The media perception of Iraq as Vietnam

I'll wade right into this one... What follows is unavoidably an oversimplification and shouldn't be understood as applying in detail to every member of the press corps but as an attempt to cover the most salient points. Call it a straw man if you will, but please propose a more accurate way, viable within the timeframe of this class, to frame the argument :-P

I believe the frequency of Vietnam analogies, which have appeared in the media since October of 2001 up until the Taliban were defeated and then resumed perhaps two weeks into the invasion of Iraq, is a good indicator of desire for a Tet moment among a wide swathe of the MSM (mainstream media). The use of the Iraq/Vietnam analogy communicates more than a perceived similarity between conflicts in far-off lands. Of course that is what makes analogy so effective; explaining one thing by reference to another, conveying an extensive set of unspoken connotations and opinions. Superficially, Vietnam and Iraq might well look similar; an ideologically driven insurgency, enemy logistics trains operating from across the border of neighboring nations, and accusations of abuse and war crimes. In this case however, the analogy does not survive any more detailed comparison of those three points of similarity.

In Vietnam, the VC were only a small part of the enemy forces which were primarily the North Vietnamese Army, not insurgents despite the conter-culture allure of the image of black pajama clad rebels defeating the mighty United States. Similar to what happened to the French in May 1954, a perception of futility after a particular battle had much to do with the winding down of US involvement rather than actual weakness of military position. Further distinguishing the two, is the fact that the majority of "insurgents" in Iraq are foreigners, not Iraqis, and their most visible leader is Jordanian, Al Zarqawi whereas in Vietnam, while there were Chinese advisors, the Vietnamese themselves comprised the overwhelming majority of enemy forces.

Supplies to the NVA from China were particularly plentiful, especially after 1953 with the end of the Korean War which allowed the Chinese to divert more resources to fighting the French in Vietnam, culminating in the battle at Dien Bien Phu (See Bernard Fall's Hell in a Very Small Place) and setting the stage for the gradual escalation of the US involvement, whereas the insurgents in Iraq are backed by no formal military and are compelled to subsist upon whatever they may steal and the largesse of Syria etc, hardly comparable to the supply train which kept General Giap's troops equipped.

Since late 2001, Camp Delta at Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib have achieved mythic proportions in some quarters. In 1971, the content of John Kerry's Winter Soldier testimony was similarly regarded as revealing the ugly, abusive underside of our military's operations, with Peter Arnett's famous quote "We had to destroy the village in order to save it" as a pithy summarization of US conduct. Two major distinctions dispel this perceived similiarity. The accusations of the VVAW and Winter Soldier testimony have since been revealed as a mixture of hearsay, propaganda, exaggeration, and in some cases outright lies by individuals who either never served in Vietnam or never served at all. And despite much searching for its source, Arnett's quote remains unattributed and Arnett himself was disgraced for appearing in what was effectively a propaganda interview on Iraqi state TV at the outset of the current Iraq war. From the recent kerfuffle over handling of the Koran at Gitmo to the vile behavior of MPs at Abu Ghraib, the investigations of abuse originated within and were pursued by the military itself, as much as Seymour Hersh and other media figures would like the credit for "breaking the story". Compounded by the irony that most "abuse" of Korans was apparently carried out by Gitmo detainees themselves, distorted media presentation more than the substance of the accusations themselves provides the most similarity. In short, the two are similar, but not in the way they are frequently portrayed as comparable.

Use of the Vietnam/Iraq analogy ends up saying more about the speaker than the subject. Michael Lind's Vietnam: The Necessary War offers an excellent analysis of Vietnam, neither beholden to ideals of the left or the right which further undermines the comparison between Iraq and Vietnam. As for the matter of revolutions and what distinguishes them from terrorism etc, that will have to wait until tomorrow. I'm done with the soap box for today :-P