Oh man, I’m doing it, I hate doing it and I know so many people dislike it as well. Comparing Iraq to Vietnam, as shown in Tim O’Brien’s The Things they Carry, is never a popular topic, even by those who support the idea that the two are practically one in the same. It is easy to understand see why people don’t want to compare one quagmire to the next, thousands of lives are lost, millions-billions-trillions of dollars being spent on unpopular ‘military conflicts,’ and not to mention those isolationists out there who wish we would just mind our own business.
I’m going to take a short turn away from the Soldier aspect of Tim O’Brien’s book and try to focus on the reasoning on the war as a whole. The Military History Podcast was something I came across awhile ago when we were searching for podcasts for our blogs. One of his more recent posts deals with the democratization of Iraq. As soon as I saw the title I dived in to hear what the man had to say. Almost immediately I thought of Vietnam and our explained reasoning of being there. “To bring democracy to the region,” “To rid the country of totalitarian rule,” “Stop the flow of communism.” You can just replace communism with terrorism in that last snippet and you’ve basically got the same situation.
The blog in question deals with four issues that we face in Iraq: Cultural, Modernization, Marxist, and Voluntarist. Stating that the country’s culture is deeply rooted in Authoritarian style rule, that the country is not modern, has a weak bourgeoisie, and does not have the strong leadership necessary to work towards democracy are all theories that have their merit and flaws but make excellent points many Americans can’t seem to grasp nowadays.
Everything that is discussed makes its way back to the Vietnam issue. It was a more rural based economy, a huge distinction between the social classes, and a more authoritative and colonial culture all prevented an easy influence from western countries to ‘evolve’ like they had towards democracy. It all sounded too similar to pass up a quick mention. I’ve posted the source below for any history buffs to give a quick listen.
http://militaryhistorypodcast.blogspot.com/2008/11/democracy-in-iraq.html
I often ask myself, “who decided democracy was the only legitimate form of government?”. Other countries have been running on other forms of government for hundreds of years and they have been doing just fine. What is our country’s problem? Maybe I am an isolationist when it comes to forcing our form of government on every country that we do not like. Sure, some forms of government are oppressive and don’t take the rights of their people into consideration when forming laws but does that mean we are responsible for going in and changing everything? We are trying to implement a democratic government in Iraq but we stay out of other countries where situations are much worse.
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Iraq and Vietnam they sound like brother. They are in the context of fruitless American war. I think i can understand the Vietnam war more then the war in Iraq. Back in the cold war the Societ Unio was a legitimate treat. They had the nukes and were expanding and we felt, wrongly, that we had to stop the. Set up the iron curtain. We went in there to fight the reds but ended up fighing farmers and boys and entire villages. The insanity of both of these situations is that i really believe that we went into these conflicts with good intentions. To bring about social change and democracy but Americas good intentions always seem to backfire. It sure backfired in Nam and it looks like it has in Iraq but only time will tell. In ten years if Iraq pulls itsef together and stabalizes the region then it is probably a good thing that we went there, but if it plunges into civil war i guess were the assholes….agian.
Mike