The new Vietnam

THE GRIM ASSOCIATED Press headline on the San Francisco Chronicle Web site (www.sfgate.com) March 31 told the story of how horribly wrong things are going in Iraq: "Seven Iraqi Women, Children Killed by U.S. Forces at Checkpoint." According to U.S. Central Command, 13 women and children were traveling in a white van when they failed to follow an order to halt. U.S. troops then apparently opened fire.

Military officials say it's hard to tell the difference between innocent civilians, terrorists, and Iraqi combatants, who may be disguised as civilians. So they had no choice but to kill some people who, it appears, were just going about their own personal business and had blundered into the wrong place in a country of 23 million people that is quickly becoming a single large war zone.

And as the civilian casualties grow, the anger at the United States, in Iraq and around the Arab world, will only explode – leading to more suicide bombings, more terrorist attacks (perhaps even on U.S. soil), and a larger geopolitical mess.

And the war in Iraq is only 13 days old.

As Rupert Cornwell reports on page 20, U.S. troops are already bogged down in a war that is beginning, more and more, to resemble another truly ugly war and foreign policy disaster, in a place called Vietnam.

In some key ways, of course, the situations are very different: The war in Iraq almost certainly won't last for 10 years. Saddam Hussein doesn't have a big country like China or the Soviet Union supporting him. Eventually, the United States will probably win a military victory.

But it will come at great cost. As in Vietnam, the Pentagon planners and the White House leaders appear to have badly underestimated the anger of the population of a country where most of the people don't welcome U.S. "liberation." Somehow, military planners expected to fight with Hussein's forces in the open, under traditional military conditions; they didn't realize that, like the Vietcong, the Iraqis would resort to guerrilla warfare.

And now, U.S. and British troops are bogged down outside of Baghdad, unable to win a decisive victory with high-tech weaponry against the Iraqi grenade launchers, small-arms fire, and suicide bombs. The casualties are piling up on all sides. The civilian population is increasingly hungry and thirsty (despite video footage of the British supply ship Sir Galahad distributing food and water, United Nations and relief agency workers say the humanitarian effort is falling far, far short of what's needed to avoid starvation and disease).

And the United States is quickly and decisively losing the battle for the hearts and minds not only of the Iraqi people but also of the rest of the world. As Robert Fisk points out on page 20, President George W. Bush has done something truly remarkable: he's turned one of the world's great tyrants, a widely despised despot known as the Butcher of Baghdad, into a martyr.

Soon the pressure will be on Bush to blunder even further. As it becomes increasingly clear that any invasion of Baghdad will be a bloody, street-by-street conflict the U.S. military is not prepared or equipped to fight, the hawks in the White House will demand wholesale bombing of the city, a process that will take tens of thousands of lives, further inflame anti-U.S. passions, and make it nearly impossible to govern Iraq after a military victory. And there is still no exit strategy, no clear path to peace.

In the Vietnam era, the antiwar movement built slowly. It took years – and tens of thousands of body bags – before activists could bring huge crowds into the streets. But this war has already galvanized massive protests, in the United States and around the world, and those numbers will get larger as Bush leads the nation further into the Iraqi quagmire.

Congress has, thus far, been woefully unwilling to heed the lessons of Vietnam and demand accountability from the White House. Even the Democrats (as in Vietnam) are far too quick to line up behind an ill-conceived military operation. On March 20, an overwhelming majority voted in favor of a sweeping statement endorsing Bush's war – and even Rep. Nancy Pelosi, leader of the Democrats and a representative from San Francisco, voted yes. San Franciscans ought to be protesting regularly outside of Pelosi's office, to let her know that she isn't representing her constituency.

And although official Washington doesn't seem to be listening to the sound of global outrage, perhaps the most important political lesson of the Vietnam War is this: Protest works. And the only way to get this war over quickly, before even more damage is done, is to keep the pressure on.