Americans want desperately for Iraq to be viewed as another Vietnam. On its face, this may seem a highly counterintuitive proposition. Why, one might ask, would a nation that lost more than 58,000 of its young men and women during a failed war in Southeast Asia desire a repeat performance in the Middle East? Surely the Vietnam War left little in its wake for Americans to celebrate. Their army was left with its organizational confidence shaken, their trust in government was badly shattered, and their conviction in the nation’s capacity to intervene in the global arena put into question. A Vietnam “syndrome”—a reluctance to commit American power abroad, especially in conflicts deemed “unwinnable”—endured for at least three decades after the fall of Saigon in 1975.
Yet, despite the many tragedies of the Vietnam War, there has been a seemingly inescapable urge to see the current unraveling in Iraq through the lens of what used to be America’s longest war. Those seeing evident comparisons between the two conflicts appear intent on promoting a certain, if not simplified, version of an immensely complicated affair within the larger Cold War era. Vietnam ostensibly offers proof of a war won by military ingenuity, then ham-fistedly lost by political infirmity. Weak American political leaders not only turned their back on a beleaguered ally in the fight against global communism but, more shamefully, on their own soldiers who sacrificed so much for so little of permanence.
Thus, pundits like Max Boot can argue with reputed historical certainty in The Weekly Standard that “the pullout from Iraq looks increasingly like the pullout from Vietnam a generation before.” According to this narrative, President Obama took a page from Henry Kissinger’s diplomatic playbook, caring only for a “decent interval” before the next election cycle, and ceded the hard-fought gains made by American soldiers and marines who had implemented effective counterinsurgency principles under the learned eye of General David Petraeus.
Not only self-styled authorities on the Vietnam War but also some veterans of Iraq take a similar view. Petraeus’s former executive officer, Peter Mansoor, has followed Boot’s lead in critiquing the interference, if not misinformed micromanagement, of civilian political leaders in Iraq. In June, Mansoor told The Washington Post’s Greg Jaffe that “Anyone who was there during the surge came away very encouraged about the future of the country if we had continued to stay engaged.”
This repackaging of a new American dolchstoss (stab-in-the-back) theory should not surprise. In the immediate aftermath of Vietnam, U.S. officers were quick to blame their civilian masters for the fall of Saigon. Admiral U.S. Grant Sharp, Commander in Chief Pacific during the Johnson years, railed against Congress for its 1974 “assault on what was left of our support for South Vietnam by cutting funds for the procurement of military supplies for that beleaguered country.” Speaking to a U.S. Army Command and Staff College class in 1978, General William C. Westmoreland, himself the target of accusations for a botched war, took aim at civilian mismanagement. “Despite military advice to the contrary,” Westmoreland lamented, “our political leaders decreased the pressure on the Hanoi regime and enticed the enemy to the conference table.” If only allowed to see it through, the argument went, military officers could have led South Vietnam to final victory.
At least a sizeable minority of Vietnam veterans have embraced such counterfactual “if only” arguments. For instance, in his recent book Losing Vietnam: How America Abandoned Southeast Asia, retired Major General Ira H. Hunt bemoans how the “American sacrifice of lives and treasure had been in vain. Had the United States continued to adequately support its allies, though, it would not have needed to end this way.” For Hunt, and similarly minded veterans and historians, the war in Vietnam was not only “winnable” but “won.” Accordingly, in A Better War, Lewis Sorley could trumpet that under the leadership of Creighton Abrams “There came a time when the war was won. The fighting wasn’t over but the war was won.” (Discerning readers might examine Sorley’s endnotes for the chapter titled “Victory” to evaluate the evidence for such a bold claim.) In this accounting, military managers had solved the riddle of Vietnam. Civilian political leaders and the public at large simply had to see the war through to its logical conclusion. The tragedy lies in their failure of commitment.
It is this version of the Vietnam War, the one in which victory was squandered, that at least some American foreign policy specialists find so attractive. Vietnam is the perfect historical comparison to Iraq, and what better way to make an argument than to find corroboration from a historical case study? The problem, of course, is that historical parallels are never so neatly drawn. The lines are always askance, in large part because context matters. In short, the Vietnam of revisionist interpretations is not the one that Americans truly left behind in 1973.
If Sorley is correct that the war was won in 1970, one might ask why Abrams’s own staff did not see it that way. Clearly, Americans struggled throughout their time in Southeast Asia to accurately assess the progress and effectiveness of allied efforts. Yet in mid-1970, the U.S. military command found that the “enemy still retains a viable military and political apparatus throughout the Republic [of South Vietnam].” Even if allied efforts were “causing a gradual erosion of this capability,” especially in the aftermath of the 1968 Tet Offensive, Abrams’s staff was still debating whether pacification programs were maintaining momentum, whether local South Vietnamese forces were effective in providing population security, and whether the morale of province and district chiefs could be sustained.
While Americans pondered the efficacy of the allied effort, the civil war in which they had inserted themselves played out along lines too often outside U.S. influence. In fact, accounts of the conflict based on South Vietnamese sources confront the notion of American successes, especially within the political realm. In his masterful work The Vietnamese War, David Elliott convincingly demonstrates the Saigon government’s inability to consolidate a solid political base in the populous Mekong delta. Even if enthusiasm for the revolution was declining after 1970, such a phenomenon “did not lead to a corresponding increase of support” for the government of South Vietnam (GVN). Eric Bergerud’s attentive study of Hau Nghia province equally disputes claims supporting a U.S. military victory. Of the period between 1971 and 1973, Bergerud argues that the “GVN held the villages and controlled the roads, but the [National Liberation] Front apparatus was intact, and enemy main force units threatened attack from the safe areas and Cambodia.” (Indeed, the allies’ 1970 incursion into Cambodia attempted to dislocate these enemy sanctuaries with only short-term and limited results.)
Moreover, the very constancy of the GVN and its armed forces remained in question, despite years of American advice and assistance. In Village at War, another work based on Vietnamese voices, James Trullinger found not only a corrupt local police force and government in My Thuy Phuong but maintained that the 1973 “cease-fire agreement has succeeded in only one respect: getting U.S. troops out of Vietnam.” This compared to the 150,000 North Vietnamese Army troops allowed to remain inside South Vietnam’s borders by the Paris Accords. In reality, the best that American forces had been able to achieve, whether under William Westmoreland or Creighton Abrams, was a costly stalemate. After nearly two decades of direct American involvement, only the Vietnamese could resolve the deep political and social differences around which their civil war revolved.
This is not to contend that American political decisions had no impact on the course of the Vietnam War. Clearly they did. Lyndon Johnson’s choices to commit U.S. ground combat troops and then limit their actions within the borders of South Vietnam most definitely altered the Hanoi Politburo’s war plans. The theory of gradual escalation as it applied to the coercive American air campaign over North Vietnam ultimately proved invalid. Richard Nixon’s effort to “de-Americanize” the war surely transformed the direction, if not outcome, of a long political-military conflict. None of these decisions, however, prove Vietnam was a war won militarily yet lost politically. Nothing about one of the most complex American interventions abroad in the twentieth century should be deemed so simple.
In fact, the Vietnam War longed for by those seeing neat parallels with Iraq quite simply does not exist. Surely, historian Heather Stuhr is correct in arguing that we should stop comparing Iraq to Vietnam. The comparisons have become little more than a rhetorical device to prove (usually) a political talking point about interventionism, commitment to one’s allies, or the limits of American power abroad. But there is something deeper at play here. The curious nostalgia for Vietnam is based not only on a misinterpretation of that war but, more broadly, of war in general. War is not a human activity that can be precisely—and conveniently—divided between military and political components. Military action should never be seen as an end unto itself. One might even argue that attempting to separate the military from the political is dangerous business.
Soldiers coming home from wars with uncertain ends should not be persuaded to blame civilian politicians for betraying their sacrifices. (Many French officers did so both during and after the long war for Algerian independence, with unfortunate results.) If there is any perspective to be gained from Vietnam, it is not to be found in reductive accusations of political infidelity. Rather, to borrow from Eliot Cohen, it may be more productive to look at conflict as a constant dialogue between civilian policymakers and their wartime subordinates. That dialogue should focus on what military force can achieve politically, how strategies are best employed, and what state of peace follows in the aftermath of man’s most destructive act. None of these aspects of war are the special preserve of either political or military leaders. War has long been about political-military interaction. Vietnam was no exception. Neither was our intervention into Iraq. Perhaps it’s time to stop longing for the two to be any more similar than that.
Gregory A. Daddis is an Academy Professor in the Department of History at West Point. His latest book is Westmoreland’s War: Reassessing American Strategy in Vietnam (Oxford University Press). The views expressed here are those of the author and do not reflect the official policy or position of the Department of the Army, the Department of Defense, or the U.S. Government.
Image Credit: U.S. Archives
strategic service 
Joe Lene 
Steve Heffington 
Lt. Gerald F. Merna USMC Ret. 
Verneoz 
Charlieford 
R J Del Vecchio 
Paul Schmehl 
COL Daddis is right about the parallels between Vietnam and Iraq with regards to military recriminations directed at civilian officials, but I wish he’d taken his analysis one step further and stated that this was done in both cases at least in part to gloss over the failures of military leaders.
Military failures occur when we cannot accomplish the mission set out for us within given parameters, including political ones. In Vietnam, as in Iraq, no matter how daunting or unpalatable the mission may seem, there is an expectation that the military will adapt, improvise, or otherwise adjust to meet the challenge. In the case of both Iraq and Vietnam, there was a great deal of organizational preoccupation with the war we wanted to fight as opposed to the war we needed to fight. Blaming politicians for our failures in these wars serves no purpose other than to insulate us from any lessons we might have otherwise learned, but it certainly does well to deflect any criticism we might have otherwise faced and makes us feel a whole lot better.
As a former student I’m glad to see you writing and look forward to reading your book.
Just as Col Daddis states there is no proof Vietnam was ever won, there is neither proof it would have been lost had the very tight shackles our civilian leadership placed on its military been loosed. Responsibility cannot be delegated, and in our system of civilian leadership over the military, it does not follow that regardless what civilian leadership does, the military must be responsible for the loss. Col Daddis is correct that the parallels between Vietnam and Iraq break down quickly though. In Vietnam, civilian leadership decisions lost the war. In Iraq, civilian leadership lost the peace.
While I agree with much of what the author said, the following line jumped out at me — “After nearly two decades of direct American involvement, only the Vietnamese could resolve the deep political and social differences around which their civil war revolved.” Given a different article would anyone have questioned that line if it read — “After a decade of direct American involvement, only the Iraqis could resolve the deep political and social differences around which their civil war revolved.” For that matter would anyone have questioned a different article that read “After nearly a decade and half of direct American involvement, only the Afghans could resolve the deep political and social differences that divided their country.” Could the same general statements be made about South Korea circa 1948 or the Philippines in 1952, or practically any other county in which a third party nation became involved in a civil war/significant insurgency?
If that is the case, then comparing the conflicts…if done in a moderately unbiased and well-informed academic exploration of the topics should be beneficial. Could it not be informative to compare the influences of Magsaysay, Rhee, Diem, Maliki and Karzai? Would an analysis of the various governmental HN capacity building operations evident in USAMGIK, MACV, MNF-I, or ISAF not do something to inform future such actions?
I will not argue that most past comparisons have been all that good, or that most of them are not made with political or personal agendas. But that should not force us to draw the conclusion that comparing Iraq and Vietnam is a useless task. Are there similarities between Maliki and Diem? I would say there are. Are there lessons we could take from comparing how we advised senior government officials in Iraq and Vietnam and the results of that advisory work. Again I would say there are. Could we compare the challenges faced by the ARVN and Iraqi Armed Forces post US withdrawal to help tailor our next government/security force advisory effort? Again I would suggest we could…to substantial gain.
Overall, I suggest we not throw the baby out with the bath water. Many of the comparisons done to date may have been less then helpful…I don’t think that means we should stop trying.
See: http://www.stagnesalumni.org/photos/GenHochmuth/StoriesGenHochmuth.pdf
Having served in Iraq in 2006, I see some similarities between Iraq and Vietnam. In Iraq, though, the war was won and the U.S. President subsequently and proactively lost the war. As for the military, we were applauded and respected when we came home from Iraq. When we left Vietnam, the military was spit on.
In both the Viet Nam and Iraq wars, the civilian leadership was instrumental in losing the initiative for success of US goals and objectives. McNamara and Johnson were (like Hitler in WWII) pushing too many operational buttons, like choosing which targets got hit what day. Also, the Americans at home contributed immensely to the aid and comfort of the enemy by public demonstrations against the war effort and the military. In the Iraq war, Obama refused to recognize the need to help the Iraqis mature their tactics, training, logistics, and intelligence systems by leaving behind a robust support force to phase the Iraqis in on operations over time. Yes, there were military mistakes in both wars, but these were not the primary reasons for the lack of success. Remember, war is a means to a political end.
After reading the comments, I can only extend Professor Daddis my sincere sympathies.
The “sizeable minority” and facts. First, yes I am a vet but a student of the war prior to going there and for many years since returning. Prof. Daddis denigrates Bob Sorley’s statement that a time came when the war was won, but neglects the fact that in ’72 the North invaded with a dozen divisions or so, spearheaded by 400+ tanks, hundreds of Russian artillery pieces far superior to what we left the ARVN, and hundreds of AA guns and AA missiles that neutralized most of the RVN Air Force. Months later, they retreated back across the DMZ and the border of Laos, with 40% casualties, and loss of all their tanks and much other equipment.
If our goal in bringing in US troops in ’65 was to buy time for the South to learn to take care of itself, then this was clear success. Yes, we did contribute the power of US combat air to help the ARVN make up for the loss of their planes and to offset the fearsome Russian artillery, but it was those little yellow guys that had been ridiculed for years who stood and fought the massive invasion forces to a standstill in battles more intense than almost any our forces withstood in the years before.
When the support we promised to the South in the Paris Accords was seen to no longer be available, after Congress forbade any use of US military in Viet Nam, Hanoi and Moscow knew they had the go-ahead for a second, greater invasion. That was a betrayal by our politicians of all we had promised to the South, and of all the blood and lives we had expended in the effort to live up to JFK’s Inauguration speech.
Prof. Daddis depends on a book about a single province in the Mekong to conclude that Saigon was ineffective in the whole region. This is grossly misleading, as all the rest of the region was very effectively defended not just by the ARVN but also by the regional forces from the villages. It’s like saying the slow progress of the Allies in Italy during WW2 showed they really weren’t doing well in the war.
And again we hear it was a “civil war” that only the Vietnamese could work out between themselves. Really? Was the North in our Civil War supplied from Day One by major European powers who were of the exact same political persuasion as Lincoln, and without whose support in arms, materiel, fuel, medical supplies, etc, the North could never have supported not one but two major invasions of the South? Better yet, will we now reconsider the Korean War to have just been a “civil war” rather than part of communist expansionism?
Take the “civil war” theme further. Eight years after Appomattox there were no Union soldiers left in the South, and all the Confederate States were again selfgoverning. Not a good parallel in Viet Nam. The Union did not force the renaming of Richmond to Lincolnville, which is the equivalent of forced renaming of Saigon to Ho Chi Minh City; this is not reconciliation, it is the conqueror’s gesture to demonstrate his power.
Discussions of the situation in Iraq are another matter. But the lack of understanding of the real history of US involvement in Viet Nam that Prof. Daddis displays is most disappointing when found in someone teaching at West Point.
I’m a Vietnam era vet. IOW, I served during that time frame but did not serve in theatre. I have studied the war extensively, because my cousin, Donald, was killed in that war.
To call it a civil war is a gross mischaracterization of what the Vietnam War was and reveals a bias on the part of the writer that is obvious to anyone who has objectively studied the war. The communists in the North left troops in place in 1954, in violation of the Paris Accords, and began infiltrating more troops from the North in 1959, two years before the US had committed any troops to South Vietnam.
In May 1961, Kennedy sent 400 Green Berets to South Vietnam to assist in the establishment of civil defense forces to defend against attacks from the Viet Cong, which were a wholly owned subsidiary of the North, despite their protestations to the contrary. (After the war was over they admitted it and expressed their amazement that the Americans believed the fiction.)
Col. Caddis calls himself an historian yet demonstrates that his knowledge of Vietnam is superficial at best and sorely lacking in the depth necessary to understand what was going on in Vietnam when the US began assisting the South.
Worse than that, he fails to recognize that not only did US politicians refuse to allow US military leaders to attack the enemy in Cambodia and Laos (contrary to all sensible tactical doctrine) and interfere daily in the prosecution of the war (Johnson once boasted that the Air Force couldn’t bomb an outhouse without his approval), but after we withdrew our forces they reneged on a treaty we had signed (and Congress had approved) in violation of everything our country supposedly stands for.
In 1972 South Vietnam soundly defeated the communist invasion force in their first attempt to take over the country after we had left. It was only when the ARVN troops were reduced to one grenade a month and 80 rounds of ammunition a day that the ARVN collapsed under the weight of a massive invasion from the North.
Iraq and Vietnam are perfect parallels. Our military, despite setbacks and mistakes, finally beat the enemy to the point that the country could be stabilized, and then our politicians betrayed our ally.
The lesson our military needs to learn is that they cannot trust our politicians and should not advocate for anything other than short term engagements that can be resolved before the politicians lose their spines. That lesson will never learned so long as the academicians teach tripe that bears no relation to the facts.