Iraq Zeroes in on Vietnam Analogy
by Nat Parry, consortiumnews.com

U.S. officials have suggested that the purpose of the world's largest U.S. embassy will be to influence, if not dictate, official Iraqi policy. At the Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing, Grossman was asked what the Bush administration would do if the Iraqi government pursues policies "that are in contradiction to what American foreign policy might be," such as forging closer ties with Iran or the Palestinian Authority. Grossman intimated that those policies would not be tolerated, which is "why we want to have an American ambassador in Iraq." [Washington Post, April 23, 2004]

Perhaps the closest comparison to the situation in Iraq is the Vietnam War. In that conflict, the U.S. was defending a fragile South Vietnamese government – which was widely seen as a puppet of the United States – against a home-grown insurgency that had previously fought occupiers from France and Japan. The only way the Saigon government could survive was with massive U.S. support.

But as former Defense Secretary Robert McNamara and other architects of the war now concede, they failed to understand the enemy and underestimated the determination to expel the American forces. In Iraq, the architects of the war assumed that the overwhelming military power of the United States, showcased by the "Shock and Awe" bombing campaign at the start, would be enough to scare the Iraqis into submission.

Full story here.