After Defeat

Back in February, Justin Logan pointed out that predictions of DOOM following an American departure from Iraq echo essentially similar predictions being made about Vietnam in the late 1960s. Now via Justin I see that Kurt Campbell and Shawn Brimley have a Foreign Policy article making the same point.

The difference, however, is that as best I can tell Campbell and Brimley read the lesson in the opposite direction. Brimley's one of the coathors, for Campbell's new think tank, of a memo (PDF) arguing we can't afford to leave Iraq. These guys are part of the "residual force" consensus to which the Democratic Party seems weirdly hostage.

Comments

As I understand it, the Viet Minh had been slowly gaining ground for 40 years before the US intervention and it was widely believed throughout the country (north and south) that they would eventually prevail. So when they did prevail, the fragments formed into a single nation-state fairly directly. The side-effects were terrible for those on the RVN side but there wasn't any real question that a single nation would form.

This is not in any sense true of Iraq that I can see. Which isn't to say the US should stay - I think we should leave - just that the aftermath of our departure will most likely be very bloody. At the same time I think it will be bloodier the longer we do stay.

Cranky

Posted by Cranky Observer | June 19, 2007 1:04 PM

Stock Wingbut Argument #618 is that Vietnam WAS a disaster after the US left, especially for the Vietnamese. While there's some truth in the claim (a lot of Vietnamese did die), it never examines how an indefinite US presence could have prevented it.

Posted by Mike | June 19, 2007 1:04 PM

While there's some truth in the claim (a lot of Vietnamese did die), it never examines how an indefinite US presence could have prevented it.

It also seems to work in a vaccuum where US presence wasn't creating megadeaths by virtue of it's existense.

Posted by Ed Marshall | June 19, 2007 1:11 PM

Don't you young'ns read history anymore? Consider these facts re Vietnam and then let's address the comments by Mike and Ed Marshall.

1) The Viet Cong were defeated as a guerrilla force by about 1970; they were replaced with regular North Vietnamese Army troops infiltrated into the South.

2) Those NVA infiltrators, in the early 70's, did not pose an existential threat to South Vietnam -- the North's conventional, mechanized military force did.

3) The 1972 Easter Offensive -- a massive conventional invasion of the South by North Vietnamese tanks, infantry etc. -- was stopped by a combination of U.S. air power and South Vietnamese ground forces.

4) The Paris Peace accords are signed in 1973. We withdraw nearly all our troops, and promise to help South Vietnam if the North invades again.

5) In 1974, Congress cuts off U.S. military support to South Vietnam.

6) North Vietnam launches another massive conventional invasion in 1975, we do nothing to help, and South Vietnam falls.

Now let's revisit Mike and Ed Marshall's comments. Mike doesn't see how the catastrophe for South Vietnam could have been prevented. Since the real threat to South Vietnam by the early 70's was a conventional invasion, and since our air power had helped to neutralize the last one (in '72), it seems likely that had we offered similar support in '75, South Vietnam would have survived. It's also possible that if Congress hadn't cut off military aid to the South in 1974 (and with it, the prospect of U.S. air support in the event of another invasion), North Vietnam wouldn't have invaded in 1975.

Regarding Ed Marshall's comment about the U.S. causing "megadeaths" in Vietnam: it's hard to see how backing the South up with air power in the event of another invasion by the North would have resulted in more deaths than followed the Communist victory.

Posted by Fred | June 19, 2007 2:03 PM

Funny how Fred conveniently forgets the history from 1943-1945 and the OSS' recommendation as to who the US should back in "French Indochina" after the Japanese surrender. Hint: it wasn't the French.

Cranky

Posted by Cranky Observer | June 19, 2007 2:08 PM

Fred also fails to take note that the various S. Vietnamese regimes were in many respects, worse than their Northern counterparts--certainly no less inclined to preside over mass killings.

Posted by rea | June 19, 2007 2:12 PM

While it's fun to rehash history, the salient point is that there's no threat to the existence of the Iraqi government whatsoever - certainly not from al-Qaeda or other forces exterior to Iraq.

At the end of the day, the government is going to have to make some kind of political accomodation with the insurgency in order to bury the hatchet. We don't seem to be bringing that day any closer by virtue of our presence. Just the opposite, it seems to me.

Posted by Steve | June 19, 2007 2:17 PM

Just don't let them try to pull the Cambodia crap -- the Khmer Rouge was virtually handed power by the U.S. carpet bombing from 1965 - 1973.

http://www.yale.edu/cgp/us.html

Shockingly, amazingly, it turns out that if you spend a number of years obliterating a society and leaving the now starving population in tatters scrounging through the rubble, the people who then emerge from the rubble to take power are often not nice people!!!

Who would have imagined?

Posted by El Cid | June 19, 2007 2:29 PM

> the salient point is that there's no threat
> to the existence of the Iraqi government
> whatsoever

I fear I must disagree with that. 6 to 9 months after the US leaves there will be AN Iraqi government (most likely with some sort of "autonomous region" in the north) but it certainly won't be THE Iraqi Government that is currently in power [sic]. The period in between will be savage beyond measure.

Cranky

Posted by Cranky Observer | June 19, 2007 2:32 PM

A lot of bad arguments are made, by all parties comparing Vietnam to Iraq. Within three years of their victory over RVN, the new Vietnam State was involved in a border war with China, and its own nasty, bitter, and in the end lost war in Cambodia after Pol Pot tried to create the perfect Marxist state while breaking a few million eggs. How much was this the U.S. fault, how much Vietnam's, how much was China's, and how much the inherent evil of the Khmer Rouge, I guess breaks down on the political faith one currently holds. To compare and contrast with Iraq shows far more differences then similarities (for one thing, we really never invaded South Vietnam and overthrew the Government, a second thing is the adversary in Vietnam was a single, coherent, entity with a strategy and interest in imposing order after winning. In Iraq, the factions, including the Shiite, Iran-allied, Maliki Government, are multiple and all, from what I can tell, believe that continued violence to exterminate their enemies may be to their advantage. The war was a horrible mistake, President Bush and forme Secretary Rumsfeld are idiots, Cheney is Darth Vader, but we do have extricate ourselves in an honorable and moral way that minimizes the harm we gave done Iraq, ourselves, and the world. Hence, we will need a residual force, with a set date for complete and final withdrawal (with the possible exception of Kurdistan - where the local population is welcoming and not shooting at us is a good test as to whether we are percieved as liberators and protectors or imperial stormtroopers) while we negotiate, engage, escort, and talk, talk, talk with the different factions in Iraq to establish a kind of order beyond the local gang of thugs.

The problem is President Bush and Darth Vader still control executive power until 20 January 2009 and they will continue to act as if "the insurgency is in its last throes" and that "we need to deal with Iran" as the new panacea to the Middle East problem, so no intelligent withdrawal is possible.

Posted by Rick Kane | June 19, 2007 2:44 PM

We killed five million Vietnamese mostly using air power supposedly in the purpose of (and this is some serious revisionism) in the purpose of avoiding a humanitarian catastrophe? Is that seriously what you are proposing?

Posted by Ed Marshall | June 19, 2007 2:45 PM

I fear I must disagree with that. 6 to 9 months after the US leaves there will be AN Iraqi government (most likely with some sort of "autonomous region" in the north) but it certainly won't be THE Iraqi Government that is currently in power [sic].

I don't understand what you mean. Are you saying Maliki won't be the prime minister, are you saying the Shiites might have to grant more powers to the parliamentary minority? Or are you saying the elected government is going to be replaced by something that bears no resemblance to the current version, and if so, how do you see events proceeding to that point?

Posted by Steve | June 19, 2007 2:54 PM

> Or are you saying the elected government is going
> to be replaced by something that bears no
> resemblance to the current version,

Yes.

> and if so, how do you see events proceeding to
> that point?

The war of all against all comes to mind. Admittedly there is a possibility that the majority of the Sunni will be either dead or in exile by that point, in which case all that will be left will be the final negotiation between the Shia and the Kurds. But that seems less likely since the Sunni apparently can't and/or don't want to leave.

Cranky

Posted by Cranky Observer | June 19, 2007 2:58 PM

I love that parenthetical throwaway: "(a lot of Vietnamese did die)". Let's all of us, right and left, sanctimonious Matt Yglesias and cynical y81, together admit that none of us cared then or cares now if a lot of little yellow people die (or get sent to re-education camps or drown while trying to escape or whatever) and that such a possibility should not affect our analysis.

Posted by y81 | June 19, 2007 2:59 PM

Whereas I love the underlying assumption of y81 and his ilk that the United States of America has a magic wand that it can wave to make bad things (including massacres) stop happening in other countries. You might read Patton's thoughts on that. Hell, you might read Sherman's or Grant's thoughts on that and that was supposedly the _same_ country.

Yes, the United States has created a situation in Iraq where hundreds of thousands, and maybe millions, more will die. We are morally responsible for that but it doesn't mean we have some magic wand to prevent it from happening. We don't.

Cranky

Posted by Cranky Observer | June 19, 2007 3:06 PM

I like the twisted logic that says of all the death and destruction that has occurred in Iraq since the invasion, none of it is on us, because we didn't INTEND to do anything except kill bad guys. But if we leave, everything bad that happens while we're not there is on us. Can't we just kind of leave-and-not-intend-anything-bad, the same way we decided to invade-and-not-intend-anything-bad?

Posted by Steve | June 19, 2007 3:32 PM

It's funny that the exact same people who predicted sunshine, rainbows, flowers, and liberator-greetings when we debated the invasion are the same people who now raise the specter of an al Qaeda caliphate if we leave.

It's almost like they don't have any idea what they're talking about, and are merely describing their own daydreams rather than the actual planet.

Posted by Elvis Elvisberg | June 19, 2007 3:42 PM

y81,

I care very much what happens to a bunch of yellow people. All people, for that matter. I don't think that an indefinite military garrision will solve what is inherently a political problem. This does not make me indifferent to the shitstorm the US helped create.

You know what? This is pointless. Let me just say "Fuck you, y81" - my original thought - and be done with it.

Posted by Mike | June 19, 2007 4:01 PM

OK, Mike, who cares so much, fill in the following sentence. (Others can play too.)

"I, ___________, care deeply if lots of little non-white people get killed. Even now, __% of my income and __% of my time are devoted to doing something about the situation in Darfur. During the Cambodian genocide, in which 3 million people were killed, I did the following to help save lives: ____________________________________."

If you're too young for the Cambodia part, you can fill in the blank by writing: "_______________, the last presidential candidate for whom I voted, did the following to help save lives: ____________________________."

Posted by y81 | June 19, 2007 4:25 PM

Well, I guess the salient point would be that the only domino that fell after we left VN was the one we pushed over ourselves. The Vietnamese did not become a slave state for China or Russia.

Naturally times were rough in VN after we dropped more bombs there than we dropped in all of WW II, poisoned the ground with Agent Orange, and left mines all over the countryside. However, the widely reported massacre of millions turned out to be a complete fabrication.

The simple fact is that VN was not a crucial battlefield in the struggle with the Evil Empire, and what happened after we left, both for them and us, was good compared with what happened while we were there.

Some confusion here- the Geneva Accords of 1956, which the US refused to sign so we could later say we weren't violating them, called for the temporary relocation of combatants and sympathizers, to be followed by a unifying election in about 1958. When it became obvious that the Ho Chi Minh party would win such an election, some of the South Vietnamese (the Roman Catholic minority) refused to hold the election, and became a client state of the US.

Many of those "North Vietnamese" who invaded the south in the 70s were actually southerners who had left their homes in 1956-57 and wished to return. Even in South Vietnam, at no point did the majority of the people want us to be there, a fact well-illustrated by the fact that we could never allow free elections to be held there.

Posted by serial catowner | June 19, 2007 4:59 PM

Fred's absurd post is the standard dead-ender line on Vietnam. Basically, he's saying that we spent 12 years there and killed millions of people trying to create a South Vietnamese government that could stand up for itself; as soon as we leave the South Vietnamese government and military promptly collapse; the obvious conclusion is that we should have stayed permanently and killed perhaps a few million more propping up this government.

Posted by mq | June 19, 2007 5:34 PM

To restate for the ADD generation:

Had we not, in 1974, bailed on our promise to back up South Vietnam (with air power, not ground troops) in the event of another invasion, it's possible that the North would not have invaded in 1975. It's likely that had they invaded, their invasion would have been defeated like it was in 1972, by the same combination of U.S. air power and South Vietnamese ground forces.

It's also likely that, with a continued promise of air support (not ground troops) by us, South Vietnam would be an independent country today. It's further likely that South Vietnam would have evolved into a prosperous democracy by now under our protection, as South Korea and Taiwan have.

Posted by Fred | June 19, 2007 6:06 PM

To restate for the Valium generation:

Had the U.S. not stupidly and cruelly joined in the French struggle to prevent the independence of Vietnam, and then carpet bombed and directly invaded South Vietnam to slaughter those fighting against a hated U.S. puppet regime, MILLIONS of Vietnamese, Cambodians, and Laotions would be alive today.

Aside from the millions directly slaughtered by U.S. warfare, hundreds of thousands of more Vietnamese, Cambodians, and Laotions were killed by the explosive ordinance left behind by the Southeast Asia hawks, and a genocide was let loose in Cambodia by those empowered by the US attacks.

It's also likely that Vietnam would have developed much more rapidly had the embittered U.S. hawks, just off of murdering several million human beings, not slapped cruel and useless sanctions on the new regime.

Posted by El Cid | June 19, 2007 6:46 PM

> Had we not, in 1974, bailed on our
> promise to back up South Vietnam

Had we not, in 1946, bailed on our promise to back Ho Chi Minh against the French...

Cranky

Posted by Cranky Observer | June 19, 2007 7:10 PM

Henry Kissinger, according to Dallek's recent bio, told Brezhnev in 1973 that if the U.S. withdrew support from South Vietnam, it would fall in 18 months. He was right on the button. Since, as Brezhnev pointed out, Kissinger was planning on withdrawing support from the South Vietnamese government anyway, given the lack of support for continuing the war in the States, what was the point of prolonging the agony? The point was simply to save american face. When Nixon and Kissinger "promised" air power to Thieu - after giving him a treaty that merely suspended the inevitable takeover of Vietnam by the North Vietnamese - they didn't even present him with a copy that was translated into Vietnamese. So much for South Vietnamese autonomy. It was always a fake state. As for Fred's wierd idea that "we" promising air strikes, there was no we there. Kissinger and Nixon promised it, knowing that Congress wouldn't approve.

The U.S. could have avoided the war altogether by, sensibly, supporting Ho and the Viet Minh, and refusing to allow the French back in the forties. More interestingly, the military strategy used to wage your typical high tech high atrocity American war for a proxy dictatorship is the Darwinian selection the Americans effected - by getting rid of the VC, they ironically got rid of the only counterforce that would preserve a certain autonomy for South Vietnam after, inevitably, the colonialist U.S. lost. As in Cambodian, the atrocious way the U.S. fought the war contributed significantly to the disaster - at least in Cambodia - after the war ended. If you fight a losing war by killing the softest and most moderate of your enemies, you will end up with the harshest and the most immoderate of enemies.

Posted by roger | June 19, 2007 7:40 PM

If you fight a losing war by killing the softest and most moderate of your enemies, you will end up with the harshest and the most immoderate of enemies. Posted by roger | June 19, 2007 7:40 PM

Or, as I sometimes say, if you eliminate the decent opposition, all that remains is the indecent opposition.

Posted by El Cid | June 19, 2007 8:50 PM

Posted by rea | June 19, 2007 2:12 PM :"Fred also fails to take note that the various S. Vietnamese regimes were in many respects, worse than their Northern counterparts--certainly no less inclined to preside over mass killings."

Sorry but that is utterly untrue. In no respect was any southern government worse than the north. The north *admits* to murdering something like 50,000 peasants during Collectivisation. The south simply did not run Re-education Camps. They did not murder millions of people. The Communists were, like Communists everywhere, different. If you think this absurd claim is true, may I ask what you think the evidence is? Notice that almost all the refugees were *from* the North and later from a reunified Vietnam. Virtually none were to any area controlled by Communists.

Posted by El Cid | June 19, 2007 2:29 PM:"Just don't let them try to pull the Cambodia crap -- the Khmer Rouge was virtually handed power by the U.S. carpet bombing from 1965 - 1973."

Sorry but how does bombing the jungle and mountains of Cambodia hand power to the Khmer Rouge?

Posted by El Cid | June 19, 2007 2:29 PM:"Shockingly, amazingly, it turns out that if you spend a number of years obliterating a society and leaving the now starving population in tatters scrounging through the rubble, the people who then emerge from the rubble to take power are often not nice people!!!"

If there was a shred of evidence for that claim it might be true. But of course there is not. The US did not try to obliterate a society. They tried to bomb base camps for the Khmer Rouge in remote parts of Cambodia. As far as I know, not one single city was bombed by the US. Not even one single town. How does the major assault on the wild life of Cambodia obliterate the country? Starving population? Where is there any evidence whatsoever that the Cambodians were hungry in 1973? Rubble? What rubble? They were not nice people, but then nor were the Communists in the USSR, or next door in Vietnam, or in China, or in North Korea. You think that perhaps maybe it might have something to do with them being Communists?

By the way the same line can be applied to Hitler. At the risk of breaking Godwin's law, does the fact that the West bombed Germany explain or excuse the Holocaust?

Posted by SoMuchForSubtlety | June 21, 2007 11:54 AM