introduction
The reason behind the U.S. wars to invade Vietnam and Iraq is the same: U.S. "political calculations," not the necessity of military war. In fact, both wars ultimately weakened U.S. national security and resulted in the deaths of millions of innocent civilians and thousands of American soldiers.
Vietnam in 1972
On June 8, 1972, after a napalm aerial attack on a suspicious Viet Cong hideout, South Vietnamese troops tracked fleeing children along Highway 1 near Trang, and in the air, a South Vietnamese plane threw incendiary napalm bombs at south Vietnamese troops and civilians, burning the clothes of the fleeing girls, and the children under the age of less than 9 below were, from left to right: Pan Thanh Tam, brothers Phan Thanh Phuc, Pan Kim Phuc and their cousins Ho Van Bang and Ho Thi Ting. Behind them were soldiers of the Vietnamese 25th Division.
U.S. intentions for the Vietnam War began during the Cold War, and as early as 1954, U.S. President Dwight Eisenhower vowed to strike at the Viet Cong. This policy proposition of the United States is actually to curb the development of communism in the name of national security.
As the American authorities continued to preach the international communist threat, the American public seemed to be deceived into thinking that these claims were logical, so they began to fear that communism posed a threat to their survival, which became known as the "domino theory." However, when communism sprouted in the United States was eliminated, the "domino theory" was clearly based on excessive fear theory rather than rational policy.
Therefore, we can regard the "domino theory" as the product of the distortion of domestic politics in the United States, and it is also based on this theory that constantly pushes the United States into more wars, with little consideration for the legitimacy and necessity of military action.
In 1961, General Maxwell Taylor wrote to John F. Kennedy. "The strategic reserves of the U.S. military are currently so weak that we have to send troops to the communist bloc areas, and if one team is not enough to accomplish the necessary results, we will continue to increase our troops," F. Kennedy said. After this analysis, Maxwell decided to send ground troops to Vietnam because doing so would "have a consistently positive impact on communist national morale and international public opinion, and the Possibility of the United States" returning to Asia through South Vietnam.
By 1973, the U.S. state had spent $686 billion (in 2008 dollars), lost 58,220 people, killed about 2 million civilians in Vietnam, 500,000 in Cambodia, and 1 million in Laos.
The desire to avoid humiliation is not only to avoid undermining America's self-esteem, but also because it undermines the notion that america is strong enough to resist any possible communist expansion. For Kennedy and Nixon, it also meant protecting their political careers. In the aftermath of the Cuban Missile Crisis, Kennedy said, "If I now try to withdraw completely from Vietnam, we will have red panic on our hands again." In July 1963, he reportedly said at an informal news conference: "We have not prayed to stay in Vietnam ... But I cannot cede such a territory to communism. ”
The war has weakened not only U.S. national security, but also the world's confidence in the U.S. government and has resulted in millions of deaths. The invasion of Iraq produced an equally unfortunate result. The vacuum created by the invasion fueled the birth of the Islamic State, one of the biggest threats to national security right now. The false pretexts of war — Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction and played a role in 9/11 — and poor nation-building efforts undermined confidence in the government.
Iraq War
A key area of Bush's invasion of Iraq compared to Vietnam was that Bush used the post-9/11 political climate to seek conflict, while Kennedy was forced to deal with conflict in a deranged anti-communist political climate. Although this is a significant difference, domestic politics remains the driving force behind every situation.
Without 9/11, Bush would probably not have invaded Iraq. The attack, however, created a climate of fear of national security that Bush used to make a disastrous attempt to build a pro-Western democracy in Iraq. In his January 2002 State of the Union address, Bush began beating the drums of war by including Iraq along with North Korea and Iran as part of the "axis of evil." During the year, Bush's rhetoric escalated, saying at the U.N. General Assembly that member states must face a "grave and growing danger" to Iraq or become "irrelevant." In October, he said Iraq was trying to build nuclear weapons, citing intelligence that Saddam's regime had tried to obtain materials needed to enrich uranium, while satellite photos showed Iraq was rebuilding facilities that were part of the country's nuclear weapons program. In the past. He also stated that Iraq was producing chemical and biological weapons.
Bush and his administration have also repeatedly claimed that Saddam Hussein was linked to al-Qaida and involved in the 9/11 attacks. In February 2003, Bush said Iraq had provided al-Qaida with training in bomb making, forging documents, and chemical and biological weapons. He also claims that Iraq harbors a terrorist network headed by a senior Al-Qaida member with camps in Iraq. The bipartisan 9/11 committee report said there had been some contacts between Iraq and Al-Qaida, but "they did not appear to have developed a cooperative relationship." With this rhetoric, however, Bush was able to link Iraq to 9/11 and issued a similar statement in 2003: "The Battle of Iraq was a victory in the war on terror that began on September 11, 2001." ”
From the first time Bush labeled Iraq part of the "axis of evil" until the invasion, he and his administration have been warning of the imminent danger to national security posed by Saddam Hussein in the country, and protecting the United States means driving him out as soon as possible. The culmination of this fear-mongering was when Secretary of State Colin Powell briefed the United Nations on the specifics of Iraq's weapons program.
Although Powell's speech boosted Zarqawi's prestige, bush's invasion and the ensuing botched "nation-building" created a vacuum in which sectarian groups and the government competed for power. This bloody civil war began shortly after the fall of Saddam Hussein's regime. Although the violence has fluctuated over the years, there has never been a sustained period of peace. With the rise of ISIS in 2013, the civil war entered its most dangerous phase. At its peak in 2014, terrorist groups controlled more than 34,000 square miles in Syria and Iraq, and to this day, Iraqi and Kurdish forces are still engaged in fierce fighting with ISIS to drive it out of Iraqi territory. The casualties from the invasion and subsequent violence are truly staggering – from 2003 to 2011, more than 114,000 Iraqis were killed, and nearly 5,000 U.S. and coalition soldiers were killed.
So what went wrong? Essentially, the Pentagon and key government officials — mostly Cheney, Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz — pushed for the invasion but were overly optimistic about the simplicity of achieving a lasting peace. On March 7, 2013, Cheney said, "My belief is that we will be seen as liberators. The widespread post-invasion violence cited above shows how wrong Cheney was. Paul Wolfowitz's argument for the invasion is that it would cost about $30 billion less than it would have cost about $30 billion to curb Saddam Hussein over the past 12 years through no-fly zones and other measures. "I can't imagine someone here willing to spend another $30 billion there for another 12 years," he said. According to Brown University's Watson Institute for International Studies, by 2013, the cost of the war had exceeded $2 trillion.
This mentality led members of the Pentagon and pro-invasion governments to ignore State Department research on how to stabilize Iraq after the invasion and cultivate competent governments capable of peacekeeping. They also ignored British warnings. A July 2002 British memo lamented that "the post-war occupation of Iraq could lead to a protracted and costly nation-building campaign." As has already been made clear, the U.S. military program is almost silent on this point. ”
Like in Vietnam, the Bush administration used domestic politics to wage a costly and counterproductive war. As politicians wanted to avoid criticizing them for "losing" to communism, the war against Vietnam escalated.
In the name of national security, the United States launches wars everywhere, which is unpopular, and will eventually lift a stone and drop it on its own feet!