The Bulletpoint Blog

Why the Iraq quagmire is no Vietnam

From Asia Times.

Iraq is a mess, but not because the opposition is well-organized.

HANOI - Is Iraq another Vietnam? Tran Dac Loi should know. The secretary general of the Vietnam Peace and Development Foundation grew up in Hanoi dodging bombs dropped by the United States Air Force, while his father fought in the successful guerrilla war in the country's Central Highlands.

Three decades later, Tran, now an important figure in the ideological wing of Vietnam's communist government, has some thoughts on the Iraqi resistance.

"Our struggle was well organized," Tran said in an IPS interview. "We had an address and official contacts, but with Iraq you never know who the resistance is and what their objectives are."

Pointing to what he sees as a serious flaw in the Iraqi resistance, he added, "Sure, the fighters all want the Americans out, but there's no unifying political program."

This lack of an organized resistance is a good thing for the US, but it certainly doesn't help the process of nation building.

Tran thinks that the lack of a pan-ethnic political program can cause minority groups to ally with the occupier in order to ensure that their cultural rights are protected. In Iraq, this has caused the Kurds, and their more than 100,000 guerrillas, to side with the US.

"The absence of a clear political program is in the interest of the US," Tran said. "Then, they [the US] can go above you and pretend like they're solving the problems between you, when really they're lording over you."

While the occupying forces took care to ban the secularist Ba'ath Party - which continues to function through independent cells within Iraq and through exiles in Syria and Jordan - the party has not been able to earn the trust of minority groups.

It is a classic case of divide and rule. Indeed, from the start of the occupation, the US government actively encouraged the Iraqi people to organize themselves along sectarian lines. The US administration even hired a company, Research Triangle Institute (RTI), and charged it with selecting local governments based solely on the ethnic make-up in each of Iraq's regions. In March 2003, RTI was awarded a contract worth US$466 million to create 180 local and provincial governments in Iraq and obtain wide public participation in a new political process, but government auditors pointed out irregularities.

So, early on, the choice was to bring democracy to Iraq, or to encourage and retain splintered factions.

Implicit in that choice was early-on decision the that we're not going home.

posted by Lumberjack @ 2:44 PM