The lesson from Vietnam war for the Middle East mayhem

Martin Woollacott, Guardian News Service, London

Anybody who has done some foreign reporting knows that the views of correspondents on the nature of the crisis or war which has brought them to a particular place tend to be similar. Day-to-day experience, constant discussion, and the weight of numbers produce a consensus which only a few resist.

Thus most of the correspondents who covered Vietnam felt that the war was in some way wrong, a feeling reflected in their stories, and thus today most of the correspondents who cover the conflict between the Israelis and the Palestinians would agree that Ariel Sharon is more of an obstacle to peace than Yaser Arafat. The point here is that the consensus is multinational and, especially, that there is not that much divergence between Americans and non-Americans.

The picture painted for readers of, for example, the New York Times, Le Monde in France, or the Guardian newspaper in London by the reporters on the spot in Israel and the territories is in essentials the same. Comment, put together in the metropolis, is a very different matter, as are the stories reporting on the views and decisions of policy makers in capitals, above all Washington.

But this argument from journalism on the ground is of interest because it contradicts the notion that an almost genetic difference can now be seen between Americans, as citizens of the imperial center, and non-Americans, and it reminds us that we have been in similar situations in the past, long before anybody was talking of the single superpower. The difference it suggests is not that between Americans and everybody else but between the sensible conclusions of people on the spot and the overly abstract, unreal and sometimes fantastical conclusions of people in power.

The Vietnam war in Washington was a construct shaped by ideology and national pride, constantly being refashioned by rival institutions, personalities, and factions. The Vietnam war in Vietnam was a terrible fight in which men, women, and children were extinguished every day, and that touched the consciences, sharpened the minds, and inflamed the passions of those reporting the conflict. Although less free to express their views publicly, soldiers, diplomats, and intelligence people were affected in the same way. The views of the working press and others on the ground in Vietnam, first that the war was being fought in the wrong way and, later, that on balance it had better not be fought at all, did eventually reach Washington and affect decisions there.

America is not of course fighting in the Middle East, and this administration's refusal to fully engage is clear, yet most see success there as vital to its wider interests. If the question that the press in Vietnam initially raised through its reporting was "is this the right way to make war?" that for their successors in Israel and Palestine is "is this the right way to make peace?" The answer of the reporters today, with many nuances, is no, and they may be discreetly joined in that by diplomats and others.

But this skepticism, as President Bush's speech this week makes clear, is not getting through to the center. Elements of a response to reality mingle with elements of what was so evident during the Vietnam years -- an insistence that reality conform to ideology or to the compromises worked out between Washington schools and factions, and anger at those who point out that it does not.

Thus the Bush administration does not ask whether it is possible that the Palestinians pass through the eye of the needle in order to attain the heaven of a state, it merely asserts that they must. It does not attend to the evident readiness of the Sharon government to sabotage any progress toward a political settlement, but assumes a goodwill in that respect which simply does not exist.

The Bush administration may be especially prone to fantasy in many fields. The Republican campaign in opposition for national missile defense, based on the claim that the right technology, with enough effort and money, was just around the corner, has become in office an US$8 billion research program without the slightest chance of producing an effective defense for years to come, the Carnegie Endowment specialist Joseph Cirincione has argued convincingly. The administration has in effect admitted as much by its new doctrine of preventative attack but the expensive NMD program stays in place, soaking up resources that might contribute far more effectively to American security if used in other ways.

Another example of fantasy at work is the American campaign against the International Criminal Court, which could even undo the NATO peacekeeping forces in the Balkans. There are legitimate concerns over how the ICC may operate, but the American demand for immunity rests on the fantastical notion that the court would reward American risks and sacrifices in peacekeeping by victimizing American personnel, a concept as far from the purposes of the new institution as can be imagined.

American governments are of course not alone in being attached to unrealistic doctrines or pursuing contradictory policies, and the resistance of rulers to unwelcome news about what is actually happening on the ground is an old story. The problem is only particularly American because of American primacy. This, you might say, is always going on in government, as is the countervailing process of slowly grasping that policy does not fit reality.

It is on this possibility that the present Palestinian leadership rests its remaining hopes. As when medieval rebels used the device of blaming the monarch's advisers but not the monarch himself, they have embraced the positive elements in the Bush speech and girded themselves for the continuing fight to turn round the American establishment.

Vietnam was less critical for America than it seemed to be at the time. There is reason to believe, by contrast, that Palestine could indeed be crucial in determining whether we are entering an era of vicious irregular war or whether we can contrive a round of settlements. The achievement of a viable Palestinian state could produce a domino effect, to use Vietnam phrases, by changing the hearts and minds of men and women in many societies.

The denial of such a state could bring a domino effect in the other direction. The Bush administration, of course, thinks of the yet different domino effect of giving in to terrorism, something that underlines the connections between the Vietnam time and the present day. The Vietnam generation has been in charge for a decade.

Now that things have become truly serious on Bush's watch, it would be a good idea to recall how hard it was, once upon a time in Washington, to sort out the real facts from the rhetoric, how unready those in power were to listen to voices that turned out to be telling the truth about how the war was going, and how they made the mistake of casting the conflict in apocalyptic terms that made changing policy all but impossible.