I hesitate to state that there are similarities between Iraq and Vietnam. On the surface many have argued in news articles, blogs, and television shows that parallels exist. Hints that these similarities somehow justify or fuel an argument about the current war, whatever that argument may be, ripple through the osmotic texture of people’s words, masking a deeper need.

Need. I think that’s the key of it. It all begins with something simple, something primal. We need to feel righteous or justified in the murdering of thousands of people, or we need to feel that we are somehow not responsible for the actions taking place under our nation’s banner. We sit back and argue about how things are different this time, maybe because that helps us to believe that our actions, our votes, our procedures, are somehow unique and not subject to the critical and unforgiving eye of history. Otherwise, we blame the elite, or we envision ourselves as the academic elite and blame the stupid people and say, “Ah, see! It’s happening again. When will they ever learn?”

There is a certain futility to all of it. It is piercing and obvious that the American people do not get all of the facts about the Iraq war. The media is biased, filtered, and confusing. Our nation’s leaders dole out facts like breadcrumbs, leading us to the trap of our own imaginations; and let’s not forget that even they do not have all of the facts sometimes. McNamara would call this the Fog of War. We also are comparing something occurring now with something that occurred over forty years ago. Forty years unraveling the knots of Vietnam have left us with a clearer picture of the failures and successes of our nation. We do not have that luxury with Iraq.

We do not have all of the facts and we do not have the revealing lens of history and time. As such, our arguments on the comparisons of the war require a measure of indulgence.

So what then is the purpose? Few of our arguments if any are based in irrefutable logic and fact. Articles, news stories, and blogs vent our frustration as a people in various ways using various “facts” and interpretations therein.

Christopher Hitchens makes a number of arguments about how the war in Iraq is different from Vietnam. “[the leadership and structure of the Iraqi insurgency is] … discredited and detested in its own country and universally condemned.” (2)...

Interesting. Yet the culture of the insurgency exists, so clearly it is not condemned universally and such a blanketed statement cannot be made. In addition to further interpretation of surface facts, he also refers to the Iraqi insurgents as “dismal riff-raff by comparison” (2). While this demonization may be unintentional, demonization it remains.

I think we need to look deeper into the tone, into the spark behind our arguments. Why do we demonize the people? Why do we try and justify our country’s actions? Why do we listen to the stories on the news, which we know to be filtered, instead of seeking the knowledge and facts for ourselves?

Hitchen’s demonization of the Iraqi insurgents suggests a measure of guilt inside his dismissive tone. History would show that every nation that has ever gone to war has always demonized their enemies. If you want to talk about the similarities between Iraq and Vietnam, you could spend some time on our demonization of the people.

In Vietnam we called them Communists, commies, gooks. In Iraq we call them terrorists, towel heads, and even sand niggers. We know that demonization is a war tactic to justify the occupation and destruction of another country, and we continue to use it in our arguments and in the conscious framework of our understanding. Why? Because war is torture, death, and destruction against our fellow brethren and how else could we handle such a massacre unless we blinded our eyes with the weapons of demonization and racism?

To call the Iraqi insurgents riff-raff is a terrible mistake and shows a serious lack of judgment and understanding. If a man is willing to die in order to send a message, then shouldn’t we at the very least listen to what that message is? Is it possible that our society is so filtered, are we so blinded by our own self-image, that a young man must strap a bomb to his chest and die a fiery death in order to blow a hole in the walls of our ignorance and apathy?

I'm sorry, but if I was ever at the point that I felt I had to die in order to send a message, if I truly felt that my death was the only way left for me to communicate...

... What a horrible prison I must live in.

William Greider discusses how it would be instructive to go back and look at the propaganda provided to the American people at the beginning of the Iraq war. He suggests that it would look irresponsibly biased, and he’s right. But we knew that it was biased then, just as we know it now. I can’t remember a day in my adolescence or adulthood where I trusted the media and didn’t see something hidden behind the story or the smile on the news anchor, but I watched as a plane exploded in the Twin Towers. I watched as a slice was taken out of the Pentagon. Oh yes, I watched and was glued to the television by a sense of excitement at the prospect of change, of revelation, the chains of my apathy and monotony shattered by the powerful message on my television screen. We all knew what the message was.

And it excited us.


But the message began to change. It shifted and mutated as words like war, terror, and fear were taped to the lips of our news anchors; humans who we had shared a powerful message with just moments, hours, and then days ago.

Do we feel shame? Do we feel guilt? Do we feel a sense of personal responsibility?
We know that the media is biased, and yet we listen. We know that the Iraqis are dying, that they are human beings, and yet we demonize them. We know that there is a cry for help, and yet we are turning our backs and shutting our eyes. We see the desperation of a people, and we answer it with more soldiers. We know that there is injustice, and yet we take comfort in our daily pleasures.

But if you dam up a river, it will eventually break open. If you lay concrete and asphalt, it will eventually splinter and the vines of nature will seek the light above. There is a primal force at work here, one that we are ignoring, a basic and complicated need that is not being fulfilled. I think that it is for this reason, this deeper and primal reason that we argue over the surface of the war and ignore the pain that it causes within us.

There are many similarities and differences between Vietnam and Iraq, but none of them matter. The truth is, people are dying. Horrible acts of torture, death, destruction and despair are poisoning our world. We feel the reverberations as they rip across our sky, flash across our minds, thunder in our hearts, and in our anger we lash out in the only ways that we have been taught how.

I believe that we are good people. We want to do good things and we want to live in peace. We are guilty, and we are shamed, and we are at a loss, because we are not being the heroes that we dreamed that we would be.