Iraq War Approaching
The Tipping PointBy Mounzer Sleiman
28 August, 2005
Aljazeera"I remember the moment when I knew we were going to lose the war in Vietnam. Frustrated by our inability to find the elusive Viet Cong, the United States had developed a top-secret program to locate enemy troop concentrations.
It was a "people sniffer," a device sensitive to the presence of ammonia in urine that could be hung from a helicopter flying low over the jungle. When a high reading was identified, artillery was directed at the area.
One evening in 1968 I was attending an end-of-the-day regimental briefing and an infantry captain was describing a sweep through the jungle.
He and his men had encountered something they could not explain: buckets of urine hanging from the trees. The regimental commander and his intelligence officer exchanged looks as they silently acknowledged that we were firing artillery (at $250 a round) at buckets of urine all over Vietnam.”
Much has been made of the differences between the war in Iraq and the US defeat in Southeast Asia, but it is obvious that there are similar doubts about the war in Iraq.
And yet, despite hearing some echoes of an earlier time, administration officials have rejected assertions that Iraq poses a Vietnam-like quagmire for US troops.
The Bush administration continues to ignore drawing any lessons from the painful US failure at nation-building in South Vietnam a generation ago.The sources of this warning are not limited to the traditional anti-war camp. Consider a 69-page report published last year by the Army War College titled "Iraq and Vietnam: Differences, Similarities and Insights", warning of dire consequences if the political lessons of Vietnam go unheeded.
"In Vietnam, we were trying to prop a government that had little legitimacy.
In Iraq, we are trying to weave together a government and support it so it can develop legitimacy. Both are extremely hard to do," said co-author W. Andrew Terrill, of the War Strategic Studies Institute.
It may be useful to consult previous reflections by the dinosaur of American diplomacy Henry Kissinger about Vietnam. He suggested in1969 that the fundamental problem for the United States in Vietnam was not psychological or military; it was political.
Unless the United States could stand up a South Vietnamese government that could defend itself and that was worth defending, America could neither leave Vietnam safely nor accomplish anything by staying.
Alas, the South Vietnamese government, according to the Army War College report, "was crippled from the start by three main weaknesses that no amount of American intervention could offset: professional military inferiority, rampant corruption, and lack of political legitimacy."
It does not take a lot of imagination to insert Iraq in place of Vietnam in the previous paragraph to draw the logical conclusion of the similarities. American policy in Iraq resembles the passenger trapped in a hurtling car who is unable to steer and unable to escape.
In addition to parroting "we are making progress", the other repeated fantasy out of officials in Washington is that American-trained Iraqi forces will ultimately be able to do what the American forces have not: defeat the resistance and pacify Iraq.
With rising anti-war feeling at home and lack of progress on the ground, US public opinion is approaching a 'tipping point' in relation to the war in Iraq.
Opinion has revealed a growing impatience with the military disaster in Iraq and an irritation with the White House's persistent denials that anything is wrong. Indications of the growing momentum toward reaching this "tipping point" are manifested in two major current and future developments:a) Rumbles of Opposition Manifesting in Congress
Congresswoman Barbara Lee introduced a Resolution of Inquiry calling on the Bush administration to produce information to answer questions raised by a series of classified British memos that suggest that pre-war intelligence was fixed in order to justify the invasion of Iraq.
"These documents offer strong evidence that the Bush administration ‘fixed’ intelligence in order to mislead our country into war, evidence the administration has failed to dispute or answer," said Lee. "Americans deserve to know the truth about the circumstances under which our troops were sent to war."
In June, Lee joined Ranking Member of the House Judiciary Committee, John Conyers (D-MI) and 131 members of Congress in writing to the President, asking him to answer critical questions raised by the Downing Street memo, including whether anyone in the administration disputed the accuracy of the leaked document and if there was a coordinated effort with the US intelligence community and/or British officials to "fix" the intelligence and facts around the policy, as the leaked document states.Lee, Conyers and other members of Congress personally delivered the letter to the White House, along with petition signatures from more than 575,000 people calling for answers. The White House has not responded.
Lee’s bill, which has 26 co-sponsors, would require the President and Secretary of State to give Congress all information relating to communication with officials of the United Kingdom relating to US policy in Iraq between January 1, 2002 and October 16, 2002, the date Congress authorized the President to use force in Iraq.
b) The People’s Factor
A significant gathering of hundreds of thousands protesters is expected in Washington responding to the September 24 National Coalition for the March on Washington DC to Stop the War on Iraq and end colonial occupation from Iraq to Palestine and Haiti. The rally is to begin at the White House.
A new coalition of major national organizations, has come together to create a united front and build the largest possible gathering of people on the streets of DC.
The leadership of the September 24 National Coalition for the March on Washington to Stop the War in Iraq now includes the A.N.S.W.E.R (Act Now to Stop War and End Racism) Coalition, National Council of Arab-Americans (NCA), Muslim American Society (MAS) Freedom Foundation in addition to a wide range of other organization representing ethnic groups.
The convergence of congressional and popular pressures on the Bush administration coupled with mounting American costs in blood and treasury is bound to force it to start looking seriously for an exit strategy based on declaring the intention of phased withdrawal as we approach the spring of 2006.
By then the midterm Congressional election considerations will undoubtedly drive the message home when growing numbers of Republican candidates start maneuvering and distancing themselves from an unpopular war run by a besieged president.
Unfortunately for the Americans and Iraqis there are no assurances that any declared phased withdrawal will not turn out to be another exercise in deception similar to the tactics employed by this administration in the period leading to the war, or by the Johnson and Nixon administrations in the disastrous years that preceded the eventual American defeat in Vietnam.
Mounzer Sleiman, PhD, is an independent political-military analyst and expert in US national security affairs, based in the Washington DC area.
