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Notes
1 George H.W. Bush, remarks at the annual conference of the Veterans of Foreign Wars, 20 August 1990, in Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: George Bush 1989–1994 , Vol. 2, p. 1150.
2 Speech before the Veterans of Foreign Wars, 26 August 2002, quoted in ‘Bush, Kerry Spar on Iraq Weapons Report’, MSNBC News Services, 7 October 2004, http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6196962/??GTI=5472& print=1& displaymode=1098.
3 Brad Wright and Jennifer Yuille, ‘Kennedy: ”Iraq is George Bush's Vietnam”’, CNN Washington Bureau, 6 April 2004, http://www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/04/05/kennedy.speech/.
4 George W. Bush, State of the Union Address, 29 January 2002, excerpted in We Will Prevail: President George W. Bush on War, Terrorism, and Freedom (New York: Continuum, 2003), p. 108.
5 Sandra Mackey, The Reckoning: Iraq and the Legacy of Saddam Hussein (New York: W.W. Norton, 2002), p. 396.
6 There is a large and growing literature on reasoning by historical analogy. In addition to my own Making War, Thinking History: Munich, Vietnam, and Presidential Uses of Force from Korea to Kosovo (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2002), see, for examples, Ernest R. May, ‘Lessons’ of the Past: The Use and Misuse of History in American Foreign Policy (New York: Oxford University Press, 1973); Robert Jervis, Perception and Misperception in International Politics (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1976), pp. 217–82; Yuen Foong Khong, Analogies at War: Korea, Dien Bien Phu and the Vietnam Decisions of 1965 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1992); Richard E. Neustadt and Ernest R. May, Thinking In Time: The Use of History for Decision Makers (New York: The Free Press, 1986); and Christopher Hemmer, Which Lessons Matter? American Foreign Policy Decision Making, 1979–1987 (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 2000).
7 Harry S. Truman, Memoirs , vol. 2, Years of Trial and Hope, 1946–1952 (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1956), p. 335.
8 Eisenhower letter to Winston Churchill, 1954, excerpted in Robert J. MacMahon (ed.), Major Problems in the History of the Vietnam War , 2nd ed. (Lexington, MA: D.C. Heath, 1995), p. 373.
9 Quoted in Theodore C. Sorenson, Kennedy (New York: Harper and Row, 1965), p. 703.
10 Quoted in Michael Beschloss (ed.), Taking Charge: The Johnson White House Tapes, 1963–1964 (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1997), p. 248.
11 Doris Kearns, Lyndon Johnson and the American Dream (New York: Harper and Row, 1976), p. 252.
12 Richard Nixon, The Memoirs of Richard Nixon (New York: Grosset and Dunlap, 1978), pp. 269–70.
13 Radio address to the nation on defence spending, 19 February 1983, in Ronald Reagan, Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: Ronald Reagan,1983 , vol. 1, p. 258.
14 Address to nation announcing the deployment of United States armed forces to Saudi Arabia, 8 August 1990, in George Bush, Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: George Bush, 1990 , vol. 2, p. 1,108.
15 Christopher Hemmer, ‘Unipolarity, the Lessons of September 11th, Iraq, and the American Pendulum’, unpublished draft, 30 June 2004, p. 13.
16 Unlike the perceived lesson of Munich, which reflects a unanimous interpretation given to the events in 1938, the lesson of Vietnam can be either avoidance of intervention or intervention with overwhelming force and a determination to win. See discussion of the Weinberger Doctrine below.
17 Ronald Reagan, An American Life (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1990), p. 456.
18 ‘Interview with Now-Vice President Richard Cheney‘, New York Times , 13 April 1991, reprinted in The Nation , 11 November 2002, p. 24.
19 ‘President Addresses the Nation in Prime Time Press Conference’, 13 April 2004, http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2004/04/print/20040413-20.html.
20 Reprinted in ‘Rhetoric Starts Here’, Washington Post , 11 November 2002.
21 Quoted in Gwynne Dyer, ‘Laying on that Old Munich Smear’, Toronto Star , 2 September 2002.
22 In his address to the 2004 Republican National Convention, former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani compared Bush to Churchill: ‘Winston Churchill saw the dangers of Hitler when his opponents and much of the press characterized him as a warmongering gadfly. George W. Bush sees world terrorism for the evil it is and he will remain consistent to the purpose of defeating it while working to make us ever safer at home.’ Alec Russell, ‘”Mayor of America” Compares Bush to Churchill’, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2004/08/31/wus31.xml.
23 Gerhard L. Weinberg, ‘No Road from Munich to Iraq’, Washington Post , 3 November 2002.
24 Joseph Cirincione et al., WMD in Iraq: Evidence and Implications (Washington DC: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 2004); and David Barstow et al., ‘How the White House Embraced Disputed Arms Intelligence’, New York Times , 3 October 2004.
25 See ‘Iraq Weapons Report Becomes Political Fodder’.
26 Final Report of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States (New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 2004), p. 66.
27 Thom Shanker, ‘Rumsfeld Sees Lack of Proof for Qaeda–Hussein Link’, New York Times , 5 October 2004.
28 See Cirincione et al., WMD in Iraq ; Michael E. O'Hanlon, ‘Iraq's Threat to U.S. Exaggerated’, Baltimore Sun , 26 September 2002; John Prados, Hoodwinked: The Documents That Reveal How Bush Sold Us a War (New York: New Press, 2004); and Hans Blix, Disarming Iraq (New York: Pantheon, 2004).
29 See, for examples, William S. Turley, ‘Apples and Oranges are Both Fruit, But…’, YaleGlobal , 24 October 2003, http://yaleglobal.edu/display.article?id=2677; Joseph L. Galloway, ‘Iraq No Vietnam, But There Are Parallels’, 19 November 2003, http://www.military.com/NewContent/0,13190,Galloway_111903,00.html; Robert G. Kaiser, ‘Iraq Isn't Vietnam, But They Rhyme’, Washington Post , 28 December 2003; Ted Galen Carpenter, ‘Iraq 2004, Vietnam 1964’, 27 April 2004, http://www.cato.org/cgi-bin/scripts/printtech.cgi/dailys/04-27-04.html; and William Greider, ‘Iraq as Vietnam’, The Nation , 3 May 2004, p. 5.
30 Andrew J. Bacevich, ‘Hour of the Generals’, The American Conservative , 30 August 2004; Adriana Lins De Albuquerque, Michael O'Hanlon and Amy Unikewicz, ‘The State of Iraq: An Update’, New York Times , 21 February 2005; and Tom Lasseter and Jonathan S. Landay, ‘U.S. in Danger of Losing the War’, Detroit Free Press , 22 January 2005.
31 Figures for both wars include battle and non-battle deaths. Figures for Vietnam are calculated from data appearing in Harry G. Summers, Jr, Vietnam War Almanac (New York: Facts on File Publications, 1985), p. 113, and David L. Anderson, The Columbia Guide to the Vietnam War (New York: Columbia University Press, 2002), p. 290. Figures on Iraq are calculated from data appearing daily on the website Iraq Coalition Casualties, http://icasualties.org/oif/.
32 Spencer C. Tucker (ed.), Encyclopedia of the Vietnam War: A Political, Social, and Military History (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998), p. 64; and Jeffrey Record and W. Andrew Terrill, Iraq and Vietnam: Differences, Similarities, and Insights (Carlisle, PA: Strategic Studies Institute, US Army War College, 2004), p. 13.
33 For an informed yet succinct assessment of the strengths and weaknesses of the insurgency and the coalition, see Thomas X. Hammes, The Sling and the Stone: On War in the 21st Century (St Paul, MN: Zenith Press, 2004), pp. 183–8.
34 The ‘conventionalisation’ of the communist military threat in Vietnam followed an insurgent phase of the war, culminating in the Tet Offensive, that forced a shift in the US war aim from defeating the communist threat in South Vietnam to finding an ‘honourable’ way out of Vietnam.
35 Robin Wright and Thomas E. Ricks, ‘Bremer Criticizes Troop Levels’, Washington Post , 5 October 2004.
36 It was not Westmoreland, but rather Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman General Earl Wheeler through Westmoreland, who, in the wake of the Tet Offensive, generated a request for 206.000 additional troops. Westmoreland regarded the Tet Offensive as a major defeat for the communists and did not believe additional US force deployments to Vietnam were necessary. Wheeler sought to use Tet to compel Johnson to mobilise the army's reserve components and talked Westmoreland into asking for more troops. Johnson refused. See Jeffrey Record, The Wrong War: Why We Lost in Vietnam (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1998), pp. 166–7.
37 Ibid ., pp. 122–40.
38 Stuart A. Herrington, Peace With Honor? An American Reports on Vietnam, 1973–1975 (Novato, CA: Presidio Press, 1983), p. 40.
39 William J. Duiker, The Communist Road to Power in Vietnam, 2nd ed. (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, pp. 350, 359.
40 Henry A. Kissinger, ‘The Vietnam Negotiations’, Foreign Affairs , vol. 47, 1969, p. 230.
41 See Faleh A. Jabar, Postconflict Iraq: A Race for Stability, Reconstruction, and Legitimacy (Washington DC: United States Institute of Peace, May 2004), and Toby Dodge, ‘A Sovereign Iraq?’, Survival , vol. 46, no. 3, Autumn 2004, pp. 39–58.
42 See W. Andrew Terrill, Nationalism, Sectarianism, and the Future of the U.S. Presence in Post-Saddam Iraq (Carlisle, PA: Strategic Studies Institute, U.S. Army War College, 2003).
43 See Jeffrey Record, Dark Victory: America's Second War against Iraq (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2004), pp. 85–9.
44 Warnings that Iraq was headed for possible civil war were numerous throughout the spring, summer and autumn of 2004. See, for example, Jabar, Postconflict Iraq ; Dodge, ‘A Sovereign Iraq’; Douglas Jehl, ‘U.S. Intelligence Shows Pessimism on Iraq's Future’, New York Times , 16 September 2004; Dana Priest and Thomas E. Ricks, ‘Growing Pessimism on Iraq’, Washington Post , 29 September 2004; Senator Richard Lugar, ‘Iraq Transition – Civil War or Civil Society’, opening statement, Senate Foreign Relations Committee, 20 April 2004; and Iraq in Transition: Vortex or Catalyst? (London: Royal Institute of International Affairs, September 2004).
45 Dean Rusk, with Richard Rusk and Daniel S. Papp, As I Saw It (New York: W.W. Norton, 1990), p. 497.
46 Joseph Carroll, ‘The Iraq–Vietnam Comparison’, The Gallup Poll Tuesday Briefing, 15 June 2002, http://www.galluppoll.com/content/?CI=11998.
47 Eric V. Larson, Casualties and Consensus: The Role of Casualties in Domestic Support for U.S. Military Operations (Santa Monica, CA: Rand Corporation, 1996, pp. 27–9.