May 27, 2015, 06:00 pm
Yes, the Viet Cong and ISIS are similar
The more things change, the more they stay the same. As a sixty-something father of three, I am amazed how similar the run-up to U.S. involvement in Southeast Asia was in the 1960s compared to what America is up against today in the Middle East.
Half a century ago, then-President Lyndon Johnson, who was reluctant to commit troops to fight in South Vietnam, told his national security adviser McGeorge Bundy, "I just don't think it's worth fighting for."
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Johnson believed he had five options: The first was to destroy North Vietnam by deploying bombers; the second was to pack up U.S. forces and bring them home; a third choice was to gradually lose territory and suffer more casualties; the fourth option was to go on a wartime footing and call up the reserves; and, the last choice, which Johnson viewed as the middle ground, was to expand the war without declaring war.
I don't know for sure, but I'm guessing President Barack Obama believes he's had similar options in Iraq.
LBJ announced that history dictated the United States use its might to resist aggression. “We did not choose to be the guardians at the gate, but there is no one else,” he said. Johnson then ordered 210,000 American ground troops to Vietnam.
The Johnson administration's strategy -- which included search and destroy missions in the South and bombings in the North -- proved ineffective. Despite the presence of 549,000 American troops in Vietnam by 1967, the U.S. had failed to cut supply lines from the North along the Ho Chi Minh Trail, which bordered Laos and Cambodia. A year before the presidential election, America's goal was less about saving South Vietnam and more about avoiding a humiliating defeat.
Now cut to 2015 and consider what Defense Secretary Ash Carter said this past weekend about the Iraqi forces, whom we have trained, and their willingness to fight ISIS.
"What apparently happened this week in Ramadi was that the Iraqi forces just showed no will to fight. They were not outnumbered. In fact, they vastly outnumbered the opposing force, and yet they failed to fight, they withdrew from the site, and that says to me, and I think to most of us, that we have an issue with the will of the Iraqis to fight and defend themselves."
Carter then added, "So our efforts now are devoted to providing their ground forces with the equipment, the training and to try to encourage their will to fight, so that our campaign enabling them can be successful both in defeating ISIL and keeping ISIL defeated in a sustained way."
The secretary said the U.S. will continue efforts to provide equipment and training so Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi and his government can wage an effective battle against ISIS, but American support alone would be no guarantee of success.
"That is why I think we need to redouble our efforts to get -- hasten this delivery of equipment to them, their training to support Prime Minister Abadi," Carter noted. "We can't make this happen by ourselves, but we can assist it to happen, and we are counting on the Iraqi people to come behind a multi-sectarian government in Baghdad."
Talk about deja vu all over again.
The names Viet Cong and ISIS may be different, but their military tactics are similar. Ditto America's response to both. The U.S. failed in Southeast Asia in the 1960s and 1970s. I hate to ask, especially so close to Memorial Day, but what makes anyone think today's plan in Iraq is going to end any differently than it did in Vietnam?
Freidenrich writes from Laguna Beach, California. He has written extensively about the need to defeat ISIS in Iraq.
