Echoes of Vietnam are invariably detected whenever the United States
embarks on a course that involves the use of military force. Certainly
this war has a long way to go before it can be credibly compared with
that long-ago conflict. For one thing -- and it's a big thing -- Vietnam
claimed upward of 58,000 American lives. At week's end, the death toll in
Iraq stood at 36. Even so, a few similarities seem worth noting.
In March 1965, American military units landed in what was then South
Vietnam. "Welcome to the Gallant Marines" read the signs that
greeted the troops as they rolled ashore unopposed near the city of
Danang.
Ten years later, in April 1975, the American mission to that distant
battleground ended in failure. In between, some accounts from the field
and from the home front mirrored events today.
The fedayeen, for example, are displaying the same passion and brutality
as the Viet Cong did some three decades ago, although clearly not in the
same numbers. Call them terrorists or death squads or irregulars.
Whatever their crimes, they are also engaging in combat activities that
fall under the rubric of guerrilla tactics.
Ullman, the defense analyst, for one, likened the fedayeen to the Viet
Cong.
Anti-war movement
As the Vietnam War dragged on, a vast anti-war movement took hold in this
country, driving one president, Lyndon B. Johnson, out of office and
influencing another, Richard M. Nixon, to severely scale back and
eventually withdraw U.S. combat forces.
This time, an anti-war movement with global dimensions, not yet
overwhelmingly large but hardly insignificant, had materialized before
this war even began. Sizable anti-war demonstrations have been seen in
New York, Washington, San Francisco and other American cities, as well as
abroad.
Vietnam was the first war upon which television had an impact. Graphic
visual dispatches from the battlefield, many suggesting that the war was
not going well, arrived each night on the evening news. Vietnam became
known as "the living-room war."
Iraq is the in-your-face war, as three homegrown cable networks,
augmented by foreign partners, are providing often gripping
around-the-clock coverage while the traditional over-the-air networks
have devoted lengthy parts of their broadcast day to the war.
In the process, we have seen battles up close, devastated families
mourning the death or capture of a son or daughter, frazzled troops
getting their first taste of combat, acts of kindness amid chaos,
portions of a city ablaze. And the images never stop.
"For some, the massive TV, the massive volume of television -- and
it is massive -- and the breathless reports can seem to be somewhat
disorienting," Rumsfeld said Friday.
But Wallace has not swerved from the goal he outlined in February, as he
sat in his command tent in the snowy German countryside, testing elements
of the war plan that would be implemented little more than a month later.
"We may win pretty, or we may win ugly," he said, "but
we're going to win."
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