Vietnam Teaches Us that Iraq Needs More than U.S. Combat Advisers
Vietnam Teaches Us that Iraq Needs More than U.S. Combat Advisers by David Johnson, War on the Rocks
The campaign against the Islamic State seems stalled, with no meaningful progress in sight. Gen. Raymond T. Odierno, in an interview with Stars and Stripes on the eve of his retirement from the Army, was characteristically blunt, noting that the war is “kind of a stalemate.” He also stated that the United States “could defeat the Islamic State with its own ground forces,” but that such an approach “is not the long-term solution to the issues in Iraq and Afghanistan.”
As I have written at War on the Rocks and elsewhere, I agree with Odierno that U.S. ground forces can defeat the Islamic State. However, I disagree his contention that “the U.S. cannot solve this problem for the region.” I think that the Islamic State must be defeated as a necessary precondition before Iraqis and others in the region can be expected to provide for their own internal security in the future. Unfortunately, the resilience of the Islamic State thus far — as well as its continued reign of terror — has shown that those in the region cannot defeat it…
When the French commander who lost Dienbienphu to the Vietminh retired, some of his officers chipped in and got him a gift. It was a beautiful lacquered, velvet-lined box containing a revolver and one bullet. The obvious suggestion was that he should load the bullet into the revolver and do the honorable thing. If anyone wants to send Gen. Odierno such a gift, count me in for a donation. This guy behaved like a short-timer, counting the days until his Wall Street cash-in while the army fell apart.