When the first President Bush swiftly crushed Saddam Hussein's invasion of Kuwait, he stated that America had "kicked the Vietnam syndrome." The strategic and regional context of the second President Bush's invasion and occupation of Iraq appeared so far removed from the Cold War era and the specifics of the Vietnam War that there seemed to be little point in harking back to that decades-old conflict. Yet starting with the growth of the insurgency in Iraq and the resultant revival of concern with "counter insurgency," the focus on "Iraqification" (with echoes of "Vietnamization"), and even a possible revival of the Kissingerian concept of a "decent interval" before disengaging from Iraq, the parallels between Iraq and Vietnam have reemerged in public discussion. Can we derive any benefit from invoking these parallels, either in better understanding the Vietnam War or in clarifying contemporary challenges in Iraq? Or is the real "lesson of Vietnam" the idea that "lessons" themselves are dangerous and misleading?
David Elliott spent seven years in Vietnam, from 1963 to 1973, in the US Army and with the Rand Corporation. The experience ultimately led to his best-known work: a two-volume, 1500-page book, The Vietnamese War: Revolution and Social Change in the Mekong Delta (2002). The New York Review of Books called it "the most comprehensive and enlightening book on that war since June 1971, when The New York Times published the Pentagon Papers." An abridged paperback edition will be published this year. Elliott's PhD is from Cornell, his BA from Yale. His current research is on Vietnam's adaptation to the post-Cold War world.