Vietnam and Iraq - Two Very Different Wars
Pacific News Service, Commentary, Thi Q. Lam, Posted: Apr 23, 2003
When, in late March, the war in Iraq looked like it might bog down, pundits quickly compared the conflict to Vietnam. Nothing could be further from the truth, writes former South Vietnamese Lt. Gen. Thi Q. Lam. But lessons from Vietnam about clarity of mission still resonate today.
Predicting a drawn-out war in Iraq, military analysts, reporters and pundits likened it to the Vietnam conflict. Nothing is further from the truth.
In late March, a combination of guerilla tactics by Iraqi paramilitary units and a distinct lack of "welcoming" of coalition forces by Iraqis brought on the Vietnam analogy. But there are many differences between these two wars. The enemy, the terrain and the technology were different. So were the political objectives and the military strategies used to achieve these objectives.
While the U.S. Army was engaged in essentially conventional warfare in Iraq, 30 years ago its counterpart in Vietnam faced an entirely different conflict. Apart from occasional engagements with North Vietnamese Army regular units in the late 1960s, the U.S. Army in Vietnam was, in great part, fighting the enemy in guerilla warfare, in which the insurgents adopt "hit-and-run" tactics.
Vietnam's jungles were ideal for guerilla warfare. They also limited the effectiveness of U.S. airpower. The substandard roadways, coupled with flooded rice fields, hampered the use of armored and mechanized units.
The Iraqi desert, on the other hand, is an ideal terrain for the type of blitzkrieg witnessed in the Iraqi Freedom operations, in which mechanized infantry units bypassed smaller Iraqi cities and raced toward the capital city of Baghdad.
In a speech titled "The New American Way of War" given to the Navy League in April, Gen. Richard R. Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, revealed the important role played by highly trained Special Forces teams equipped with advanced technology in targeting and intelligence-gathering. Gen. Myers also indicated that the integration of intelligence gathering, communications and high-tech weaponry provided for faster reactions to tactical developments in the battlefield. These new features didn't even exist in the 1991 Gulf War, let alone in the Vietnam conflict.
The difference in terms of objectives and strategy is even more obvious. In Vietnam, the political objective was to contain Communist expansion in Southeast Asia. There is nothing wrong with this policy, which had proven effective in Europe during the Cold War. However, the mission of the U.S. forces in Vietnam was not clearly defined and, as a result, the different strategies used were unrealistic and inefficient, leading to the tragedy of the Vietnam conflict.
In retrospect, it is clear that in Vietnam, the United States had no choice but to adopt one of the two following alternatives: to carry the war to North Vietnam and aim at the destruction of the Hanoi government's will to fight, or to support the government of South Vietnam in fighting a long and protracted war in the South against guerillas insurgencies.
Unfortunately, the United States did not have the guts to go North nor the patience to stay in the South, and opted out in 1972. That left the Army of Republic of Vietnam (ARVN) to fend for itself with very little ammunitions, while the North was being backed by the Soviet Union and China. Despite being abandoned by the United States, South Vietnam held on and fought for three more years before Saigon fell in 1975.
Disarmament and "regime change," on the other hand, were President Bush's objectives in Iraq. To root out the Iraqi leadership, the U.S. forces were instructed to invade Iraq and take Baghdad and other major Iraqi cities, using a pincer movement by mechanized infantry and Marines divisions, supported by artillery and airpower.
The most important feature in this war was to use the overwhelming U.S. airpower to create an effect of "shock and awe." This shock and awe strategy would trigger mass desertions of Iraqi troops and hasten the collapse of the regime. In spite of some original difficulties (harassments and ambushes of supply convoys in Southern Iraq), the strategy has largely succeeded. The military campaign was practically over in less than a month, with minimal casualties for coalition forces.
According to former Secretary of Defense James Schlesinger, the use of military power must pass the test of clarity of mission and efficiency. The Iraq war passes the test. Although some military analysts and war critics had questioned the adequacy of the number of ground troops involved in the invasion, it turned out that America's overwhelming firepower more than compensated for this apparent inefficiency. Vietnam failed the test, because the basic flaw of the U.S. policy in Vietnam was the lack of clarity of mission, which resulted in confusion regarding the number of troops required and the inadequacy of various military strategies applied during the war.
Despite tremendous advances in technology, the fundamental principles of war have not changed. Good military leaders know what their objectives are and how to achieve them. Reduced to its simplest expression, warfare, even in this age of digital technology, is but a matter of judgment and common sense. And this simple truth, after all has been said and done, may be the only common ground of the two wars.
Gen. Lam is the author of the memoir "The 25 Year Century: A South Vietnamese General Remembers the Vietnam War." He resides in Milpitas, Calif., where, after 20 years as a bank executive, he now teaches high school.
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