Basra and Operation Lam Son 719

A weak and unpopular government propped up by a large American combat force tries, and fails, to take the offensive against stubborn indigenous opponents: That was the goal of Operation Lam Son 719, launched by the South Vietnamese army against North Vietnamese troops in Laos in early 1971. Scripted from Washington, the fighting was to be done by the Vietnamese, in a major test of President Nixon's policy of "Vietnamizing" the American-led war. Despite heavy U.S. aerial, logistical, and artillery support, Saigon's troops were mauled. While North Vietnamese supply routes were briefly disrupted, the six-week operation exposed Vietnamization as an illusory escape hatch for salvaging a failing policy.

Is this week's offensive by Baghdad's shaky clerical-dominated government against restive Shia militias in southern Iraq the death knell for President Bush's policy of "Iraqization"?

The effort to shatter the militia supporting cleric Moqtada al-Sadr was backed by the U.S. military and personally directed from a bunker in Basra by prime minister Nouri al-Maliki.  Its collapse raises all the doubts that discerning voices had expressed in Vietnam about the viability of a strategy to rely on native troops under American tutelage to achieve U.S. policy goals against native insurgents.

Certainly much about the two wars is different. In Iraq, there is no alternative, ruthlessly efficient indigenous state to pick up the pieces when a faction-ridden central government is toppled, as happened in Vietnam when Saigon's forces collapsed in 1975. If anything, Iraq's internal politics are hauntingly reminiscent of those of similarly multi-confessional Lebanon during the agony of its civil war. And, like Lebanon in that unhappy period, Iraq has seen considerable experimentation with local cease-fires among competing groups. This could be one basis for Iraqis to cobble together a post-occupation political understanding as U.S. combat forces leave.

What the Basra debacle does demonstrate clearly, however, is that the much-vaunted "new" Iraqi army is unlikely to rescue Bush administration policy. The botched effort to strike a decisive blow in Iraq before General Petraeus and Ambassador Crocker update the Congress on recent "progress" could not have been better timed to illuminate a renewed national debate in the United States.  And the American public is paying even more attention than usual.