The U.S. invasion of Iraq  edit   (Category  edit)

[edit] Victory is unattainable

Ron Paul (2007-06-13). Escalation Is Hardly the Answer (http://thetruthproject.us/2007/06/13/escalation-is-hardly-the-answer/). Retrieved on 2007-05-11 11:18. [Comparison to Vietnam War (category)]

Before the US House of Representatives, January 11, 2007

Mr. Speaker, A military victory in Iraq is unattainable, just as it was in the Vietnam war.

At the close of the Vietnam war in 1975, a telling conversation took place between an NVA Colonel named Tu and an American Colonel named Harry Summers. Colonel Summers reportedly said, “You never beat us on the battlefield.” Tu replied, “That may be so, but it is also irrelevant.” It is likewise irrelevant to seek military victory in Iraq.

As conditions deteriorate in Iraq, the American people are told more blood must be spilled to achieve just such a military victory. 20,000 additional troops and another $100 billion are needed for a “surge.” Yet the people remain rightfully skeptical.

Though we’ve been in Iraq nearly four years, the meager goal today simply is to secure Baghdad. This hardly shows that the mission is even partly accomplished.

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[edit] Comparison to Vietnam War

Bob Cooper (2004-02-29). Is Daniel Ellsberg Right ... Again? (http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2004/02/29/CMG3R50LHE5.DTL). Retrieved on 2007-05-11 11:18.

The Pentagon insider-turned-Bay Area activist says the parallels between Vietnam and Iraq are tragic and inescapable. Why, he asks, have our leaders failed to learn from the mistakes of 40 years ago?.

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Now the longtime Bay Area political activist can only educate the public, one bookstore talk at a time, on why he thinks the war in Iraq is Vietnam revisited.

Ellsberg's Berkeley appearance was his 55th nationwide since publication of his American Book Award-winning "Secrets: A Memoir of Vietnam and the Pentagon Papers." The book tour is entering its 18th month as audience interest in Ellsberg's Vietnam-Iraq comparisons remains high, fueled by gloomy news from the occupation. For the middle-aged crowd, especially those who are Vietnam veterans, it's a reopening of old wounds, while for college students it's a history lesson tying their parents' war to their own. Says Ellsberg, "Sometimes I feel I'm waking up to the world I left 40 years ago."

In that world, public support for the Vietnam War was substantial until Ellsberg released the Pentagon Papers to the Senate and 19 newspapers. The 47 volumes of mostly classified documents revealed a pattern of government errors and lies about the war considered to be so inflammatory that the Supreme Court temporarily ordered the New York Times to stop publishing excerpts. Henry Kissinger, who had previously sought out Ellsberg for his expertise on Vietnam, called him "the most dangerous man in America."

Ellsberg was charged with 12 felony counts under the Espionage Act, carrying a maximum sentence of 115 years. The charges against Ellsberg and Anthony Russo (who helped him photocopy the papers) were dismissed in the fifth month of the trial, however, on grounds of governmental misconduct due to illegal wiretapping and evidence tampering. He was free to resume criticizing the government, which he's done assiduously and passionately ever since.

Duped by Our Leaders?

"We were lied into both wars in every aspect - the reasons for going in, the prospects, the length, the scale and the probable costs in lives and dollars," he tells the crowd as rain puddles the sidewalk on Shattuck Avenue. "With Iraq, the big lie is that it represented the No. 1 security threat to the U.S. That's not just questionable, it's absurd. We live in a dangerous world with al Qaeda terrorism, more than 20,000 poorly guarded Russian nuclear weapons and the unstable, nuclear-armed state of Pakistan, where Osama and other al Qaeda leaders are probably hiding. Saddam was a tyrant, but he was never linked to 9/11, and the talk of weapons of mass destruction was at least exaggerated. He wasn't even a threat to his neighbors."

Ellsberg speaks in a gravelly baritone. A swirl of white hair frames a slender, kindly face. He is formal and professorial in dress and speech, remnants of his straight-arrow days as a Harvard man (doctorate in economics), U.S. Marine commander, Rand Corporation think-tank analyst and Pentagon insider. He has studied war for most of his life, but came to a visceral understanding of it while "walking point" (leading foot patrols to draw fire) with troops in Vietnam. That was when he realized the Vietnam War was unwinnable, largely because of what he calls "revolutionary judo" - a guerrilla tactic used against U.S. troops by the Viet Cong and now by Iraqis.

"In judo, you can turn the strength of a stronger opponent against himself, " he explains. "Revolutionary judo in Vietnam often took the form of a single Viet Cong firing a shot at a U.S. chopper from a village, which prompted us to bomb the village. We thought, 'That will teach them a lesson.' But the villagers who saw relatives killed and wounded joined the other side. So our superior firepower was used against us to create support for the enemy. It's how the Viet Cong, with their handmade weapons, prevailed against massive U.S. bombing, and it's also why the Iraqi resistance is not going away."

The Vietnam War killed 58,235 Americans and an estimated 1.5 million Vietnamese, and Ellsberg fears Iraq could be just as catastrophic. Besides "revolutionary judo," he says that U.S. war planners have forgotten other lessons of Vietnam, like the need for an exit strategy and the futility of "pacification." Pacification means that locals can gradually take over for occupying troops, but Ellsberg says hired locals are always seen by fellow citizens as traitorous collaborators. Pacification attempts have consistently failed - in Afghanistan by the Russians; in Vietnam by the French and the Americans; and so far by British and American forces in Iraq.

"We perceive ourselves as liberators opposing the forces of evil," he says, "but the resistance fighters are not seen as evil by most Iraqis, nor were they in Vietnam. Iraqis think we want to occupy the country indefinitely with U.S. troops and a pro-American government, and as long as that perception exists, pacification is impossible."

At the heart of his argument is this: "The fundamental similarity shared by the Vietnam and Iraq wars is that a U.S. occupying force is facing primarily nationalist resistance fighters - locals who feel they are defending their country. These fighters can hide without being found because they have the general support of the population. This happened in our own country when the British were occupiers, but now we're the redcoats."

All the President's Men

How did we get into this mess? Ellsberg blames the president's men - notably Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz and Perle - for channeling the outrage over Sept. 11 into an attack on a Muslim country.

Deception (c) was the means, he says, and world oil dominance the end. "It's a lie that this war is part of the war on terror, because every day we occupy Iraq is a good recruiting day for Osama. The occupation of an Arab country increases al Qaeda's support and reduces the cooperation from Muslim countries to stop terrorism, so it actually increases the likelihood of another 9/11."

In most of the world, he adds, the Iraq invasion was seen as an act of naked aggression, comparable to Saddam's invasion of Kuwait or even Hitler's blitzkriegs of Poland and France. "Like Vietnam, this war was started as a result of distortions fed to Congress and the public by the executive branch," Ellsberg says. He witnessed the distortion game firsthand at the dawn of the Vietnam War. While working for Assistant Secretary of Defense John McNaughton in 1964, he received an urgent cable from the captain of a naval destroyer in the Tonkin Gulf describing a torpedo attack. Hours later, however, another cable from Capt. John Herrick stated that "overeager sonarmen" had probably misinterpreted the ship's own propeller beat for torpedo hits.

"Herrick's new cable didn't slow for a moment the preparations in Washington and the Pacific for a retaliatory air strike," Ellsberg wrote in "Secrets." U.S. bombing commenced the next day, after President Johnson told the nation he had "unequivocal" evidence of an attack. Long after the war ended, Herrick and then-Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara acknowledged the ship was almost certainly never hit.

Congress also deserves some blame for both wars, says Ellsberg. The 1964 Tonkin Gulf Resolution passed overwhelmingly three days after the purported attack, handing war-making powers to Johnson. The 2002 Congress conceded war powers to Bush by passing the Iraq Military Authorization bill. "In both instances, it was unconstitutional and irresponsible for Congress to write an undated blank check to the president to start a war. Even worse, they did it on the basis of brief testimony in the case of Vietnam and no hearings at all in the case of Iraq. Although both resolutions were based on false information from the White House, that doesn't excuse Congress for abdicating its constitutional role."

Iraq War opponents do seem to have a head start on their Vietnam-era counterparts. First, he notes: "Government lying about Vietnam didn't become widely known for four years, while in Iraq the lack of weapons of mass destruction became apparent within weeks." Second, it took five years for anti- Vietnam War street protests to become as large as those that preceded the Iraq invasion. Third, the anti-war candidacy of Howard Dean that made him the early Democratic frontrunner is reminiscent of the Gene McCarthy and George McGovern presidential runs in 1968 and 1972. Richard Nixon won those two elections, however, and the troops didn't come home until Congress finally cut off funds in 1973.

"A major factor that kept us in Vietnam and that's keeping us in Iraq," says Ellsberg, "is the unwillingness by those in power to admit they made a mistake. This would be admitting that lives were wasted and it would look like they're accepting defeat. That thinking was enough to keep Vietnam going year after year. In Iraq, we would be giving up if we withdraw troops . . . but we should give up. It's not for President Bush or any other American to determine the internal policies of Iraq, and prolonging the occupation does nothing to solve Iraq's problems."

Patriot or Traitor?

Ellsberg's release of the Pentagon Papers was like kicking over a beehive. His trial made headlines for months, highlighted by the revelation that the so- called "plumbers" (assigned to plug government leaks) broke into his psychiatrist's office in an attempt to discredit him. They bungled that assignment as badly as their more famous caper, the Watergate burglary, and Ellsberg had the last laugh when they ended up behind bars instead of him. The trial's disclosures also figured in Nixon's resignation, and as an indirect result, hastened the end of the war.

Ellsberg now encourages those with access to similar documents concerning Iraq to turn them over to Congress and the press. "They can omit the portions that in any way involve national security," he says. "I have no doubt there are numerous people who have access to such documents," he says. "[Leaking them] may cost them their careers or even jail time, but it could save many lives."

His role as an unapologetic whistle-blower has caused some to call him a traitor and others a patriot, but he rejects both labels. Nor is he a strict pacifist, although he opposes military aggression. "As a boy during World War II, I believed we were on the right side because we were fighting aggression and I felt the same way about Korea when I joined the Marines. But now I am in the horrifying position of seeing my country being the aggressor."

He has been a political activist since Vietnam. He still feels guilt for not exposing government duplicity in 1964, when he first knew of it, instead of waiting several years. This guilt and haunting memories of Vietnam bloodshed drives his current anti-war work, which takes the form of writing, lecturing and nonviolent protest. He has been arrested for civil disobedience 70 times in protests against nuclear weapons, Central American interventions, the Gulf War and the Iraq War, including once last winter with his 26-year-old son, Michael, at an Iraq protest in front of U.N. Headquarters.

"I felt that Bush was leading America off a cliff with this war," says Michael of his first arrest. "The message my father is trying to get out is important, so I do what I can to help. I'm proud of what he's done in his life. " Michael edits his father's books and manages his Web site (Ellsberg.net). His father is devoting this year to finishing his most ambitious book yet, on nuclear war planning, an area of expertise going back to his Pentagon days. "I will address current dangers in light of the past, which was more dangerous than even people in the anti-nuclear movement realized," he says.

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Aliases: Iraq War, The Iraq War