A referendum was held following a protracted military struggle with a Western power. One of the two main religious groups boycotted, leading to the controversial ascension of one religious group to power.
The previous narrative wasn't ripped from the headlines of Iraq, with the ratification of the Iraqi constitution. Instead, it is a description of something that happened a half-century ago, with Ngo Dinh Diem's rise to power in South Vietnam.
This eerie coincidence, while noteworthy, does not mean the mistakes of the Vietnam conflict are necessarily being repeated in Iraq. However, many of the lessons to be learned from Indochina are still applicable in the current situation.
The United States has learned some lessons from that conflict. For example, the United States has been very good about following democratic principles and taking the wants of the majority into consideration. The Bush administration has conscientiously attempted to avoid many of the mistakes of Vietnam in its policy on Iraq.
They have mandated the inclusion of numerous provisions for civil liberties in both the newly ratified Iraqi constitution and the preceding provisional administrations. However, the result of this will be similar to the opposing religious group to American policy in post-colonial Indochina: desperate measures.
In Vietnam, Buddhist monks famously engaged in self-immolation to express dissatisfaction with the American-backed South Vietnamese government. Buddhist monks hardly have the same reputation for ferocity and insanity as al-Qaeda operatives. One can only imagine the lengths Sunni Arab fundamentalists in Iraq might go to try to force Iraq into an all-out civil war.
Al-Qaeda and other Sunni Arab fundamentalists in Iraq realize that the only opportunity to achieve their aims of reinstating Sunni Arab rule lies with the opportunity to create an atmosphere of chaos during the ratification of the constitution. Therefore, it is highly likely they will resort to redefining inhumanity with their ruthlessness in an attempt to provoke civil war with the Shia Arabs.
Meanwhile, it is only a matter of time before the Shia Arabs begin to respond in kind. At the latest, this will occur with the likely establishment of a permanent Shia Arab-Kurdish electoral majority in Iraq's December parliamentary elections.
The failure of the United States to contain Sunni Arab fundamentalist violence in the interim will likely determine the ferocity with which any newly elected Shia Arab-Kurdish coalition will deal with the Sunni Arab minority.
Another key lesson of Vietnam was to recognize civil war for what it is. While the United States is not indefensible in remaining in Iraq until parliamentary elections (in order to lend its resources to the containment of Sunni Arab fundamentalist violence), the presence of the current troop levels might provoke more, rather than less, resentment toward the new regime from the Sunni Arab minority.
The failure to realize when the goal should have shifted from victory to peace was the fundamental failure in Vietnam. Echoing history, the Bush administration fails to acknowledge the fundamental fact that the goal of American actions, at this point, should be peace, not victory.
Therefore, while experts are better equipped to decide which levels of American presence are and are not appropriate in containing religious violence, American goals should be re-adjusted toward an ultimate end of peace, not necessarily any ulterior motive or objective.
If the United States fails to prevent descent into civil war between now and the elections, or if the Iraqi people elect a government that opposes religious peace, then the United States should not repeat the same mistakes it made so many decades ago. It should recognize the conflict as the inherently internal conflict that it is.
One can only hope and pray that American leaders can have the humility to acknowledge that any conflict rooted in "whether or not Abu Bakr or Ali was the rightful caliph a millennium and a half ago," is a conflict in which the United States has no business taking part.
Joaquin Rios is a political science sophomore. He can be reached at joaquin.rios@asu.edu.
