The response of many in this part of the world to the shooting down of a US helicopter over Fallujah with the loss of 15 personnel and the general escalation in attacks on US forces is that Iraq is the new Vietnam and that President Bush will lose the election as a result.
Such claims at this point in time show a remarkable degree of insight into how events will pan out in Iraq over the next 12 months and how the American public will react. Either that or just plain wishful thinking.
Single disasters can impact on decision-making in Washington. The 1983 suicide attack on a US Marines barracks in Beirut which left 241 US servicemen dead led directly to a pullout. The gunbattle in Somalia in October 1993 in which five US helicopters were shot down and 18 American servicemen killed convinced Washington of the failure of its Somali intervention and it quit. But this is not the same. One helicopter downed does not a Vietnam make. Nor indeed is Iraq comparable in any other sense with Vietnam. They are very different conflicts. The only comparison worth making is that the US became bogged down in one and could become bogged down in the other. Furthermore, comparisons with Vietnam forget the change in attitude wrought by Sept. 11. Fear of body bags coming home is no longer a force in US foreign policy decisions. The specter of Vietnam, of Beirut, of Somalia, no longer haunts the American public as it once did. That is the new reality that has to be understood. Any analysis of the situation that ignores that fact cannot be taken seriously.
In any event, those who make comparisons with Vietnam forget that no US president lost or won an election because of Vietnam.
We are in danger of imagining that what is crucial for us is crucial for the Americans. For us, here in the Middle East, Palestine and Iraq are the big issues. Not for the Americans. The stark, sad truth is that they never vote on foreign issues. They vote, and always have, on internal matters. When Bill Clinton said “it’s the economy, stupid,” he was stating a profound truth about what motivates Americans. It was fears about the US economy won him the 1992 election and lost it for George Bush the elder despite the latter’s own victorious war against Iraq. That is the reality that has to be understood. Iraq is way down the agenda of most Americans. That was painfully demonstrated during the recent California governor recall vote. Across the US, the front pages were about the latest allegations of fondling by Arnold Schwarzenegger; Iraq was lost in the inside pages. It is not going to be very different next November. Iraq will not be the issue; it will be the economy again. And at the moment, it is doing well. Of course, it may not be doing well then. Who can tell?
