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by Jeff Jacoby, The Boston Globe
Iraq war skeptics and critics have been invoking Vietnam almost from the
day the fighting began. So Senator Chuck Hagel of Nebraska was hardly
breaking new ground when he joined the invokers on Sunday. “We are
locked into a bogged-down problem,” he said on ABC’s “The Week,” “not…dissimilar to where we were in Vietnam.”
Run-of-the-mill stuff on the Democratic left, but since Hagel is a
Republican and a decorated Vietnam vet, his words instantly leaped to
the top of the news cycle. “GOP Senator Says Iraq Looking Like Vietnam,” was the headline on AP's widely reprinted story.
Yet in so many ways, Iraq doesn’t look like Vietnam at all. Vietnam
was never the central battleground of the Cold War, while Iraq has
become the focal point of the war on terrorism. Americans had no reason
to feel that their own security was at risk in Vietnam, whereas 9/11
made it clear that the enemy we face today in the Middle East poses a
lethal threat here at home as well. The jihadis in Iraq don’t have the
backing of superpowers; North Vietnam and the Viet Cong were armed to
the teeth by China and the Soviet Union. In South Vietnam, the United
States was allied to an unpopular and incompetent regime; in Iraq, the
United States toppled a brutal tyranny and is trying to nurture a
democracy in its place.
But of all the ways in which the Iraq war is not like Vietnam,
perhaps the most telling is the attitude of the troops.
“When I was in Vietnam,” retired Army Colonel Jack Jacobs, a 1969
Medal of Honor recipient who had just returned from a fact-finding trip
to the Sunni Triangle, told NBC News in May, “if you asked anybody what
he wanted more than anything else in the world, he’d say: to go home. We asked…hundreds of soldiers, low-ranking soldiers, in both
Afghanistan and Iraq…the same question. And the response, to a man
and a woman, was, 'To kill bad guys.’…The morale is just over the
top – just really, really enthused about what they’re doing. And I
think the reason is they perceive that they’re making progress. Success
will do a lot to morale.”
Indeed it will, as the “Today” show’s Matt Lauer discovered when he
visited Baghdad last week. He tried valiantly to coax some Vietnam-style
disillusionment out of the soldiers he met, but as NBC’s transcript
makes clear, the troops weren't having any of that:
Lauer: Talk to me a little bit about morale here. We’ve heard so much
about the insurgent attacks, so much about the uncertainty as to when
you folks are going to get to go home. How would you describe morale?
Chief Warrant Officer Randy Kergiss: My unit morale’s pretty good.…People are ready to execute their missions, and they’re pretty excited
to be here.
Lauer: How much does that uncertainty of knowing how long you’re going
to be here impact morale?
Sergeant Jamie Wells: Morale’s always high. Soldiers know they have a
mission, they like taking on the new objectives and taking on the new
challenges.…They’re motivated, ready to go.
Lauer: Don’t get me wrong, I think you guys are probably telling me the
truth, but there might be a lot of people at home wondering how that
could be possible with the conditions you’re facing and with the
insurgent attacks.…What would you say to those people who are
doubtful that morale can be that high?
Captain Sherman Powell: Well, sir, I tell you – if I got my news from
the newspapers also, I’d be pretty depressed as well.
Lauer: What don’t you think is being correctly portrayed?
Powell: Sir, I know it’s hard to get out and get on the ground and
report the news.…But for of those who’ve actually had a chance to
get out and go on patrols…we are very satisfied with the way
things are going here. And we are confident that if we’re allowed to
finish the job we started we’ll be very proud of it and our country will
be proud of us for doing it.…
Lauer: How would you feel about US forces being withdrawn before– you’re shaking your head – before the insurgency is defeated?
Powell: Well, sir, I would just tell you…as long as we continue to
have confidence that we are supported and people have our back, there is
nothing we cannot accomplish.
Lauer: So you would rather stay here longer and defeat the insurgency
then be pulled out earlier…?
Kergiss: Yes, sir.
Wells: Absolutely.
Things have gone wrong in Iraq as they go wrong in every war.
President Bush’s strategy of defeating Islamist terrorism by draining
the swamps of dictatorship and fanaticism in which it breeds carries a
high price tag. Nearly 1,900 US soldiers have been killed and more than
14,000 wounded in Iraq so far. There are more casualties to come.
But another Vietnam? No – not when such strong support for the war
comes from the very soldiers who are in harm’s way. Their high morale,
their faith in their mission, their conviction that they are doing the
right thing for both America and Iraq – those are the signals to heed,
not the counsels of despair on the TV talk shows. It will be time to
give up on Iraq when the troops give up on Iraq. So far, there’s no sign
they will.
©2005 Boston Globe
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