Round The World

New Delhi, 5 September2007

President Bush Surprise Visit

IRAQ: VIETNAM OF MIDDLE EAST?

By Dr. Chintamani Mahapatra

School of International Studies, JNU

The US President Bush sprang a surprise yet again by landing in Iraq along with his Defense Secretary and Secretary of State. Not only to convey a message of success of his recent strategy but also to prepare for the upcoming debate on his Iraq policy in the US Congress mid-September.

As usual, he asserted that, “When we begin to draw down troops from Iraq it will be from a position of strength and success, not from a position of fear and failure.'' The Bush Administration has explicitly stated that any decision about troop levels would be “based on a calm assessment by our military commanders on the conditions on the ground” and not on account of “a nervous reaction by Washington politicians to poll results in the media.”

Pressure on President Bush to alter his Iraq policy has come since the Congressional elections campaigns. Unlike the Presidential election of 2004, when President Bush prevailed over the Democrat Presidential candidate John Kerry on the debate on Iraq, the 2006 Congressional elections witnessed the successful political combat launched by the Democrat leaders on the country’s Iraq policy.

The reverses faced by the US-led coalition forces in the battleground, the rising death rates due to suicide attacks and bomb blasts and the inability of the Iraqi Government to meet the benchmarks demanded by Washington led to the fast declining popular support for President Bush. Making it easy for the Democrat Party to capitalize on this issue and win the Congressional elections.

The Democrat leaders demanded a withdrawal timeline, which was vehemently opposed by the Bush White House. The Democrats conjured up the visions of Vietnam while making their case. About 20 years of US involvement in the Indo-China crisis, the prolonged Vietnam War with enormous American casualties, the body bag syndrome and the inability of the mighty US forces to prevail over the Vietnamese insurgents bounced back in the US people’s memory at the time of the debate on Iraq policy.

The traumatic experience of the US in Vietnam has lived on in the American mind. After winning the first Gulf War against the Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein in Kuwait, the then President Senior George Bush, announced the end of the ‘Vietnam Syndrome’ in the American psyche. 

But when his son defied the United Nations and intervened in Iraq, removed Saddam Hussein from office and demonstrated US unilateralism, some felt that ‘Vietnam Syndrome’ was indeed gone for ever. But before long, people realized that the Iraq war was not winnable, as expected. With every passing year it appeared as if the US forces were getting sucked into a Vietnam-type quagmire. By 2005, memories of Vietnam came to hunt some analysts who questioned: Was the US involvement in Iraq going the Vietnam way?

Soon the concerns of the foreign policy analysts found a political voice and some US legislators began to compare Iraq with Vietnam. As this comparison became more frequent during the last Congressional elections, the Bush officials thought it was important to revisit the Vietnam War issue and provide a counter to the argument.

President Bush attended the Veterans of Foreign Wars National Convention on 22 August and sought to address this issue in his speech. His interpretation of America’s Vietnam experience was in a way a strong counter-point to his critics. He said: “Unlike in Vietnam, if we withdraw before the job is done, this enemy will follow us home. And that is why, for the security of the United States of America, we must defeat them overseas so we do not face them in the United States of America….”

He then went on to endorse a recent article by  “two men who were on the opposite sides of the debate over the Vietnam War” which said an American defeat and withdrawal from Iraq “would produce an explosion of euphoria among all the forces of Islamist extremism, throwing the entire Middle East into even greater upheaval. The likely human and strategic costs are appalling to contemplate.”

The critics usually refer to the humiliation suffered by the ‘super power’ in Vietnam and the difficulty in dealing with an insurgency by military means. However, President Bush is drawing a parallel to the implications of the US withdrawal from Vietnam. Given Washington’s loss of credibility in the world, particularly among its allies who looked upon the US as their protector. If America failed to achieve its goal in Vietnam after committing many troops and spending loads of money, what could its allies do when they would need the US help against external danger?

Recall, President Gerald Ford had to make a special trip to the Asia Pacific to assure the US allies that withdrawal from Vietnam did not mean America’s withdrawal from Asia and that Washington’s security commitment to the region remained intact. Second, the US withdrawal from Indo-China had led to an ideological defeat for the country as South and North Vietnam unified under the Communist rule.

Third, the US defeat in Vietnam emboldened the former Soviet Union and a few other smaller countries. The Iranian Revolution ended the US military presence in that country in 1979. The Leftist Sandinistas came to power in Nicaragua challenging US domination in its own Hemisphere. The Soviet military intervention in Afghanistan spread the American adversary’s influence into South-west Asia and posed a challenge to the US influence in the Persian Gulf.

Now, President Bush is seeking to paint a picture of the negative consequences of premature US withdrawal from Iraq. According to him, “If we were to abandon the Iraqi people, the terrorists would be emboldened, and use their victory to gain new recruits. As we saw on 11 September 2001, a terrorist safe haven on the other side of the world can bring death and destruction to the streets of our own cities.”

Importantly, what he intends to imply is that withdrawal from Iraq would be more dangerous than the American withdrawal from Vietnam. The Vietnamese did not chase American soldiers back to the shores of the US. The Islamic extremists, on the other hand, could!  Thus, Bush and his opponents have begun to use the Vietnam example to promote contradictory viewpoints. Iraq appears to have become the Vietnam of the Middle East. ---INFA

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