The Vietnam ghost that does walk in Iraq

---

See the Sol Sanders Archive By Sol Sanders SPECIAL TO WORLD TRIBUNE.COM

Millions of words have been written about the American defeat in Vietnam. Much of it highly partisan, theorizing by those in “the American bubble” that the huge American Establishment in Southeast Asia turned into, or by those faraway from events because they chose to dodge the draft with student deferments [and alas! heavy in contemporary tenured faculties].

Many know more – as the arch conspirator Jay Lovestone once said after recommending an academic expert – than they understand; mountains of statistics and "facts" which ignore realities of a conflict spread over several Vietnamese generations with dozens of issues from colonialism to feudal regional and family quarrels to old-fashioned corruption.

It was inevitable this “Vietnam industry” would misapply their metaphors to “Iraq”. Like all historical analogies, comparisons are usually inappropriate – in this case, if for no other reason because of the enormous technological leaps since the 1960s. Yet a contemporary debate within the U.S. establishment over the role of outside elements in Iraq’s terrorist campaign is cogent.

Both U.S. civilian – including the Commander-in-chief – and military sources publicly have castigated Syria and Iran for undermining the Iraq Coalition’s goals. Even beyond actively financing, facilitating cadre passage and logistics, are neighboring countries Arab “moderate”, largely Sunni, leadership’s sympathies. As indicated at a recent Arab League meeting, they fear Washington may just pull off a revolution – the first free, representative Arab government. That would be contagious for their corrupt authoritarian regimes.

Where the Vietnam analogy does apply is the refusal to recognize the decisive role of this foreign assistance. Administration critics argue spotlighting foreign connections is only scapegoating Washington’s failures. They come up with statistics – probably as inaccurate as most in a wartorn country – of tiny numbers of foreigners either captured or reported. They point to an already overextended U.S. military as reason enough for “don’t even think of it [military intervention]". And they grasp at whatever straw hinting Damascus or Tehran will see the light.

The Arabist chorus in and retired from the State Department, those specialists in the Mideast, Araby, and the Moslem world, are ready to say “I told you so”. Had they not warned there was no alternative to buying oil, backing and bribing the so-called “moderates”, hoping to stave off for still another generation the beast in the souk --- a gifted and talented people hopelessly mired in a pre-modern social structure, ready to explode for any cause? Their “realism” calls for begging our European allies, with their gift for [Munich] “compromise”, to help us out of the dilemma of seeing our young men die and our treasure, seemingly, thrown after good works not appreciated or eroded by violence.

One of the bitter lessons learned from “Vietnam” was the dual nature of the conflict: yes, it was a civil war between a dedicated Communist minority and the Vietnamese “silent majority”, if you will. [More than a million Vietnamese, with virtually no help from us, almost literally swam south when the country was divided in 1954.] But despite an American strategy which ultimately murdered President Ngo Dinh Diem [JFK feared the accusation he was backing a Catholic dictatorship], the “revolt” in the South was Hanoi inspired, directed and encadred from its very beginnings. The 30,000 Southern Communists evacuated to the North after the country was divided, were sent back in “infiltration packets” to reactivate terrorism.

The Viet-Cong operated from safe havens in neighboring Cambodia and Laos. [In the winter of 1961-2 when the young American correspondents began their campaign to bring down Diem, at the moment they and some American military advisers were saying the Republic of Vietnam’s army being trained by the Americans was incapable of winning, an Australian KGB agent has written Hanoi was thinking of pulling out of the Mekong Delta because they were being eviscerated. The vagaries of war!] When Washington agreed to “neutralize” Laos, Hanoi began to “modernize” old mountain trails. [Vietnam’s lengendary generals, the Trung Sisters, had used them to defeat the Chinese at the beginning of the Christian Era.] As an old British spy pointed out to me over lunch in the early 60s in immaculate, peaceful Singapore, “We are selling enough penicillin to cure syphilis in Cambodia for the next thousand years.” In fact, while PM Lee Kwan Yu was congratulating Washington for “holding the line”, Singapore was entertaining monthly Cambodia "trade missions", logistics for the Tet Offensive that broke American morale in 1968 [but incinerated Hanoi's southern guerrilla base].

Sadam’s money, exiled Bathist principals, Syrian [perhaps rogue] intelligence, and Iran’s worldwide terrorist network, are planning, supplying, and sometimes leading [with foreign suicide bombers] the present Iraq terrorism. It‘s an issue that must be faced. As Ibsen said: “What we have inherited from our fathers and mothers is not all that ‘walks in us.’ There are all sorts of dead ideas and lifeless old beliefs. They have no tangibility, but they haunt us all the same and we can not get rid of them. Whenever I take up a newspaper I seem to see Ghosts gliding between the lines.”