One of the most misleading arguments against the American involvement in Iraq today is the false comparison many people make to the Vietnam conflict. Vietnam left a bitterness in our hearts that is both irrational and completely unnecessary. And now unscrupulous people are using that bitterness to fuel support for the anti-war movement.
During the Vietnam War, Americans suffered through two conflicts. The fighting overseas was no more bitter or sectarian than the disagreements we experienced among ourselves here at home. The war was unpopular because the United States did not enter it with a goal to win or a strategy for resolving the core conflict. We invaded Iraq with the intention of toppling Saddam Hussein's government and replacing it with a more peaceful, stable government.
Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson, who committed American forces to battle, viewed the Vietnam conflict as a proxy battle between the two superpowers (the United States and the Soviet Union). To the Vietnamese, the conflict was always about whether the North would dominate the South.
In fact, anyone familiar with Vietnamese history understands that for the past 1500 years the Vietnamese peoples have repeatedly fought each other in addition to outsiders. The conflict between North Vietnam and South Vietnam was deeply rooted in ancient rivalries and cultural distinctions.
Today, people frequently criticize the American exit-policy of "Vietnamization", by which we substantially transferred the responsibility for the conflict back to the South Vietnamese. Many Americans believe the South Vietnamese people did not stand up for themselves. In reality, more than 240,000 South Vietnamese soldiers died defending their country.
The truth of the matter is that the South Vietnamese were simply overwhelmed by a more determined, better organized enemy. They were conquered by a neighboring, rival nation. From the days of Ho Chi Minh, North Vietnam's goal was to conquer the south. Ho's ambition was no different from the many kings and emperors who invaded southern Vietnam in past centuries.
American foreign policy in the 1960s was strongly influenced by the Domino Theory. Thanks to President Franklin Roosevelt and President Harry Truman, we had seen how the Domino Theory could work in eastern Europe. We gave the Soviet Union effective control over Poland, East Germany, Hungary, Bulgaria, and other nations. When Communist influence became rooted in North Vietnam as well as China, American leaders feared that all of Asia might succumb. Given enough allies, the Soviet Union might have proven willing to start another world war.
How realistic was this fear? We'll never know. What we do know is that American foreign policy was based on the assumption that the Soviet Union intended to export its brand of communism throughout the world.
Ironically, today's Iraq was shaped in part by that American foreign policy. Because we feared Soviet use of nuclear weapons, we used proxy nations to wage our wars throughout the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s. Iraq became one of our proxies after Iran fell into the control of Ayatollah Khomeini and his Islamic revolutionaries. Because Khomeini's Iran humiliated the United States and became hostile, we used Iraq to punish the Iranian people. At the same time, our support for Iraq ensured that the Soviet Union didn't acquire more influence in the Middle East (and it already had a proxy in Syria).
The problem with using Iraq, or any nation, as a proxy is that American leadership doesn't take into consideration cultural values or conflicts. For example, when the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan, the United States did not hesitate to provide help to the Mujahedeen. We paid for their war against the Soviets, but we did nothing to ensure a quick defeat of Soviet troops. Instead, we helped keep the war going until the Soviet simply became so tired of the conflict they went home.
Sound familiar? That was what they did to us in Vietnam. The Soviet Union supported North Vietnam in the hope that we would get tired and go home.
When the Soviets left Afghanistan, so did we. When we left South Vietnam, North Vietnam began asserting its own agenda. North Vietnam no longer needed the Soviet Union. Afghanistan, on the other hand, had no alternative to Soviet power. The various warlords who had helped defeat the Soviets attempted to form a new government in Afghanistan but they fell to fighting among themselves. Eventually, Afghanistan was left without a central government (much like Somalia, another failed American experiment).
The Taliban rose up to fill the vacuum in Afghanistan, and because they had no support from America and no ties to American culture, they never became our friends. Instead, they befriended the extremely anti-American Al Qaida. So we eventually had to topple the Taliban in order to drive Al Qaida out of Afghanistan.
We have not yet had to return to Vietnam to drive anyone out of South Vietnam. In fact, we're in the process of establishing normal relations with the Vietnamese government.
The difference between Vietnam and Afghanistan is that when we left South Vietnam, another government moved in and imposed its will on the South Vietnamese people. When we left Afghanistan, no one cared enough to do anything.
We used Iraq to weaken an enemy state (Iran) just as we used Afghanistan to weaken an enemy state (the Soviet Union). This was the lesson we learned from Vietnam. When you don't want to fight a war, but you want to defeat an enemy, get someone else to fight your enemy until the enemy can fight no more.
However, when the Iraq-Iran conflict ended, the United States did nothing to ensure that Saddam Hussein, who had become used to mobilizing his people for war against his neighbors, would stand down and become a peaceful regional power. Saddam's ambition to control huge oil reserves (which had led him to attack Iran in the first place) led him to look south instead of east.
Suddenly, the fourth largest army in the world -- an army that both the Soviet Union and the United States had helped to create -- was being turned against two long-time American allies; Kuwait Saudi Arabia.
Why are they long-time American allies? Because President Franklin Roosevelt realized that the United States would need a secure supply of foreign oil. So he arranged for a mutual defense treaty with Saudi Arabia that has been honored and in force for about 70 years. People don't invade Saudi Arabia because the United States won't allow it, not because everyone loves the Saudis.
Nonetheless, like Hitler before him, once Saddam set himself on the path to war, he couldn't stop himself. So we fought the First Persian Gulf War to stop the advance of Saddam's armies into Saudi Arabia. We freed Kuwait in the process, but when the Kurds and Shiite Iraqis rebelled against Saddam, we did nothing. The first President Bush, like Presidents Nixon and Reagan before him, simply walked away from a destabilized situation American foreign policy had created. When the world asked President Bush what should be done about Saddam, he said that was up to the Iraqi people. But when the Iraqi people failed to defeat Saddam's remaining forces, the United States did nothing.
Well, that's not entirely true. We persuaded the United Nations to impose 12 years' worth of sanctions on Iraq. Those sanctions, intended to punish Saddam for his bad behavior, had the most direct impact on the Iraqi people. Some non-governmental organizations have estimated that as many as 50,000 Iraqi children suffered from malnutrition every year (many of them dying from lack of basic care). If the estimates are accurate, about 500,000 Iraqi children died during the years of the sanctions. If they are only 1/10th true, as many as 50,000 Iraqi children died.
From 2002 to the end of 2005, fewer than 50,000 Iraqi civilians are believed to have been killed in the insurgency. So far, history indicates that our peaceful policies toward Saddam were deadlier for the Iraqi people than the aftermath of our invasion.
Iraq today stands on the brink of new nationhood. Technically, like Afghanistan, Iraq now has a new government that has been sanctioned by at least a majority of its people. The insurgency in Iraq, unlike the Viet Cong insurgency of the 1960s, is not being directed by a foreign power which intends to invade and conquer Iraq.
Of course, it could be argued that Al Qaida would now very much like to see the United States leave Iraq before the new Iraqi government can defend itself. But despite its widespread reach, Al Qaida is not a country. Its leadership is not the seasoned leadership of a formal state government. Al Qaida can no more restore stability to Iraq than any well organized militia or street gang would be able to.
And that's the problem we face in Iraq today. It's not that if we stay someone will continue to drain our resources year after year. It's that, when we leave, there will be no one to fill the vacuum -- except Al Qaida.
For all the bitterness between the United States and Vietnam's Communist government, we have nonetheless been at peace for 30 years and we are now on the brink of normalizing relations. Millions of people suffered terribly in the wake of the fall of South Vietnam, but the United States and other nations opened their doors to many refugees from South Vietnam. They have had a hard life, but they have been given an opportunity to start over.
We Americans need to accept responsibility for our government's foreign policies. Those policies have fueled the resentment that drives support to terrorist groups like Al Qaida. But those policies created the reasons we had to invade both Afghanistan and Iraq.
President Bush's political enemies, bitter and resentful over his election to the Presidency in 2000, have ceaselessly burdened the American people with propaganda that is really only intended to help bring the Democratic party back into power. Virtually all of the major voices of opposition are long-time Democrats and supporters of the Democratic Party.
There is an old saying: in every war, the truth is the first victim of the conflict. We are today fighting many more conflicts than we faced 30 years ago. President Bush's policies may be no better than those of Franklin Roosevelt and John Kennedy, but his hand is to some extent guided by their hands.
Americans don't have to like President Bush. We don't have to respect his intelligence. But we should not allow political activists to hand us our feelings on a platter of lies.
But if we choose to walk away from Iraq before the Iraqi government has a reasonable chance of surviving, if we allow the Iraqi insurgents to do what the Viet Cong could not do, if we refuse to accept responsibility for what we have done in the past, we'll have to return to Iraq when it has fallen into the wrong hands.
After the First World War, we refused to participate in the League of Nations and subsequently found ourselves embroiled in the Second World War.
We walked away from South Vietnam and now every petty conflict is wrongly compared to the Vietnam war. People regard America as weak, vacillating, and unreliable. Worse, they think we can be beaten just by waiting longer than we are willing to wait.
We used Iraq to punish Iran and only walked away after Saddam began using chemical weapons indiscriminantly. In doing so, we ensured we would have to fight Iraq in at least two wars.
We used Afghanistan to punish the Soviet Union and then we walked away without helping the Afghan people build a stable new government. In doing so, we laid the foundations for September 11.
If we walk away from Iraq today before it is time for us to leave, we'll pay a heavy price in the future. So history has shown us.
We need to stay in Iraq simply because we should be tired of making horrendously bad mistakes.
Michael Martinez writes essays on a variety of topics. He also operates a popular network of Web sites devoted primarily to science fiction and fantasy.
http://www.michael-martinez.com/