Deja-Vu?
“Soldiers are now fighting a counter-insurgency war,” said General Sir Mike Jackson, the head of the British Army.
President George W. Bush said yesterday: “Terrorist enemies are trying to stop the progress of both those countries, and their violent and merciless attacks may increase as elections draw near. But all the world can be certain: America and our allies will keep our commitments to the Afghan and Iraqi people.”
It was 1968, I was an ROTC cadet at a military school. In our dress uniforms at the assembly the General who was speaking to us proudly announced that the American military was killing the Viet-Cong and North Vietnamese soldiers at such a rapid rate that the Viet-Nam war would be won within the next six months. I looked around at all the young guys standing at attention next to me; none of us believed what the General was saying.
Today we hear about a counter-insurgency in Iraq , back then the reporters called it a guerrilla war in Viet-Nam. Today we hear about the terrorists in Iraq, then it was the Communists in Viet-Nam.
For Viet-Nam, it was the Gulf of Tonkin Incident, which was proven to be false. For Iraq, it was WMD and ties to Al Queda, which have also proven to be false.
Back then it was the Pentagon Papers, which were leaked to the press. Today it is a classified CIA report, leaked to the media, which offers a bleak assessment of Iraq’s future with civil war as the worst-case scenario and continued instability as the best.
Today we are “Training Iraq’s fighting units” to take over that country’s security tasks from American and coalition forces. Back then the U.S. government called it “Vietnamization”.
Back then, President Richard M. Nixon questioned the patriotism of any American who questioned the U.S. government’s policies in Viet-Nam. Today George W. Bush and Dick Cheney not only disparge the patriotism of anyone questioning U.S. policies in Iraq but also imply that anyone not voting for the Republican ticket in November would actually be to blame for any future terrorist attacks to our country.
For those of us who lived through the Viet-Nam era it is deja-vu all over again. As the song says, “When will they ever learn?”