Vietnam Lessons That Really Apply in Iraq

Wednesday, January 4, 2006

In his Dec. 29 op-ed column, "Three Lessons From Vietnam," Dale Andrade made no allowance for the overall historical and political context of the wars in Vietnam or Iraq.

Three lessons of Vietnam that apply with greater salience to Iraq are these:

First, just as the war in Vietnam was not the result of a monolithic Soviet drive to establish an empire extending from Moscow to Beijing to New Delhi, the war in Iraq is not the result of any monolithic effort to establish a radical Islamic empire. The logic employed in the 1960s -- that we must fight in Vietnam so we don't have to fight in California -- is the same logic President Bush uses when he says we are fighting terrorists in Iraq so we don't have to fight them at home.

Second, falsehoods were used to justify both the war in Vietnam and the war in Iraq. The Gulf of Tonkin incidents, contrary to the assertions of then-Defense Secretary Robert S. McNamara, were not unprovoked acts of aggression by the North Vietnamese; Saddam Hussein, contrary to Vice President Cheney's assertion, had not reconstituted Iraq's nuclear weapons programs.

Last and most fundamental, as with Vietnam, the war in Iraq is a political rather than a military battle. Victory will depend more on winning "hearts and minds," however difficult or unrealistic that may be, than on "search and destroy" or "pacification" missions, or whatever the term is for such operations today.

MATTHEW W. CLOUD

Washington

While discussing the successful use of territorial forces in Vietnam, Dale Andrade didn't mention that because those forces were locally recruited, they knew the neighborhood and hence had organic intelligence on the enemy.

It has been reported that Iraq does not have enough Sunnis in its military to give Sunnis confidence in the security forces. Sunni "territorial forces" might have been a good source of intelligence on the mostly Sunni insurgents, could have provided local security in a clear-and-hold strategy, and could have provided a measure of confidence for the Sunni minority in the new Iraq.

ALFRED R. BARR

Washington

I vividly remember the Vietnam War and the controversy around it. While our soldiers fought well and bravely, and while the programs that Dale Andrade cites may have been as successful as he claims, we lost the war, and not just because of the North Vietnamese army and some sanctuaries in Laos and Cambodia.

One reason we lost is because we supported an unpopular government. The South Vietnamese would never have made the sacrifices necessary to defeat the North on behalf of President Nguyen Van Thieu and his ruling class. The Thieu government probably would have collapsed as soon as we left even if we had won, just as it did after we lost.

Second, many Vietnamese perceived us as another occupying power, taking the place of the French. This belief was at least as powerful as concern about communism.

Finally, Mr. Andrade apparently believes, as the Bush administration does, that the number of insurgents is fixed and that we can win if we neutralize or kill them all. To the contrary, I think that if the insurgents can force us to kill or brutalize innocent people, or convince people that our presence brings violence to their neighborhoods, they will recruit new members along with sympathizers who will protect them and undermine our efforts to build a civil society.

As we belatedly realized in Vietnam, these are wars for hearts and minds. This war cannot be won by the military alone, no matter how valiant the soldiers or how sophisticated their tactics.

CAROLINE POPLIN SLATE

Bethesda