Looking at Iraq Through the Lens of History
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From its conception, the Iraq war has been haunted by the ghosts of wars past. Whether explicitly or implicitly, scholars, pundits and politicians constantly compare Iraq to other American wars already cast to annals of history. As a result, many people’s fundamental conception of the conflict is rooted in historical analogy. An analogy becomes the way to interpret everything about the Iraq war and its place in the “War on Terror”—its morality, its potential outcome, its strategy, and more. Indeed, it appears that the greatest determinant of opinion on Iraq is which historical model you chose to use a guide. Debates over Iraq boil down to an argument over which historical paradigm is most accurate.
Commentators are mostly split into two camps based on their favorite analogy. War critics have long compared Iraq to the Vietnam War as a failed American attempt to shape a far-off nation. Meanwhile, Iraq war supporters see the conflict like a theatre in World War II- as a small battle in a larger war. But the comparisons don’t stop there. Pundits and historians also draw on the details and generalities of the American-Filipino War, the Barbary war, Korea, Bosnia-Herzegovina, and even the American Revolutionary War as ways to process events in Baghdad and Fallujah.
The Vietnam War, for a number of reasons, has become the most popular analogy among liberal and conservative war critics alike. This analogy views the U.S. as an aggressive imperial power overstepping its boundaries, taking unjustified military action in a distant land in order to support some abstract cause, and then meeting a resistant indigenous population. Ultimately this is a “realist” view of the war which focuses on Iraq’s national history, ethnic struggles, competition for power among different sects, economic realities, and other tangible situations. As a result, the Vietnam analogists see a realist solution not only to the conflict in Iraq but also to the larger War on Terror through diplomacy, concessions, and reevaluation of American foreign policy.
By 2002, as President Bush sold the case for an American invasion, the spirit of Vietnam was already being invoked in articles, columns, editorial cartoons, blogs, and chat rooms, as well as by prominent political commentators such as the late Molly Ivins, James Fallows, Thomas Friedman and countless others. They used Vietnam as a model to understand the justifications leading to the war and to predict the war’s future. The analogy really took hold by 2004 and 2005, however. As America became more entrenched militarily and economically in the distant country, everybody from Republican Senator Hagel of Nebraska to war protester Cindy Sheehan used this analogy to frame the national debate. By October 2006 even President Bush felt comfortable conceding similarities between the two wars.
Part of the popularity of this comparison is generational. The Vietnam War was the defining political issue of the “Baby Boomer” generation’s youth. Many of this generation developed their entire personal political outlook based on their rejection of the Vietnam War. They consequently see international and national affairs through the lens of the 1960s and the Vietnam War. Many of the Baby Boomer writers, Senators, and talking heads who now run America instinctively compared the major international conflict of their youth to the major international conflict of their adulthood.
This instinct might not be so far off. The wars certainly share basic similarities in both broad patterns and specific details. A complete list of similarities would be too long for this article, but a few of the major similarities bear mention here: in 1964, contentious circumstances off the coast of Vietnam were the pretense for the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution- a resolution which gave President Johnson the power to wage war without a formal Congressional declaration. In 2002 and 2003, dubious and inaccurate information concerning “weapons of mass destruction” was used as a pretense for passing the Iraq War Resolution and then for invading without a formal declaration. In both cases, once deeply involved in the war, the United States found itself embroiled in indigenous conflict. In both wars, American troops encountered increasingly organized and brazen guerilla tactics from an enemy hidden in plain sight. Because of the guerilla nature of enemy forces in both wars, American strategy eventually became focused on winning over the population to the American side; or winning over “the hearts and minds” of the occupied nation’s people. Both wars have also been highly domestically divisive. In light of all these parallels, anti-war thinkers seek a solution to Iraq in the same way that the US eventually sought a resolution to Vietnam.
Supporters of the war in Iraq—from its conception to this very day—use drastically different historical analogies to frame the debate. They conjure images of World War II or even the Cold War when describing world politics. They see Iraq as a battlefront in the larger “War on Terror.” To them, Iraq is simply a part of the larger epic struggle between Islamic radicalism and Western freedoms, just as World War II was an epic struggle between fascist aggression and Western freedoms.
Supporters of this idea—Christopher Hitchens, President Bush, Donald Rumsfeld, Victor Davis Hanson, John McCain, and most prominent Conservatives—use grand ideas like “terror” versus “freedom” and—most tellingly—“islamofascism”. As in World War II or the Cold War, they see two black-and-white sides to this conflict. In World War II the conflict boiled down to fascism versus democracy; in the Cold War, totalitarian communism versus democratic capitalism; now it comes down to fundamentalist, theocratic Islam versus liberal, secular Western values.
What sets the World War II analogists apart from the Vietnam analogists is a sense of inevitable conflict. World War II analogists feel that the US, whether in Afghanistan, Iraq, or even Iran—must face its enemies now, or wait for them to attack us. Act now or become a Neville Chamberlain, they warn.
Islamic fanaticism indeed bares a resemblance to totalitarianism or fascism in rhetoric and organization. Also, the supposed enemy does want to conquer and destroy American values. The “enemy” did attack America—Pearl Harbor and September 11th—and parts of Europe, after years of the US neglect of their threats. And, finally, both fascism and radical Islam share an anti-Semitic worldview.
To a degree, this point of view is generational as much as the Vietnam analogy is. Many of the proponents, the Baby Boomers who led the conservative revolt against 1960’s liberalism, base their worldview on Reagan-era conservatism and neo-conservatism. Reaganites and Neocons see America—particularly after the resolution of World War II—as a modern “city upon a hill.” To them, the US has a moral duty to lead the international community. Secondly, they see Vietnam not necessarily as a military failure, but as a domestic failure of will. If only America had given itself the freedom to whole-heartedly wage the necessary war, Vietnam would not have gone communist. Finally, they see President Reagan during the Cold War as the quintessential exemplar of someone who stood by his rhetoric and beliefs—summed up in the “Evil Empire” speech—to defeat a powerful enemy.
So who is right? It appears that both sides have good points to be made, and likely no single side is entirely correct. Some sort of answer will certainly come with time. History is a graveyard of wrongheaded ideas, after all. Perhaps one of these lines of thinking will be buried there someday.
But all this comparison is natural. History’s most powerful and natural use is in the interpretation of the present and the prediction of the future. For societies, like human beings, have memories. As individuals, our understanding of our own memories intimately shapes our understanding of ourselves. Our identity is shaped by our memories. By comparing Iraq to other wars, America is simply searching its memory for an identity; trying to make sense of where we now stand as a nation—and how we got here.
