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In what ways is post-Saddam Iraq similar to Vietnam? What about the Philippines, World Wars, or other conflicts in history? 
(Also see "Lessons of History" pre-war FAQ section)

The optimists look at post-war Iraq as another Marshall Plan for post-World War II, where generous American aid help rebuild war torn Europe and make or keep them our allies.  Others point to Vietnam, where the administration goals seem to be what I started to call in mid-September 2003 a sort of "Iraqization", hoping the Iraqis will soon be ready to take over their country.  Though Vietnam is the most popular war with which to compare Iraq, about half of this lengthy chapter is dedicated to the Spanish-American War, World War II, and other thought-provoking parellels.

This echoes President Nixon's Vietnamization policy of the early 1970s, when the President was withdrawing U.S. troops and urging South Vietnam to fight for themselves. Another Vietnam parallel is the overtly-optimistic view of progress by the U.S. administration and the pressure to stay so the cause and deaths will not be in vain.

Those readers over 40  will recall many of these striking similarities with Vietnam, even the same language used by the administration today and in the mid-60s.
http://www.commondreams.org/cgi-bin/print.cgi?file=/views03/0919-12.htm

The Sunday Chicago Tribune of December 2006 reprinted a speech from Nixon. The November 1969 speech, just over 37 years ago, sounds eerily familiar to Bush and the administration. Nixon says, "The war was causing deep division at home and criticism from many of our friends as well as our enemies abroad. In view of these circumstances, there were some who urged that I end the war at once by ordering the immediate withdrawal of all American forces...I had to think of the effect of my decision on the next generation and on the future of peace and freedom in America and the world...The question facing us today is: Now that we are in the war, what is the best way to end it?" A few months before President Nixon "could only conclude that the precipice withdrawal of American forces from Vietnam would be a disaster not only for South Vietnam but for the US and for the cause of peace. For the South Vietnamese, our precipice withdrawal would inevitably allow the Communists to repeat the massacres...A nation cannot remain great it it betrays it allies and lets down its friends...Ultimately, this would cost more lives. It would not bring peace; it would bring more war.

Turning to the future, Nixon continued, "We have adopted a plan...in cooperation with the South Vietnamese for the complete withdrawal of all US combat ground forces...This withdrawal will be made from strength and not from weakness....I have not and do not intend to announce the timetable for our program have chosen" a course which "is not the easy way. It is the right way." Nixon spoke again of a "plan for peace" and "winning the peace." He concluded, "The more support I can have from the American people, the sooner that pledge can be redeemed; for the more divided we are at home, the less likely the enemy is to negotiate at Paris."

Other Vietnam parallels are drawn in a late December Post op-ed, with quotes from Bush and Johnson compared. The military comparisons are deemed few, according to the veteran Vietnam correspondent, Robert Kaiser. http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A33485-2003Dec26?language=printer

Robert Kaiser's "Iraq Isn't Vietnam, But They Rhyme" is a thoughtful, detailed analysis.   http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A33485-2003Dec26?language=printer Excerpts include:  "Are we caught in another quagmire?...Have we lost our way again?"  He compares President Bush in August of 2003 with President Johnson in 1966.

Bush:  "'Our military is confronting terrorism in Iraq and Afghanistan...so our people will not have to confront terrorist violence in New York or St. Louis or Los Angeles.'"  Johnson:  "If we don't stop the Reds in South Vietnam, tomorrow they will be in Hawaii, and next week they will be in San Francisco." Kaiser, a Vietnam war correspondent with the Post, also sees the context for the two wars as very different.  He goes on to discuss the domino theory, wars of choice vs. war of pressure.  "And yet, there is a way in which Iraq really is like Vietnam, one worth thinking about.  It involves ends and means, creditably and capability...We face a similar problem in Iraq, where the original stated objective was to topple a cruel dictator and seize his [WMD].  But the WMD have not been found.  If those weapons never turn up, that would eliminate the key advertised purpose of the war."  Kaiser's last two pages detail comparison in terms of  official optimism, American isolation on the ground and in the world, and the primacy of American political considerations.  He concludes, "Vietnam undermined the U.S. economy, early destroyed the U.S. Army and contributed to a generation or more of public cynicism and distrust of government.  There are no grounds today for predicting consequences as grave from the war in Iraq.  Indeed, a successful outcome, including a new democratic Iraq remains possible.  But the rhymes should give us pause." 

See below for more comparisons of Johnson and Bush.

Is Iraq in mid-April 2004 like Vietnam in January of 1968, after the North's Tet Offensive? The University of Chicago's professor Marvin Zonis (Chicago Tribune, 4/9/04) sees a "disquieting parallel...With  the Tet Offensive, the American public turned against the war, the mood within this country turned bitter and the president did not stand for re-election."  Echoed a lead New York Times editorial of April 11, though the North Vietnamese lost Tet militarily, "the offensive marked the beginning of a shift in the attitude of the American public.  Slowly, former supporters of the war began asking what the point was."

A mid-April New York Times analysis of "The Parallels of Wars Past" sees the cities of Iraq as impenetrable as the jungles of Vietnam.  Writes James Bennet (4/10/04), both are "a test of American resolve against a rising international menace", Communism and Terrorism.   

"Iraq as Vietnam" provides an answer to the question, "What did you learn from the war, Grandpa?"  The Iraqi insurrection looks like "Little Tet" to author and veteran journalist William Greider, writing in The Nation.  "It shocks Americans in much the same way [because] the indigenous people we 'liberated' do not love us....Every day I hear echoes from the past...'stay the course'...that four decades ago was understood, ironically, as an expression of official obstinacy and ignorance."

Greider learned that "the government sometimes lies to the people--big lies with awful consequences--and sometimes government begins to believe its own lies...I also learned that military conquest, regardless of the stated intentions, seldom succeeds in creating democracy." He feels that the two war are different in that their were protests at home and abroad before the Iraq war began and "virtually every element of what has gone wrong in Iraq was cited by those demonstrators as among the reason they opposed the march to war...How could such forgetfulness prevail, especially among a smart, engaged group like news people?  It is perhaps not as sinister as it sounds.  Most of the men and women now in charge of the news processes were boys and girls during Vietnam."

"Iraq as Vietnam" concludes by responding to the question of a U.S. field commander, "Tell me how this ends?"  How it ought to end, feels Greider, is "declare victory and get out.  Withdraw now, not later, as responsibly as this can be arranged.  That wise formation was first proposed during the bloodiest Vietnam years by the lat Senator George Aiken, a Vermont Republican.  Neither LBJ nor Nixon had the courage to listen.  "Stay the course." "Light at the end of the tunnel."  "Peace with honor."  The war continued for years, with many more deaths on both sides and eventual defeat for our.  US military power can proceed now to pulverize the cities of Iraq, but there is no victory ahead, only more, killing, and when it is over, a swell-earned sense of shame."

"Iraq is Not Vietnam.  It May Become Worse", by Robert Freeman, takes a detailed look at other comparisons.  He is pleased that "a virtual cottage industry has sprung up comparing Iraq with Vietnam."  Examining both shallow and deep similarities, Freeman is most concerned with the deeper similarities, "those that shape policy and drive alternatives."  First, both Iraq and Vietnam were founded on lies, from WMD and connections to Al Qaeda to complicity in 9/11 to cakewalk to "welcomed as liberators."

Second, both wars became guerillas wars.  Civilians are alienated and their deaths/injuries give increasing support for the resistance, "an inescapable and fateful cycle."  Third, both wars were "against victim nations already deeply scarred by colonial domination."  Fourth, in a strategic context, both wars were fought "in the vanguard of grand U.S. strategy.".  Freeman recalls that in 1965 before the massive escalation that would make the war irreversible, Pentagon briefers told President Johnson that the true US goals in Vietnam were, "'70% to avoid a humiliating US defeat; 20% to keep South Vietnam (and adjacent territories) from Chinese hands; 10% to permit the people of Vietnam a better, free way of life.'  This is the smoking gun of the ideological aversion to withdrawal."  This fear of a "humiliating defeat" may make Iraq worse than Vietnam. 

The article concludes, "Because of Bush' strategic commitment to global hegemony and his messianic ideological persuasions, the US cannot get out of Iraq; but because of the realities of colonialism, guerilla war, phony democracy, and the foundation of lies to justify it all, it will not be able to win either.  Does this sound familiar?" 

The 40th Anniversary of the Gulf of Tonkin in August 2004, brought us further reminders who a President who mislead the public into war.  As tapes of LBJ have shown us, he knew that U.S. forces were not attacked in the Gulf.  Some in Congress regret their "blank check" vote in '64, among them Senator Robert Byrd. Also see NPR's Morning Edition for its August 6 report. Some of the parallels included: --Intelligence officers being pressured by the administration; --The President knew he was stretching the truth as the war began; --Strong support for a Congressional resolution. http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0419-11.htm

Michael Kinsley of the Post recalls that compared to Vietnam's "out now" protestors, "What seems to be today's antiwar position--it was a terrible mistake and it's a terrible mess, but we can't just walk away from it--was actually the pro-war position during the Vietnam era.  In fact, it was close to official government policy for more than half the length of that war."  

Kinsley continues, we are too focused on "credibility" as in Vietnam "A superpower that announces a goal and gives up without achieving it will not be super for long,  In the end, Nixon and Kissinger added fiver year to the length of the Vietnam war, and we lost it anyway.  Did that add to our superpower credibility?  Well, maybe.  He concludes, "An American general in Vietnam famously said,  'We had to destroy the village to save it.'

This has become the definitive expression of the macabre futility of war.  Last week we destroyed an entire city [Fallujah] to save it (progress!) but our capacity to find that sort of thing ironic seems to have become shriveled and harmless.":  
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A64027-2004Nov19?language=printer("It Hurts, but Don't Stop", 11/21/04). 

In December 2004, columnist Derrick Jackson (also see "Op-Ed Views" section) saw the medals awarded to Tenet, Bremer, and Franks as reminiscent of Vietnam.  President Johnson handed out the meals "over a war in which 58,000 American soldier died for a losing cause. Bush is handing out medals and humanizing his defense secretary for an invasion in which 1300 US soldiers and untold thousands of Iraqi civilians have died under false pretense and bombastic predictions of shock, awe, and 'catastrophic success' that blew up in the administration's face like a roadside bomb.  Three-and-a-half decades after Vietnam, Bush is repeating Johnson's act of awarding medals to the architects of delusion as the pawns of delusion die in Iraq." 

The head of Iraqi Veterans Against the War, is former Marine Mike Hoffman.  He sees Iraq "just like Vietnam:  the longer we stay there, the more anti-American sentiment will be drummed up, the more organized the insurgency becomes.  

Media expert and author Norman Solomon, a critic of the pre-war intelligence failures, writes in March 2005 that "powerful pundits keep telling us that a swift pullout of US troops would be irresponsible...Such acceptance is part of what Martin Luther King Jr. called 'the madness of militarism.'...Throughout the 1960s and into the 1970s, a prevailing argument was that removing US troops would be a betrayal of US responsibility to the people of South Vietnam. (My Lai massacre at left). Today, likewise, opposition to a swift US pullout from Iraq is often based on the idea that the American military must stay because of a responsibility to the people of Iraq."  He then points out the at polls show an increasing majority of Iraqis want US troops to leave.

Solomon later writes of public support for war based on the wounded.  "Historically, mounting US casualties have not stopped most Americans from supporting a length war--if that war seemed justified.  Through World War II, public support remained above 75%.   In sharp contra, the public backing for the Vietnam War, with far fewer total dead and injured, spiral downward to 30%.  

In May 2005 came the uncovering of Watergate's "Deep Throat" as the source for the Woodward/Bernstein stories in the Washington Post from 1972-1974 under President Nixon.  Bob Herbert of the Times sees new parallels between Iraq and Vietnam.  "The lessons of Watergate and Vietnam are that the checks and balances embedded in the national government by the founding fathers (and which the Bush administration is trying mightily to destroy) are absolutely crucial if American-style democracy is the survive, and that a truly fee and unfettered press (which the Bush administration is trying mightily to intimidate) is as important now as its' even been." .

Richard Cohen of the Washington Post looked at Vietnam and Iraq in June of 2005 in "Iraq is beginning to look a lot like Vietnam."

John Nicholas in The Nation of mid-July recalls Sen. Gaylord Nelson (D-WI)) who was concerned in 1964 of 16,000 US "advisers" in Vietnam.  Before the Gulf of Tonkin, Nelson said, "I don't think that additional men and materials and economic aid...is going to solve the problem of South Vietnam."  His call for an "orderly withdrawal" was the first from the Senate floor.  "Obviously, you need my vote less than I need my conscience."  In 1973 as the US was finally withdrawing, Nelson concluded, "Let us hope that our political leaders in both political parties have leaned a lesson from this mistaken enterprise and will not involve the country again in a civil war where the vital interest of this country are not at stake." 

In mid-September 2005, U.S. forces were using "body counts" to proclaim success, much as the US military had done in Vietnam. 

As Syria was seen in the fall of 2005 as public enemy number one with regard to Iraq, I am reminded of a time 25 years ago when President Nixon spread the Vietnam War into Cambodia.  Will excursions become an actual invasion?  Is Syria the 2005 version of Cambodia?

Rep. Jack Murtha was back in the news in May 2006 , when he called attention to an ongoing Pentagon report concluding that the November 19 killing of more than a dozen civilians was intentional.  It did not involve a firefight or IED. Murtha said, "They killed civilians in cold blood." Also see US Politics '06 for more on Murtha. Also see "Troops/Recruits/Morale/Massacres" FAQ.

This story had new revelations just a few days earlier, when it was announced that the war crime involved the killing of 24 Iraqis, among them women and children.  Reports show that Marines lied about the action that day. Could this became the My Lai Massacre of the Iraq War?  See much more on comparisons to Vietnam. 

How patient are Americans with wars that don't seem to be going well?  An ABC This Week commentator feels that American lose faith in 18 months unless there is clear progress.  This was the case, he feels in both Korea and Vietnam.  With large number of combat troops in Vietnam starting in about 1965, it was not until 1968 that the majority of Americans were against the war. 

In late November/early December 2005, former Nixon Defense Secretary Melvin Laird wrote a piece in Foreign Affairs, called "Iraq:  Learning the Lessons of Vietnam"  In a NPR interview, Laird recalls that he coined the phrase and designed Vietnamization.  One of the lessons is that we need to force to Iraqis to get ready.  In learning from Vietnam, we should not walk away.

Newton Minow, who chaired the FCC in the '60s, drew his Vietnam lessons from elections.  In his Tribune op-ed "Day of decision is Dec. 16" (2005), the media critic expresses that after the elections "We should announce that we are leaving in a phased withdrawal" as Obama proposed.  "Some will say that will lead to a civil war...and that our job is not done.  To them, I would argue there is a civil war there now and that it is not our job to intervene in a civil war.  We cannot train enough troops, build enough schools and hospitals, to make any difference in a civil war, except to prolong it.  We did that in Vietnam and suffered terribly for it."  Minow concludes by quoting philosopher George Santayana who warned that "those who do not study history are bound to repeat it.  And I would remind those who do not remember Vietnam of the haunting words in a powerful song of the '60s:  'When will we ever learn.'"  The song is "Where have all the flowers gone." 

Bob Herbert of the New York Times looks back  (12/29/05) at our world 35 years ago, in 1970.  He recalls Johnson administration hawk Walt Rostow warning that "the sky would fall if the US were to 'cut and run' in Vietnam."  Rostow wrote at the time, "Contrary to every short-run political and personal interest, three successive American presidents decided over the past decade that the events set in motion by a prompt withdrawal of our forces....would risk a larger war there and create dangerous instability elsewhere."  In other words, concludes Herbert, "we have to keep feeding the flames of war with the healthy bodies of our kids because if we were to stop something bad might happen.  Sound familiar?"

Steve Chapman of The Chicago Tribune quotes from OSU political science professor John Mueller Foreign Affairs article as casualties.  Like Vietnam and Korea, "'As casualties mount, support decreases'...Once people jump off the bandwagon, they rarely climb back on...If there is anything different this time around...it's that opposition grew so fast.  In Vietnam, 20,000 American soldiers died before most Americans decided LBJ had blundered.  In Iraq, it only took 1500 deaths to convince a majority that we have better things to do.  Maybe that's because we've gotten used to seeing our military prevail quickly and easily, as we did in Haiti, Bosnia, Kosovo and Afghanistan." (1/22/2006).

Vietnam in 2006 also includes one of the responses to the President's vigorous defense of the NSA spying.  A tough New York Times editorial, "Spies, Lies, and Wiretaps" (1/29/06), tries to examine to big picture.  Among the "lies" the paper sites is that other presidents did it (The precedents of Washington, Wilson, and FDR "have no bearing on the current situation, and [Attorney General Gonzales's timeline] conveniently ended with FDR, rather than including Richard Nixon, whose surveillance of antiwar groups and other political opponents inspired FISA in the first place.  Like Mr. Nixon, Mr. Bush is waging an unpopular war and his administration has abused its powers against antiwar groups and even those that are just anti-Republican").

The paper might have added the infamous Nixon quote, "When the President does it, it's not illegal."

John Kerry brought up Vietnam again in April 2006.  He believes that thousands of Americans died there after our government knew the war was not winnable.  Also see "When Will US Troops Come Home?" FAQ.

George McGovern was one of the growing number of Americans who want US troops out soon, as he became more vocal in October of 2006. McGovern was the Democratic nominee for President in 1972 during the Vietnam War. His new book is "Out of Iraq: A Practical Plan for Withdrawal Now."

Jack Murtha spoke out again in late October of 2006. An early propenent, now 11 months ago, of starting a withdrawal, he received much criticism. The Tribune compares his stance to McGovern's in 1972. "It took a long time to realize that George Mc Govern was way ahead of everyone else...The spin from the White House is that there will be chaos if we pull out. It's chaos now, for Christ's sake. This is the most important issue in the election. You can't solve any other problem unless you solve the war. And they call me unpatriotic." McGovern said, "I really thought the Democrats would use [Murtha] as cover. Some Democrats are a little gutless about taking on war that they know are mistaken...Most people hide behind the statements of the president if he says we're in danger...We were blasted for 50 years for not being tough enough on communism. Now we're getting it on the terrorist thing."

Polls show 37% of Americans want to pull the troops out of Iraq. 37 years ago, in February 1972, four years after the Tet Offensive, an immediate withdrawal from Vietnan was favored by 40% of Americans. One wonders if the questions were asked the same way.

See much more on Times editorials.

Thomas Friedman saw a comparison between Tet and Iraq in mid-October 2006. With the increased violence and killing continuing President Bush admitted that he could some a parellels with Vietnam's Tet Offensive, seen as a turning point in US public opinion toward the Vietnam War. Such a comparison "could be right," he told ABC news. The President feels that the "terrorists" are trying to influence our election. The Tet Offensive was in January of 1968 as Johnson was considering his re-election bid.

Colbert King of the Post saw Vietnam again in November. The veteran wonders, "How in the world could we be reliving a nightmare like Vietnam? To be sure , that war and Iraq are different" in casualties, "geography, and the enemy. But there are ghostly similarites" such as they are both "quagmires." Powell and other vowed to learn from Vietnam to not use "half-baked" reasons for going to war. "To do otherwise would mean the sacrifices of Vietnam were in vain." But in Woodward's State of Denial, King notices that key military brass did not or would not stand up to Rumsfeld. He is upset that Congress took so long to get Rice before them.

Post colleague Michael Kinsley also saw Vietnam in November. The getting Iraqis to take on more responsibility reminds him that "older readers may recognize this formula. It's Vietnamization--the Nixon-Kissenger plan for extracting us from a previous mistake. But Vietnamization was not a plan for victory. It was a plan for what was called 'peace with honor' and is now known as 'defeat.'"

The President's pre-election press conference reminded some news analysts of Johnson in Vietnam. The idea of no more "staying the course" and using the Baker Study Group recommendations was "reminiscent of ealry 1968, according to the Times' John Broder. President Johnson "convened a panel of wise men" on the war "which by then was killing hundreds of Americans a month with little military progress to show for it. Mr. Johsnon insisted that American credibility was at stake and believed that a leader in wartime had to show resolve in the face of an implacable enemy and loud domestic criticism...It took seven more years" for Nixon to withdraw us from Vietnam.

Also see "US Politics '06" and US Politics Post-Nov. '06

Outgoing Defense Secretary Rumsfeld's quote about going to war "with the Army you have" led the Times lead editorial of Nov. 19, 2006 to speak of "The Army We Need" in an historical manner. "Mr. Rumsfeld didn't like the lessons the Army drew from Vietnam--that politicians should not send American troops to fight a war of choice unless they went in with overwhelming force, a clearly defined purpose and strong domestic backing." Times military reporter Michael Gordon compared Rumsfeld with McNamara. They were both Secretaries of Defense for many years during a war which became increasingly unpopular. Gordon writes that both were "undone by policies that resulted in a quagmire in a distant land."

President Bush visited Vietnam in mid-November 2006. He was asked about the lessons of the Vietnam War and how they might apply to Iraq. His answer was that "we will succeed unless we quit."

That month, columnist Dennis Byrne worried that US troops will leave Iraq as they left Vietnam. "The folks who believe the Iraq war looks increasingly like the Vietnam War are right" because a pullout will leave millions of people "hanging out to dry." April 30, 1975, as the last helicpoter left Saigon was "one of the most shameful days in American history. It was our own day of infamy."

Mark Moyar is an author on Vietnam. In November he examines pro-American South Vietnamese leader Ngo Dinh Diem, 50 years ago, and current Prime Minister al-Maliki. Like Maliki, Diem sought to "disband militias that belonged to religious sects." In both countries, leaders need to maintain a monopoly of power or "lose prestige." Thus, we should pull back and let Maliki use Iraqi forces to save his country as Diem did. "We will see whether he has the political skills to cut deals with local leaders, the support of enough security forces to suppress those who won't cut deals, and the determination to prevent the obliteration of the Sunnis."

Author of Intelligence Wars, Thomas Powers looks at the fall of 2006 (11/30 Times) and compares it to President Johnson's challenges and choices in 1965. He had just been re-elected on the "oft-repeated campaigning pledge not to send American boys thousand s of miles away to fight a war that Asian boys outhgt to fight." So Johnson's advisers told him direclty that the war was lost and there wasn't juch time to waste. "The choice was clear: lost the war or expand the war, fund a formula of words to mask failrue or send ore troops and increase the bet on the tabel. Johnson chose to expand the war." Powers feels that the choices today of "not quite as stark" because "Iraq is not Vietnam...We find ourselves, at a parelel moment, militarily committed to a policy on the verge of conspicuous failure."

Frank Rich sees Vietnam in his December 3 Times op-ed. He fears that Bush is not dealing with the harsh reality of the war and is "slipping into the same zone...as a sleepless LBJ did when micromanaging bombing missions in Vietnam...Some two years ago I wrote that Iraq was Veitnam on speed, a quagmire for the MTV generation."

LBJ was also central to Anthony Cordesman's argument in early December. Though parellels to Vietnam "are always terribly dangerous...you are beginning to see in George Bush some striking resemble to Lyndon Johnson. Both became failed presidents and tragic figures long before they left office."

Anthony Zinni, former top military officer in the Middle East talks of troop reductions by saying, "This is not Vietnam of Somali or those places where you can walk away. If we just pull out, we will find ourselves back in short order."

"'Iraqization' idea has a familiar ring", writes Jack Fuller in the Tribune of mid-December 2006. "Haven't we been here before? Bogged down in a war that has come to seem impossible to win, unable to control the use of neighboring countries as sanctuaries by enemy forces, public support for the whole enterprise gone, and then a new plan." Asking US forces to train more Iraqis "to do what American troops haven't been able to do: secure the territory and people so that healthy institutions of self-government can begin to develop"

Bob Herbert (12/11/06) quotes McCain in the forward to The Best and the Brightest, about Vietnam: "No other national endeavor requires as much unshakable resolve as war. If the nation and the government lack that resolve, it is criminal to expect men in the field to carry it alone." Adds Herbert, "It is time to pull the troops out of harm's way."

Veteran author and historian Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr. jointed the debate in the Jan. 1, 2007 op-ed pages of the Times. A leader in the Kennedy administration, he recalls that 30 years ago "we suffered defeat in an unwinnable war against tribalism, the most fanatic of political emotions, fighting against a county about which we knew nothing and in which we had no vital interest Vietnam was hopeless enough, but to repeat the same arrogant folly 30 years later is unforgivable The Swedish statesman Axel Oxenstierna famously said, "Behold, my son, with how little wisdom the world is governed.'" Schlesinger continued, "a nation informed by a vivid understandin of the ironies of history is, I believe, best equipped to manage the tragic temptation of military power...The great strength of history in a free society is its capacity for self correction."

Assuming that the war continues into March, it will be the third longest war in US history, surpassed only by the Revolutionary War and Vietnam.

For more on McCain, see multiple FAQ sections, including "US Politics Since 11/06"

As the President issued his "surge" speech in January 2007, some compared it to Nixon escalating Vietnam by invading Cambodia.

The surge vote in the House, against the President in a non-binding February '07 resolution was compared to the repeal of the Gulf of Tonkin resolution. Troops were capped. However, that 1971 vote did not halt the conflict because financing continued to be approved for another two years.

The Vietnam Syndrome made Americans hesitant to get involved in war-away wars which might not be easily winnable. Reagan concluded that during his Presidency we "kicked" the syndrome. David Brooks (New York Times, 2/1/07) is not worried about an "Iraqi Syndrome" because despite our disillusionment, we are not looking to avoid entangling alliances or shift toward a dovish foreign policy. "Many people around the world predict that an exhausted America will turn inward again Some see a nation in permanent decline and an end to American hegemony...Forget about it." Hillary is from the "hawkish wing" of the Democrats and most Senators, Brooks believes "take it for granted that the US is going to be in the Middle East for a long time to come."

Bob Herbert (also see "Op Ed" sections) quotes Martin Luther King in his controversial April 1967 Riverside Church speech in Manhattan. "I come to this magnificent house of worship tonight," Dr. King said, "because my conscience leaves me no other choice." He felt that silence was "betrayal." The Times headline editorial the next day was, "Dr. King's Error." Some felt he should have only spoken about civil rights, but King saw the Vietnam war effecting domestic policy.

"Different Paths From Vietnam To War in Iraq", was the front page Times article of March 18, 2007. Sen. Chuck Hagel (R) was "lowly grunt" whereas Sen. John McCain (R) was a long-time POW. "Memories of Vietnam haunt the public debate...They also lurk in the private thoughts of a generation in Congress...who lived through the earlier war, vote on the current one and, despite their shared past, now disagree profoundly on what the US should do next." McCain feels the surge is "our last shot" whereas Hagel focuses on an administration guilty of the "arrogant self- delusion reminiscent of Vietnam." Hagel recalls that telephone conversations now reveal that President Johnson saw the war as pointless but feared he would be impeached if he tried to withdraw. "The dishonesty of it was astounding--criminal, really. I came to the conclusion that they used those people, used our young people. So I am very careful, especially now. We'd better ask all the tough questions. This administration dismissed every tough question we asked. We were assured, 'We know what we're doing.' That's what they said in Vietnam." McCain, who spent over five years as a POW, was bound, kicked, and stomped, having his left arm broken, and tried to commit suicide. A Duke professor who has studied both wars concludes, "The key distinction between being pulled" toward Hagel or McCain "is their judgment about whether or not the mission can succeed."

For much more on McCain and Hagel, see 2006 Politics.

The US "dithers" in Iraq in May 2007 just as in Vietnam. Meanwhile, more Americans die. The op-ed columnist, from the Oregonian, suggests a wall of names for US deaths in Iraq.

In May, the President actually brought up Vietnam for comparison. "There are many differences between those two conflicts, but one stands out above all: The enemy in Vietnam had neither the intent nor the capability to strike our homeland. The enemy in Iraq does." Of course, the President in 1964, LBJ, encouraged the US to stay in Vietnam so that "the beaches of California" would not be attacked by Communists, sensing our weakness.

Columnist Maureen Dowd used her May 27 column to examine Vietnam, LBJ, Nixon, and Bush. "So many died" at the Vietnam Wall "because of ego and deceit--because LBJ and Robert McNamara wanted to save face or because Henry Kissenger wanted to protect Nixon's re-election chances. Now the Bush administration finds itself at that same hour of shame. It know the surge is not working. Iraq is in a civil war, with a gruesome bonus of terrorists mixed in. April was the worst month this year [104 US killed]...The democracy's not jelling" and "our kids" are being left to be "blown up...W. thinks he can save face if he keeps taunting Democrats as the party of surrender--just as Nixon did." The President's "loop of logic" is that we have to "push on in Iraq because Al Qaeda is there, even though Al Qaeda is there because we pushed into Iraq. Our troops have been dying there. We have to stay so the enemy doesn't know we're leaving. Osama hasn't been found because he is hiding."

The President brought up Vietnam again in late August of 2007, embracing comparisons where he had previously rejected them. Bush said the reason we lost Vietnam, is in essence, because we left. (The withdrawal took years to complete, during Nixon's Vietnamization policy). He blamed the Cambodian "killing fields" genocide on our withdrawal. About 1.7 million Cambodians died under Pol Pot, 1/5th of the population. "In Cambodia, the Khmer Rouge began a murderous rule in which hundreds of thousand of Cambodians died by starvation and torture and execution In Vietnam, former allies of the US and government workers and intellectual and businessmen were sent off to prison camps, where tens of thousands perished. Hundreds of thousands more fled the county on rickety boats, many of them going to their graves in the South China Sea...A free Iraqi is not going to transform the Middle East overnight...but will be a massive defeat for Al Qaeda...The question now that comes before us is this: Will today's generation of Americans resist the allure of retreat, and will we do in the Middle East what the veterans in this room did in Asia?"

Historians had a field day disagreeing with Mr. Bush. He was accusing his critics of amnesia. Public officians "usually turn to history to justify polices they've already settled on." One historian feels that just as the Khmer Rouge would not have come to power without the Vietnam war, so the occupation of Iraq has created more terrorists. Another points out that Vietnam today is a stable trading partner for the US. In regards to Vietamese refugees, we should "get serious" about allowing more Iraqi refugees. Comparing Iraq to Germany and Japan after World War II, claimed another foreign policy expert, "is fanciful." Hisorians and political scientists note that one of the factors in destabilizing Cambodia was US military action in Vietnam. "It's great for sound bites but it is completely misleading," comments a professor of military history.

Was the President suggesting that we could have "won" Vietnam is we had only stayed longer? The Times editorial feels the "ignoring past meistkes...dooms a nation to repreat them." The only lesson Bush drew from "the nation's last quagmire of a war was that it ended too quickly."

One columnist, Clarence Page, added his commentary in the Tribune. "Bush appears to be arguing that Iraqi is not like Vietnam as long as we stay [quagmire, death], but it will be if we leave...To those who have memories longer than a fruit fly's attention span [I recall that Paige was stationed in Vietnam] Bush's flip-flop sounds like a brave strategic move or maybe just weird." Page concludes that Bush fails to mention "how much more damage the Vietnam quagmire would have cause us and Southeast Asia if we had stayed longer. He also didn't mention how many lives could have been saved the the US had left sooner."

"Good Morning, Vietnam!" came from Eugene Robinson in the Washington Post. He was "fascinated" by Bush's invoking of Vietnam, "not as a cautionary lesson about hubris and futility but as a reason to push ahead." Robinson has "the sinking feeling that Bush actually believes the nonsensical version of history he's peddling. I fear that man is on a mission to rewrite the past." He reminds us that it was the Vietnamese who eventually ousted the Khmer Rouge. "George McGovern, who never got to be president, was right...Bush seems to want to return to a golden age when America confidently threw its weight around wherever, whenever and however it pleased The problem is that no such golden age existed." As Robinson concludes, "Bush wants us to remember Vietnam?...Let's remember" the death of civilians. Let's remember "how wrong the domino theory proved to be...and how long it took us to recover."

Another reaction came from the Times editorial which describes the President's argument as "specious" though there is "a chilling similarity between the two American foreign policy disasters." In both wars "Americans presidents and military leaders went to great lengths to pretend that victory was at hand when nothing could be farther from the truth." In another piece, the "paper of record" asserted that failure to face the political realities of Iraq "opens the door to strange and dangerous fantasies, like Mr. Bush's surreal take" on Vietnam...The real lesson...is clear enough. America lost that war because a succession of changes in South Vietnamese leadership, many of them inspired by Washington, never produced an effective government in Saigon" which never won the loyalty of its people...The short-term sequels...were brutal, as the immediate sequels of...Iraq will surely be." But "more American deaths will not change the sequel to the war." The piece concludes, "If Mr. Bush, whose decision to inject Vietnam into the debate over Iraq was bizarre, took the time to study the real lessons of Vietnam, he would not be so eager to lead America still deeper into the 21st century quagmire he has created in Iraq. Following his path will not rectify the mistakes of Vietnam, it will simply repeat them."

One Vietnam vet, a Vietnamese, was quoted in the Tribune as saying, "Nobody regrets that the Vietnam War wasn't prolonged except Bush."

Another Vietnam vet, former Presidential nominee and Senator John Kerry, had spoken out against the war in the early '70s. He feels that invoking "the tragedy of Vietnam to defend the failed policy...is as irresponsible as it is ignorant of the realities of both of those wars."

Thomas Friedman compared Bush to Johnson. Publically, LBJ spoke of progress but privately compared South Vietnam to a terminally ill patient. It was going to die to matter what the US did.

Inflation adjusted costs equalled Vietnam with the Presidential request of October 2007. See more on costs of Iraq.

Iraq of 2008 seemed like Vietnam of 1968 is that claims that "victory is at hand...are as fatuous and unsubstantiated as [General] Westmoreland's belief in 1968 that he was seeing 'the light at the end of the tunnel.'" Civilians deaths decreasing by 60% "are no more believable than they were 40 years ago in Vietnam. In fact, American's military advneture..is even less sustainable" than it was in Vietnam. One problem is that "there are not enough fresh units to replace those in the field." Iraqis opposed to the occupation "have not been eliminated, but are merely lying low. The media focus on al-Qaeda is misleading, since it is a minor component" compared to militias. (The Albany Times, 1/31/08, commentary).

Vietnam came up rarely in the 2009 press I read, watched, and listened to. One exception was a late June Times op-ed, which feels that as the US pulls back, "the specter of Vietnam looms." US will transition from combat to advisers, in some cases merely a "semantic dodge." This was similar to Nixon's Vietnamization strategy. Rod Nordland concludes, "as nearly everyone has realized by now, invading Iraq is a lot easier than withdrawing from it."

Though Vietnam is the dominant conflict compared to Iraq, there are others potential parallels:
In mid-October 2003 on his trip to Asia, President Bush used The Philippines as a parallel.  In some ways this parallel is more fitting than Vietnam. The U.S. seized the Philippines from Spain in 1898 during the Spanish-American War.  The Philippines were not granted independence for 50 years.  Mr. Bush said that the U.S. had "liberated the Philippines from colonial rule," (NYTimes, 10/19) perhaps a reference to the rule of the Spanish. 

Stanford historian David Kennedy recalls the occupation of the Philippines and Cuba:  "We went to the Philippines in 1898 and decided to stay, while surrounding that decision with a lot of the same kind of rhetoric [as today].  We were going to lift them up and usher them into the family of nations.  But as soon as we got there, it turned out the Filipinos had ideas of their own."

The U.S. called the  Philippines a colony for nearly 50 years "to protect its strategic interests in Asia" reported New York Times Steven Weisman in "A Foreign Policy, of Try, Try Again" (1/8/2004).  When the U.S. fought to successfully expel the Spanish from the Philippines, it was assumed that U.S. troops would then liberate the islands and leave the Filipinos to govern themselves.  Soon the U.S. found itself in a bloody guerilla war which lasted for years.

Also in the fall of 2004 (11/14/04), The Tribune Perspective section featured the ideas of E.W. Chamberlain III, a retired infantry colonel.  He drew the most detailed parallels I have yet read between Iraq and the Philippines.  "In History, We Can See Iraq's Future", opens thusly:  "It's a few years into the new century, and the nation is at war.  This war, unlike others, is not a war declared by an act of Congress.  The purpose for this war has changed since it started  The goals and objectives of the war also have changed.  The initial phase of the war went quickly and successfully.  But American soldiers now find themselves fighting an insurgency and taking casualties almost daily."  As Chamberlain comes to suggest that the U.S. might pull out of Iraq, he uses these ten parallels, summarized below:

Chamberlain concludes, "History does repeat itself...This being the case, one has to ask, why are we so surprised at the events in Iraq?...We don't even know our own history, much less that of Iraq."  He worries that democracy requires a separation of church and state, not likely in Iraq.  How can one best defeat an insurgency?  Either "win the hearts and minds" or kill them all.  The former "never has worked."  We could remove the entire population, like the Boer War in South Africa or the Native American insurgency.  In Vietnam "we lost interest.  We are a nation wedded to instant gratification...The first lesson of war its to never engage in a war that you cannot win."

Another take on the Spanish-American War came a few weeks after the January 2005 Iraqi elections.  William Schroder compared Bush and McKinley in terms of making the country scared and worried.  For someone who is still waiting for WMD to be found or believes it is "America's moral duty to free the peoples of the world from tyranny" or that Iraq was "an imminent threat", he does not access blame.  "Deep inside, you're scared, and you believe your government's clarion call to arms was necessary to keep you safe."

To strengthen his argument, McKinley announced to Congress that he 'got to his knees' in the White House and received God's assurance that American expansionism was heaven sent.  The war...bolstered American business, secured American colonies...and cost the lives of 600,000 innocent Filipinos who happened to be in the path of the 'bandwagon of Anglo-Saxon progress and decency."

Examining the bigger picture, Schroder adds that the Spanish-American War was the first of many overseas wars of conquest and occupation, each one "preceded by a vast government/media fear-based propaganda campaign."  He lists Vietnam (fear of Communism), Nicaragua Contras, and Grenada as other examples. 
http://www.commondreams.org/cgi-bin/print.cgi?file=/views05/0215-22.htm

An analysis of the President, press, and public opinions compared The Spanish-American War with Iraq.  "Plus Ca Change...A Template for the US War in Iraq"  The thorough piece compares writing of Walker Karp's Politics of War of 1976 with statement of the past few years.  A sampling from Karp has the "new vocabulary" in brackets:
--...the American people could indeed be diverted from their domestic concerns if the right sort of foreign crusade was offered.
--By inciting hatred of [Saddam] by inciting up interventionist pretext, by encouraging the rebels to prolong their struggle, by entangling America officially in [Iraq's] affairs, the interventionists bent themselves to the task of turning passive, if promising sympathy [of oppressed Iraqis] into active, fighting support.
--Although the [9/11 attacks] produced no clamor for war [against Iraq], it had made the great majority of Americans impatient for the first time to see matters settle in [Iraq] by American intention if necessary.
http://www.commondreams.org/cgi-bin/print.cgi?file=/views05/0312-25.htm

Author of The Unconquerable World (2003), Jonathan Schell often writes on empire and looks at U.S. policy compared to other empires throughout history.  In August 2004 he wrote, "But the full truth may be that the war...was lost before it was launched.  The preemptive war was pre-lost.  The problem was not the Bush Administration's incompetence, great as that has been, but the incurable incapacity of any foreign conqueror to win local hearts and minds, on which everything, in the last analysis, depends...The verdict was delivered before the crime was committed."

A February 2006 analysis comes from a US historian's essay comparing the Philippines to Iraq, in "Back to The Future: The US in Iraq and The Philippines."
http://www.commondreams.org/cgi-bin/print.cgi?file=/views06/0215-30.htm

Jonah Goldberg's Tribune op-ed from late November 2007, emphasized that US empire is not bad or evil. "Unlike the Romans, or even the British, our garrisons can be ejected without firing a shot. We left the Philippines when asked. We may split from South Korea in the next few years under similar circumstances. Poland wants our military bases; Germany is grumpy about losing them. When Turkey, a US ally and member of NATO, refused to let us invade Iraq from its territory, the US government said 'fine.'" Goldberg's take on Turkey and the Philippines is controversial.

A Times editorial of November 2007 reminded us of earlier uses of US torture: "Waterboarding is torture and was prosecuted as such as far back as 1902 by the US military when used in a slightly different form on insurgents in the Phillippines." See much more on Torture 2007\

Throughout 2008 there were few references to the Spanish-American War.

In addition to the Vietnam and the Spanish-American War comparisons, other analysts see "another Afghanistan" were Russian troops were bled for 10 years beginning in 1979,  before finally leaving the country to the Taliban and bin Laden. The U.S. supported bin Laden in his anti-Communist struggle.

Nicholas Kristof wrote of the Afghanistan /Iraq parallel in his November 15 "A Scary Afghan Road".  He sees that opium production is worth twice the Afghan annual budget (to profit warlords and the Taliban) and that the number of children in school has plummeted in parts of the county, and that 12 aid workers have been killed in the last year with dozens injured.  The New York Times columnist, a strong supporter of was in Afghanistan, was in Kabul "and saw first hand the excitement and relief of ordinary Afghans, who were immensely grateful to the U.s. for freeing them ()a crucial distinction between Iraq and Afghanistan, to anyone who covered both wars is that you never saw the same adulation among Iraqis)."  He adds, "With the White House finally acknowledging that the challenge in Iraq runs deeper than gloomy journalism the talk of what to do next is sounding rather like Afghanistan.  And that's alarming, because we have flubbed the peace in Afghanistan even more egregiously than in Iraq." 

Like Afghanistan, in the spring of 2004 we see religious "freedom fighters" coming to Iraq to "liberate" the country from the "outside invader."  We should also recall that when the Soviet Union pulled out of Iraq U.S. security became more precarious.

October 23, 2003 brought the 20th anniversary of the terrorist bombing of the Marine headquarters in Beirut, Lebanon.  As "One Deadly Morning in Beirut" (Chicago Tribune op-ed, 10/23/03) reminds us of the 241 Americans killed.  The U.S. was attempting to provide stability "in a country ravaged by civil war and a Syrian invasion.  to the Arab world, however, the intervention was seen as a prop to the continued Israeli occupation of southern Lebanon [Israel invaded in '82].

This difference of perception would prove deadly...Twenty years later, the Arab world looks at America's presence in Iraq in much the same way it saw our mission in Beirut.  Since President Bush announced the end of hostilities in May, more than 100 Americans soldiers have become casualties--one or two a day have been killed in ambushes, shot by snipers and blown to pieces by roadside bombs.  In military parlance, this is termed harassment....It is easier to fight wars than to build nations."  The piece concludes, "[We should] not repeat...the tragedy.  Having made the decision to intervene in Iraq, the U.S. is now obliged to stand by the Iraqi people as they struggle to rejoin the world.  

Amidst the increased violence of early April came the New York Times detailed "The Parallels of Wars Past" (4/10/04).  Though Vietnam is the more common comparison, author James Bennet feels Israel's 1982 invasion of Lebanon is more appropriate.  "It, too, was envisioned as a bold mission to combat terrorism and reshape part of this region to be stable and friendly to the West...The uncertain combat zones of Vietnam and Lebanon posed nightmarish challenges to soldiers  Those challenges may seem familiar to marines in Iraq as they try to sift enemies from civilians, without alienating most Iraqis."  In both wars, the invader "plunged into a vacuum...of political and religious rivalries." Commented an Israeli political scientist, the problem was "how to rule a society that is divided, a country that does not exist as a state with a central authority with legitimacy." When they first arrived, Israelis were showered with rice by Shiites who lived in fear of Palestinians military. "Within a year they were being bled by the Shiites, whom they failed to enlist as allies."

A turning point for Israel in Lebanon came more than a year after the invasion when an Israeli military convoy "provoked a riot...when it tried to drive, honking, through tens of thousands of Shiite worshipers gathered to celebrate their most important holiday, Ashura."  Shiites stopped sitting on the fence.  In mid-April, 2004, just over 20 years later, this seems to describe Iraq.  A Labor Party Israeli leader concluded, "In '82, it was Sharon who didn't learn from the American experience in Vietnam and was doomed to repeat it.  Here is George W. Bush, who didn't learn from Sharon's experience in '82." 

As the Republican National Convention came to a close in early September 2004 and the U.S. was pressuring Syria to have less influence in Lebanon, more parallels were drawn to Lebanon.
http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0903-09.htm

Thomas Friedman's thoughts in the spring of 2006 included his March 31  "Iraq At the 11th Hour".  With sectarian violence increasing in February and March, (See Violence '06 for details) the veteran Times columnist is confident that "the fate of the entire US enterprise...now hangs in the balance, as the war has entered a dangerous new phase....of the barbaric identity-card violence between Sunnis and Shiites.  In the late 1970s, I covered a similar moment in Lebanon and the one thing I learned was this:  Once this kind of venom gets unleashed--with members of each community literally beheading each other on the basis of their religious identies-0-it poison everything.  You enter a realm that is beyond politics, as realm where fear and revenge dominate everyone's thinking--and that is where Iraq is headed."

As violence escalated once again in the fall of 2006, Lebanon seems more and more the apt comparison. Maureen Dowd writes, "Lebanon was a shambles with multipe factions and everyody called that a civil war."

For more on Syrian troops in Lebanon in 2005, see "Who is Next?" FAQ.

Parallels to the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza started appearing in November and December of 2003. In Iraq the U.S. would arrest and detain relatives of suspected attackers, ring barb wire around entire towns, blow up homes of suspected attackers, and stage nighttime raids into homes, scaring women and children.  Would Sharon's tough policy toward Palestinian be learned by the U.S.  Would the policy bring stability and peace?

The Christian Science Monitor reported that "'Made in Israel'" crackdowns in Iraq won't work" (12/11/03), using the infamous quote of the U.S. Colonel north of Baghdad:  "With a heavy dose of fear and violence, and a lot of money for project's I think we can convince these people that we are here to help them."
http://www.csmonitor.com/2003/1211/p09s01-coop.htm

The occupation is the Gaza and West Bank could be compared to the occupation of Iraq:
--The occupatier kills civilians and children and is guilty of human rights violations;
--The occupier is killed by suicide bombings, who get at least some help from outside the region
--Most of the world wants the occupier out;
--The occupier says that the occupation helps their security;

After the January 2005 elections in Iraq, another Israel parallel was comparing Kirkuk to Jerusalem.  Kirkuk is very important to the Kurds, more for oil than for religion.  Would Kirkuk be controlled by the Kurds?  Saddam had expelled Kurds from the area and settled Arabs there.  Would Kurds have the "right of return?" was asked, reminding us of the Palestinian right of return in Israel or the occupied territories.

Other possible Israeli parallels surfaced in August 2005 when Israel completed its controversial withdrawal of the Gaza Strip.  Many Palestinians saw this unilateral move as a victory and some felt their their violent actions had succeeded in pushing out "the occupiers."  US supporters of keeping troops in Iraq used this parallel, arguing that pulling out would only embolden the terrorist.  Israel attacked Gaza in December 2008.

Yet another negative parallel with Iraq is the long war France fought against Algeria after World War II as the African nation sought independence with an inferior military. The 1966 movie on the French-Algerian wa, "The Battle of Algiers" r was re-released  in January 2004. US soldiers often see the film as part of their training. The French won the battle but lost the war. The film deals with insurgency and torture and is usually seen as balanced. Three decades later, Algeria's 1991 elections were won by the Islamic party.  These results were overthrown, leading to years of civil war.  In Iraq, we wondered how Sunnis would react to a Shiite victory in January 2005?

Hopefully the Fallujah offensive of November 2004 will not become similar to the Russian's in Groznyy.  Flattening a city so doubt killed anti-occupation insurgents, but later probably led to even more hatred and violence.

Some U.S. officials in January 2004 looked at the 1780s in the U.S. for comparisons. The Post reported that the Kurdish autonomy and direct election debates "are reminiscent of arguments among America's founding fathers about Federations.  Like New York, Virginia, and Massachusetts...Kurdistan does not want to cede full autonomy to a strong central government " (1/8/04, "Kurds' Warriors").

Nicholas Kristof sees a lesson in history in the poll results in "Take It From The Iraqis" (10/8/06), showing that 71% of Iraqis want US troops out within a year:"The biggest mistake we Americans have made all over the world in the post-World War II era, from China and Vietnam to Latin America and Iraq, has been the failure to appreciate the appeal of nationalism. Ironically, it's the same big mistake King George III made in the 1770s."

The Chicago Tribune editorial of August 3, 2005 was optimistic about a possible new Iraqi constitution.  Though the document would not answer all the questions "or ease all the frictions, "That would mirror America's experience in Philadelphia in 1787, where the framers sidestepped the incendiary issue of slavery."  About 60 years later, the American Civil War began. 

During that summer the Washington Post criticized the President on specifics but not on the overall war.  In early August, their editorial opened, "To point out that Philadelphia in 1787 was a lot quieter than Baghdad in 2005 is something of an understatement."  

"It's not easy," said General Abizaid, in November 2006 Senate testimony. He then compared Iraq in 2006 to the US after the Revolutionary War.

The talk of quagmire illustrates "the dangers of learning from the wrong history."  The British attempt "regime change" in 1920 as the Ottoman's left Mesopotamia.  "Our armies do not come into your cities and lands as conquerors or enemies, but as liberators, "declared the British general 85 years ago. Ferguson deems much of the violence to be symbolic rather than strategically significant, as when British bodies were mutilated in 1920.  "Despite their overwhelming technological superiority, British forces still suffered more than 2000 dead and wounded."  Another lesson is that "only be quelling disorder firmly and immediately will America be able to achieve its objective of an orderly handover of sovereignty."  The op-ed reminds reading that Iraq only became independent in 1932 and British troops stayed in Iraq until 1955.  Ferguson concludes ominously, "Fear of the wrong quagmire could consign [the U.S.] to a terrible hell." I would add that by April 2004 the Iraqis were already seeing parallels to the powerful invaders of 85 years ago.

Ferguson's May 2005 op-ed, "Cowboys and Indians" elicited numerous letters to the editor about how he did not come up with a good solutions.  The author opened with a warning for those who are "clamoring for a hasty exit" that they should "be careful what they wish for."  Noting that about 1/3 of insurgencies in the past 100 years have failed, he looks again at the British in Mesopotamia in 1917..  Seeking to be liberators, holding a referendum, and backed by the League of Nations, there was still an insurgency.  The British remained in Iraq after its 1932 independence , installing the country's leaders, for another 30 years.  Yet Ferguson asks, "How, then, did the British crush the insurgency of 1920?"  

He examines three lessons.  
--First, the British 90 years ago had enough men.  Given the Iraqi population today, the US would need one million troops, a ratio of 23 to 1, though today the US has only 174:1.  87% of  British  troops were from India. 
--Second, the British were ruthless.
--Third relates to "timing and expectations...The US does not have the luxury of time" that the British had.

"So , if we acknowledge that the US simply does not have the luxury of time that the British enjoyed and cannot be similarly ruthless, can it as least increase the manpower at its disposal in Iraq?...No one should wish for an overhasty...withdrawal...It would be the prelude to a bloodbath of ethnic cleansing and sectarian violence with inevitable spillover and interventions from neighboring countries."  Ferguson concludes his long piece, "As the anonymous officer said, the Bush administration's policy in Iraq could indeed still fail.  But too few American grasp how high the price well being if it does...The numbers that matter right now are 174 to 1.  That is not only the ratio of Iraqis to American troops.  It is starting to look alarmingly like the odds against America success.." 

What about Iraq compared to World War II?  "A Short Guide to Iraq" was published by the US government in 1942.  The handbook was used by American soldiers.  Among its guidelines:  "American success or failure in Iraq [against possible Nazi aggression] may well depend on whether the Iraqis (as the people are called) like American soldiers or not.  ...You aren't going to Iraq to change the Iraqis.  Just the opposite.  We are fighting this war to preserve the principle of 'live and let live.'"

Kamikaze pilots from Japan during World War II are examined in mid-July 2005 by Richard Cohen.  After the London bombings, he examines earlier suicide bombers.  Americans did not know what to make of these "fanatics" 60 years ago as it "unnerved" us.

Other World War II parallels were drawn by Hoover Institution's Peter Schwiezer (8/17/05,. "USA Today).  He notes that critics have assailed President Bush "for his strategy on terrorism, calling the war in Iraq a diversion" from Al Qaeda. But FDR during WWII faced similar critics when he first focused on Germany rather than the country which had attacked us "out of the blue" at Pearl Harbor.  Germany was seen as a diversion by some.  "In a fascinating parallel...part of FDR's motivation...was fear that the Nazis were working on atomic weapons.  Alas, postwar intelligence revealed that Germany (like Saddam Hussein's Iraq) did not have much of a program. But military victory led most to ignore this massive intelligence failure...Like Islamist extremist and secular Saddam, Imperial Japan and Nazi Germany were opportunistic allies."  Schwiezer concludes, "The forces of reform in the Middle East have been strengthened; the terrorist movement has been psychologically shaken.  by destroying Saddam' military machine overnight, he has completely changed the psychology of the war on terrorism.  Bush's strategy in one that FDR would understand well."

In December 2005, President Bush drew some World War II parallels, in talking about Japan's' transition to democracy.  Seeing his stage in history, the President said, "I'm absolutely convinced that some day, 50 or 60 years from now, an American president will be speaking to an audience saying, "Thank goodness a generation of Americans rose to the challenge and helped people be liberated from tyranny...Democracy spread and the world is more peaceful for it."

Was 9/11 like December 7, 1941?  On the 65th anniversary of Pearl Harbor, we were reminded that VJ day came in less than four years.

It wasn't until 2008 that Bush brought up World War II again. In May he called the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan "a great struggle" and warned against those who would waver. "To win the first war of the 21st century, we need to prevail not just in the battle of arms, but also in the battle of wills. And we need to recognize that the only way America can lose the war on terror is if we defeat ourselves. Our new enemies know they can't defeat us militarily. So their strategy is to cause us to lose our nerve and retreat before the job is done...By helping these young democracies grow in freedom and prosperity, we'll lay the foundation of peace for generations to come."

Post-World War II was also used. A State Department report prompted a Times article to conclude that "No project since the Marshall Plan after World War II even approached the scope and ambition" of the Iraqi reconstruction effort. President Bush compared himself to President Truman as the Cold War began and during the Korean War. The Truman Doctrine was "the right approach to fight communism" he told Illinois Senator Durbin in December 2006. Durbin told the President that a better comparison would be President Johnson during Vietnam. Spokesman Tony Snow added to the Truman analogy that Truman was not popular but took a strong stand against "an ideological enemy with a global ambition and global reach...it took 60 years, but we did win the Cold War."

As Bush continued to compare himself to Truman into January 2007, Post columnist Harold Meyerson sees that both President's saw themselves as fighting for values after becoming unpopular. "But neither the presidents nor their wars are analogous. As was not the case in the war between the Koreas, neither side in Iraq's civil strife is aligned with our values not interests Unlike Bush, Truman sought and obtained UN support for our efforts."

After World War II, former General and then President Eisenhower said in 1954, that "a preventative war, to my mind, is an impossibility today...Frankly, I wouldn't even listen to anyone seriously [who]came in and talked about such a thing."

Bush directly compared Iraq to Korea in June of 2007. He felt a decades-long presence might be needed. One difference is the exact border between north and south, unlike Iraq. As Howard Dean replied to the Bush analogy, "4 years down and 46 to go." Tens of thousands of US troops have remained in South Korea since that war ended in 1953. Gates echoed the President's Korean anology, seeming to try to prepare Americans for thousands of US troops remain for years or even decades.

NPR's Weekend Edition in March 2004 drew a unique parallel between Iraq and ancient Athens in the 400s BCE.  Democratic Athens overextended itself during the Peloponnesian Wars with Sparta by invading Syracuse. This powerful democracy could not survive becoming an empire.

"Brother, Can You Spare a Brigade" was Nicholas Kristof's December 11, 2004 column on trying to gain more allies.  The "'coalition of the willing'" reminded the Times columnist of ancient Athens and their growing hubris. Despite all its wonderful cultural qualities, "Athens became too full of itself.  It forgot to apply its humanity beyond its own borders, it bullied its neighbors, and it scoffed at the rising anti-Athenians.  To outsiders, it came to epitomize not democracy but arrogance.  The great humanist of the ancient world could be bafflingly inhumane abroad, as at Melos, the My Lai [in Vietnam] of its day.  Athens' overwhelming military intervention abroad antagonized and alarmed its neighbors, eventually leading to its defeat in the Peloponnesian War.  It's not so much that Athens was defeated--it betrayed its own wonderful values, alienated its neighbors and destroyed itself."  Kristof concludes on a more positive note,   "Fortunately, I think Mr. Bush is beginning to get it."

A War Like No Other was the 2005 book from Victor Davis Hanson.  "Where Hubris Came From" is the Times review, quoting Hansen: "Perhaps never has the Peloponnesian War been more relevant to Americans than to us of the present age."  The review reminds us that at the outset of the war, "Athens was the richest city in the word and, within Greece, the sole superpower, with an omnipotent navy.  Athens was also a democracy, anxious to export her political system and way of life throughout the Greek world, if necessary by force.  The war was fought because Sparta, a military oligarchy, feared Athenian imperialism and cultural dominance, and persuaded other Greek cities to join with it in an attempt to cut Athens down to size.  Hanson sees the US as sharing Athenian hubris and inviting nemesis  by trying to export democracy to countries like Iraq and Afghanistan.  The fact that Hanson himself supports American policy gives his book an ironic twist...History has many lessons to teach, provided we don't push the comparisons too far." 

Though Ancient Greece is often seen as a comparison, so too was Ancient Rome. The November 22, 2006 Morning Edition on NPR compares how reacted to a surprise pirate attack (their 9/11) with giving up their rights. Pompeii The Great urged new laws and rammed them through the Senate, soon to be followed by Julius Caesar and the end of the Roman Republic. At the time, Rome was the world's sole superpower. The Sunday Chicago Tribune's examined the Rome parellels in June of 2007. Also see the beginning of Chalmers Johnson's book on the end of the republic.

George Will loves to examine history in the context of Iraq and other issues.

In his "Ignoring History in Iraq" (8/18/04) he brings in World War I, the Spanish-American War, Mexican-American War, and Vietnam.  In terms of the length of the war, 10 days before the November 2 election, it will have lasted as long as World War I.  In December it will be longer than the Mexican War (630 days). The Philippine war lasted on and off for 14 years, however.  Woodrow Wilson, in 1918 on post-revolutionary Russia, said, "'My policy regarding Russia is very similar to my Mexican policy. I believe in letting them work out their own salvation, even though they wallow in anarchy for a while."  Will concludes with a possible Vietnam parallel.  Worrying that an offensive may be coming from insurgents before the November election, it could be "an Iraqi version of the North Vietnamese Tet offensive of 1968...And it could unmake a presidency, as Tet did [with Johnson]."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A9781-2004Aug17?language=printer

In late May 2004, Thomas Ricks compares the casualties to other American wars, including the Spanish-American, Mexican War, and War of 1812.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A3022-2004May30?language=printer

The Mexican War is seen by some historians as the first US "pre-emptive war", led by President Polk in the 1840s. Polk wrote his war declaration speech and sent US troops into disputed territory, then claiming the "American blood has been spilled on American soil." Abraham Lincoln, as a member of the House, opposed the war because it allowed a president to act like a king and "to make war at pleasure."

The first time I recall reading in detail about parallels to the U.S. Civil War was from John Tierney in his July 2, 2005 New York Times column. He recalls the tightly knit clans in much of the middle east:  "My brother and I against my cousin; my cousin and I against the world"  Tierney informs us that half of Iraqis are married to their first or second cousins.  During the U.S. Civil War "Union soldiers were amazed to see poor Southerners without any stake in the slavery system defended it in suicidal charges.  But there was  simple explanation, as a barefoot emaciated Confederate captive famously put it when a Union solders asked him why he kept fighting:  "Because you're here.'"

After the December 2005 Iraqi elections and the prospect of the withdrawal of at least some US troops, parallels were drawn with Reconstruction and the occupation of the south by US troops. With troops present, democratic reforms were enforced.  Once troops left, the racial and political gains ended.  The rights of former slaves were taken away and would not return until at least the 1960s.  The December 18 Tribune adds that like Reconstruction, "Iraq's political gains have come at the point of a bayonet.  Democratization there has required constant and pervasive US military presence...Without US troops to maintain order, the political reforms in Iraq would likely fall by the wayside."  The reporter feel a quick withdrawal  would likely be disastrous and concluded, "Contemporary historians often lament national policymakers' lack of resolve in maintain Southern Reconstruction and preserving African-American political freedoms.  Will future generation make similar remarks about contemporary policymakers and their commitment to democracy in Iraq?  History will judge us not only on our initial decision to invade Iraq, but also on how steadfast we were in fostering democratic change in Iraq." 

Rice used the Civil War in September 2006. She felt that both had their critics but both were justified. "Just because things are difficult, it doesn't mean that they are wrong or that your turn back." Perhaps the Secretary of State is reading Goodwin's new book on President Lincoln.

Maureen Dowd responded to spokesman Tony Snow in late November 2006. He claimed it was not a Civil War because there was not fighting in all the provinces and because there were free elections. "But that's like saying that the Battle of Gettysburg only took place in one small corner of the country, so there was no real American Ciivl War. And there were elections during our civil war too. President Lincoln was reelected months before the war's end."

Republican Minority House leader John Boehner saw the Feb. 2007 House resolution in epic terms. "Lincoln could have given up. He could have recalled Union forces and sent them all home. But he didn't We need a similar commitment to victory today...Lincoln famously said in 1858 that 'a House divided against itself cannot stand.' I believe, as LIncoln did then, that we must choose sides on a critical issue."

Robert Kennedy, Jr. concluded that Iraq is certainly in the midst of a Civil War. In the US Civil War, the US population was 31 million whereas Iraq's is about 26 million. That is, by some estimates, a higher percentage of Iraqis have been killed in four years than Americans were killed in our four year Civil War.

Could the US win the war but lose the peace? This was the subject of a multi-part NPR special on The World. The 1/4/09 edition on "How Wars End" (see "part 2") compared US reconstruction after the Civil War to US reconstruction currently. For the US in the 1860s and 1870s, reconstruction was generally considered a failure. What lessons can we learn from our own history? Why is Iraq reconstruction not like that in Japan and Germany after World War II, which was the pre-war comparison made by some pro-war thinkers.

The 1980s examples, according to one author, include using fear to motivate Americans.  President Reagan warned that the Nicaraguan military was only "8 hours by truck from...Texas."

Somalia became the parallel after the horrific burning, beating, and hanging a four American security contractors in Fallujah in late March 2004. Americans recalled the Black Hawk Down scene with American soldiers being pulled through the streets of Mogadishu in the early '90s under President Clinton. "We will prevail...they will not have died in vain...we will kill those who did this" came the statements from top American officials.

Rumsfeld spoke of Somalia in different terms in December 2005:  "We make a terrible mistake if we fail to listen and learn.  In my view, quitting is not a strategy.  Quitting is an invitation to more attacks and more terrorist violence here at home.  this is not just a hypothesis.  The US withdrawal from Somalia emboldened...bin Laden in the 1990s.  We know this:  He said so." 

Elsewhere in Africa came a warning that Darfur could become Iraq for the US, if they brought in troops. This warning of March 2008 came from Sudanese officials.

A May 15, 2005 New York Times Week in Review cover story analyzes the insurgency and looks at possible lessons of history. TE Lawrence, fighting for Arabs against the Turks, concluded decades ago that one need just 2% support from the population to succeed as an insurgency.  Another history lesson could come from the IRA in England where a group of 200-400 armed fighters frustrated the British for decades, though did not drive them out. 

Bosnian comparisons came during the 10th anniversary of the Dayton Accords ending the killing of over 200,000 Europeans in former Yugoslavia.  Jackson Diehl of the Washington Post posited that both countries have three ethnic/religious groups which historically have trouble living together.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/11/20/AR2005112000863_pf.html

In somewhat of a surprise to me, the Senate in late September 2007, passed a non binding resolution endorsing the partition of Iraq. The vote was condemned by six Iraqi political parties as well as the US embassy. Those who feel the partition of Bosnia was successful, argue a similar strategy for Iraq. Both had three groups, which is Bosnia were Croats, Serbs, and Muslims.

Another European comparison cane in the summer of 2006, on the 50th anniversary of the Hungarian Revolution of 1956, put down by the Soviets. President Bush traveled to Hungary and thanked the people for fighting for their liberation. He certainly does not see Iraqi insurgents as playing the role of ridding their nation of those who attacked and are occupying it.

Comparing the lead up to Iraq with the possible lead up to a war with Iraq was seen with the IAEA and members of Congress The IAEA complained about a House report being "erroneous, misleading and unsubstantiated information" about Iran's nuclear program. The chairman of the committee, Rep. Hoekstra, feels intelligence is now being too conservative, afraid to make the same mistakes as with Iraq. However, the report was written by a leading Hawk, Fredrick Fleitz, and ally of UN ambassador John Bolton.

As the Civil War expanded in Iraq and, by the fall of 2006, there was talk of the nation breaking into three, parellels arose with Yugoslavia, and nation also established after World War I out of the Ottoman Empire. with a mix of multiple ethnic groups. Unlike Yugoslavia, with Catholic, Orthodox, and Muslim, at least 95% of Iraqis are Muslim.

A comparison to Nicaragua was brought up for the first time in February 2007, as the House voted to disapprove of the President's troops escalation. Historians commented that this was similar to a cutting off of funding for the anti-Sandinista Contras. It also led to the Iran-Contra scandal under President Reagan.