Vietnam and Iraq:
When Deja Vu Is Not the Same

by Col. Dan Smith (USA ret),
FCNL’s Senior Fellow on Military Affairs

A Vietnam War Veteran's reflection on the announcement
of the 2,000th U.S. military death in Iraq.

It was, in a sense, inevitable in that the only strategy was “to stay the course.”

It was also characteristic that the announcement was delayed. The soldier actually died October 23, two days
before the death became “official” and public. What was uncharacteristic was the reported comment by a military spokesperson in Baghdad that the 2,000th U.S. fatality in the second Iraq war was a milestone only for those individuals and groups with political motives and anti-war agendas.

Obviously, the spokesperson was unaware of the Senate’s moments of silence in honor of the 2,000 U.S. military dead. Objectively, of course, the 2,000th fatality is no different from the first (March 21, 2003), the 500th (January 8, 2004), the 1,000th (September 6, 2004), or the 1,500th (March 2, 2005). But for the families and friends of those killed in the war, each death is different. Each is personal. Each is theirs.

The major media publications all carried the grim story “above the fold” on page one. A few also noted the number of U.S. wounded (15,200) while others drew quick comparisons with previous U.S. war fatalities. (Oddly missing from virtually all comparisons were the wars with approximately the same number of fatalities or duration: War of 1812, 42 months, 2,260 killed; and the Spanish-American War, 2,426 killed. The “hot” phase of the Korean War ran for 37 months, but technically the war “continues” to this day as no peace agreement was signed.)

Perhaps it was coincidence. Some have suggested that, to lessen the psychological reaction of the U.S. public when the 2,000th fatality was confirmed, the Pentagon “planted” another fatality story in the hope the media would bite. Conspiracy or not, the other story ran on October 24 above the fold on page 1 of the Washington Post: “Enemy Body Count Revived.”

Predictably, the story reignited the controversy stemming from comparisons of this Iraq War and Vietnam, with both sides issuing lists of ten similarities and dissimilarities. The newspaper article itself carefully characterized as “unofficial” and “periodic” all U.S. government reporting of fatalities suffered by insurgent and terrorist groups fighting the U.S.-led coalition in Iraq. Military officials – mostly unnamed – willing to comment on the growing trend to tally enemy losses in reports and briefings agreed on one point: in Iraq the reporting is ad hoc whereas in Vietnam it evolved into THE de rigor measure of “success.”

In his “No man is an Island,” the 17th century English poet, John Donne, proclaimed that “any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind.” In this sense, the death of each of the 2,000 U.S. military personnel is a momentous and tragic event equal to the death of any other – and as tragic as every death of a coalition soldier and every Iraqi.

However, for a Vietnam veteran with a deep interest in the interplay among religion, psychology, mythology, war, and peace, the suggestion that the “enemy body count” story might have been an effort to manipulate the news cycle is intriguing. Conversely, the conjunction of the “body count” story with the public announcement of the 1,999th U.S. military death in Iraq is almost synchronistic. This latter impression is reinforced by two other Iraq War fatality counts that were reached in the same week. First, the combined military dead of all non-U.S. coalition partners in Iraq stood at 199. Second, the on-line “Iraq Coalition Casualty Count” website, which this year started recording monthly Iraqi fatalities, reached 6,699 on October 24.

(Others more expert in numerology can detail the “meanings” of 9. I would only note that Joseph Campbell, the highly-regarded 20th century mythologist, discovered a plethora of cross-cultural associations of 9 with the Mother or goddess and the creative faculties that are normally ascribed to the feminine. Moreover, the life of each person springs from the feminine at birth and returns to it as “Mother Earth” in death.)

As in Vietnam, albeit after many more thousands had already been killed, the enduring question that haunts this misadventure is “why?” But listening to the administration spokespersons leaves the impression that the White House is more focused on forcing events to conform to their message (capturing the psychological process) than in acknowledging events as they are.

Thus the emphasis on installing in Baghdad a “friendly” and “stable” regime that can govern the entire country or, at a minimum, that would be receptive to (i.e., not hinder) development of Iraq’s vast petroleum potential by U.S. energy companies. This requires “winning” the fight against the insurgent groups through “Iraqization” of the security effort on the theory that Iraqis can better win the hearts and minds of other Iraqis. However, the presence of 140,000 or more U.S. troops whose day-to-day activities effectively support the Shi’ite majority against the Sunni minority (the Kurdish area has a very small U.S. presence) fuels not cooperation but continued animosity, growing revenge, and lengthening lists of the dead.

Moreover, this tact is spiritually bankrupt. It simply substitutes the probability of Iraqi for U.S. fatalities, a morally questionable course for anyone who believes that the inner life makes all people equal and gives no one the right to take another’s life.

And “winning”? The U.S. will not “win” because it has only brought death and destruction to Iraq. And that gets us back to the “why” that has cost 2,000 U.S. lives. Yes, a brutal dictator is gone, but that was not why Bush went to war. Nor does it address the reason why, 30 months after May 1, 2003, by Bush’s own declaration, the U.S. is still in a country where it was not invited and in which it has become an occupier, not a liberator.

U.S. commanders seem determined to avoid the Vietnam-era debacle. But their concern may not be only for accuracy. Those inclined toward cynicism in the wake of the shabby treatment of Army Chief of Staff General Eric Shinseki for his honest (but nonconforming) appraisal of troop numbers needed for occupation duty, might point to Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld’s November 2003 retort when asked about enemy fatalities as the real reason the numbers are not made public: “We don’t do body counts on other people.”

But the fact that the Pentagon increasingly does fall back on body counts as “a metric that can help convey magnitude and context” of a given operation, suggests that 30 years after the end of the Vietnamese civil war and 30 months of counter-insurgent operations in Iraq, the U.S. military still has no other “metric” to convey battlefield success – land taken and held, divisions and armies defeated, surrendered, or otherwise forced out of the battle.

In Vietnam, promotion rested on “success” in what became a war of attrition for both sides. The whole system quickly became corrupt. The reported numbers of enemy killed soon bore no relationship to actual bodies, and the automatic classification of most of the dead as Viet Cong or Viet Cong sympathizers – even the children – was but the ultimate mockery.

Similarly, in Iraq, the pressure to “succeed” produced Abu Ghraib and other instances of abuse of prisoners.
Stressed by the constant danger, uncertain who among the Iraq security forces – not to mention the general Iraqi public – is trustworthy, mistakes are inevitable and, just as inevitably, new anti-U.S. insurgents are created.

Vietnam was a watershed for another reason: it was the first war in which U.S. losses were the effective cause for ending U.S. participation and forcing withdrawal. (In Korea, U.S. forces did not withdraw after the 1953 armistice.) The question now is: Will the milestone of 2,000 dead U.S. military men and women, reached on October 23, 2005, be the psychological “tipping point” that finally compels the Bush administration to begin removing large numbers of troops from Iraq?

FCNL Document - Reviewed 10/27/05