iraqis were good to go, that they were strong, powerful, well led and properly equipped. So when our Marines got into that tough fight in Fallujah last April, a battalion of the new Iraqi army was called in to reinforce them. The Iraqi troops completely fell apart. They ripped off their uniforms--many wore civilian clothes underneath--threw down their weapons and ran. This is the army that Eaton spent a year building, the army that's a major player in our exit plan.
Young Marines study Vietnam, even if the top brass seem not to: When the Iraqi troops ran, the Marine advisory team that had accompanied them said the forces "went ARVN on us."
While it looks as though the outcome in Iraq may be the same as in Vietnam, the consequences will be far more significant. After all, the North Vietnamese communists wanted only to eject the invader. Their political and military objective was to be free of foreign influence. Contrary to U.S. propaganda saying they would head for San Francisco next, the North Vietnamese had no intention of exporting their views beyond their immediate region. But if we lose in Iraq, it's not going to end in the Middle East. The Vietnam War was conjured up by LBJ, McNamara and crew, brought about by a sham attack--the Gulf of Tonkin--and, because it remained confined to Southeat Asia, in no way affected American security. This war in the Middle East is totally different. It's a global war not confined to Iraq. The objective is not just to boot us out of Iraq and Afghanistan but to impose a radical brand of Islam on the world and to destroy our way of life. By bumbling in Iraq, we have greatly eroded our ability to contain and destroy these fanatics--and they know it. Bin Laden couldn't have dreamed of a better scenario than our getting stuck in Iraq. That shell-shocked country is now his hottest recruiting ground, and our troops there have become Al Qaeda's most convenient target.
It's not uncommon in out history to have adopted the wrong strategy and tactics at the onset of a war. We've frequently gone off in the wrong direction. But in the past we've always had the kind of bold, innovative leadership that said, "Whoa, we've screwed up. We're doing this thing all wrong. I'm going to appoint Ulysses S. Grant to change things, and we're going to fight this war correctly and win." That's what we need to do now. If we don't wise up, our future and the security of our country and of the rest of the world are indeed in dire jeopardy.
Winston Churchill once said Americans always do the right thing--after they've tried everything else. While we never got it right in Vietnam, unless we're prepared to become one nation under Allah, failure is not an option in Iraq."
To tell you a bit more about Ret. Col. David M. Hackworth, he sailed in the merchant marine at age 14 and the U.S. Army at 15. In almost 26 years in the Army he spent over seven years in combat theaters, winning a battlefield commission in Korea to become that war's youngest Army captain. Hack is a regular guest on national radio and TV shows, and from 1990 to the end of 1996, he was Newsweek's contributing editor for defense. Hack is an advocate of military reform and a believer that the big fire power -- "nuke-the-pukes" -- solution won't work anymore, but that doesn't mean war will go away. He sees big and little fights ahead and urges military reform. He believes passionately that "America needs a streamlined, hard hitting force for the 21st century" and beyond.
Well, I believe the observations of these two very honorable men are accurate, important, and if their advice is listened to, will bring victory in Iraq. If their advice, and the lessons of Vietnam are ignored, I am less than optimistic about the prospests of American success in Iraq. I think it is obvious that our current strategy and tactics are not working and we must initiate a new approach to fighting this war unless we want a similar outcome to what happened in Vietnam. |
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