The Commander Guy Screws Up History

George W. Bush's speech to the VFW in which he compared the current great adventure in Iraq with World War II in the Pacific, the Korean War, and the War in Vietnam had as much relevance to the actual history of these major events as his service with The Texas Air National Guard had with combat over North Vietnam.

Actually, it was the kind of historical misrepresentation that the Geek expects from a man who has probably read fewer books on the Vietnam imbroglio than the Geek has written. If the Commander Guy had written his speech in response to one of the Geek's old midterm exams in Freshman US history, it would have gotten the big Fox.

Get a grip on some true parallels between Iraq and Vietnam.

There was no need for either our intervention in the Vietnamese war or our invasion of Iraq. In 1964, President Johnson cast about for a justification to increase our already significant, and significantly counterproductive, presence in South Vietnam. He dusted off an old concept that had been lying around since the mid-years of the Eisenhower Administration.

It was called the domino theory. In the original Age of Ike version drafted in 1953-54, the line of falling dominoes ran from Indochina through India to the Persian Gulf states. The collapsing line was seen to threaten the flow of oil from the Gulf states to Europe, which would cripple NATO's ability to defend against the on rushing "Crimson Tide" as it crashed across the West German boarder.

In the new, improved version, the domino theory was recast to show a line of collapse from Laos and South Vietnam across the Pacific. No mention of the Persian Gulf. No talk of oil. No NATO versus the Red Army.

LBJ demanded that CIA prove the domino theory. The response to his demand came in the form of a short memo from Dr Sherman Kent, Director of the Board of National Estimates. Kent, a vastly experienced and able intelligence officer, was, in essence, the senior analyst in the Agency. In a few pages, (Kent knew that LBJ didn't like to read. A characteristic apparently shared by the Commander Guy.) the Kent Memorandum blew the domino theory out of the water several different ways. In short, Kent concluded that there were no national interests of the US in play in Indochina, and it wouldn't matter at all if "South Vietnam went communist."

That wasn't what LBJ wanted to hear. He read, initialled, and disregarded the memo. We went to war to prevent the domino theory from coming to reality.

History shows who was right on that one.

The fact that there was no need to invade Iraq is also clear from both declassified materials and the mass of information that has been available through open sources since long before Spring 2003. The US had no national interest in play in Iraq at that time. No need to bust down the door. No need to topple Saddam no matter how personally unpleasant he may have been.

History will show who was right on that one too.

There was another parallel that the Commander Guy neglected to reference in his speech. In both Vietnam and Iraq, the initial military doctrine as well as the overall American theory of victory were totally, absolutely and completely wrong. In Vietnam, it was our military doctrine, our theory of victory which insured our defeat.

Until very recently the same was happening in Iraq. Fortunately , there are some signs that the military has finally wakened to the smell of coffee, and we are waging counterinsurgency more effectively.

A third parallel was spun misleadingly by the president. As the Geek has written many times here and elsewhere, counterinsurgency is a war of political will between two opposing nations. Military operations, killing and breaking things, are merely means of stimulating and affecting political will. The Hanoi politburo understood this. US political will was eroded fast enough to protect the North Vietnamese from impending defeat.

So far the Iraqi insurgents and their cross-border advisers have not been as smart and insightful as the Hanoi leadership. But, they must be learning. They have access to the Internet, to satellite television, to US political news. Time may be on their side.

False history forced the Commander Guy to make false analogies. Saddam Hussein did not by any wild hallucination stand in relation to the 9/11 bombings as Japanese Prime Minister Tojo did to the attack on Pearl Harbor. The Korean War was, like those in Vietnam and Iraq, highly unpopular with the American public after the first few months. Nonetheless, it was a war we could not afford to lose.

Harry Truman knew that. So did Dwight Eisenhower. As a result the war was not lost. Neither was it won.

Vietnam was a war the US could afford to lose. We could walk away from the mess which we had in such large measure created. We could write off the deaths of 60,000 of our men. We could even be so cavalier in our dismissal of the war that our congress could and did cut off the flow of supplies so necessary for an army trained by us and promised support by us at the most critical time.

Congress could do the same in Iraq. We the People could do for Iraq what we did to Vietnam, write off our dead as a bad investment, walk away from a mess which we made after, of course, a few Pontius Pilate type washings of hands.

Get a grip on the analogy that the Commander Guy could have made, but didn't. Get a grip on an analogy which is rooted in history.

The war in Iraq is like the Korean War. We may not be able to win it. We must not lose it.