#3 - RW 283
Moscow Times
November 18, 2003
Iraq Is No Vietnam Repeat
By Pavel Felgenhauer

Five U.S. helicopters have crashed recently in Iraq, killing 39 soldiers. In the first six months of occupation, an average of 20 U.S. servicemen were killed in action per month. In November, however, casualties have risen dramatically.

Last week, former Democratic Senator Max Cleland, who lost both legs and his right arm in combat in Vietnam, blasted the Bush administration's war policy, saying that the conflict in Iraq now resembles the Vietnam War. "We don't have a strategy to win or get out," Cleland told a town hall meeting on Iraq in Arlington.

The occupation of Iraq is the first major long-term engagement of the U.S. military abroad since Vietnam. Bitter recollections of the Indochina quagmire are today used by many critics of the Bush administration at home and abroad. But is the Vietnam analogy accurate?

The Vietnam War was one battlefield of a global Cold War in which the Russian role was decisive. Partially declassified Soviet files disclose that 6,359 Russian generals and officers took part in combat operations in Vietnam. The Soviets piloted jet fighters that engaged the Americans and operated SAM anti-aircraft missile batteries, as well as training the North Vietnamese.

The latest Soviet weapons were shipped to Vietnam. The MiG-21 jet fighter, the C-75 SAM and the Grad multiple-rocket launcher were all used first in Vietnam. Soviet defense industry engineers were sent to Vietnam to help maintain and modernize equipment. As soon as the United States introduced new designs that changed the balance of forces on the battlefield, the Russians speedily produced tailored modernizations that were sent to Vietnam. And all this was free of charge.

The Vietnam War was not a "people's liberation struggle," as it was portrayed by Communist and anti-war propaganda. The U.S. campaign to win the hearts and minds of the South Vietnamese as a means to win the war was irrelevant from the start. In the end, most South Vietnamese in fact supported the Americans or were neutral, but their opinion did not matter: It was the hearts and minds of the North Vietnamese and Russian generals, the Politburo members in Hanoi and Moscow, that were the decisive factor.

In 1975, it was not "guerrillas," but 14 North Vietnamese divisions, with hundreds of tanks, heavy guns and SAM missiles that invaded the South (violating the Paris peace treaty), overwhelmed the South Vietnamese army and captured Saigon. More than 8,000 planes and helicopters were lost, over 60,000 Americans and more than 2 million Vietnamese were killed. But still the United States could not win in Vietnam without first defeating the main center of enemy power: the Soviet Union. Time and again U.S. forces decimated North Vietnamese units, only to have them retreat to relative safety, regroup and rearm. Vietnam was as unwinnable as the Soviet war in Afghanistan.

It's ridiculous to compare Iraq with Vietnam or Afghanistan. No superpower is providing the Iraqi resistance with military specialists or top-class new weapons. The capabilities of the resistance are severely limited and the level of U.S. casualties is incomparable with the toll in Vietnam.

Today, it's clear that Saddam Hussein anticipated that his army and Republican Guard would be squashed in open combat and that preparations were made beforehand to mount an underground resistance under occupation. Hussein's resistance network has managed to keep him personally secure and has been mounting guerrilla attacks. The Iraqi underground is also getting support from jihadist anti-Western radicals.

Iraq is clearly not a new Vietnam. The winning strategy is obvious: kill or capture Hussein, who is the main center of enemy strength; and hire loads of Iraqi police and security personnel to crush the insurgency, while providing U.S. logistical and firepower support.

A large portion of the Iraqi population seems ready to support the United States in its confrontation with jihadist terrorists and Hussein's loyalists. The United States has already managed to muster some 100,000 armed Iraqis, while in Chechnya the Russians have assembled no more than a few thousand collaborators after years of occupation.

Total global U.S. military supremacy can ensure that no foreign armed force will invade Iraq as happened in South Vietnam. Today, "Vietnamization," the U.S. policy of arming South Vietnamese to defend themselves, may well succeed in Iraq.

Pavel Felgenhauer is an independent defense analyst.