A Vietnam parallel slapped me in the face as I read about
what happened when British troops vacated an Iraqi military base on Friday.
AMARAH, Iraq - Iraqis looted a military base vacated by British troops and stripped it of virtually everything removable on Friday, an indication of possible future trouble for U.S.-led coalition forces hoping to hand over security gradually to the Iraqi government.
Men, some with their faces covered, ripped corrugated metal from roofs, carried off metal pipes and backed trucks into building entrances to load them with wooden planks. Many also took away doors and window frames from Camp Abu Naji.
"The British forces left Abu Naji, and the locals started looting everything," 1st Lt. Rifaat Taha Yaseen of the Iraqi Army's 10th Division told Associated Press Television News. "They took everything from the buildings."
In the words of Yogi Berra: It's like deja vu all over again.
In Vietnam, we had no real "exit strategy". The troops just left when they left, and the vacuum was filled by chaos and whatever they left behind.
We allowed the South Vietnamese forces to be heavily dependent, too dependent, on U.S. forces. Have we not learned that lesson?
The Iraqis, too, are doomed as an independent military force if the United States makes the same critical mistakes made with the South Vietnamese:
Vietnamization failed because U.S. advisers trained the South Vietnamese to fight the American way -- with heavy firepower and air support, which vanished with our troops.
James Willbanks, author of "Abandoning Vietnam" and an Army adviser, recalled: "Advisers were needed for so long because we had trained the Vietnamese to fight the same way that we did, using massive firepower."
U.S. advisers stayed too involved for too long, eroding the national identity of Vietnamese soldiers.
Buu Viên, a personal aide to South Viet Nam's president, recalled: "The presence of American advisers at all levels of the military hierarchy created among the Vietnamese leadership a mentality of reliance on their advice and suggestions."
Lewis Sorley, author of "A Better War," wrote about one Vietnamese officer who had 47 different U.S. advisers. The United States essentially micromanaged South Vietnamese military and political affairs while Vietnamization's key assumption -- that the South Vietnamese could successfully fight entirely on their own without U.S. advisers and air power -- was never tested until the very end of the war.
The presidents' men had no answers then, just like this president's men have no answers now.
[In March 2006] an unprecedented conference took place at the John F. Kennedy Library and Museum in Boston, featuring American historians, journalists and leaders from the Vietnam War era. Not a single Vietnamese was invited to speak.
How we got into Iraq should not matter as much for now as how we will exit. Two of the key participants in Boston -- Jack Valenti, a special assistant to President Johnson, and Henry Kissinger, former secretary of state and national security adviser for President Nixon and the mastermind behind the "peace with honor" strategy in Vietnam -- offered no solutions for Iraq. Kissinger lamely reflected, "I know the problem better than the answer."
Some things never change, eh, Mr. Kissinger?
Back in Iraq...
America's overall strategy calls for the U.S.-led coalition forces to redeploy to larger bases and let Iraqis become responsible for their security in specific regions. The larger bases can act in a support or reserve role. A final stage would involve the drawdown of troops from Iraq.
Camp Abu Naji, 200 miles southeast of Baghdad, had come under almost daily attack when the Britons were in control, an indication of the hostility for foreign troops.
It was first invaded by a handful of Iraqis on Thursday, hours after 1,200 British troops pulled out to redeploy along the border with Iran to crack down on weapons smuggling.
Police unable to stop looters
Iraqi police dispersed looters by firing shots into the air, said Dhaffar Jabbar, spokesman for the governor of the southern Maysan province where Amarah is located. But scores of looters returned Friday when the camp was under a small contingent of Iraqi troops.
"There are only a few soldiers at Abu Naji camp. Some of the residents were carrying weapons so they (the soldiers) did not want bloodshed and with such a big number, they could not stop them," Jabbar said.
At least Senator Chuck Hagel gets it:
The United States needs to craft an exit strategy for Iraq because its continued presence has created a potential Vietnam, says an influential Republican senator.
"We should start figuring out how we get out of there," Senator Chuck Hagel of Nebraska said on Sunday.
"I think our involvement there has destabilised the Middle East. And the longer we stay there, I think the further destabilisation will occur."
Is no one capable of stopping this train wreck?