How Iraq war compares to Vietnam conflict
By Margaret Talev -- Bee Washington Bureau
Published 2:15 am PDT Monday, July 18, 2005
WASHINGTON - Iraq and Vietnam.
When President Bush's critics drew the analogy during the March 2003 invasion, it was hypothetical, politically tinged and not very widely held.
Two years and four months later, however, as body counts rise in Iraq and the insurgency appears to be holding strong, the inclination to compare the nation's first great military humiliation with what is happening now in the Middle East is wending its way into mainstream America.
"These are totally different kinds of situations. Nonetheless, there are some similarities," says Vietnam historian and best-selling author Stanley Karnow. "People who used the word 'quagmire' at the beginning were wrong. But it's turned into a quagmire."
Historians, while loath to oversimplify wars, are turning to the subject with passion and precision. Pollsters are digging out old public opinion surveys looking for parallels. More than one-third of Americans surveyed today say they worry Iraq could become another Vietnam. And politicians from both major parties, especially those facing re-election next year, are worrying aloud about public perception and military prospects, much as they did when U.S. casualties began mounting in Vietnam.
While vastly different in scale, scope and magnitude of lives lost, the conflicts share several traits: sharp international criticism of U.S. action, uncertain prospects for stable self-governance and security, and a growing skepticism on the part of Americans back home.
Many Americans' frame of reference for comparing the wars is superficial, particularly for those younger than 30 who were born after Saigon fell to the communists in 1975.
Here are some of the similarities, differences and connections between the wars, as identified by experts outside and inside the military.
The enemy
The U.S. war in Vietnam ran from 1961 to 1973, but the war's origins began decades
earlier. As early as 1941, Ho Chi Minh sought Vietnam's independence from France,
but the French, supported by the U.S., fought to take back control. France gave
up in 1954, and Vietnam was divided into the communist North and capitalist
South. North Vietnamese insurgents increasingly invaded South Vietnam, and the
U.S. military began training South Vietnamese forces.
In 1961, President Kennedy called for a stronger U.S. presence and sent military advisers. President Johnson sent combat troops in 1965, but began looking for a way out after enduring the punishing Tet offensive of 1968. President Nixon expanded the war into Laos and Cambodia, relying heavily on attacks by air even as he began bringing ground troops home. The U.S. got out of the war formally in 1973. Saigon fell to the communists in 1975.
While Vietnam's civil war was driven by an anti-colonialism toward the French, the stated threat to the U.S. was the spread of communism.
In Iraq, which was not at civil war, the threat was leader Saddam Hussein and his supposed stash of weapons of mass destruction. With the American military's quick disposal of Saddam's regime in early 2003, what the U.S. considers a big-picture threat is more amorphous: international terrorism connected to Islamic fundamentalism.
U.S. foreign policy
In Vietnam, the U.S. sought to prop up a regime in South Vietnam. In Iraq, the
U.S. toppled the existing regime and is attempting to establish an elected government.
Karnow likens the war in Iraq to a "reverse domino theory: that if you
create peace, democracy and McDonald's hamburgers in Iraq, the rest of the Middle
East will rise up and follow."
In both wars, the U.S. was largely on its own for resources and faced criticism internationally.
The pace of war
The U.S. was slower into Vietnam than into Iraq. Financial aid to South Vietnam
began in the 1950s under President Eisenhower. Ground combat forces weren't
sent until 1965. In Vietnam, the U.S. tried to use South Vietnamese soldiers
before sending American forces; the reverse is true in Iraq.
In both wars, after about two years of U.S. ground presence and rising deaths, Americans began to sour, worry and criticize White House officials for false optimism. Vice President Dick Cheney's recent claim that the insurgency was in its "last throes" has been compared to "light at the end of the tunnel" sightings in Vietnam.
Newspaper coverage from the second half of 1967 describes a shift in which the administration realized there would be no quick, favorable outcome, and President Johnson's fellow Democrats realized the war could hurt them in the next election. Members of Congress were publicly getting cold feet.
This summer, President Bush's fellow Republicans are mostly sticking by him but starting to express concerns about public sentiment. "Public support in my state is turning," Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., said last month at a Senate hearing. "We have a chronic problem on our hands." said Rep. Walter Jones, R-N.C., once a leading advocate for the war who is no longer behind the president. He is now calling for a timetable for withdrawal. Democrats' early polling shows Republicans may lose ground in the midterm elections.
Public opinion
Second-guessing over Iraq happened faster than over Vietnam, said Frank Newport,
editor in chief of the Gallup Poll.
Gallup found a majority of Americans believing war in Iraq was "a mistake" as early as 2004, although opinion has bobbed up and down since. Last month, 53 percent called the war a mistake. A majority didn't call Vietnam a mistake until the summer of 1968, three years into U.S. ground fighting and seven years after Kennedy sent advisers.
After that 53 percent "mistake" rating for Vietnam, public opinion for the war never recovered.
President Johnson's approval ratings fell further than President Bush's so far. Johnson's high point (78 percent) was his inauguration after President Kennedy's 1963 assassination. It dropped to 36 percent in March 1968, and he did not seek re-election. Bush's peak (90 percent) followed the Sept. 11 attacks. His latest approval rating was 46 percent.
Manpower and costs
Iraq has involved far less manpower and fewer casualties. Recent Pentagon records
put the U.S. death toll in Iraq at 1,766. Looking at the first two and a half
years of U.S. ground combat in Vietnam, between 1965 and 1967, the death toll
was nine times higher. (The final U.S. death toll approached 58,000.) Wounded
rates were seven times higher. On a per-capita basis, these differences are
even higher, since the U.S. population has increased nearly 50 percent since
1965.
Money spent during the same time period was also higher during Vietnam, though the difference was not as great. Adjusted for inflation, Vietnam spending during the period was less than twice as high.
Justifications for force
In both wars, critics say justifications for triggering force were later proven
questionable.
The Gulf of Tonkin Resolution of 1964 authorizing force to defend U.S. troops and bombing raids on North Vietnam was based on "unequivocal" evidence of an unprovoked second attack on U.S. destroyers patrolling the gulf. Later, documents known as the Pentagon Papers revealed the administration knew a second attack (on destroyers on a secret mission) might instead have been a false alarm due to weather or bad sonar readings.
President Bush built a case for invading Iraq in the fall of 2002, saying there was evidence Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction and ties to al-Qaida. The search for weapons stashes ended with none found, and the 9/11 commission reported no evidence Saddam was collaborating with al-Qaida.
About the writer:
* The Bee's Margaret Talev can be reached at (202) 383-0010 or mtalev@mcclatchydc.com.