Heretics' almanac: The Vietnam/Iraq Meme

Ted Kennedy caught pundit imagination when he compared Iraq to Vietnam. A lot of people are weighing in on this issue, most of them trying to reassure us that, no, this is entirely different. (My initial take is here).

Comparisons and analogies are always tempting, in part because they - as senator Kennedy demonstrated - are so effective. We understand things by comparing them to things that we already know and then distilling the differences. Well crafted, comparisons are sharp and incisive; poorly chosen and articulated they only confuse things.

It may be, for example, that the greatest value in the Iraq/Vietnam comparison is that the differences are important than the similarities. Merely making the comparison doesn't guarantee and outcome.

And since the basis for comparison isn't clear, opininions differ:

Andrew Sullivan (whose writing I admire) writes that even if the Vietnam analogy were accurate, it should be kept in mind that it took years for the American public to lose patience and force a withdrawal. [TOH to document.no for pointing me to this article]

Christopher Hitchens (whose writing disappoints me for all its [Eric Arthur] Blairish pretense) thinks that Iraq is different from Vietnam for a lot of disjointed reasons. He also rejects a comparison with Israel's "Peace in Galilee" campaign by falsifying history, but that's a topic for a different entry.

Daniel Pipes, interestingly, thinks that the US should heed history and learn that non-Moslems can't rule Moslems, and that separation has to happen soon, leaving a "democratically-minded Iraqi strongman" whom the various Iraqi factions won't hate regardless of his other merits/demerits.

These are all interesting comparisons, but they all miss the mark, more or less.

Andrew: I don't think the American public will have as much patience this time around as they did for Vietnam, and there's a reason why everyone worries about this being a quagmire.

Chris: you can't dismiss the comparison because the scenery is different - you have to consider the strategic context on either side of the issue.

Dr. Pipes: Don't forget that the Brits ruled Moslem parts of India (today's Pakistan and Bangladesh) for a long time; Indonesia was ruled by the Dutch; indeed huge tracts of the Arab world were British and French mandates without bloody wars of liberation breaking out. And (relatively) secular (pan) Arab nationalism seems to be as much of a driving force as Islamic fundamentalism.

The Vietnam comparison is meaningful for most Americans if Iraq turns out to be a protracted, bloody, expensive war with no objectives, no exit strategy, in which American troops are resented if not hated by the people they were supposed to liberate. It's way too soon to tell whether this will be the case in Iraq, but it's not an impossible scenario, and it's a question worth asking.

Nordic perspectives

General rolls