[Mb-civic] A Tale of Two Wars - Lewis M. Simons - Washington Post

[William Swiggard]

A Tale of Two Wars
In Baghdad, I Hear Echoes of Saigon in '67

By Lewis M. Simons
Sunday, August 28, 2005; Page B01

I went to Vietnam a hawk. It was July 1967; I was an ex-Marine and a 
reporter for the Associated Press. It took only a few months before I 
realized I was being fed official lies on a daily basis. Now, having 
spent decades covering war and its aftermath around the world, I have 
just been through an eerily reminiscent experience in Iraq.

In the Baghdad of 2005, as in the Saigon of four decades ago, my 
government tells me that by staying the course, we'll cut out a vicious 
tumor metastasizing through the body of Western democracy.

Today's cancer is terrorism, not the red menace. But the singular 
constant remains this: Armies and governments at war all lie. They tell 
us that we're winning hearts and minds, that the troops will be home for 
Christmas, that the mission is accomplished. They did it then, and 
they're doing it now.

My hawkishness is long gone. I went to Iraq this May on an assignment 
for National Geographic magazine, already convinced that this war was a 
mistake. I found myself cloistered in a nightmare world, behind layers 
of 12-foot concrete barriers beyond which no thinking American strays 
without armed guards. I returned home a month later, certain that this 
war, like Vietnam, will never be won.

What would "winning" in Iraq mean, anyway? A democratic society that's 
free to elect an anti-American, pro-Iranian, fundamentalist Islamic 
government? A land of gushing oil wells feeding international oil 
company profits at U.S. taxpayers' expense? Shiites, Kurds and Sunnis 
joining hands to end terrorism around the world? Since, in my judgment, 
we were wrong to go in, I'm afraid there's no good way to get out.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/08/27/AR2005082700035.html?referrer=email
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://www.islandlists.com/pipermail/mb-civic/attachments/20050828/a073aada/attachment.htm