-Caveat Lector-
Begin forwarded message:
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: June 8, 2007 7:54:13 PM PDT
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Fwd: Iraq Parallels Vietnam, Not Korea
The United States did not need a permanent military presence in the
Persian Gulf during the Cold War when the biggest threat to that
oil existed -- the antisemitic, Arab-friendly Soviet Union.
The United States still didn't need such a presence when it waged
war for oil against Saddam Hussein in the 1991 Gulf War. After
Saddam invaded Kuwait, the U.S. military brought in land and air
forces from the United States for Desert Shield and Desert Storm.
Revealing its imperial intentions, the United States only
established a permanent military presence on land in Kuwait and
Saudi Arabia in 1991 after the Soviet and Iraqi threats had melted
away.
With those two major threats eliminated, the United States could
easily claim to be "defending" Persian Gulf oil . Economists,
however, know that oil will flow from the Gulf even without U.S.
military forces protecting it. Oil is a valuable commodity to the
Gulf countries, including Iran, only when it is sold, making the
profit motive the best guarantor that oil will continue to flow
freely.
Non-Muslim military forces occupying Muslim lands is the central
factor that motivates radical Islamists, and indeed most Muslims,
to oppose the occupiers. This factor was the source of zealous
resistance to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and the Russian
invasion of Chechnya.
See what's free at AOL.com.
From: "Jim S." <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Date: June 8, 2007 6:23:45 PM PDT
Subject: Iraq Parallels Vietnam, Not Korea
http://www.consortiumnews.com/2007/060607a.html *Iraq Parallels
Vietnam, Not Korea*
By Ivan Eland
June 7, 2007
[Editor's Note: A new Bush administration talking point for the
Iraq War is to tell the American people that the bloody conflict
will morph into a Korean-style armistice, not a Vietnam-style
catastrophe.
In this guest essay, the Independent Institute's Ivan Eland says
the reassuring Korean parallel is the latest Iraq War deception.]:
The Bush administration has decided its new model for a long-term
solution in Iraq is Korea. It's an attempt to stifle the
inevitable comparisons of the Iraq quagmire to Vietnam and a way to
justify the eventual reduction of U.S. forces in Iraq (to take the
heat off of Republican candidates in the 2008 elections), while
retaining a substantial U.S. military presence by establishing
three or four long-term major military bases.
The plan would ultimately be a disaster for the United States.
Merely suggesting the long-term establishment of U.S. military
bases in a historically significant Muslim country will confirm to
the Islamist radicals, mainstream Muslims, as well as Bush critics
that the U.S. desire for a continued land-based military presence
in the oil-rich Persian Gulf was the administration’s real
objective in invading Iraq.
As one of those critics, I had long assumed that oil was one of the
major underlying reasons for the invasion of Iraq. The
administration knew that the Saudi Arabian government wanted the
United States to withdraw from land bases in the desert kingdom,
and the administration likely believed in the need for replacement
bases to keep its finger on the jugular of Gulf oil.
Open talk by the administration of retaining a long-term military
presence in Iraq, à la Korea, merely provides hard evidence for
this thesis. For more than a half century after the Korean War, the
United States has maintained tens of thousands of U.S. forces in
South Korea.
Of course, the need for a U.S. land presence in the Persian Gulf to
defend oil is highly questionable. The United States did not have
a permanent military land presence in the Gulf during the Cold War
when the biggest threat to that oil existed: the Soviet Union.
The United States didn't even have such a presence when it waged
war for oil against Saddam in the 1991 Gulf War. After Saddam
invaded Kuwait, the U.S. military brought in land and air forces
from the United States for Desert Shield and Desert Storm.
Revealing its imperial intentions, the United States only
established a permanent military presence on land in Kuwait and
Saudi Arabia in 1991 after the Soviet and Iraqi threats melted away.
Certainly, with these two major threats eliminated, the United
States could easily "defend" Persian Gulf oil offshore, as it did
successfully during the 1991 conflict. Many economists, however,
believe that oil will flow from the Persian Gulf, even without U.S.
military forces protecting it.
Oil is a valuable commodity to the Gulf countries, including
radically Islamist Iran, only when it is sold, making the profit
motive the best guarantor that oil will continue to flow freely.
Furthermore, non-Muslim military forces occupying Muslim lands is
the major factor that energizes radical Islamists, and even
mainstream Muslims, to oppose the occupiers. This factor was the
source of zealous resistance to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan
and the Russian invasion of Chechnya.
It also explains Palestinian and Lebanese opposition to Israeli
occupation and the aggressive Iraqi and Afghani push back against
the U.S. occupation.
Any U.S. bases remaining in Iraq, either to keep a finger on the
oil, or to act as a jumping off point for attacking Iran, will
similarly quickly come under withering attack from Iraqi insurgents
and al Qaeda. It will not be easy for these bases to be used
effectively for these roles if they are constantly under siege.
In Vietnam, U.S. bases became major targets for the communists. In
addition, unlike post-war Korea, which had a clearly demarcated
border that ensured stability in South Korea, guerrilla warfare,
terrorism, sectarian violence, and chaos in Iraq have no fronts and
are ubiquitous -- much more like Vietnam.
President Bush has stated his belief that the United States left
Vietnam too soon before the job was done, saying that the United
States should not make the same mistake in Iraq -- an ironic
statement from a man who successfully avoided serving in Vietnam.
In the president's eyes, U.S. withdrawal after an unsuccessful U.S.
effort to transform Vietnam over more than two decades was "cutting
and running." Apparently he's willing to see Americans continue to
be killed in Iraq indefinitely with the same result.
Even some of the administration’s critics, however, believe that
the United States cannot leave Iraq in chaos. But chaos is a
reality. A permanent U.S. military presence is likely to be the
worst of all worlds.
The president appears to be reversing his position and considering
a pull back of U.S. forces to bases away from major Iraqi cities,
the elimination of regular U.S. security patrols, and more focus on
training Iraqi security forces and launching U.S. raids against al
Qaeda.
Unfortunately, this tack has been tried in the past and failed. The
problem is not that the Iraqi forces cannot be trained, but that
they will end up fighting in the escalating civil war for the
Shi'ite, not the Iraqi, cause. Furthermore, as one senior
administration official admitted to the New York Times, there is
little reason to believe that retaining U.S. bases will prevent the
country from remaining "the great jihadist training camp it is today."
Even some administration critics argue that the United States has
too many interests in the Persian Gulf for the United States not to
have a Korea-like long-term military presence in Iraq. Although
they are vague about what these interests are, they are usually
assumed to be oil and Israel.
The myth of the need to defend oil already has been debunked;
Israel is a rich country with 200-plus nuclear weapons that doesn't
need to have its security subsidized by endangering U.S. lives in
Iraq ad infinitum.
The failure in Vietnam is the correct lesson; Korea is not the
correct model for Iraq. The United States should have learned in
Vietnam that accepting inevitable defeat, cutting losses, and
withdrawing sooner, rather than later, would have saved lives,
money, and U.S. prestige.
~~~
Ivan Eland is Director of the Center on Peace & Liberty at The
Independent Institute
http://www.independent.org/research/copal/ and Assistant Editor
of "The Independent Review."
http://www.independent.org/publications/tir/ Dr. Eland has
been Director of Defense Policy Studies at the Cato Institute,
Principal Defense Analyst at the Congressional Budget Office,
Evaluator-in-Charge (national security and intelligence) for the
U.S. General Accounting Office, and Investigator for the House
Foreign Affairs Committee.]
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