Chris Hitchens, fresh from perhaps his first blockbuster book success, is taking a break from his book tour to write on his second-favorite topic after religion, the war in Iraq. A relentless supporter of the war, Hitchen’s latest piece in the Guardian shows how he is well and truly pissed that President Bush invoked Vietnam in the latest speech on the war. Hitchen’s says the analogy couldn’t be more incorrect: “As my hand smacks my brow, and as I ask myself not for the first time if Mr Bush suffers from some sort of political death wish, I quickly restate the reasons why he is wrong to join with his most venomous and ignorant critics in making this case.” Here they are, slightly abridged:
1) The Vietminh were allies of the United States and Britain against the Axis during the Second World War. The Iraqi Baath party was on the other side.
2) Ho Chi Minh quoted Thomas Jefferson in proclaiming Vietnam’s own declaration of independence, a note that has hardly been struck in Baathist or jihadist propaganda.
3) Vietnam was resisting French colonialism and had defeated it by 1954 at Dien Bien Phu; the real ‘war’ was therefore over before the US even landed troops in the country.
4) The subsequent conflict was fought to preserve an imposed partition of a country striving to reunify itself; if anything, the Iraqi case is the reverse.
5) The Vietnamese leadership appealed to the UN: the Saddamists and their jihadist allies murdered the first UN envoy to arrive in Iraq, saying that he was fit only for death because he had assisted in securing the independence of East Timor from Indonesia.
6) Vietnam never threatened any other country; Iraq under Saddam invaded two of its neighbours.
7) Vietnam was a victim of chemical and ecological warfare; Iraq was the perpetrator of such illegal methods and sought to develop even worse nuclear and biological ones.
8) Vietnam neither sponsored nor encouraged terrorist tactics beyond its borders; Iraq under Saddam was a haven for Abu Nidal and other random killers and its ‘insurgents’ now proclaim war on Hindus, Jews, unbelievers and the wrong sort of Muslim.
9) There has for years been a ‘people’s war’ fought by genuine guerrillas in Iraq; it is the war of liberation conducted by Kurdish fighters against genocide and dictatorship. Inconveniently for all analogies, these fighters are ranged on the side of the US and Britain.
10) The Iraqi Communist party and the Iraqi labour movement advocated the overthrow of Saddam (if not necessarily by Bush), a rather conspicuous difference from the situation in Indochina. These forces still form a part of the tenuous civil society that is fighting to defend itself against the parties of God.
11) The American-sponsored regimes in Vietnam strongly identified with the Catholic minority to the exclusion of secular, nationalist and largely Buddhist forces. The elected government in Iraq may have a sectarian hue, and the American embassy works as a solvent upon religious and ethnic divisions rather than an inciter of them.
12) President Eisenhower said if there was a fair election in Vietnam, Ho Chi Minh would have won; the Islamist in Iraq declared that democracy was an alien concept and threatened all voters with murder.
13) The Americans in Vietnam employed methods (‘search and destroy’; ‘body count’) and weapons (napalm, Agent Orange) that targeted civilians. Today, it’s the proxies of neighbouring dictatorships or of international gangster organisations who indiscriminatly kill civilians.
- BROWSE / IN TIMELINE
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- » Kaplan on Iraq and Vietnam
COMMENTS / 15 COMMENTS
Admiral Waugh added these pithy words on 28 Aug 07 at 4:19 amBless Chris’ heart, but the point of the comparison had nothing to do with any of those points. President Bush didn’t say “these two situations ARE EXACTLY alike.” I do appreciate Chris’ distinguishing between the two, because he makes really important points, but the point is that Bush drew the comparison for the purposes of showing how a pullout would be bad. End of story.
Curzon added these pithy words on 28 Aug 07 at 6:20 amYeah, people have really latched on to the “Bush compares Iraq to Vietnam” headline, not the substance of the talk.
Matt Schiavenza added these pithy words on 28 Aug 07 at 7:48 amHitch wrote something similar a few years ago as a riposte to anti-war critics who called Iraq the second-coming of Iraq. His comparison made sense then, but now what Admiral Waugh said pretty much sums it up: Bush was talking about consequences of withdrawal, not the merits of going to war itself.
chriswaugh_bj added these pithy words on 28 Aug 07 at 12:33 pmWhat?
?
“1) The Vietminh were allies of the United States and Britain against the Axis during the Second World War. The Iraqi Baath party was on the other side.”
Sure, but Saddam was just as much a creation of America’s own CIA as Manuel Noriega and Augusto Pinochet. I suppose I could also mention another currently infamous personage….
“7) Vietnam was a victim of chemical and ecological warfare; Iraq was the perpetrator of such illegal methods and sought to develop even worse nuclear and biological ones.”
Well, first of all, Iraq was not the perpetrator, Saddam’s regime was. Secondly, where the hell did Saddam get the WMD from? The name Donald Rumsfeld suddenly springs to mind….
“12) President Eisenhower said if there was a fair election in Vietnam, Ho Chi Minh would have won; the Islamist in Iraq declared that democracy was an alien concept and threatened all voters with murder.”
And yet Iraqi elections result in people with Shi’ite Islamist and pro-Iran leanings winning substantial numbers of votes.
“13) The Americans in Vietnam employed methods (”˜search and destroy’; ”˜body count’) and weapons (napalm, Agent Orange) that targeted civilians. Today, it’s the proxies of neighbouring dictatorships or of international gangster organisations who indiscriminatly kill civilians.”
Seems to me a hell of a lot of people, especially those of the Iraqi persuasion, would disagree quite vehemently with that point.
I don’t really want to be picking a fight, it just seems to me that Hitchens’ views, as presented, are so full of huge holes that a large number of truck bombs could be driven through with room to spare for the odd nutter with an AK47.
lirelou added these pithy words on 28 Aug 07 at 2:43 pmWhen it comes to Vietnam, and especially Uncle Ho and the Party, Hitchens is an idiot.
Mark added these pithy words on 28 Aug 07 at 5:04 pmI think some of you, as well as Bush miss the point: if the US did not withdraw, they would still be fighting in Vietnam. Yes, there were executions and re-education after the withdrawal (defeat). But the alternative, endless war, would have been worse.
The US faces the same thing in Iraq and Afghanistan. Since I hope for the end of the nation-state system, the longer the US stays in Iraq, the better for me, as the defeat will just be that much larger.
Curzon added these pithy words on 29 Aug 07 at 1:13 amI’d love to hear Lirelou’s reaction to Mark’s comment…
snow added these pithy words on 29 Aug 07 at 1:26 amSorry Mark, I don’t think that’s true about the withdrawal being a defeat. The US withdrew most of its military and provided monetary and limited military support (advisors and such, I think) for the South, which was holding its own quite nicely. What caused the fall was the Democratic controlled Congress cutting off funding to the South and thus it fell. The US withdrawal was not a loss (it wasn’t a win, either), the cutting off of funding was. I think Kaplan touches on this in his article if I’m not mistaken, and I heard this from a military historian friend, also.
Mark added these pithy words on 29 Aug 07 at 1:48 pmSo without US taxes diverted to South Vietnam, the ARVN lost their will to fight? If you honestly believe that the South Vietnamese would have defeated the communists with some more money, I really won’t try to take away your delusion.
von Kaufman-Turkestansky added these pithy words on 29 Aug 07 at 6:58 pmWhat’s the problem? Just declare a resounding victory, get a few nice photo ops, make sure the media parrots the “we won in Iraq” line, and leave. In a few years no one will be the wiser. Then later Oliver Stone will make a movie about it, but by that time it’ll be old news.
The line about Mr Hitchen’s head smacking his brow made him sound rather geeky.
lirelou added these pithy words on 29 Aug 07 at 8:49 pmIf Mark were to argue that the war was unconstitutional and that we shouldn’t have been there in anything other than an advisory effort by regular forces (well within the Prez’s constitutional authority), I’d completely agree with him. I was there because it was my profession. No draftee’s congressman ever voted for (or against) the Vietnam War. The ARVN actually beat the PAVN in 1972, but they did so with US air power. They were crushed by a mechanized army in 1975 because they did not have that level of air support.
We may have been better off supporting Ho in the early days, especially as it would have given Uncle Ho’s government a chance to flounder on its own, but there was no incentive to do so. Truman only decided to recognize Tito because of Churchill, as it was the latter who convinced Truman that Tito was a nationalist first, and that recognition of his regime would help the U.S. shut off the Yugoslav border to Greek communists engaged in a civil war against their government. (and it worked!) My only argument with Mark are his implications that Vietnam was a war between the “Vietnamese” and the Americans. It was between two legally recognized Vietnamese states, and to quote a line from the The Sadness of War, ...why do we call them puppet troops, when they fight so hard…” (Uncle Ho, by the way, was not a nationalist first. Indeed, his position within the party depended upon his reputation as a long time member of the Communist International, who had spent his youth outside of Vietnam as a revolutionary. Indeed, he had to get Joe Stalin’s permission to return to his own home. The fact that he even asked should tell Mark something.)
Mark has never sat down with a member of the former Communist guerrilla structure whose husband was executed by the Diem government, who looked him in the eye and stated that had she only known what was going to happen after “reunification”, she would have supported the Diem government as the lesser of two evils.
Simply put, Indochina was not on our screen in 1945, except for a miniscule OSS effort that was fleeting. By 1975, it was off our screen again, except for those of us who had developed an unhealthy fondness for the place and its peoples.
“pham-trai mai mot luoui guom” – (swords best sharpen on wind and dust)
snow added these pithy words on 30 Aug 07 at 1:09 amMark, dont be ridiculous. Money has nothing to do with will to fight. Money pays for weaponry, training and logistics. We cut this off and the South fell. The North was well funded by the Chinese and Russia, so in effect, we took our boys and toys home, saying we didn’t want to play anymore, handing the North an easy victory. For your information, the South had done relatively well in holding off the communists with US support. The South was not trying to reconquer the North, they were defending the South against the communists and had some victories to show for it. If the US had continued to provide support, perhaps the South could have held them off for a long time (like North and South Korea?), but who knows? Instead, the US chose to cut and run and betray an ally. I agree with lirelou, maybe they should have let Uncle Ho take over early on and fail on his own policies.
Mark added these pithy words on 30 Aug 07 at 1:56 amHaving lived in SE Asia for a few years colors my view that the US has no business killing foreigners unless they directly threaten the US, which hasn’t been the case for decades, if not longer. I enjoy reading the viewpoint of nationalists like yourselves, as I believe the nation-state is becoming obsolete, hopefully soon, and I want to see what that inevitable force is up against. Kaplan is probably right about only one thing: increased tribalism.
Curzon added these pithy words on 30 Aug 07 at 5:27 am
the US has no business killing foreigners unless they directly threaten the US, which hasn’t been the case for decades, if not longer.What was 9/11?
Mark added these pithy words on 30 Aug 07 at 1:54 pm9/11 was a criminal act by non-state actors and tribalists, whose mastermind was not pursued and is still presumably alive. If the federal gov’t wants to protect its people (a big if) they should simply declare Islam itself a terrorist org., and isolate and deport Muslims. Attacking secular Iraq was just dumb.
As someone wanting the end of the USG (because I want more freedom), I am glad Iraq was attacked, as this debacle will speed along the federal gov’ts demise. More chaos please.
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