Mid-East Meets Midwest

Throughout the war in Iraq, comparisons have been drawn between the current occupation and America’s military intervention in Vietnam.  As troops withdrew from Baghdad, blogger George Berkin referred back to this comparison once more.

Berkin says believes a withdrawal from Iraq will be completely different than the American withdrawal from Vietnam because:

• “…in Iraq, unlike in Vietnam, the U.S. will depart having won the military conflict. A powerful dictator was overthrown, the cities have been secured, and the insurgents are not in control in Iraq.”
• The US learned from its mistakes in Vietnam and has since improved the way the military trains local police forces.
• Iraq has a larger size and greater potential wealth to play to its favor, unlike Vietnam.  Berkin said in his article, “For all the blood and treasure invested in South Vietnam, it was (and is) a small and poor country, and police forces were underfunded.”
• Berkin says the task faced by the local security forces in Iraq is very different than the task faced by South Vietnamese forces.  He stated, “In the Vietnam War, the South Vietnamese faced an enormous army. For the North Vietnamese to gain control of all of Vietnam, it was simply a matter of overrunning what remained of the decimated South Vietnamese forces.  The battle for an independent South Vietnam was a standoff when the Americans bolstered the weak South Vietnamese army. When the U.S. left, North Vietnam’s advantage in forces was overwhelming.” Whereas in Iraq, security forces face pockets of resistance and attempting to “quell violence aimed at pitting factions in Iraq – Shiite, Sunni and Kurds – against each other.”

See full article: Iraq and Vietnam

As our troops pulled out of Iraqi cities last week, the American armed forces are now playing a completely different role in Iraq than they have played over the last six years.  Moving away from the days of armed conflict, soldiers focus on civil affairs, helping local governments and fulfilling their roles as advisers, training Iraqi security forces.

This shift has also required a shift in how the Army trains its soldiers.  Now troops are expected to not just help stabilize Iraq, but to transition their duties to their Iraqi comrades by the end of 2011.

The Associated Press reports:

The 3rd Infantry Division, headed by Maj. Gen. Tony Cucolo, will lead all U.S. military operations in Iraq’s volatile north. Since January, the Georgia-based division has been training at Fort Stewart to defuse potential conflicts before they flare up — largely with the help of Iraqi forces or through diplomacy.

Training to leave a war, however, is a delicate mission.

Retired Gen. John Hendrix, who used to command the 3rd Infantry Division and the Army’s Forces Command, said military planners probably did not have a good idea of what would happen when U.S. troops pulled out of Saigon in April 1975, months before the North Vietnamese takeover.

Military historians say the Army’s overall strategy during the Vietnam War failed precisely because it did not understand the nature of the society. It’s not a lesson the Army wants to repeat in Iraq, with its rich oil fields and strategic location in the Mideast that will be an important U.S. interest for years to come.

“We never got at the strategic problem in Vietnam. We were not nearly as prepared then as we are now,” Hendrix said in an interview. “When that decision was made, we didn’t have nearly as good a plan as how we were going to come out. These guys do have a little bit more of a challenge — they’ll do the last handshake and the Iraqis will look around and there’ll be no one there.”

…”To secure a victory, you send in your closers,” Cucolo said. “I said [to my unit], ‘Gentlemen, ladies, we are the closers. We’re going there, and we’re going to leave it all on the field because this is the decisive moment.’”

To read full article: Army ‘closers’ train for new mission: leaving Iraq

With the so-far successful withdrawal of American troops from select Iraqi cities and Vice-President Joe Biden’s trip to Iraq topping the week’s headlines, it may appear that Obama has Iraq under control. But experts are warning Obama that taking his eyes off Iraq could jeopardize American relations with the whole region and earn him an unflattering comparison with George W. Bush.

BBC News reports:

[The Obama] administration has… shifted a considerable amount of its attention further east – many have described the conflict in Afghanistan as “Obama’s war”.

But in light of the recent uptick in violence in Iraq, there were growing concerns that the new president risked making the same mistake as his predecessor, albeit in reverse.

George W Bush was criticised for not paying enough attention to Afghanistan after the fall of the Taleban and while he tried to fix Iraq, al-Qaeda regained strength both in Afghanistan and Iraq.

“Barack Obama cannot afford to lose Iraq,” warned Kenneth Pollack recently.

Mr Pollack, a Middle East expert at the Brookings Institution, added that there was a feeling that the administration’s policy on Iraq was adrift.

He said the regional consequences of instability in Iraq would undermine whatever else Washington was trying to achieve in the Middle East, from peace between Israelis and Arabs to dealing with Iran’s nuclear ambitions.

Click here to see full article: Has Obama taken his eye off Iraq?