Somnolence

Thu, 06 Jul 2006 12:32:34 +0100

I thought I had linked to this 2004 piece by Martin Van Creveld (professor of history at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem) before, when I first read it, but searching my archives I can find no trace. I'm making up for that by posting about it now as it strikes me, reading it today, that it's even more relevant than it was in 2004.

It describes Moshe Dayan's experiences (as a former Israeli commander, defence minister, and politician) reporting on the Vietnam war (in I think 1965) and contrasts it to the state of Iraq in 2004. In my opinion the two intervening years only make the comparisons more striking.

During the next few days his feeling that the Americans did not really know where they were going was reinforced. Everywhere he went he was received courteously enough. Everywhere he went the people he encountered were committed and extremely hard working. Intensely patriotic, they seemed proud of what they were doing and would not admit any errors. At one point he asked whether they had changed their methods since they first went to Vietnam and was told that they did not have to do so since everything worked much better than expected. Thereupon he noted that the US Military never made any mistakes; however, that comment he kept to himself. He was subjected to a flood of statistics – so and so many enemies killed, so and so many captured – meant to prove that the situation was well under control and that large parts of the territory of South Vietnam, as well as its population, were now safe against terrorist attack. As he noted, however, even a few elementary questions revealed that things were far from simple. Later he was to discover how right he had been in this; in the whole of South Vietnam there was not a single road that was really safe against the Viet Cong. Nor was there anything to prevent the enemy from returning even to those places that had been most thoroughly “cleansed” and “pacified.”

If you replace Vietnam with Iraq and Viet Cong. with insurgents (or freedom fighters -- your choice) this could have been written in the Times today. Later on it says:

Flying to Vietnam by way of Honolulu and Tokyo, Dayan summed up his impressions so far. Almost all of the Americans he had met were pleasant enough. None, however, could tell him how they were going to win the War. Most could not even give a convincing reason why the US had to be in Vietnam in the first place; at least one had said that, had President Johnson been presented with a way to get out, he would have jumped on it and withdrawn his troops. What really infuriated them was any attempt to question their motives. As far as they were concerned their cause was noble and just. The fact that the Communist States did what they could to support the Viet Cong and North Vietnam was bad but understandable. They were, however, puzzled by the attitude of their European allies. Those Europeans supposedly shared America’s liberal-democratic values. Still many of them were strongly critical. At a loss to explain the problem, the Americans attributed it to cowardice, envy, and the resentment that arose from Europe’s own recent failure in waging “Imperialist” war. He thought that, in ignoring the Europeans, the Americans were making a big mistake.

How true. What we read about Iraq today tells us:

Most Americans are pleasnt
They don't know why they are there
They don't how to win
Their cause is "noble and just"
They are infuriated when you question their motives
They are puzzled by liberal, democratic, European states not supporting them
They explain this in terms of cowardice and envy

What is scary for me, as a 30 something, is realising just how long the Vietnam conflict went on. In my ignorance I imagined it was a few years in the late 60's and early 70's. According to Wikipedia however, it was fought between 1959 and 1975.

By the time America pulled out they had suffered over 58,000 dead and nearly 3 times as many wounded. Total deaths approximated 1.4 million soliders from both sides and over a million wounded. I'm not sure how to read the figures for civillian dead and wounded but it seems to be somewhere between 4 and 8 million total.

For the sake of argument lets call it about 8 million total dead and wounded. What did they die for? What was won? Was it a worthwhile sacrifice to win hearts & minds and establish democracy? Well as far as I can tell it wasn't worthwhile in Vietnam and I have no reason to believe it will be in Iraq either.

Back in Paris Niceault had told him the “battle for hearts and minds” would not work, given that that the Vietnamese had their own cultural traditions – as well as “immensely beautiful women” – and that “Californization” was the last thing they wanted.

...

the campaign for hearts and minds did not work. Many of the figures being published about the progress it was making turned out to be bogus, designed to set the minds of the folks at home at rest. In other cases any progress laboriously made over a period of months was undone in a matter of minutes as the Viet Cong attacked, destroying property and killing “collaborators.” Above all, the idea that the Vietnamese people wanted to become Americanized was an illusion. All the vast majority really wanted was to be left alone and get on with their lives.

I certainly hope that the next American administration is prepared to admit that Iraq was a mistake and should never have happened because this will allow them to change course and to leave. With us gone who knows what will happen but it will be in the hands of the Iraqi's. If it goes the worse for us well... that is the price we pay for meddling and, perhaps, learning that price will inform and teach us not to listen to our leaders when they bay for foreign wars.

But of course the next administration will hold to the line democracy at the point of a sword and we'll still be in this mire 10 years from now looking at casualty figures that rival the bloodbath in Vietnam. For those that question this I would remind you that the numbers in Vietnam were achieved even though the North Vietnamese had no effective means to strike at foreign homelands.

But of course I am crazy. I think the answer is not to fight harder and be more vicious but to bow out and leave them alone. I think our leaders (on both sides) should explain themselves before a war crimes tribunal and the evidence.

Neither will happen of course. Let the somnolence continue.

Curiouser and Curiouser! on vietnam

Somnolence