Bush's Vietnam

[Adam D]

by John Pilger
New Statesman
June 22, 2003

Once more, we hear that America is being "sucked into a quagmire". The rapacious adventures in Iraq and Afghanistan are going badly wrong. By John Pilger

America's two "great victories" since 11 September 2001 are unravelling. In Afghanistan, the regime of Hamid Karzai has virtually no authority and no money, and would collapse without American guns. Al-Qaeda has not been defeated, and the Taliban are re-emerging. Regardless of showcase improvements, the situation of women and children remains desperate. The token woman in Karzai's cabinet, the courageous physician Sima Samar, has been forced out of government and is now in constant fear of her life, with an armed guard outside her office door and another at her gate. Murder, rape and child abuse are committed with impunity by the private armies of America's "friends", the warlords whom Washington has bribed with millions of dollars, cash in hand, to give the pretence of stability.

"We are in a combat zone the moment we leave this base," an American colonel told me at Bagram airbase, near Kabul. "We are shot at every day, several times a day." When I said that surely he had come to liberate and protect the people, he belly-laughed.

American troops are rarely seen in Afghanistan's towns. They escort US officials at high speed in armoured vans with blackened windows and military vehicles, mounted with machine-guns, in front and behind. Even the vast Bagram base was considered too insecure for the defence secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, during his recent, fleeting visit. So nervous are the Americans that a few weeks ago they "accidentally" shot dead four government soldiers in the centre of Kabul, igniting the second major street protest against their presence in a week.

On the day I left Kabul, a car bomb exploded on the road to the airport, killing four German soldiers, members of the international security force Isaf. The Germans' bus was lifted into the air; human flesh lay on the roadside. When British soldiers arrived to "seal off" the area, they were watched by a silent crowd, squinting into the heat and dust, across a divide as wide as that which separated British troops from Afghans in the 19th century, and the French from Algerians and Americans from Vietnamese.

In Iraq, scene of the second "great victory", there are two open secrets. The first is that the "terrorists" now besieging the American occupation force represent an armed resistance that is almost certainly supported by the majority of Iraqis who, contrary to pre-war propaganda, opposed their enforced "liberation" (see Jonathan Steele's investigation, 19 March 2003, www.guardian.co.uk). The second secret is that there is emerging evidence of the true scale of the Anglo-American killing, pointing to the bloodbath Bush and Blair have always denied.

Comparisons with Vietnam have been made so often over the years that I hesitate to draw another. However, the similarities are striking: for example, the return of expressions such as "sucked into a quagmire". This suggests, once again, that the Americans are victims, not invaders: the approved Hollywood version when a rapacious adventure goes wrong. Since Saddam Hussein's statue was toppled almost three months ago, more Americans have been killed than during the war. Ten have been killed and 25 wounded in classic guerrilla attacks on roadblocks and checkpoints which may number as many as a dozen a day.

The Americans call the guerrillas "Saddam loyalists" and "Ba'athist fighters", in the same way they used to dismiss the Vietnamese as "communists". Recently, in Falluja, in the Sunni heartland of Iraq, it was clearly not the presence of Ba'athists or Saddamists, but the brutal behaviour of the occupiers, who fired point-blank at a crowd, that inspired the resistance. The American tanks gunning down a family of shepherds is reminiscent of the gunning down of a shepherd, his family and sheep by "coalition" aircraft in a "no-fly zone" four years ago, whose aftermath I filmed and which evoked, for me, the murderous games American aircraft used to play in Vietnam, gunning down farmers in their fields, children on their buffaloes.

On 12 June, a large American force attacked a "terrorist base" north of Baghdad and left more than 100 dead, according to a US spokesman. The term "terrorist" is important, because it implies that the likes of al-Qaeda are attacking the liberators, and so the connection between Iraq and 11 September is made, which in pre-war propaganda was never made.

More than 400 prisoners were taken in this operation. The majority have reportedly joined thousands of Iraqis in a "holding facility" at Baghdad airport: a concentration camp along the lines of Bagram, from where people are shipped to Guantanamo Bay. In Afghanistan, the Americans pick up taxi drivers and send them into oblivion, via Bagram. Like Pinochet's boys in Chile, they are making their perceived enemies "disappear".

"Search and destroy", the scorched-earth tactic from Vietnam, is back. In the arid south-eastern plains of Afghanistan, the village of Niazi Qala no longer stands. American airborne troops swept down before dawn on 30 December 2001 and slaughtered, among others, a wedding party. Villagers said that women and children ran towards a dried pond, seeking protection from the gunfire, and were shot as they ran. After two hours, the aircraft and the attackers left. According to a United Nations investigation, 52 people were killed, including 25 children. "We identified it as a military target," says the Pentagon, echoing its initial response to the My Lai massacre 35 years ago.

The targeting of civilians has long been a journalistic taboo in the west. Accredited monsters did that, never "us". The civilian death toll of the 1991 Gulf war was wildly underestimated. Almost a year later, a comprehensive study by the Medical Education Trust in London estimated that more than 200,000 Iraqis had died during and immediately after the war, as a direct or indirect consequence of attacks on civilian infrastructure. The report was all but ignored. This month, Iraq Body Count, a group of American and British academics and researchers, estimated that up to 10,000 civilians may have been killed in Iraq, including 2,356 civilians in the attack on Baghdad alone. And this is likely to be an extremely conservative figure.

In Afghanistan, there has been similar carnage. In May last year, Jonathan Steele extrapolated all the available field evidence of the human cost of the US bombing and concluded that as many as 20,000 Afghans may have lost their lives as an indirect consequence of the bombing, many of them drought victims denied relief.

[Adam D]

This "hidden" effect is hardly new. A recent study at Columbia University in New York has found that the spraying of Agent Orange and other herbicides on Vietnam was up to four times as great as previously estimated. Agent Orange contained dioxin, one of the deadliest poisons known. In what they first called Operation Hades, then changed to the friendlier Operation Ranch Hand, the Americans in Vietnam destroyed, in some 10,000 "missions" to spray Agent Orange, almost half the forests of southern Vietnam, and countless human lives. It was the most insidious and perhaps the most devastating use of a chemical weapon of mass destruction ever. Today, Vietnamese children continue to be born with a range of deformities, or they are stillborn, or the foetuses are aborted.

The use of uranium-tipped munitions evokes the catastrophe of Agent Orange. In the first Gulf war in 1991, the Americans and British used 350 tonnes of depleted uranium. According to the United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority, quoting an international study, 50 tonnes of DU, if inhaled or ingested, would cause 500,000 deaths. Most of the victims are civilians in southern Iraq. It is estimated that 2,000 tonnes were used during the latest attack.

In a remarkable series of reports for the Christian Science Monitor, the investigative reporter Scott Peterson has described radiated bullets in the streets of Baghdad and radiation-contaminated tanks, where children play without warning. Belatedly, a few signs in Arabic have appeared: "Danger - Get away from this area". At the same time, in Afghanistan, the Uranium Medical Research Centre, based in Canada, has made two field studies, with the results described as "shocking". "Without exception," it reported, "at every bomb site investigated, people are ill. A significant portion of the civilian population presents symptoms consistent with internal contamination by uranium."

An official map distributed to non-government agencies in Iraq shows that the American and British military have plastered urban areas with cluster bombs, many of which will have failed to detonate on impact. These usually lie unnoticed until children pick them up, then they explode.

In the centre of Kabul, I found two ragged notices warning people that the rubble of their homes, and streets, contained unexploded cluster bombs "made in USA". Who reads them? Small children? The day I watched children skipping through what might have been an urban minefield, I saw Tony Blair on CNN in the lobby of my hotel. He was in Iraq, in Basra, lifting a child into his arms, in a school that had been painted for his visit, and where lunch had been prepared in his honour, in a city where basic services such as education, food and water remain a shambles under the British occupation.

It was in Basra three years ago that I filmed hundreds of children ill and dying because they had been denied cancer treatment equipment and drugs under an embargo enforced with enthusiasm by Tony Blair. Now here he was - shirt open, with that fixed grin, a man of the troops if not of the people - lifting a toddler into his arms for the cameras.

When I returned to London, I read "After Lunch", by Harold Pinter, from a new collection of his called War (Faber & Faber).

And after noon the well-dressed creatures come To sniff among the dead And have their lunch

And all the many well-dressed creatures pluck The swollen avocados from the dust And stir the minestrone with stray bones

And after lunch They loll and lounge about Decanting claret in convenient skulls

[bfp]

The Iraqi and Afghani people will suffer the consequences of our battlefield equipment and the refuse from our weaponry for years to come.

The American people will pay the price in blood as our people are killed almost daily and the cost of re-building, that continues to skyrocket, for just as long.

bushs vietnam? sheep.

number of american troops killed in iraq as of now: 120-140 i think?

number of troops killed in afghanistan: 20-30 i think?

number of troops killed in vietnam: 58,000

you people kill me.

the american psyche are used to short wars with no casualties nowadays.

its war you moron.

[Dionysos]

Originally posted by bfp
bushs vietnam? sheep.

number of american troops killed in iraq as of now: 120-140 i think?

number of troops killed in afghanistan: 20-30 i think?

number of troops killed in vietnam: 58,000

you people kill me.

the american psyche are used to short wars with no casualties nowadays.

its war you moron.

Though I don't think he phrased it correctly, I think that it is definitely premature to think of Iraq as "Bush's Vietnam". Casualties are far lower, fighting is much less common since the end of the war, and the level of resistance is a fraction of what it was in Vietnam. To equate the war with Iraq with Vietnam is incorrect at this point, bordering on sensationalism. Is everything going perfectly? Of course not. Is it going better than Vietnam? Definitely. We've lost less than 200 people in combat, that's roughly 0.5% of the soldiers that died on our side in Vietnam.

[Leo]

Originally posted by bfp
bushs vietnam? sheep.

number of american troops killed in iraq as of now: 120-140 i think?

number of troops killed in afghanistan: 20-30 i think?

number of troops killed in vietnam: 58,000

you people kill me.

the american psyche are used to short wars with no casualties nowadays.

its war you moron.

I don't frequent here too much, but are you always this much of a fucking tool?

In any case, considering Vietnam was 11 years and we've been involved in the Mid-East for what?...a little over a year now (considering both Iraq and Afghanistan). Oh, and the "official" # killed in Nam was around 47,000.

In any case, I'm with Jonny. Calling this the new Nam is probably a bit sensationalist, however I believe the point is to point out how this "war on terrorism" is and will most likely drag on for a looooonnnggg time with no real winner in the end.

I do agree with you in that I doubt the current American psyche could sustain a prolonged war.

[bfp]

um, there were 140-150 soldiers dying a day in vietnam at times, so please.

and no, look up the numbers again for vietnam, its over 58,000 you idiot.

[Adam D]

The comparision isn't on the number of US fatalities. It's on the environment created in Iraq and Afghanistan that IS similiar to Vietnam.

[Dionysos]

Originally posted by Adam D
The comparision isn't on the number of US fatalities. It's on the environment created in Iraq and Afghanistan that IS similiar to Vietnam.

Can we try this comparison again in 10 years when we've had a comparative amount of time elapse?

[Adam D]

Originally posted by RosebudProd
Can we try this comparison again in 10 years when we've had a comparative amount of time elapse?

I think the point is that we don't need to wait 10 years to see the same actions going on now.

[randyc]

The environment, the conflict, the people, national sentiment.....

all different than nam.

i'll give you this much, ALL wars are a pork barrel graft orgy for the politicos. It doesn't matter if they have D or R next to their name on CNN. They ALL profit from death and destruction.

So what are we gonna do about it? Just eat more hamburgers and watch some tv. It'll be ok.

[USAcommitteeX]

I don't mind if people protest this war, but I hope it doesn't get like the vietnam war with all the dope smoking hippies waving the flags of our enemies in our nations capital

[Dionysos]

Originally posted by Adam D
I think the point is that we don't need to wait 10 years to see the same actions going on now.

I think the point is that opportunistic journalists will jump on a sensationalistic bandwagon for the sake of advancing their careers, rather than give things time to develop. Using an 11-year case study to contrast a 45-day case study is inaccurate bordering on incompetent. Let's not forget the large differences in the situation, such as Warlod's point about suppliers like the USSR which aren't there for any Iraqi resistance. Let's not forget that in Vietnam there was also a radius around the capital of North Vietnam that the US wasn't allowed to attack. These are only 2 of the many very large differences between that situation and this one. Making comparisons to Vietnam are ridiculous at this point, and largely without merit. In time things may pan out in that direction - though personally I doubt it - but to throw out those sorts of analogies at this point is extremely premature.

I know this country is bad about delayed gratification, but this is going to take time. Anyone who honestly believed that Iraq would be up and running on their own in a matter of months either has enormous blinders on or is an idiot. The effect is the same regardless. I'm sounding like a broken record, but the point is valid: setting up a government takes time. The war was officially ended on May 1st, 44 days ago. Hell, even the incoming president gets a 100-day 'holiday' to start getting the wheels turning here and our government is in full swing already. To expect that Iraq should be running fully after decades of sanctions & dictatorship within a matter of weeks is at best foolish, and to call it a "quagmire" because it doesn't meet the journalist's unrealistic expectations is inane.

On a side note, I'd like to say I'm glad bfp is here. I am no longer the most conservative person on this board while he's around, and it's kinda nice to not sound like a right-wing nazi just because I'm not on the far left. I'll let him keep up with the glazed over one-liners, I'll stick to picking my battles and backing them up with facts.

[Adam D]

Originally posted by RosebudProd
I think the point is that opportunistic journalists will jump on a sensationalistic bandwagon for the sake of advancing their careers, rather than give things time to develop. Using an 11-year case study to contrast a 45-day case study is inaccurate bordering on incompetent. Let's not forget the large differences in the situation, such as Warlod's point about suppliers like the USSR which aren't there for any Iraqi resistance. Let's not forget that in Vietnam there was also a radius around the capital of North Vietnam that the US wasn't allowed to attack. These are only 2 of the many very large differences between that situation and this one. Making comparisons to Vietnam are ridiculous at this point, and largely without merit. In time things may pan out in that direction - though personally I doubt it - but to throw out those sorts of analogies at this point is extremely premature.

I know this country is bad about delayed gratification, but this is going to take time. Anyone who honestly believed that Iraq would be up and running on their own in a matter of months either has enormous blinders on or is an idiot. The effect is the same regardless. I'm sounding like a broken record, but the point is valid: setting up a government takes time. The war was officially ended on May 1st, 44 days ago. Hell, even the incoming president gets a 100-day 'holiday' to start getting the wheels turning here and our government is in full swing already. To expect that Iraq should be running fully after decades of sanctions & dictatorship within a matter of weeks is at best foolish, and to call it a "quagmire" because it doesn't meet the journalist's unrealistic expectations is inane.

On a side note, I'd like to say I'm glad bfp is here. I am no longer the most conservative person on this board while he's around, and it's kinda nice to not sound like a right-wing nazi just because I'm not on the far left. I'll let him keep up with the glazed over one-liners, I'll stick to picking my battles and backing them up with facts.

I'm not suggesting that you're wrong here, I just think you're missing the point of the article. It is not that the situation is exactly the same, but that US policy and actions in Iraq are similiar to those used in Vietnam.