The ideology of ignorance

Reading journalists’ reports from Iraq is like being sucked into a time warp where ancient incompetence comes flying at you with mocking vengeance. It’s a confirming experience as well -- a confirmation that policy makers will never learn as long as ideology is seen as capable of trumping history.

This time around the Bushies were the best-and-brightest “adults.” They were the steely-eyed realists who understood the world as it is and how to handle it. They alone -- the neocon grownups and hard-asses -- could overcome the wimpish stain of Vietnam on America’s ego.

Iraq I? The Balkans? Child’s play. Not nearly enough to refurbish our standing in the world and erase those 1960s remnants of failure. They would do it right, in a big way, in the Middle East, and start with Iraq. They could hardly wait for excuses. In fact, they didn’t wait. They just made some up.

Now we read tales – literally from the Independent press – that reveal how similar the screw-up in Iraq is to that of Vietnam decades ago. To wit …

“The extent of US failure to control Iraq is masked by the fact that it is too dangerous for the foreign media to venture out of central Baghdad…. US forces seldom venture into much of Iraq.” Needless to say, journalists and doughboys weren’t too fond of careening around South Vietnam’s unhealthy countryside, either, and for the same “scurry, sniff, flinch” reasons.

During our Fallujah assault, the Independent noted that as we were being told of that “victory,” “at the same moment an insurgent offensive had captured most of Mosul.” The same Whackamole game played out from village to village in … yep … Vietnam.

And there was this: “Washington [has] never appreciated the fact that the US occupation was so unpopular.” Why? “Their massive firepower meant they won any set-piece battle, but it also meant that they accidentally killed so many Iraqi civilians that they were the recruiting sergeants of the resistance.” Ask any surviving South Vietnamese peasant what he thought of US forces and their “massive firepower” and you’d get the same frame of mind.

So how do you deal with locals distrustful of your presence? Easy. “The solution for the White House has been to build up an Iraqi force to take the place of US soldiers” – many of whom have “mutinied … or refused to fight.” You of course will recall the vast cooperation we received from the South Vietnamese regular forces, which operated in a perpetual state of getting up to speed. And now the New York Times reports that in Iraq the “build up” may take a bit longer than projected. Well blow me away.

Just as familiar is this chestnut: “The US army [is] also too thin on the ground.” Again, the difference between the Iraq situation and Vietnam is one without a distinction. True, in Iraq, Washington never planned enough troops. So we’re losing. In Vietnam the brass was forever citing a precise number of troops to achieve victory, which Washington gave them. We still lost. The old right -- the neocons’ predecessors -- concocted the myth that Washington starved the military in Vietnam and that was the reason we lost. But the fact is, there are never enough troops to occupy a nation that doesn’t want to be occupied. Ask the Roman Empire, the British Empire, the Soviet Empire….

That, combined with the Independent’s concluding remarks, sum up the cause of failure redux: “The greatest failure of the US in Iraq is not that mistakes were made but that its political system has proved incapable of redressing them.”

There you go. That just about says it all. During Vietnam, Washington’s political system was enmeshed in the ideology of battling communism. It failed to comprehend the war’s nationalist roots and its fundamental construct of a civil war rather than expansionist aggression. So whatever wasn’t working was better than what they perceived as the alternative. And of course policy makers and the military always dangled victory in Vietnam. Let’s keep at it a little longer and we’ll have this mess cleaned up.

Ideology, entrenched thinking, false hope and fear of admitting failure and reversing course -- the combined causes of lasting pain in Vietnam.

As George C. Herring reflected in America’s Longest War: The Unites States and Vietnam, 1950-1975, “Failure never comes easily, but it comes especially hard when success is anticipated at little cost.”

[Please remember that your financial support -- in any amount -- of this site's running commentary is most needed and, of course, most appreciated. My thanks, P.M.]

Comments

[Andrew Murphy]

All I want to say is Bravo, for standing up and saying it like it is!

[Roddy McCorley]

One of the other parallels is broader philosophically: The Communist Menace was seen as some sort of monolithic conspiracy with interchangeable players. Never mind that the Chinese and the Russians mistrusted each other, or the Chinese and the Vietnamese -- as they had for generations. Nope, a commie is a commie and therefore fair game.

These days, with the benefit of hindsight, we now know that a raghead is a raghead and therefore fair game. Sure, the folks in the Administration know that the Iraqis had nothing to do with 9/11 -- but they also know that in the minds of certain ill-informed Americans (aka "The Base") a ra-- well, I've already made my point and it doesn't need to be phrased that way twice. You know what I'm getting at.

The fact that they do know better, but play to and encourage the ignorance of their fellow citizens makes it all the more cynical. And, to my untutored eye, treasonous.

[Donald from Hawaii]

Roddy McCorley: "These days, with the benefit of hindsight, we now know that a raghead is a raghead and therefore fair game."

I believe, sir, that the proper ethnic perjorative is Haji, which of course is short for Haji Baba ... =:-0

[Saab Lofton]

The bottom line is right-wingers won't admit they're ususally wrong. Flat Earth? Wrong. Center of the universe? Wrong. Slavery? Wrong. Stealing Native land? Wrong. Forbidding women from voting? Wrong.
Segregation? Wrong. Nuclear proliferation? Wrong. Drug War? Wrong. Magic bullet? Wrong. Vietnam? Wrong. Weapons of mass destruction/links with Al-Queda? Wrong.

The right-wing assumes that, at some point, they'll wind up like Marie Antoinette if she ever met Stalin. But to assume makes an 'ass' out of 'u' and 'me' (get it?). Not all leftists are out for blood and vengeance ...

In this Star Trek episode, a Wall Street stock broker (Stalin bait if there ever was) was frozen for 300 years until a cure for what ailed him was found. Upon being defrosted in the future Roddenberry depicted ...(http://www.lasvegascitylife.com/articles/2004/01/14/scorched_earth/fear_no_evil/fearnoevil.txt)
... when everyone barters their labors of love and a musician would no more be told in 2267 A.D. to work a "day job" any more than a black man today would be advised to pick cotton, the stock broker has the following conversation with Capt. Picard:

Picard: "People are no longer obsessed with the accumulation of 'things'. We have eliminated hunger, want, the need for possessions. We have outgrown our infancy."

Offenhouse: "Then where's the challenge?"

Picard: "The challenge, Mr. Offenhouse, is to improve yourself."

And therein lies the problem: Given the bully, macho mentality of your Republican relatives, they can't see themselves needing improvement. They're rich, white and pretty ... what more could anyone ask?

By the way, Debtors' Planet by W.R. Thompson
(http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0671883410/103-6487097-7601467?v=glance)
shows what happened to Offenhouse. Tell your paranoid libertarian friends to shut the hell up, 'cause Starfleet didn't sent him to a "camp" of some kind. All they did was offer Offenhouse the only job a wheeler and dealer like his ass could do in the ever-ethical Federation: That of a diplomat. Instead of talking folks out of their money, Offenhouse talks whole worlds out of going to war. Perfect. How sweet is that?!

We could engage in that kind of job creation now, if the rich wanted to. And that's what being a left-winger is all about, waiting for the rich to either grow a brain or a heart.

[Stephen Kriz]

This short but poignant column, should be required reading for all Americans. It was also on the Common Dreams website.

Several points reverberate:

"..there are never enough troops to occupy a country that doesn't want to be occupied."

POW!

"The greatest failure of the US in Iraq is not that mistakes were made but that its political system has proved incapable of redressing them."

BAM!

"Ideology, entrenched thinking, false hope and fear of admitting failure and reversing course -- the combined causes of lasting pain in Vietnam."

BLAM!

A one-two-three knockout punch and the Bush-Cheney Administration is on the floor, bleeding from every orifice....

Well done, Mr. Carpenter!

[Silverbird]

I heard a talk recently where the speaker said that a former CIA employee and now a hired security person in Iraq told the speaker that he was not going to work in Iraq any more. "Its over," said the person, "no Americans can work in Iraq anymore."

American cannot win wars anymore, so we should just stay home. It is not our dedicated fighting men -- its their civilian and military leadership that tries to run an army like a corporation and forgets that the whole purpose of an army is to win. The whole purpose of our army is political -- to scare everyone else into adopting "Democracy."

The sooner we realize that we should leave NOW, the better off Iraq and the USA will be.

[Art Durand "Whitebear"]

Relatively few careers were ruined during the Viet Nam war. Is it to be the same this time? Will the lairs and evil doers and war criminals go free once more?
"What are their names and on what streets do they live?...." Crosby, Stills & Nash

[Robert Myers]

"The Communist Menace was seen as some sort of monolithic conspiracy with interchangeable players. Never mind that the Chinese and the Russians mistrusted each other, or the Chinese and the Vietnamese -- as they had for generations. Nope, a commie is a commie and therefore fair game."

Spot on. Anyone in the Intelligence community or Government for that matter, who argued otherwise were dismissed and passed over. There was the opinion of many in the OSS who had worked with Ho while fighting the Japanese in WWII , that he was first and foremost a nationalist who simply wanted the French out. That there was a long history of mistrust between China and Vietnam which made a cooperative effort of the two unlikely. Then, as now, anything that didn't support the case for war ( red scare- domino theory, then or 9/11 -wmd, now) was ridiculed or ignored. One of the more disgusting aspects of the current mess, is to hear people claim that no one could have predicted what has happened. That any complaining now is simply 20, 20 hind site , second guessing. Nothing is further from the truth but the people who were predicting exactly what has happened were not given access to the debate.

[Bill Trembley]

A great explanation of what may go down in American history as the worst foreign policy blunder of all time. In 1968 the American people realized what futility is was to continue fighting the war in Vietnam as a result of the Tet offensive; it still took five more years before the last American soldier left. And since then more factual evidence has been uncovered that the military, the CIA, and the administration falsified numbers concerning the order of battle of the Viet Cong and North Vietnam to justify the policy. We have evidence of that now with the Downing Memo. Is it going to take five more years of death and destruction before this policy of madnees is ended? Five more years-imagine what our country and our world will be like. Just imagine---