No way out

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.... As in Vietnam, the Pentagon planners and the White House leader appear to have badly underestimated the anger of the population of a country where most of the people don't welcome U.S. "liberation" ... they didn't realize that, like the Vietcong, the Iraqis would resort to guerrilla warfare.

"The New Vietnam," Bay Guardian editorial, 4/2/03

A YEAR AFTER the invasion of Iraq, Paul Krugman, the New York Times columnist who is quickly becoming not only the leading progressive economic analyst in the mainstream news media but also one of the best political writers, is openly talking about what an April 16 column called "the Vietnam analogy."

His argument: "There are some real parallels, and in some ways Iraq looks worse."

Sure, Krugman notes, the size of the U.S. force in Iraq is far smaller than the size of the army that fought in Southeast Asia during the height of that misguided war. "But the U.S. military as a whole ... is much smaller that it was in 1968," he writes. "Measured by the share of our military strength it ties down, Iraq is a Vietnam-size conflict."

And like Vietnam, the entire misadventure is based on lies – "Gulf of Tonkin attack, meet nonexistent W.M.D. and Al Qaeda links," Krugman writes – and President George W. Bush, like Richard Nixon before him, is trying to portray anyone who criticizes the war as a traitor who is undermining support for U.S. troops.

Liberals like Krugman aren't the only ones with serious concerns about the way the occupation is proceeding. As Jason Vest reports on page 18, an internal Bush administration memo shows that even hawks who are on the ground in Baghdad can tell the situation is bleak.

"Baghdadis have an uneasy sense that they are heading towards civil war," the memo says. "Sunnis, Shias, and Kurd professionals say that they themselves, friends, and associates are buying weapons fearing for the future."

That points to the most obvious – and frightening – aspect of the Vietnam analogy: on a pure political level, the war in Iraq is far worse. Because the Bush administration has gotten the United States into a quagmire from which there is no clear or credible escape.

At least in Vietnam there was a way out: The United States could – and eventually did – simply leave. Ho Chi Mihn, the Vietcong leader, had built a political and governing structure that had overwhelming popular support and the ability to quickly take control of the country. You can argue forever about the impact of communism on the Vietnamese economy, but the reality is that shortly after the United States left, Vietnam became for the first time in decades a peaceful country, with a government that lacked democracy but at least had popular legitimacy.

There is no such leader and no such structure anywhere in Iraq. The Sunnis and Shiites have been enemies for generations. The Kurds don't get along with either group. And under the brutally repressive regime of Saddam Hussein (who built his reign of terror in part with U.S. support), there was no opportunity for any sort of credible internal opposition movement to arise.

In other words, Bush has blundered wildly into a situation he can't control, and there's no easy way out. The United States can't leave without throwing a country that we now own and are responsible for into anarchy and chaos, with gangs of armed warlords fighting for control of cities and religious and ethnic groups with long-simmering antagonisms killing each other – and killing thousands of civilians who happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time – while destroying what's left of the nation's infrastructure.

And yet the U.S. occupation force clearly can't remain for the long term: Bush's army has little or no legitimacy and has already lost the battle for the hearts and minds of the Iraqi people. The longer the occupation lasts, the more U.S. troops – many of them young, ill-prepared soldiers who signed on as reservists or national guard troops – will be killed and maimed, the more Iraqi civilians will be caught in the crossfire, and the more the nation will be sucked toward civil war.

The only real hope is to replace the U.S. occupation force with an international peacekeeping crew, under the jurisdiction of the United Nations – but the U.N., for good reason, doesn't want to clean up Bush's mess.

In fact, at this point, there's only one way to extricate the United States from this disaster, and that's to get rid of Bush in November and elect John Kerry, who can at least then plead with the U.N. for help fixing a disaster he didn't create. Vietnam brought down Johnson and helped bring down Nixon. If that part of the parallel holds true, there may still be hope for Iraq.