Is Iraq Like Vietnam?
Part 1: Unity of Command
By D.W.

Many journalists, pundits, scholars, and others have often compared the conflict in Iraq to the war in Vietnam. This is an easy and convenient comparison to make for people with superficial knowledge of history and of military/political operations. And given the recent history of Vietnam many seasoned journalists can easily reach back into their memory and retrieve such examples.

Indeed between these conflicts there are certain parallels in enemy tactics and procedures. Iraq, like Vietnam, is a low intensity guerrilla war. Iraqi insurgents are oftentimes indistinguishable from civilians and this leads to confusion and sometimes regrettable mistakes. However, there are profound differences between these unique conflicts and comparing these differences is more important to policy development than to superficial similarities.

A very significant difference between the insurgents in Iraq and Vietnam is the military principle of unity of command and control. Unity of command means that one commander is overall in charge of all military and related political efforts aimed at achieving that commander’s goal. All subordinate commanders are accountable for operating within the directions of the supreme commander in chief. For instance, the President of the United States is in overall command of the U.S. Military and all subordinate commands in all branches of service operate within the limits set by the President towards the goals that he has set.

Unity of command is absolutely essential for success of a military operation.
 

Story Continues Below ê

Today's Top Stories

● Desegregation Decrees - We Must Stop Living in the Past ● Birthday Suit Parties - The Ivy League Rebellion ● Obesity Politics - New Ways to Feel Good ● Disrespecting Teachers - Parents are Out of Control ● Audacity of Molesters - Teach Children as their Probation ● The Color of White - The Meaning of White

Yesterday's Top Stories

● Reforming Bureaucracy - Say Goodbye to the GS System ● Helicopter Parents - Parents Who Do Too Much ● Unsavory Pictures - Mayor Forced Out of Office ● Poor Minorities - A Collective Moral Responsibility? ● Firing Teachers - States Need New Tenure Reforms ● Nude Carwash - Drought Drives Aussies to Extremes

Imagine working at a retail chain that has the goal of beating Wal-Mart but lacked a CEO or director who provided a vision or a structure to achieve it. All the departments just went around doing whatever they wanted to without coordinating any of their actions or assisting each other. Such a business would either fail or be doomed to miserable performance and this company would never come close to overtaking Wal-Mart. All successful military campaigns, including guerrilla movements, have had unity of command and those that did not were defeated.

During the war in Vietnam, Ho Chi Minh was the commander in chief from start to finish and all subordinate communist elements took orders in one form or another from him. The guerrilla war in South Vietnam did have a bogus political party which was just another subordinate of Ho Chi Minh’s government. And the North’s political advisors and military officers were thoroughly integrated throughout the Viet Cong military structure and always ended up calling the shots.

The one ultimate goal that the communists had throughout the entire conflict was to unite South Vietnam under the dictatorial control of Ho Chi Minh and his political apparatus in the North. All communist military operations were aimed towards achieving this objective and subordinate commanders ultimately knew who the big boss was.

Vietnamese communist unity of command allowed the communists to persist and maintain over thirty years of conflict to achieve victory. Without Ho Chi Minh’s leadership the movement might have weakened and disintegrated into various bands of misfits who would have been defeated piecemeal. Instead, the Viet Cong were able to recover very quickly from massive defeats like the Tet Offensive because the North was in control and they were able to reconstitute these formations.

The Iraqi insurgency, unlike the war in Vietnam, doesn’t have a supreme commander let alone any unity of command. Within the insurgency at large there is no one key leader able to unify and coordinate the actions of all the other insurgent groups to achieve a goal.

The insurgents often spend considerable effort fighting each other in internal power struggles. The various factions don’t even share a common vision of the political future for Iraq except to expel foreign powers and unite the country or to have sections of it fall under their group’s leadership. Some factions don’t necessary want the coalition to withdraw immediately as its presence somehow benefits their cultivation of power. The insurgents are killing lots of people in spectacular attacks but they are often not coordinated and even have very different objectives.

If the U.S. were to withdraw from Iraq too quickly the country would fragment into tribal enclaves unless a powerful key leader was to emerge with the power to control and subdue other factions. It is essential to think of Iraq as a tribal society because that’s what it is.

Saddam was able to maintain power because he understood this and he knew how to manipulate the tribal structure to his advantage. Before any insurgent group can establish unity of command it must manipulate the Iraqi tribal system and unify enough tribes under it.

This is a difficult task to accomplish in peacetime let alone during the coalition establishment of an Iraqi government that they must compete with for leadership. Furthermore, for all the wickedness of the communist system, they offered a coherent vision for the country, something the Iraqi insurgents cannot do beyond ambiguous claims of an authoritarian Islamic government.

Unlike Iraq, Vietnam was not a highly tribalized society and the communist did not face as much opposition to their claim to leadership. There were no rival communist groups fighting with Ho Chi Minh for control over the war while fighting the South Vietnamese and foreign troops. If the Iraqi insurgency could unite under a single leader working in unison then they could be as formidable as the Viet Cong. Until then, they are just disparate groups of murderers working in an uncoordinated manner causing a lot of chaos but without any clear objective.

The late Al-Zarqawi and Al-Sadr have been identified by various people as being such key leaders, but neither one is a modern Ho Chi Minh. Al-Qeada may garner sympathy from many Iraqi Sunni’s but definitely not from all of them and probably not even the majority. And most of this sympathy doesn’t translate into any type of meaningful support required by the group to claim leadership of the Sunni insurgency.

There are already many Sunni factions with different agendas and they fight each other more often than the press bothers to report. Al-Qeada has engaged in combat with powerful Iraqi Sunni tribal groups and the U.S. has been able to exploit this to the coalition’s advantage.

The Shia Cleric Maqtada Al-Sadr has been identified by some as being the leader of the Shia insurgency. He is a popular Shia figure and has plenty of support from the Shia population but not from everyone. He has support of a sizeable militia but competing Shia militias exist and sometimes they clash. Overall, Al-Sadr cannot lay claim to being the leader of Iraqi Shia population and he doesn’t command or influence nearly enough of their population to translate his vision of power into strong actions.

While all these Iraqi insurgent groups are killing a lot of people and causing chaos in Baghdad, they are by no means the equal of the Vietnamese Communists. With enough effort they can be isolated and picked off one by one, although this is still a difficult task.

And finally, the Iraqi Government doesn’t have any serious competitors to its rule on a national level. Disintegration into autonomous tribal communities is the only alternative to national level leadership.

We want your opinion! Tell us what you thought about this article. Click the Your Feedback menu item to send us your comments.