Poignant Parallels from A Dissenter’s Guide to Foreign Policy, or How History Repeats its Self

Here's how this works; first, every time it says "Vietnam" put in its place "Iraq", then where appropriate, substitute "Iran" or "Syria" for "China", "Islamofascism" for "Communism", "Arab" for "Asian", and so forth. None of this was written after 1968, yet you can hear the echoes across time.

“During the past fifteen years the two major triumphs of Chinese policy have been in Korea and Vietnam. In Korea, by hurling American forces back to the 38^th parallel, China proved to the world that it was a power to be reckoned with. In Vietnam it watches the Americans bleed, the Vietnamese grow increasingly disaffected, and the Asian masses grow more anti-American, without having to expend much of its material resources or any military manpower.” Pg. 85-6

“Consider, by way of contrast, our record in Vietnam. The other war, the effort to “pacify” the countryside, is, after eleven years and many billions of dollars, still “at the beginning of a beginning”-to quote Senator Mike Mansfield’s words. Imagine the outcry if the U.S. Army was to be put in charge of flagging Head Start programs in Mississippi and Alabama. The decision to transfer authority over pacification efforts to the American military command in South Vietnam is no less ludicrous. Men engaged in a shooting war, exposed to a totally different cultural experience, are being asked to teach the Vietnamese how to achieve stability, freedom, and democracy. The notion that their efforts hold any promise of success is nonsense on stilts.” Pg. 79

“Every opportunity to rely on multilateral rather than bilateral relations ought to be pursued. Every effort to create and utilize supranational agencies ought to be made. This obligation falls most heavily on those nations that are currently most powerful; for they have the defensive power that make them less liable to suffer vital injury through pursuit of this realistic goal. This is why the decision of the United States to bypass the United Nations in Vietnam is perhaps the greatest of the many tragedies of that pointless war.” Pg. 92

“A justification may be argued in domino theories or indefensible analogies with Europe in the 1930s, or warnings that if we don’t fight here we soon will have to fight… in Hawaii or California.” Pg. 98

“In Vietnam an American preoccupation with the freedom and well-being of other men, morally inspired but sentimental in its analysis of real possibilities, has converged with an American fear of Communism which naively exaggerates the unity, power, and threat of the Communist movement.” Pg. 100

“The second argument currently being made relies on the character of guerilla warfare. By the special use they make of the civilian population, it is said, the guerillas themselves destroy all conventional distinctions.” Pg. 308