Iraq pays a bloody price as US fails to learn lesson of Vietnam

THE Iraq war has been raging for over four years now.

By the end of last month, US troop fatalities had reached 3,474 and the estimates of Iraqi security force and civilian fatalities ranged from 30,000 up to as high as 650,000.

As we continue to become desensitised to hearing about deaths in Iraq every day, the body count continues to rise and every individual killed leaves a huge gap in the lives of his or her family.

Those who so vehemently supported the illegal invasion of Iraq believed in the presence of weapons of mass destruction and of Al-Qaida’s links to Saddam’s regime, and were sceptical that the situation there could ever turn into a repeat of Vietnam.

The have clearly been proven wrong on all counts. The troops have been fighting a guerrilla war for a long time now from which, as in Vietnam, a favourable outcome is simply not possible.

While protesters against the Vietnam war were criticised for speaking out, how many more lives could have been saved if people had listened earlier?

Just as Lyndon Johnson did in Vietnam, George W Bush is now repeating the same mistake with the announcement last January that the US would be deploying more than 21,500 additional troops to Iraq, bringing the total to 160,000 by this month.

This is blind belief in the fact that greater technology and better organisation ensures victory.

How many more lives need to be sacrificed before people learn from the lessons of the past?

In Roger Davis’ Oscar-winning Vietnam documentary, Hearts and Minds, Randy Floyd, who flew 98 bombing missions there, gives his view of the conflict.

He states: “During and after the missions, the results never really dawned on me. The reality of the screams, people dying and their homeland being destroyed was not something I thought about. I think we as Americans have all tried very hard to escape what we’ve learned in Vietnam, to not come to the logical conclusions of what’s really happened.

“The military does the same thing. They don’t realise they can’t stop things just by changing their tactics, adding a little more sophisticated technology, improving the tactics used last time and not making the same mistakes.”

Floyd conmcluded: “I think history operates a little different than that. I think Americans have worked extremely hard not to see the criminality that their officials and policymakers have exhibited.”

Randy Floyd’s comments are strangely relevant in the current situation in Iraq and highlight how useless are the attempts to win that conflict.

Bring the troops home now.

David O’Connor

9 Oakdene

Ballinclea Road

Killiney

Co Dublin