The striking similarities between Vietnam and Iraq: Can you say quagmire?

We of the Kennedy and Johnson administrations who participated in the decisions on Vietnam acted according to what we thought were the principles and traditions of this nation. . . . Yet we were wrong, terribly wrong. We owe it to future generations to explain why.

In the late 1950s and early ’60s, I was the model American boy. I was an Eagle Scout who made good grades. I was captain of my high school football team who played in an all-American game and earned a full athletic scholarship to the University of Tennessee. I was a regular participant at Sunday school and Methodist Youth Fellowship.

I believed in Mom, apple pie, and the flag. I loved guns and spent a lot of time at Boy Scout camp shooting .22 rifles and earning NRA badges. Audie Murphy, the most decorated American combat soldier in World War II, was a childhood hero of mine. Thus it was natural for me to support President Lyndon Johnson when he said we needed more U.S. troops in Vietnam. “The issue is the future of Southeast Asia as a whole,” Johnson declared. “A threat to any nation in that region is a threat to all, and a threat to us.”

Despite the culture in which I lived and the values I’d taken on, it quickly became obvious to me that something was amiss. Politicians’ promises of a limited conflict morphed into a huge military buildup. While some military leaders claimed we were making Vietnam safe for democracy, a U.S. officer proclaimed that “it became necessary to destroy the village to save it.” We heard reports of atrocities committed against civilians by the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong soldiers, but there were also reports of Lt. Calley’s massacre of unarmed civilians at My Lai. Our nation’s leaders predicted “light at the end of the tunnel,” yet the war dragged on. Most disturbing of all, of course, were the inflated enemy body counts that were somehow supposed to offset the horror of the thousands of body bags returning to our shores. And no one, including Congress, seemed to have a solution to end the slaughter of Americans and Vietnamese except to increase the U.S. troop and munitions levels. The phrase “credibility gap” entered the lexicon. (more…)

Saturday, September 20th, 2003