Decent Intervals: Iraq and Vietnam, Then and Now Posted by Suzanne Nossel

I wrote last night about the disturbing parallels between the effort now underway by President Bush to get the Iraqi government and army to "stand up" for long enough to allow US troops to make it to the door, and the Nixon Administration's push to secure a "decent interval" during which the South Vietnamese government would hold, avoiding a situation where the departure of US troops was the proximate cause of that state's collapse.

In a move that has got to have White House staffers spinning Nixonian conspiracy theories, the National Archive chose today to release a set of papers that underscore the point.  The New York Times offers the following glimpses into language that's become very familiar of late.

May, 1969:  The Nixon White House said in May 1969 that it wanted to establish in Vietnam "procedures for political choice that give each significant group a real opportunity to participate in the political life of the nation."

January, 2005:  "There will be many opportunities along the way for the Sunni community to express itself, either through voting or through other participation in the political process," said State Department spokesman Richard A. Boucher. "And our goal is to try to make sure that all those opportunities are available to all the citizens of Iraq."

Vietnam era: "What the United States wants for South Vietnam is not the important thing," according to an internal White House planning initiative memo. "What North Vietnam wants for South Vietnam is not the important thing. What is important is what the people of South Vietnam want for themselves."

April, 2003:  "If we want, as I believe we must, democratic rule in Iraq, then we will have to accept the consequences of freely chosen leaders by the Iraqis," he said. "That's where legitimacy lies, not in some bureaucracy either from New York or elsewhere, but in what the people of Iraq want for themselves." (Bush Adviser, Richard Perle)

There's nothing wrong about ensuring broad participation from Iraq's political factions and seeing to it that the Iraqi people determine their own future.   These principles likely made equal sense in Vietnam. 

But the parallels suggest that Americans should take little comfort from the Administration's rhetoric on this score.   While Bush may talk a good game about the progress being made and Iraq's bright future, the facts on the ground more often than not contradict him.   As they did in Vietnam, the American people are steadily realizing this.  Decent interval redux is Bush's answer to their skepticism, but the skeptics ought to answer him right back and say they're not prepared to risk more lives for a strategy we've seen fail before.

Comments

[Lane Brody]

South Vietnam was not a democracy and was not supported by the majority of the population. The insurgency in Iraq is being supported by a portion of a minority group. The two situations are hardly analagous and in the case of Iraq it's insulting to all those people who proudly voted in the last 2 elections and presumedly will vote in even larger numbers next month.

What percentage of arab sunni's have to vote next month in order for a reasonable person to assume the insurgency has no long term prospects? When the #2 Al Qaeda leader has to tell Al Qaeda in Iraq that killing innocent civilians is counter-productive you'll forgive a reasonable person for questioning the mainstream view these killings are proof the insurgency is effective.

Lane Brody

[J Thomas]

"What percentage of arab sunni's have to vote next month in order for a reasonable person to assume the insurgency has no long term prospects?"

Whyever would you suppose those two are linked?

Sunnis tried not voting to show they didn't support the coalition government. The result was that government got to do stuff with no input from them. So whyever shouldn't they vote and fight both? The only concern is that we might grab some of them as insurgents when they go in to vote.

South vietnam had a series of elections. The elections were rigged but they said they were being democratic. The media reported a level of vote-fraud in iraq that appeared considerably less than that in vietnam. So we might be doing quantitatively better.

I agree that it looks bad for the #2 Al Qaeda leader to say that killing innocent civilians is counterproductive. The trouble is, we look worse -- where is the US leader who's pointed out that it's counterproductive for us to kill innocent civilians? It's progress that iraqis despise al Qaeda almost as much as they despise us, but if we could just come up with ways to avoid killing innocent civilians we'd be so much better off, yes?

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