One of the differences between Vietnam and Iraq, Vietnam was a Peaceful country

[Toots]

That sounds strange doesn't it? However it is pretty darn factual. American soldiers were not allowed to carry firearms into most of the Major cities. Very rarely was there any killing in the cities. Most all of the fighting was in the country, jungles and highlands, against uniformed enemy. The people that lived in the cities went about their daily business in a normal manner. They did not live behind barbed wire or in sand bag bunkers. The cities were filled with traffic and the markets flourished. Though most were poor they still had hope and were not overly concerned with warfare..Iraq seems to be quite different...

[HereSince1628]

1. Well, if we ignore things like the Tet attacks on cities and the seige of Hue

and that little episode of bombing the shit out of Hanoi.

But maybe the presence of those events in my living memory makes them over large. My impression was that over a decade the war in Vietnam touched the whole damn country, including hamlets, villages and cities.

[Toots]

2. How often did you carry a firearm into Saigon or Nha Trang or Da Nang?

I spent two tours there and never stepped foot into Hanoi and yes Hue was held for a month during the '68 Tet offensive but the war last ten years and you are talking about one month. I am speaking of the rest of the time. I spent some time in a lot of those cities and never once feared for my life....While on patrol though.....We were hit often.

[INdemo]

7. Ok I'm asking

Do you think that Iraq has many similarities with the Vietnam war e.g;
We didn't always know who our enemy was.They could be a shop keeper or the farmer with the OX cart by day and a VC at night.Same with Iraq by day a normal civilian but at night he joins his insurgent group..So we dont necessarily know exactly who or where our enemies in Iraq are..Would you agree?

[dubykc]

8. I agree completely...I am still a little unsure of exactly how we...

identify our target anyway. Our intel in Iraq doesn't have the best track record either.

[HereSince1628]

9. I think there are differences. I think politically one outstanding similarity

Sorry to have dropped off this thread, I needed to deal with my part of today's retreating stock market...

My time was up at PhuBai not far from Hue and I didn't go off station much, to me the terrible commie enemy was almost never a person, but rather disembodied radio signals to be intercepted, given a precise directional heading from "us" and other units. The enemy was a distant transmitter, to be triangulated on and turned into map or target coordinates.

I can't really speak firsthand to the notion of the fighter by night, farmer by day. I know that's frequently told and I have no reason to doubt it. But at the time I was there the enemy at the wrong end of the radio transmissions was likely as not to be a member of regular NVA forces.

The most obvious difference to me between Iraq and Vietnam is that in Vietnam our effort seemed not to be separating roughly four sides of an ethnic civil war. I'm not saying civilians weren't ever targeted. But the goal of VC and NVA alike was unification of Vietnam, and they directed most of their effort at military forces and the government (though from the aftermath I saw, it seems police stations, railroad terminals, schools and government offices could all be "government").

In Iraq the problem is different, one week we are fighting one side and the next week we are fighting to support them. One week we are training government forces, the next we are accusing them of participating in ethnic kidnapping attacks or black marketing electronics and weapons. There seems to be increasing doubt about who is the reliably "friendly" host force we are supposed to train and support. The bad guys' are increasingly all recognizable as bad guys only because they attack civilian targets.

Consequently, although knowing who our enemy is in Iraq is a huge problem, the ambiguity of who that is isn't exactly like the farmer by day fighter by night thing associated with Vietnam.

On the otherhand, a striking domestic political similarity seems to be that the political leadership in the US administration has succumbed to the "sunk-cost" effect. This is basically a pattern wherein administrators not wanting to admit failure and ante up for another effort, another bigger bet that will result in a winning roll of the dice whose jackpot offsets the losses we've incurred by engaging in risky gambling in the first place. That hope keeps away the threat of having to admit to losing the car, the kids' college funds and the house. This is what all the escalation was in Vietnam was about after 1966 or there about. This is what the "more troops" option is, it's just upping the ante by addicted, losing, gamblers.

[Toots]

10. Actually Vietnam was divided into Corps

I --IV Corp> I Corp and II Corp were almost entirely NVA regulars, III Corp was more NVA but had a lot of VC as well, IV Corp was much more VC. I never entered IV Corp so have no real knowledge of how it would compare to Iraq. Fairly similar I would guess but the booby traps were more personel and not against civilian centers. They were mostly snipers and sappers. In the other three Corps we were engaged against the third largest army of the time. They were well trained and seasoned fighters that carried modern weaponry. They lived pretty much underground in huge tunnel complexes. We spent all of our time trying to find and destroy their tunnels We had no doubt who our enemy was and we respected their abilities mightily. It was one hundred percent a military operation. I can not say that for Iraq. I believe it is a police matter that needs to be solved by those that live there. Our soldiers are not trained for this type of political fighting, especially our National Guard..We are not engaged against a uniformed enemy so we can not really know who the enemy is. The Iraqi people know though and they can, with US assistance police their own country city by city and section by section...I was just letting people know that Vietnam was relatively peaceful through out the major urban areas. People smiled a lot there and kids were everywhere...

[dubykc]

3. One of the differences is that we were NOT occupying Vietnam..

We were there theoretically to support the corrupt Thieu government and keep the North Vietnamese from starting the proverbial "Domino Effect" in SE Asia.

I also agree with the previous poster on the fact that we did some major warfare in urban areas during the Tet offensive and the bombing of Hanoi.

On edit: spelling correction.

[Mandate My Ass]

4. Thank you

this is typical blame the victim bullshit. We illegally invaded and are now occupying Iraq but the violence is their fault.

The sectarian violence was deliberately created and escalated by US-backed death squads and false flag operations. The Iraqis are not to blame for the chaos and are no different than any other peace-loving people.

[dubykc]

5. Indeed, if we would not support and encourage or incite the sectarian ...

violence in Iraq through our hand picked and installed puppet government, I'm sure things would be totally different.

If the US is so concerned about the "atrocities" Saddam committed on "his own people", why the hell are we allowing far more atrocities to occur in Darfur?

[stellanoir]

6. Too other differences that continually strike me is that most

Vietnamese were Buddhist (one of the most forgiving if not the most forgiving religions.) Blood feuds can go on for generations in some more extreme factions of Islam.

Aaaand Our "Vietnam conflict" didn't piss off 1/3 (if not more. . .just refering to Muslims here) of the global population.

The comparison always bothers me for those reasons though the striking similarities are that neither is "winnable," we've stayed too long, have been lied to in both instances.