In Obama Speech, Echoes of the Lyndon Johnson Era

Listening to President Barack Obama’s speech, I heard as background music Country Joe and the Fish singing “I Feel Like I’m Fixin’ To Die Rag,” the 1967 favorite of the anti-Vietnam War movement. Echoes from the Lyndon Johnson era reverberated through the president’s speech.

First, the false promise of air power. If Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant  troops were to line up in formation in the desert, this would work. But ISIL, if not American military planners, learned lessons from the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese. The ISIL fighters will spend most of their time in villages, and “bombing them back into the Stone Age,” as was tried with the Viet Cong, will likely result in heavy civilian casualties with limited damage to ISIL. The more civilians killed, the easier it will be for ISIL to recruit more fighters.

Second, “Iraqization” promises to be a direct descendant of “Vietnamization.” The Iraqi military has proved itself to be worthless, even more pathetic than the South Vietnamese army was. Remember, the Iraqis are the “soldiers” who threw aside their guns, vehicles, and even their clothing when ISIL showed up. Obama seems to believe that U.S. advisors (another term from the past) can fix this. It won’t happen, and at some point the United States will need to decide whether to withdraw fully or fight the war itself.

Missing from the president’s speech was the argument that Arabs do more to clean up their own mess for a change. The Saudis, for instance, have bought billions of dollars’ worth of American military hardware. Several other countries in the region also possess well equipped and relatively well trained armed forces. The Obama plan seems to rely heavily on NATO allies, whose steadfastness is questionable. The one NATO member that clearly has a stake in the outcome, Turkey, has so far shown little interest in being helpful. Why not tell the Saudis and the United Arab Emirates to take the lead in dealing with ISIL?

There was also little mention in the speech about longer term political impact in the region. This will be seen as another “American war,” regardless of how it is branded. No matter how bad ISIL is, infidels will once again be fighting in Muslim lands. The number of civilian casualties will grow and a further generation will be radicalized. Soft rather than hard power is the best way to keep these young people from becoming tomorrow’s terrorists, and the administration’s planners should address this with the same energy they put into launching planes and drones.

The speech was nicely written, if you care about presidential syntax. But it reflected no sense of history. We have been down this path before.

Philip Seib is a professor of journalism and international relations at the University of Southern California. His most recent book is Real-Time Diplomacy: Politics and Power in the Social Media Era.