Parallels

I'm reading a book titled The First Battle: Operation Starlite and the Beginning of the Blood Debt in Vietnam by Otto J. Lehrack.

I got this book as soon as I saw it because it happened while I was in the Corps, and I knew a lot of guys who were involved in Starlite. They rotated from Vietnam to Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, where the 2d Marine Division was guarding the Atlantic coast against the VC. Corporal Gordon was doing his usual magnificent, heroic job of bringing up the rear from his command post at the Area 6 EM Club..

Operation Starlite was the first major combat by American forces against Main Force VC and effectively took them out of action as large-unit combatants for the rest of our involvement there. The PAVN, aka NVA, took over the role afterwards.

Mr. Lehrack brings up issues that are analagous to Iraq. I'm not sure if he meant to, because the book was published in 2004, and he conducted lots of interviews with American and Vietnamese (both sides), and that must have taken time. My guess is that he was in the final turd-polishing editing when the Iraq war started. Here's a few quotes from Chapter 2, "America Touches The Tar Baby":

...Johnson could not appear to be weak. He was a Texan, dammit,with all the pop-mythology baggage that the label carried. He regarded himself as a macho-man. Some months after Johnson's election, at a small White House meeting, Supreme Court Justice Arthur Goldberg asked the President why we were in Vietnam. Johnson unzipped his fly, pulled out his penis, and said, "This is why."

[...] The corner was turned when Lyndon Johnson asked for, and Congress naively gave him, a blank check to conduct an undeclared war in Southeast Asia.

Not everyone within the administration was sanguine about America's prospects in Vietnam. As early as 1963, John McCone, director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), expressed doubts to President Kennedy about the efficacy of American efforts. His view of the adventure in Vietnam was that it was based on "complete lack of intelligence" and "exceedingly dangerous..." His views were dismissed as "out of step with policy."

There's a lot more, and I'm sure you recognize some key words that are being used today in relation to Iraq. The point is that both wars were started with lies for political gain, and that folks who tried to slow things down were pooh-poohed. Personally, I think this administration is far worse than Johnson's.

The chapter on parallels about the end of both wars is yet to be written, but I definitely see history repeating itself: a tremendous loss of life and treasure for no gain.