April 25, 2003
NOW IT'S TIME FOR VIETNAM STRATEGIES
Depending on who you were talking to, a lot of people were hoping
or fearing that Iraq was going to turn into another Vietnam, where
thousands of U.S. troops would lay down their lives in the quagmire of
an unwinnable war. That obviously hasn't been the case thus far.
Militarily, we toppled Saddam Hussein's regime in an astounding fit of
href="http://bunsen.tv/2003_03_01_bunsen_archive.html#200041383">TOTAL
FUCKING VICTORY. But now it's time for us to win the peace and
establish a peaceful, free, and democratic government in Iraq and that
could prove a little trickier.
Yesterday I was reading more of Max Boot's book, The Savage
Wars of Peace, a history of small wars and how they shaped American
power in U.S. history. While Vietnam was not essentially a small war,
Boot includes it in his book because the conflict shared many of the
same characteristics of smaller conflicts in the past. Vietnam is
normally viewed as a military failure and, ultimately, it was for the
South Vietnamese who had to surrender to communist oppressors from the
north. But lessons were learned there, and ultimately ignored, that
could prove worthwhile in the current conflict in Iraq.
Diverging from a strategy that focused on big-unit conflicts, the
U.S. experimented with tactics that concentrated on co-operative
defense and pacification of Vietnamese communities that were quite
successful. Here's an excerpt from the book discussing the Combined
Action Program begun in 1965:
This was a marine initiative modeled on the constabularies the Corps
had founded in Haiti, the Dominican Republic, and Nicaragua. There
was a direct line of descent, for after chasing Sandinistas around the
wilds of Nicaragua in the 1930s Chesty Puller had become an instructor
at the marines' Basic School, where one of his pupils was 2nd
Lieutenant Lewis Walt, who as a general in Vietnam would go on to
create CAP. "The Caribbean campaigns had many lessons applicable to
Vietnam forty five years later," Walt wrote. Trying to apply those
lessons, the marines organized CAP in 1965. Each Combined Action
Platoon consisted of a marine rifle squad under the command of a
sergeant--all volunteers chosen for their ability to work with the
locals. The 12-15 marines were paired with a platoon from South
Vietnam's Popular Forces militia, about 30 men from the local
community. Together, the marines and militiamen worked on securing a
village from the Vietcong, the Americans providing military know-how,
the Vietnamese invaluable knowledge of local conditions.
The CAP program turned out to be very successful, with American
troops often volunteering to extend their tours of duty rather than to
rotate home like many other short-timers in the field. Indeed, Boot
writes that a strong bond would grow between U.S. troops and the
militiamen they worked with and the communities they were defending.
It was classic hearts and minds, with Americans attending events like
birthdays and weddings of locals and occasionally refusing orders to
withdraw when under attack from the Vietcong and North Vietnamese
regular army.
The situation in Iraq seems similar. Judging by the reception
coalition troops received, most Iraqis are happy to be free under under
the thumb of the Ba'ath fascists. Unfortunately, it now seems that
there will be a lot of forces jockeying to take their place, whether
it's Iranian-backed Shiite fundamentalists or some other warlord Saddam
pretender. The job for General Garner should be to try to replicate
the CAP program by teaming small units of coalition soldiers with
larger units of an organized Iraqi militia committed to forming a
democratic civil government. Ordinary Iraqis need to feel safe to form
a new government free from retaliation by political opponents, much the
way the Vietnamese needed to be protected from marauding Vietcong. A
joint-operational approach should also mitigate feelings among the
Iraqis that their country is being occupied by coalition forces. If
there's going to be an us-against-them sentiment, we want it to be an
us, forces for peaceful reformation of an Iraqi government, against
them, violent thugs looking to intimidate the populace. This would be
preferable to an us, coalition forces, against them, the Iraqi
people.
The CAP program was abandoned in Vietnam because it didn't fit
into the big-war framework held by Westmoreland and MacNamara, shaped
through WWII and the Korean War. The problem wasn't that they were
using history as their guide, but that they weren't looking back far
enough. The strategies currently needed in Iraq are the ones
successfully employed in small conflicts fought a hundred years ago,
pacification and defense against guerilla elements while retaining the
goodwill of the general population. If you're interested in reading
more, look for The Savage Wars of Peace and read pp 304-309.
Posted by Lexiphane at April 25, 2003 12:50 PM
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