Lessons Learned and Unlearned

In Vietnam, the hierarchy of the U.S. military and the political establishment in Washington discovered that attempting to take a count of enemies killed was fraught with unexpected pitfalls. There was first of all the media usage, where the continuous reporting of body counts became a focal point of revulsion for the average American.

And second, there were the ‘deep in-country’ temptations that defied proper monitoring; that is, the ingratiating desire of soldiers and field officers to show their superiors strong results from various small actions, therefore five dead sometimes became 50 with the attachment of a simple zero, and at some point civilian casualties began to be counted as enemy combatants, since after all every Vietnamese began to seem suspect to the increasingly beleaguered GI’s.

So when the Bush Administration decided on its Iraq incursion, a specific decision was made that body counts of Iraqi’s, whether combatants or civilians, would not be a part of official reporting.

Gen. Tommy Franks, who commanded the Iraq invasion force, explained it in his usual blunt manner: "We don’t do body counts."

The irony of this is that while a lesson was learned from the Vietnam experience, its absolute application in the pre-emptive Iraq war has resulted in something of a national blindness toward what is euphemistically called "collateral damage;" i.e., the death of civilians and the destruction of public and private property. But the Iraqi populace isn’t blind to the results.

Further, the current political establishment and the military brass seem to have unlearned another, vital lesson from the Vietnam experience.

In ‘Nam,’ frontline combat soldiers became increasingly hardened by the guerrilla war they were facing, and it wasn’t uncommon for a squad to enter a rural village, herd everyone into the rustic square, and then search the hooch’s with a good deal of vigor if not vengeance. This was understandable, given that Viet Cong often operated out of the villages and had hidden weapons caches, tunnels and so forth, in many residential areas, but the searches in the end made the villagers resent and fear the Americans as much if not more than the native guerrillas.

This was counter-productive, and many in the U.S. military command structure came to realize it.

Now, however, those lessons seem to be forgotten, or unlearned. There are even news pictures of American GI’s rooting through the homes of Iraqi’s in the middle of the night, having kicked in the doors without preamble, and there are photos in the newspapers and news magazines – but not often on TV – showing kneeling suspects with burlap or canvas hoods over their heads, sometimes even with duct tape securing them, being readied for removal to a military compound for questioning and possible imprisonment.

Even without considering whether such procedures are moral or ethically correct, and only looking at them with the most pragmatic eye, it should be clear that this is not the way to win the hearts and minds of the Iraqi people.

Is this the way Americans want to be perceived?

Certainly what is happening on the ground in Iraq is as ugly and vicious as what faced American men in Vietnam. There are booby-traps, ambushes and sneak attacks, and it is only natural that the soldiers facing this guerrilla war will become bitter and hardened. Some troops of the fabled and elite 101^st Airborne have taken to calling all Iraqi’s "Hajji’s," which ironically can be a term of some respect in the native language, but that’s not what’s intended by the American soldiers. It’s an epithet, not too far away from ‘Gook’ in its overall ethnic and cultural disdain.

The only way to reverse this trend would be to have the Bush Administration recognize that earlier lessons are being forgotten, and that it is in fact possible to conduct raids and interrogate suspects without the appearance of Imperial Storm Troopers.