Almost from day one in Afghanistan and in Iraq the nattering nabobs of negativity brought up the ghost of Vietnam and invoked the word Quagmire. Obviously the Afghan example was ridiculous, the Iraq one has had more validity.
This, of course, is based on the precept that those who don't know history are condemned to repeat it.
I have never fully accepted the Vietnam/Iraq comparisons, but the article by Christoper Preblein todays National Post (subscriber only) titled Exiting Iraq made be think of taking the comparison to its natural conclusion (and to be far Mr. Preble does not make the comparison in the article).
...Early last year, I chaired a panel of experts tasked with examining America’s military occupation of Iraq. The result was the report, Exiting Iraq. Our unequivocal finding — that it was in America’s interest to quickly end the military occupation — was, at the time, dramatically at variance with the conventional wisdom, which presumed that the United States must remain in Iraq “as long as necessary.”
As long as necessary has proven too long.
...Withdrawal is not the only option, and leaving Iraq does carry serious risks. Although there are signs that the occupation is serving to increase ethnic tensions, many worry that the presence of U.S. troops is the only thing standing in the way of a civil war between the disparate groups in Iraq that are vying for power.
But the question ultimately comes down to costs and benefits: Can an alternative course of action, especially a continuation of the occupation, be crafted in such a way that it has some reasonable chance of permanently pacifying Iraq? Can the U.S. nation-building project in Iraq achieve its goals at a cost that will be acceptable to the American people?
Former national security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski declared last week that the United States could never achieve its goals of a democratic, stable and peaceful Iraq unless the American people were prepared to “commit 500,000 troops, spend [US]$200 billion a year, probably have a draft,” and have some form of wartime taxation. Brzezinski conceded that Americans “are not prepared to do that.”
If Zbigniew Brzezinzki is correct in his assesment then his is certainly correct in his conclusion. Mr. Preble alluded to the anxious chorus in the introduction of his article. By the 70's the exit Vietnam was a boistrous chorus which led to the Nikon Administration to negotiate such an exit. Of course at the time there were those who said that if the Americans left Vietnam the Communist North Vietnamese would overrun South Vietnam and the cure would be worse than the disease. Such people were shrugged off as fear mongers and besides the Americans committed to protecting South Vietnam in the Paris Accords. Of course the US stood by and watched as North Vietnam violated the agreement. The US also stood by and watched as Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge brutally murdered 1-2 million Cambodians in the vacuum that the US left behind.
If we are to believe that Iraq is President Bush's Vietnam (in the immortal words on Senator Kennedy) then wouldn't a rushed exit just as plausibly lead to ethnic cleansing in Iraq just as it did in Indochina? If the US left would there be any will to go in and stop such a genocide? Since the answer would be no would the UN stop it? Just look at Rwanda and Sudan for the answer to that.
But we could also take an alternate view of history.
The chief practical use of history is to deliver us from plausible historical analogies.
James Bryce
