Why The Iraq
And Vietnam
Wars Are Not Alike
The anti-Coalition
insurgencies by parts of the Sunni and Shia communities in Iraq have caused some to start
referring to the conflict there as the next Vietnam War. These comparisons in
regard to the recent insurgencies do not stand up to serious analysis. They represent
either wishful thinking by an anti-American segment of politicians &
journalists, or a poor knowledge of history concerning the Vietnam War. There
are obvious differences between the two wars in how the insurgents were/are
supported, political views of the insurgents, and how much support each
country’s leader garnered from the people. These facts clearly prove that the Iraq and
Vietnam Wars are completely different.
The first point of
difference lies in the small operational capability of the Iraqi insurgents
compared with those in Vietnam.
In Vietnam, Vietcong
insurgents seeking to overthrow the South Vietnamese Government had the armed
and financial backing of a neighboring state, North Vietnam. In addition, North Vietnam was backed by a superpower, the Soviet Union. This meant that military supplies and other
resources could be supplied to the insurgents in South Vietnam in a continuous fashion
that could be disrupted temporarily but not destroyed. The United States and its South Vietnamese allies
did not at any time control South Vietnam's
borders with North Vietnam.
In contrast, no superpower, no foreign State and no Ho Chi Minh trail support
the current insurgency in Iraq.
Neither the insurgents, nor any external State support and control Iraq's borders
or interrupt those borders at will. Small numbers of insurgents have also been
able to overcome the Coalition's security line along Iraq's borders. However, this cannot
begin to compare in scope with the continued flow of external support that the
Vietcong received during the Vietnam War.
There are also
critical political differences between the conflicts in Vietnam and Iraq. The Iraqi people are a mass
of many ethnic and religious groups. There have never been comparable religious
or ethnic divisions in Vietnam.
The importance of this difference within the two countries lies in the
differing attitudes of the various Iraqi communities towards the presence of
Western led forces in their country. The Kurds strongly support that presence.
The Sunni minority, who were the big losers when Saddam was toppled, are the
most active and bitter opponents of the Coalition. The Shiites, who comprise
the largest group, are split. Only a small, radical faction of the Shiite
community supports the insurgents. In contrast, American forces in Vietnam
were confronted with a population, in both the north and the south, among whom
there was widespread sympathy for the insurgents. The majority of Vietnamese
belonged to the lower class that stood to gain from many of the land reform and
other policies of the anti-US forces.
Another major
difference between the Iraq
and Vietnam
wars is on how each country’s leaders were viewed by the population. Ho Chi Minh,
the communist leader of North
Vietnam at the time, was a popular patriotic
figure. He led the Vietnamese in their fight against the French in the early
1950s and the Japanese during World War II. Ho Chi Minh was ahead of any Arabic
leader in both popularity and ability. Saddam Hussein enjoyed no such support
from the Iraqi people. Obviously, Saddam was popular but not in a good way.
Most of the Iraqi people feared Saddam in his regime.
The current
insurgents in Iraq
have shown themselves, and as a result, have experienced detrimental military
losses. However, in the process they have created a certain amount of
speculation about a potential civil war in Iraq. These factors have become the
obvious focus of the media and therefore seem more threatening than they really
are. Like the Vietcong before them, the Iraqi insurgents are hoping to exchange
their military losses into a political victory, thanks to the reporting of the
world’s sometimes irresponsible media managers. As explained previously, there
are obvious differences between the two wars in how the insurgents were/are
supported, the political views of the insurgents, and how much support each
country’s leader enjoyed from it’s people. The
differences pointed out here more than support the fact that the Iraq
and Vietnam Wars are completely different.
Works
Cited
“Iraq is Another
Vietnam? It’s Not Even Close” www.rightwingnews.com.
John Hawkins, Accessed 5 July 2007. <
http://www.rightwingnews.com/john/iraqasvietnam.php>.
Mac
Johnson Post on “www.freerepublic.com. Posted on 27 September
2005.
Accessed
28 June 2007. < http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/1491433/posts>.