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Return to Article: FEATURES Lessons Not Learned

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  In Vietnam we finally chose "our" Viets in form of Revolutionary Development Cadres and let them lead us in our CORDS efforts. In Iraq we destroyed a welfare state system replacing it with corrupt and greedy US Corporation (mostly Cheney's company)and caused an 80% unemployment that our allies Saudi Arabia and Kuwait exploited paying for insurgency, though they agreed with Israel that we should remove Saddam. But when Bush atomized Iraq supporting Shia and Kurs, these Sunni states funded the insurgency. We could not be so stupid had we used our institutional memory from Vietnam. There must have been a motive for not doing so. That the neocons made clear in their writings: Israel feared Iraq and to make Israel dominant in Mideast it was necessary to atomize the Iraqi nation en route to doing the same to Syria and Iran. Now, 2009, Israeli operative Congresswoman Jane Harman is insisting publicly that we do the same with Iran because, she claims, Persians are only one of many ethnic groups into which we could atomize Iran. When the goal is clear before we aquire any knowledge, when the motives preceed the intelligence, America goes in intel blind, language deaf and culture dumb in the service of a foreign power. It is no wonder then that the neocons brag in private that they have us "dumb goyim" under control. As for lessons, when I recently debated with a general on loan to the Bush White House as a terror Czar, he warned me that if I want to keep a dialogue going I had better not bring up "that looser's war, Vietnam." It is not hubris but criminal negligence that the Bush Administration has been covering up. One can thus understand that DCI George Tenet blamed CIA intel failures in Iraq on: "WE DEPENDED TOO MUCH ON SECOND COUNTRY INTELLIGENCE"-- that instead of learning from our hard earned lessons in Vietnam.

  DE Teodoru Posted May 23, 2009 12:50 AM
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  I am heartened to see this discussion treated so comprehensively in what I will call the "mainstream press" of government/military trade journals. These points are exceedingly important and must be heeded in the conduct of the War on Terrorism. On the other hand, it is a tragedy that the dialog is occurring four years after inception of the Iraq war, instead of four years after the Vietnam War.

  The tremendous expenditure in military weapons and communications systems in an effort to "transform" to a futuristic ideal better suited to the Soviet era of warfare is misguided -- unless one thinks it is more important that we should prepare for near to mid-term conflict with China or North Korea rather than what we are currently experiencing in Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, and elsewhere in the Islamist terrorist caliphate. Otherwise, "unconventional" war should be addressed by heavily appropriated unconventional means as soon as possible. This has been blatantly obvious for years, but has been ignored for political reasons flying in the face of logic and experience.

  These wars should be fought clandestinely with clandestine assets and methods. Americans need to realize this and wean themselves from Hollywood World War II-style images of warfare in favor of meaningful, "conflict-appropriate" shifts to intelligence-based clandestine operations. Yes, it will mean that we will not know everything and the media and Hollywood will suffer for content for a while. However, unless we grow up to these realizations, we can look forward to a future of defeats in the field and threats at home.

  Good work, Government Executive.

  GovExec.com reader Posted January 16, 2007 2:24 PM