E&P: Good Mourning, Vietnam - Parts I and II (Iraq is Vietnam Redux)

[RamboLiberal]

http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/columns/pressingissues_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1002156192

By Greg Mitchell

(March 09, 2006) -- It may surprise most in the media to learn that the U.S. has now been waging war in Iraq for precisely the same length of time that passed between the Gulf of Tonkin resolution in 1965 and the humbling of President Lyndon Johnson at the polls that led him to promise to exit the White House in 1968.

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More than two years ago, I started warning of the Vietnamization of Iraq. My first column on the subject, in fact, was titled, “Good Morning, Vietnam.” It observed that our soldiers do not know who is on our side -- who they should save and who they should shoot. By April 2004, I had observed that some of those who once chortled about the Vietnam link—including Bill O’Reilly and Pat Buchanan-- were now invoking it.

Yet the war has gone on, unabated: Apocalypse then, and now.

I could repeat here all of my prescient arguments from back then. But let me cite a source with more credible hawkish credentials. No, not Vietnam vet Rep. John Murtha, but Lt. Gen. William E. Odom, U.S. Army (Ret.), director of the National Security Agency from 1985 to 1988 under President Reagan, now teaching at Yale University. In an article posted at Nieman Watchdog on Wednesday, he argues:

“The Vietnam War experience can’t tell us anything about the war in Iraq – or so it is said. If you believe that, try looking through this lens, and you may change your mind.

http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/columns/pressingissues_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1002157344

When I wrote a column in this space on Thursday refreshing my long held view that America’s experience in Iraq will one day be viewed, in many respects, as “another Vietnam,” I had no idea that a conference of big-name former policymakers was to be held this weekend that would dwell on this very notion. I was more interested in directing readers to another official, Lt. Gen. William Odom, and his current article at Nieman Watchdog (you can find the link to that column to the right on this page).

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Jack Valenti, former special assistant to President Lyndon B. Johnson: "You cannot win against an insurgency that springs from the population. There's never been an insurgency that doesn't prevail against a mighty power."

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Haig on Iraq today: "It appears to me we haven't learned very much.”

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A tape of former Pentagon chief Robert McNamara from 1965: "The current battle is going very well. The problem is that it's not producing the conditions that will almost certainly win for us."

President Johnson, on tape from 1966: "I know we oughtn't to be there , but I can't get out."