Iraq Isn't Like Vietnam -- Except When It Is

[Sargent]

True to a degree, but this still does not answer the question of the accountability of Congress. Who took them to task for selling South Vietnam down the drain? That's really my basic thrust with this. Once Congress steps in, any possibility of accountability disappears. I agree completely with executive responsibility, but I don't see much of a balance in Congress with a "get out of jail free" card. This is especially true with the Senate, which often has years between elections to cover their tracks.

With Word War II, one thing most people don't remember is that FDR flew in the face of public opinion by putting Europe first. One reason he didn't declare war on Germany initially is that there was little real public or Congressional support for it. It took Pearl Harbor, and Hitler's ill-advised declaration of war on the US, to give him that window.

Tet is an interesting case, and one that will be debated for many years yet. I tend to fall into the camp that feels that Tet was really a military victory for the US and SVN, even though it obviously ended up a political loss of major proportions. Tet exposed much of the VC infrastructure, and saw it destroyed in the bargain. That may not matter in the historical long run, but it's an interesting balancing factor.

I don't disagree with your points on Congress -- I don't know how to solve the problem either.

Yes, FDR did have a problem putting Europe first -- both before and after Pearl Harbor. In the end, although that was the official strategy, the Allies ended up fighting both theatres simultaneously. And, to a degree, the Pacific theatre was the one in which the Allies could begin the substantive fight more effectively first.

As for Tet, there is an intermediate picture that is often missed between the we won the military fight/lost the strategic battle. If you look at Truong Nhu Tang's memoir (_A Viet Cong Memoir_), the dedicated South Vietnamese nationalist/communist fighters were not particularly interested in uniting all of Vietnam under the North's regime. The North was aware of this. So, to an extent, by defeating the VC/NLF during Tet, we solved a problem for Hanoi. We made certain that if we did exit precipitously or before the matter was settled that Hanoi would have an easier time over-running the South and uniting the entire country under its regime. (We also probably had a hand in radicalizing that regime, but that's another matter entirely.) This was the NLF's great disappointment in 1975.

This seems to be something that certain segments of the Iraqi resistance have come to understand in the current fight. Isn't this what the Shia Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq party was aiming at in dropping the "Revolution" from their name? To distance themselves from Iran?

One thing that I've come to believe about the Vietnam War is that there were two wars going on -- one fought by the North, one fought by the South Vietnamese nationalist insurgents. The latter war was the one the US missed. It was also the one we probably didn't need to fight.