Iraq Nam: Part 2

Part 2:
Q: Has America learned its lessons from the Viet Nam conflict?

A: Yes and No.

Neither Viet Nam nor Iraq are military, but rather, socio-political-ideological debacles.

Imagine a champion prizefighter having an opponent reeling and ready for a knockout punch but being ushered to the corner for no apparent reason and having the referee and his manager tie his power arm behind his back and sent back out into the ring. His opponent cannot react immediately, but as time goes by he gathers more and more confidence and strength and doesn’t care in the least about a, quote-unquote, fair fight and begins to pound the handicapped champion with all he has.

What does this mean?

This means ‘Yes’ America has learned from its Viet Nam experience in the sense that even though America’s military deviated from its forte in Viet Nam by not establishing a true front and concentrating its efforts in a conventional push, but rather breaking up its enormous military firepower into small, easily attacked formations spread all over the landscape, the United States’ air and sea advantages being too overwhelming for their opponent were yet and still the deciding factors until ridiculously bargained away little-by-little and sidelined. The American military initially accomplished its mission in Viet Nam and has even improved on its science since. But, clear-cut military objectives were subterfuged in a confused political morass and in both instances, Viet Nam and Iraq, and America’s armed forces were immediately mis-maneuvered by political incompetence and facetious infighting.

This means ‘No” America has not learned from its Viet Nam experience in the sense that, as is true of its domestic policies, America’s foreign policies are still rife with antiquated amero-christio-male prejudices, oversights and misconceptions. Contrary to the dreams and sub-conscious aspirations of many, enemies are not cutting and running and the foreign populace is not breaking out with “Yankee Doodle Dandy” and American flags when John Wayne shows up.

Regarding IraqâÂ?¦ in their headlong rush for the history books,(or perhaps the spigot on the oil pipeline maybe?), what the American leadership badgered the American military into doing was like badgering a chess champion into focusing entirely on his opponent’s queen and rooks and completely ignoring very powerful knights and bishops. Not to mention also ignoring pawns that can morph into even the most lethal pieces on the board. Once again the American leadership has come up with the brilliant idea of sentencing a splendidly victorious, well-oiled war machine to nesting on a powder keg created by truncated political planning and being picked apart by a bantamweight in a heavyweight fight.

The French had tried to subdue the Vietnamese for over 80 years through every conceivable (even the most brutal)means. Why would Americans have believed for one moment that we would be perceived by the Vietnamese as anything other than another bunch of gangsterous Caucasian colonizers? Why?

The very fact that George Bush, Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney all appeared on (inter)national television espousing the fantasy that (Muslim) Iraq would welcome (infidel) American forces as liberators (even though they were) was one of the most ludicrous and out of touch TV episodes I’ve ever seen in my life. (How many parades honoring their American liberators have you seen from Kuwait since 1991?) Not smart. Not smart at all.

As a rule, America will smile in your face for the photo op, but America, as do all other countries and cultures, egregiously disdains other cultures and is constantly on a mission to reinvent them in its own image. Unfortunately, that’s where we humans are on the ladder of human (and societal) evolution. When other cultures reject our faÃ?§ade for their own and recoil at the thought of being bullied or humiliated into rampant sexuality, dissolving family values, abusive commercialism, sugar-coated bigotry and what appears to be strong-arm diplomacy âÂ?¦ America’s leaders react stunned and aghast and relegate them to the realm of the backwards, the un-enlightened, the ‘third-world’ that must be rescued from itself or totally ignored. Our ‘greatest minds’ simply must become more adept and more ‘pre-emptive’ (even more contemporary) thinkers.

Case in point:

Viet Nam. Did our ‘save them from themselves’ cavalry charge stave off or change anything in the short or long run? No. Is Viet Nam a boiling cauldron of communist expansionism? No. Does Viet Nam have a happy and thriving country and culture? Yes. Can we travel to, do trade with and even learn from Viet Nam? Absolutely. We do all of the above with China, the granddaddy of them all, do we not?

In other words, why does the world’s supposedly most enlightened democracy, (America), keep buying into the socio-political-ideological hype only to find out in the end that a misinformed war strategy was moved along, or not moved along, not so much as a product of national necessity, but rather a product of industry lobbyists representing fiscal interests to the demise of American alliances and prestige and/or the loss and disfigurement of tens of thousands of American service men?

The American military definitely learned its lessons from Viet Nam, (in spite of the sleepwalking wake up call in Mogadishu), it is properly equipped and back on its ‘A’ game. The blitzkrieg victories and casualty ratios in Afghanistan and the two Iraq campaigns bear that out.

However, the American political leadership since World War II still just doesn’t seem to get it. Finding it difficult, if not impossible, to know exactly when to act and exactly how to act. (And the American citizenry must bear some responsibility for its apparent apathy and diminished due diligence.) Our presidents, their cabinets, congress and the senate are not measuring up. It would have been easier to finish off the Baathist regime in 1991. We wimped out. It would have been easier to deal with bin Laden immediately after, (if not years prior), to 9/11. We ignored Bin Laden for years and then arrogantly refused to accept bin Laden being handed over by the Taliban on a silver platter on anything other than our explicit, crawl on your hands and knees, testosterone-induced, terms. What on earth was Somalia about? Why would an American president sit on his hands and watch American embassies being demolished one after another and American warships bombed as a prelude to the worst atrocity on American soil since Pearl Harbor (a whole ‘nother episode) and not, at the very least, battle harden the intelligence community?

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying that in the prevailing climate of the time (with his testicles finally overwhelming his brain also and Saddam rattling one too many sabers) and under the horrifying pressure of American units in Afghanistan being blind-sided by WMD being passed over the border into al Qaeda possesion that waiting in vain for the Russians and the French to come onboard would have been the prudent thing for President Bush to do. It would not have been. Aside from their economic incentives in Iraq, the Russians will be seething over Afghanistan and the crumbling of their empire for a long time. In the meantime, very seldom will they bother to veil their resentment for America’s involvement. Rubbing their noses in it isn’t going to help. France is still suffering from similar colonial withdrawal pains as a result of American weapons playing a large role in French military and civilian losses in Algiers and America having the audacity to think that it could embarrass France’s national pride by upstaging them in Viet Nam. (However, French noses will always be up in the air no matter what you do. Something in the food I think.) Actually, given the information he had to work with, President Bush did the right thing. His mistakes were not researching and strategizing beyond Saddam Hussein and accurately analyzing the Iraqi people and compounding that mistake by (once again) using American soldiers as litmus paper. Too, of course, the Iraqi military should have been left intact (minus its armor, aircraft, the very top echelons and most ardent Baathist loyalists) to head off the fomentation of a climate of chaos and open strife which would have made bringing any and all needed assistance in after the fact much more feasable, much more swift and a lot safer.

The architecture of the dissolution of the Soviet Union is the blueprint for America’s success in the exigent world. Do what we do best. Make it quite clear that if you really want to pick a real fight you had better think twice because we can act, and we can act decisively, if we need to. And show them that we can out produce, out compete and out think them every step of the way. If your socio-economic system is so superiorâÂ?¦ prove it in the court of international opinion. Not international war.

In the mean time, let’s enjoy, not hate on, one another’s humanity and culture and have some fun. (Perhaps expanding on the Olympic sports model, we can organize the Cooking Olympics (then the French could really kick some American hiney) or the Dance Olympics (and let the Africans and the Latin Americans battle it out for world supremacy). I’m dead serious.

(On a lighter note: When I tried to retell my teenaged experience of viewing a battalion of drop-dead gorgeous Russian beauties in a Moscow beauty pageant during the height of the cold war, I was almost run out of high school tarred and feathered. My, my Ms. Sharipova, how times can change� if we want them to.)

Iraq should have been the blueprint for this type of United Nations nation restructuring and international cooperation. Instead it is, so far, yet another American embarrassment.

For future reference, if and when it should ever come to the impending possibility of our soldiers going to war, before the first precious boot hits the ground our leadership should have the complete package on paper. Military. Political. Economic. Socio-Cultural. (Discussed further in Part 3� Can America Prevail in the Iraq Conflict?) And the voting public should demand, now!, that we document a prescribed comprehensive checklist that will reasonably answer all the necessary questions, provide all the necessary options and enable our leadership the ability to respond in minutes if necessary. This being in the dark years down the road stuff is simply nuts. Is it not?

The current treatment, neglect and lack of appreciation for the sacrifices of the American service man and service woman and the absence of a clearly outlined initiation-through-conclusion military strategy on the part of our political leadership is bordering on criminal abuse.

America has the most magnificent military the world has ever seen� If we keep wasting it� one day it just might not be there for us.

Ask the Romans.

Has America learned its lessons from the Viet Nam conflict? You be the judge.

Next:
Q: Can the United States prevail in the Iraq conflict?