Insurgencies and the Vietnam myth

Col Tom Snodgrass:

The myth that fighting insurgencies is futile may underlie much pessimism about the current war in Iraq. Professor Donald Stoker's article, "Insurgencies Rarely Win - And Iraq Won't Be Any Different (Maybe)," did thinking Americans a great favor by writing the historical truth: that insurgents are not invincible. The misconception that they are destined to win in war was, as the professor writes, born in the U.S.'s Vietnam fiasco.

John Kennedy's and Lyndon Johnson's administrations purposely chose to focus national attention on the Viet Cong insurgents as the cause of the Southeast Asia war, rather than admitting that the true originator of the conflict was the Communist Government in North Vietnam, which was waging a war of aggression. By publicly pretending that the insurgency was homegrown, springing from native South Vietnamese "guerrillas," Kennedy and Johnson were attempting to circumvent a direct conflict with North Vietnam's sponsors, Communist China and the Soviet Union, which were funding and supplying the war in the south.

The Soviets and Chinese funneled their all-important support to the insurgents in the south through their client state. Kennedy and Johnson mistakenly believed that preventing the Soviet/Chinese proxy aggressor state from receiving the Communist war supplies and trans-shipping them to the Viet Cong conflicted with the vital national interests of the Soviets and Chinese. The absolute fallacy of this Kennedy/Johnson strategic miscalculation was clearly shown when Richard Nixon finally paralyzed all war re-supply to and through North Vietnam in December 1972 with a massive bombing campaign known as "Linebacker II." But by then it was too late to end the war on America's terms because of the total collapse of the American public's will to fight, so Nixon had to settle for the type of cut and run troop withdrawal now advocated in Iraq by disheartened U.S. politicians.

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The insurgency in South Vietnam was totally destroyed in the failed Viet Cong "Tet Offensive." In that major Communist failure, the Viet Cong was decimated to the tune of 45,000 to 70,000 killed, which was the cream of their force and constituted the bulk of their guerrilla army. Thereafter the North Vietnamese could no longer sustain the fiction that it was a southern insurgency, and they had to infiltrate massive numbers of North Vietnamese Army personnel to continue their war of aggression. However, by this time in 1968, Americans were so "Viet Cong saturated" that they made no distinction between North and South Vietnamese combatants fighting against U.S. GI's.

Consequently, when the Democrat controlled congress cut off military aid to South Vietnamese forces fighting the North Vietnamese Army (similar to how Senator Clinton has just proposed cutting off military aid to the Iraqis who are fighting the Islamic insurgents), South Vietnam was overrun and conquered by a conventional army, not an insurgent force. However the U.S. media and American leftists, both of whom were anxious to continue the fiction of Viet Cong moral superiority and U.S. illegality, heralded the triumph of "the people's Viet Cong" over the "U.S. aggressors." The American people totally bought the left's Viet Cong victory propaganda line and tried to forget the whole sorry affair.

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The same crew that was desperate for defeat in Vietnam what to do for Iraq what they did for Vietnam. People fight insurgencies because they are too weak to use a more effective strategy. When liberals comprehend this reality there may be a chance for a reasonable argument with them on war policy.