A friend, Sarah Buttenweiser, who contributes frequently to a variety of on-line news sources and blogs, alerted me to a first person piece in today’s DAILY HAMPSHIRE GAZETTE by a veteran of the War in Iraq. It is titled, “BROTHERS IN ARMS” and subtitled, “A Soldier Comes Home, Still in the Grasp of Iraq.” It is an eloquent account by William Quinn of his homecoming and the very strange an unsettling experience he has of witnessing an America essentially disengaged from the war. He then proceeds to share some of his war experience and the effects it has had upon his psyche. I was reminded from the outset of the piece, when he describes arriving in the Detroit Airport, of many of the stories I was told by Vietnam veterans, about how out of place and surreal they felt when they got back to the States after a tour of duty in ‘Nam. The disorientation, the sense that America was completely unaware of what was going on in Southeast Asia and the disconnect between what was expected here vs. there was comprehensively disconcerting and it is going on for thousands of men and women again now. Here is one man’s take and it certainly deserves our attention and, upon reading, reflection.

As I was about to copy the piece into the blog I saw that it had received one comment on www.gazettenet.com I believe the writer of the comment somehow missed the great stress this former soldier is experiencing since he wrote: “You wanna be a hero? Stop participating in the war machine that’s killing thousands of innocent people. THAT’S a hero.” I certainly can appreciate the sentiment behind this comment, but if only it were so simple to unburden one’s self of what the war does to one’s psyche and become an anti-war proponent. Here’s the Quinn story:

The only feeling I’ve ever had that was more surreal than arriving in a war zone was returning from one. I came home on R&R in 2005 after eight months in Iraq. Heading for baggage claim in Detroit, I watched travelers walking and talking on their cellphones, chatting with friends and acting just the way people had before I’d left for Baghdad. The war didn’t just seem to be taking place in another country; it seemed to be taking place in another universe.
There I was, in desert camouflage, wondering how all the intensity, the violence, the tears and the killing of Iraq could really be happening at the same time all these people were hurrying to catch their flights to Las Vegas or Los Angeles or wherever.

Riding home that day with my parents, I felt nervous, too exposed in their Ford Taurus. There was no armor on the car, and it felt light. At every red light and stop sign I saw potential dangers everywhere, even though I-94 heading into the city was nothing like Baghdad’s Airport Road. There were no torched trucks or craters left by bomb blasts. The neatness of it all made me uncomfortable. Staying alive shouldn’t be so easy.
Two years after Iraq I have a different life, as a college student. But some of those feelings are still with me. After a year in a conflict of such enormous complexity, I find college a bit mundane, and it’s inexplicable to me that people here seem entirely untouched by the war.

On Sept. 11, 2001, everyone said that day would change the lives of all Americans. I was then a trainee in the interrogation course at the Army Intelligence Center at Fort Huachuca, Ariz. At 18, I had dropped out of college and joined the Army because I felt that my life lacked discipline and direction. Six years later, 9/11 seems to have had little effect on most people’s lives. But it has had an enormous effect on mine.
I arrived in Iraq in March 2005. My unit hurried onto a Chinook helicopter at Baghdad International Airport in the middle of the night. I was weighted down with more than 100 pounds of gear, and I never managed to strap myself in. Helicopters are violent machines, and we shook as we lifted into the air. The rear door was open, a machine gunner suspended over the ramp, and the lights on the ground receded as we flew off, like the scenery behind a taxi in an old movie. Soon we were over a field of tents, lit up under spotlights as bright as day. We had arrived at Abu Ghraib.

I spent the next 11/2 months at that prison complex outside Baghdad. By then, the interrogation rules had changed substantially after the stories of abuse there came out in mid-2004. We were permitted to sit across from a detainee and talk to him – everything else was banned. This was a good rule. Torture is easy to justify. Interrogators assume everyone they question is culpable; it’s part of the job. If a detainee can’t provide information because he has none, the temptation to slip into brutality is very present. Without rules I might have been brutal, but I never so much as raised my voice to a detainee.

On April 2, 2005, Abu Ghraib was attacked by dozens of insurgents armed with vehicle-borne bombs, rockets, mortars, rocket-propelled grenades and Kalashnikovs. It was terrifying – but also exhilarating. I learned that I was capable of functioning through my fear, and that I could place my life, with absolute confidence, in the hands of my fellow soldiers.
I spent a few hours that night in an inner tower with Marines who responded to the rockets and small-arms fire with 50-caliber machine guns. I watched as a man in a tractor was killed by machine-gun fire and as a group of trucks was stopped by a barrage of bullets from the tower guards. Later that night, I interrogated some of the men who had been in those trucks. A few had been wounded; all were frightened. They were fish deliverymen, caught in the wrong place at the wrong time. The man in the tractor turned out to be a suicide bomber. It’s nearly impossible to tell the enemy from the innocent.

After Abu Ghraib I was transferred to Camp Cropper, near Baghdad International Airport. Over the next year, I spoke with hundreds of detainees: members of al-Qaida, Baathists, Sunni nationalist insurgents and Shiite insurgents. I listened to their life stories, and I wrote hundreds of reports about their experiences.

My interrogations lasted weeks, sometimes months. The long-term nature of our conversations forced me to see the men I interrogated as human beings. Most were Iraqi. Many were extremely intelligent, and some had had a great deal of formal education. Some were forthcoming with information; some were not. They all remain in my thoughts, and I’m sometimes surprised by my feelings. Recently, I read in the International Herald Tribune that a man I’d interrogated had been executed in Baghdad. If anyone ever deserved execution, it was he. But I still felt a pang of regret. His life, for all its horrors, mattered to me.

The Army discharged me in July 2006, and I began Georgetown University that August. What a difference. People on campus don’t think about the war very much. It rarely comes up in conversation. One student actually told me to stop thinking about Iraq. “You need to get rid of all that baggage and let yourself live,” she said. “We need to be shallow sometimes.”

After my first semester, I decided to rejoin the Army by signing up with the ROTC. I felt guilty for having done only one tour in Iraq while friends of mine have done two or three. And I didn’t want to forget the war. I may be prejudiced, but many of my college peers seem self-absorbed. I didn’t want to end up like that.

Students’ true priorities are demonstrated by their daily activities: They have friends to meet, parties to attend, internships to work at, classes to attend. They’re under pressure to build a strong resume for whatever company or graduate school they apply to after college. They’re under no pressure to be concerned about those who are less fortunate – or those who fight wars on their behalf.

I have a lot of respect for my professors and peers. But there are still days when I think about what it must be like back in Baghdad – and wonder whether that’s where I should be.

William Quinn, who is majoring in international politics and security studies at Georgetown University, served in Iraq from 2005 to 2006.

   Tomorrow night (Sunday, Nov. 4th) the Northampton Film Festival is screening “No Unwounded Soldiers”.  It will be shown at 6:30 p.m. at Smith College’s Weinstein Auditorium in Wright Hall.  The Daily Hampshire Gazette wrote an article about both this film and “War Made Easy”, which was shown this afternoon.  The article conveys the challenges faced by returning veterans from World War II, Vietnam and Iraq.  The film shows that healing is possible for these vets, especially through artistic expression.  The director of the film festival, Jeffrey Dreisbach, is quoted as saying, “It’s not a political film at all.   It’s just important.”

I was particularly struck by one quote in the article.   The director of the film, Rebecca Abbott said, “As Vietnam veterans, they’re so used to people not wanting to hear their stories.”  This is a major reason why I wanted to include veterans’ stories in CALLED TO SERVE.  Invariably I felt the anguish of those sharing their stories with me – in reliving the experiences and in having kept so much hidden for so long.  So this comment substantiated my experience with these people whose stories need to be told to allow them to heal and find closure and to enable us to learn about them and their lives…

As always I would greatly appreciate reactions to the article as well, for those able to attend, the film.  There is a reception, as the article mentions preceding the film at the Neilson Library Reading Room from 5:15-6:00.  Here is the article as it appeared in the Gazette:

Two films about war’s causes and consequences will be shown the first weekend of the Northampton Independent Film Festival, which kicks off today.

Both films explore the issues and questions that veterans and citizens face during and after war.

‘No Unwounded Soldiers,’ a documentary by filmmaker and educator Rebecca Abbott, will be screened Sunday at Smith College’s Weinstein Auditorium in Wright Hall at 6:30 p.m.

Shot at the VA Connecticut Healthcare System hospital in West Haven, Conn., the film follows four Vietnam-era veterans and the twin sister of a deceased veteran as they attempt to heal through a drama therapy program offered at the hospital.

Led by registered drama therapist Mary Lou Lauricella once a week, the group created an original play, ‘The Promise Once Removed,’ which the veterans based on their own experiences or those of others they knew. In the performance, a veteran of Iraq comes home to his father, who is a Vietnam War veteran.

The personal stories of the Vietnam veterans, as well as World War II veterans, including Pearl Harbor survivor Edward Borucki of Southampton, and a veteran of Iraq, are woven throughout the film.

Abbott’s documentary shows that healing is possible for them, particularly through the means of artistic expression.

‘It’s not a political film at all,’ said Jeffrey Dreisbach, the director of the Northampton Independent Film Festival. ‘It’s just important.’

An official selection of the 2007 Vail Film Festival in April, ‘No Unwounded Soldiers’ met a receptive audience there, Abbott said. Four of the veterans profiled in the film traveled to Vail, Colo., for the screening and to speak to audiences, an experience they found moving, the filmmaker said.

As Vietnam War veterans, ‘they’re so used to people not wanting to hear their stories,’ said Abbott, a professor in the media production and media studies department at Quinnipiac University in Hamden, Conn.

Abbott said she wanted to make the film after realizing ‘there were so many untold stories at the VA and among veterans.’ She encountered frustration among many veterans who saw the conflict in Iraq as the Vietnam War all over again – they never thought the history of the Vietnam War would repeat itself, she says.

‘They thought that people would learn from it,’ Abbott said, ‘and know what not to do.’

Healing through speaking

The Amherst-based Veterans Education Project, which is sponsoring the film with the Smith College School for Social Work and the college’s theater and history departments, aims to educate youth on violence prevention through veterans’ first-hand storytelling accounts.

The project is celebrating its 25th anniversary this year. Although not considered therapy for the veterans, says VEP director Rob Wilson, telling their stories is therapeutic.

‘The act of sharing your story with people who are really interested in it, and ask you questions, and who validate your story – it’s incredibly helpful,’ said Wilson.

He said ‘No Unwounded Soldiers’ is poignant not only because it shows the value of drama therapy, but because it links veterans from three generations.

‘We have felt that there are just so many lessons from the Vietnam War era that have not been applied to the current conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq,’ Wilson said. With another generation of veterans coming home from Iraq, ‘we have a lot to learn about homecoming,’ he said.

The filmmaker, a group of veterans, and counselors will be on hand for discussion after the documentary. Before the film, from 5 to 6:15 p.m., a reception and light dinner will be held in the Neilson Library Reading Room at Smith College. A donation is requested.

The second film, ‘War Made Easy: How Presidents & Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death,’ will be shown Saturday at 4 p.m. at the Academy of Music, 274 Main St.

Based on a book of the same name by media critic Norman Solomon, the documentary is narrated by actor and director Sean Penn. Produced by the Northampton nonprofit Media Education Foundation, ‘War Made Easy’ critically examines the strategies used by politicians to promote their agenda for war, from Vietnam to the present day conflict in Iraq. The film also asserts that Americans are not adequately served by the journalists charged with questioning government tactics. A panel after the film will feature two VEP veterans and MEF executive director Sut Jhally.

    Here, as promised, is the second very compelling piece about the increase in PTSD symptoms in Vietnam Vets.  Interestingly, many of the causes of the what Libby Lewis describes in her story as the PERFECT STORM that is triggering these symptoms, are experiences we of the Vietnam era are all sharing as we age.  The essential difference is that those of us who did not serve are not having to filter the aging process through the trauma that was Vietnam.

‘Perfect Storm’ Triggers PTSD in
Vietnam Vets

by Libby Lewis

“The search for meaning of life and the rekindling of questions about one’s own war experiences creates a perfect storm to aggravate the questions of what’s this all about, anyway?”

John Wilson of Cleveland State University

NPR.org, September 24, 2007 · Iraq isn’t the only reason Vietnam veterans are pouring in to the Department of Veterans Affairs for help for post-traumatic stress disorder decades after the war.

While there is no empirical study examining the reasons for the large increase in PTSD cases decades after the Vietnam war, experts say a lot of hypotheses have been formed. Some of the hypotheses are based on studies that offer pieces of a puzzle. Some experts cite aging and demographics as potential reasons for the recent influx.

Ira Katz, head of the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs mental health programs, said that many Vietnam vets might have been coping with mild or moderate post-traumatic stress symptoms throughout their lives.

“And they’ve lost the ability to deal with them, as their health has become affected,” Katz said, “as workaholics have retired, or they’ve lost friends or husbands or wives.”

Katz said another theory has to do with the aging brain.

“As brain changes occur later in life, the ability to keep the symptoms under control, from a neural perspective, may have been affected,” Katz said.

Rich McNally, a psychologist at Harvard who helped devise the definition of PTSD, said at least some veterans may be diagnosed with PTSD when they really have depression or panic disorder.

McNally said it is possible that some veterans are exaggerating trauma histories, PTSD symptoms, or both, to obtain service-connected disability compensation.

Epidemiologist Bill Schlenger is a principal author of the National Vietnam Veterans Readjustment Study, a study of the prevalence of PTSD and other psychological effects of the war on Vietnam veterans.

Schlenger said any system with financial compensation attached to it is going to draw some people who try to take advantage of it. But, he said, “The overwhelming evidence from epidemiologic studies of Vietnam veterans is that that’s a relatively minor problem.”

Schlenger said the facts of those veterans’ lives are likely a bigger factor.

“They’re getting older, their children have grown up and gone, sometimes even their grandchildren have grown — and they’re nearing or have already retired. So there’s less going on in their life to distract them from their combat experience and what happened to them,” Schlenger said. “The hypothesis goes, when one is less distracted, it’s harder to contain the intrusion.”

John Wilson, a psychologist at Cleveland State University and an expert on PTSD and Vietnam veterans, said he doesn’t buy the idea that aging and retirement are major factors in and of themselves. He said he believes the war in Iraq is a major factor.

Wilson said he does know how things get revisited. For example, he notes that when Stephen Spielberg’s movie Saving Private Ryan was released, World War II veterans flooded the VA for help.

“It got to the point where the VA had to create a crisis line for vets having flashbacks of their war experiences,” Wilson said.

These veterans may have been approaching the end of their lives, but it’s not only the issue of aging, Wilson said.

“There’s the whole question of meaning. There are more existential questions about the meaning of life, the meaning of sacrifice, the meaning of what the war did to one’s life,” Wilson said. “In my experience with Vietnam veterans, there’s not a day that goes by that they don’t think about the war.”

When you combine the issue of aging, Wilson said, “The search for meaning of life at this age, and the rekindling of questions about one’s own war experiences because of what’s going on in Iraq, you have a kind of a perfect storm to aggravate the questions of, What’s this all about, anyway?”

    I came upon two articles that made the connection between the endlessly disturbing events in the Iraq War and the struggles of Vietnam vets living for decades with PTSD and having to endure it being restimulated by the current war.  I found both stories compelling and very sad.  I share them in the hope that there can be more dialogue about the devastating effects of this war on the combatants, the innocent Iraqi civilian victims and the veterans of previous wars for whom all of the hell in Iraq stirs up memories of their own versions of hell.

To be honest, I have had some of the same concerns in watching the Ken Burns documentary airing this week on PBS – THE WAR.   There are so many gruesome images that one must become numb to when watching for hours on end.  I have tried to imagine what it would be like to experience this admittedly masterfully wrought film for those who served in combat in World War II and the subsequent wars our country has waged.  That one of the articles mentions the spike in visits to V.A. hospitals after the screening of “Saving Private Ryan” only serves to further convince me that viewing such vivid scenes of devastation are incredibly restimulating.  Here is the first of the two articles.  I will include the second in a post tomorrow…

Iraq War Stirs Up Memories for Vietnam Vets

by Libby Lewis

Morning Edition, September 25, 2007 · The number of Vietnam veterans seeking help for post-traumatic stress disorder has been steadily rising since the 1990s, and the rate has spiked since the United States prepared to invade Iraq in 2003.

Experts say a number of factors could be at play, including that America’s present is rekindling ideas of its past and the Iraq war is triggering Vietnam memories.

For Jim Hale, a Vietnam veteran who ran electrical generators on Phu Quoc Island for the U.S. military, the Iraq war is almost like “watching a rerun” of the Vietnam war.

Since 1987, Hale has lived off the grid with his wife, Deena, in the Ozarks, 10 miles from the nearest paved road. He said that for years he thought he was doing all right.

He’s always been a bad sleeper, and he tends to get nervous when he’s alone at night. But four years ago, Hale got pulled emotionally into helping two old war buddies whose feelings about Vietnam were resurfacing as the United States began laying the groundwork to invade Iraq. All the while, he said, he listened to the news about Iraq on his battery-powered radio.

Then Hale, too, found feelings of anger and betrayal creeping up on him. Deena pushed him to get help.

Vietnam Veterans and PTSD

In 2003, more than 153,600 Vietnam veterans sought treatment for PTSD. Some of those veterans were diagnosed years ago; some were brand new diagnoses.

There are plenty of theories about the reason for the spike: from aging veterans with more time on their hands, to veterans trying to game the system for government benefits. A number of experts, including those at the Department of Veterans Affairs, said Iraq has had a role in the numbers.

John Wilson is an expert on Vietnam veterans with PTSD. He’s convinced Iraq is a significant factor in the spike.

“It brings back to them their own experiences in Vietnam, and it brings back their pain and frustration since they were discharged three decades ago,” Wilson said.

Wilson thinks the parallels between Iraq and Vietnam figure into it. For example, neither war offers a front or safe place, and there is often little certainty when trying to identify the enemy in the field, he says.

Steve Harris, an Arkansas psychologist who works with the Department of Veterans Affairs, said veterans of both wars have seen and done things that they can’t accept.

“And that’s where the problems seem to lie,” Harris said.

Back of the Mind

Harris diagnosed Hale with PTSD two years ago. Hale said Iraq was the trigger that brought him there, Harris said. Since his diagnosis, Hale has been going for counseling twice a month.

Hale says the counseling has helped him bring things from the back of his mind to a place where he can deal with them.

Like the time he remembered in late ‘68 on Phu Quoc Island.

The military was shutting down the air base and turning it over to the Vietnamese. Hale said he was one of the last airmen left on the base.

Hale remembered what they thought was enemy fire. He remembered firing his M-16 into the jungle. And he remembered finding out it was civilians — not Viet Cong soldiers — he and his buddies had shot.

“And it was so bad, the air force flew in a C-130 Medevac,” Hale said.

He didn’t remember much else for all those years, until he’d told the story to Harris about 10 times.

Then the rest came back to him. Hale remembered he turned his head so that he didn’t have to watch the grisly scene. He said not being able to watch made him feel like a coward.

“I couldn’t look,” Hale said. “I told myself I’m here to guard, I’m not here to watch this happen. I’m going to turn around the face the dark. I don’t have to see it.”

Hale said he feels like he’s dealing with it now.

And Hale is not alone. At the local VA mental health clinic in Fayetteville, Ark., the parking lot is packed with old cars and small pick up trucks — many with bumper stickers indicating the driver is a Vietnam veteran.

Oliver Stone has made another Vietnam War film – PINKVILLE – about the My Lai Massacre (read his interview at the website listed under CONVERSATIONS on this blog). He has made several powerful points including these about Bush’s recent VIETNAM/IRAQ analogy:

Speaking of parallels, President Bush recently made the case that the lessons from the aftermath of the Vietnam withdrawal is reason to stay in Iraq. Any thoughts?
Now that’s despicable. The man went to Yale, but he never went to class. Obviously he didn’t learn history. Anyone who knows anything about Vietnam would know that it was not the American withdrawal that precipitated chaos in this area. It was quite the opposite. It was the American invasion that precipitated the chaos. I don’t think he was a good student. I was in the same class with him at Yale — ‘68. I left, he stayed. But he didn’t learn his lessons.

He also had this to say about whether he would ever make a film about Iraq. I believe it just about covers it regarding one of the ultimate parallels and lessons our present administration refuses to learn about Vietnam:

Do you think you’ll make an Iraq movie eventually?
It’s a good subject, but you know, it’s another generation’s war. I think it could be told better by someone who has really lived it like I lived Vietnam. But I’m interested in the politics of what happened behind it. That fascinates me. Right now the surge — it resembles a lot of the Vietnam stuff because we always heard that there was a light at the end of the tunnel. That was a very consistent quote: “It’s changing, it’s getting better, [another] six months, another 100,000 troops.” We heard that again and again and I think any Vietnam veteran or person of my age from that era will tell you that it’s very similar. False hope.

I learned about an extraordinary woman, Congresswoman Barbara Lee, who refused to be intimidated by those who would silence themselves and others when the dogs of war were about to be unleashed on Sept. 14, 2001. One of her comments that day was particularly foreboding…and accurate. She said, “…let us not become the evil that we deplore.” She took a stand and was the one lone voice out of 535 Congresspeople who cast a vote against “the gathering madness.” Her words of attempted restraint have frighteningly come true. James Baldwin is incredibly accurate when, in the quote that ends the piece, he speaks of our collective and individual need to demand more of ourselves. Congresswoman Lee reminds us that this is not only possible to do, but essential for us to preserve our moral center, especially when so many remain caught in the misrepresentations and manipulations of our government.

Here is the article about the Congresswoman, THE LONE VOICE, which was published in the VALLEY ADVOCATE (www.valleyadvocate.com) of August 16-22:

Between the Lines:

The Lone Voice
Let us now praise an infamous woman.
By Norman Solomon
GETTY IMAGES PHOTO
Congresswoman Barbara Lee

The problem with letting history judge is that so many officials get away with murder in the meantime—while precious few choose to face protracted vilification for pursuing truth and peace.

A grand total of two people in the entire Congress were able to resist a blood-drenched blank check for the Vietnam War. Standing alone on Aug. 7, 1964, senators Ernest Gruening and Wayne Morse voted against the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution.

Forty-three years later, we heard another lone voice on Capitol Hill standing against war hysteria and the expediency of violent fear. Days after 9/11, at the launch of the so-called “war on terrorism,” just one lawmaker out of 535 cast a vote against the gathering madness.

“However difficult this vote may be, some of us must urge the use of restraint,” she said on the floor of the House of Representatives. The date was Sept. 14, 2001.

She went on: “Our country is in a state of mourning. Some of us must say, ‘Let’s step back for a moment, let’s just pause just for a minute, and think through the implications of our actions today so that this does not spiral out of control.’”

And, she said: “As we act, let us not become the evil that we deplore.”

With all that has happened since then—with all that has spun out of control, with all the ways that the U.S. government has mimicked the evil it deplores—it’s stunning to watch and hear, for a single minute, what this brave congresswoman had to say (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nf1N-y9Mbo4).

After speaking those words, Rep. Barbara Lee voted no. And the fevered slanders began immediately. She was called a traitor. Pundits went crazy. Death threats came.

Barbara Lee kept on keeping on. And nearly six years later, she’s a key leader of antiwar forces inside and outside Congress. In her own way, she is a political descendant of Sen. Morse, whose denunciations of the Vietnam War are equally inspiring to watch today (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JiLV-Xeh8bA).

Not surprisingly, the president has sought to use the Vietnam War to further his Iraq War agenda. His misapplication of the lessons of Vietnam, so vividly detailed in the book IRAQ AND VIETNAM – HOW NOT TO LEARN THE LESSONS, is deeply disturbing. I felt that this editorial from the Los Angeles Times, which I came upon in the Las Vegas newspaper en route from the southwest back to Massachusetts, captured the enormous problem of his flawed analogy. What do you think?

Tom Weiner

August 28, 2007

From the Los Angeles Times

The misleading Vietnam analogy

August 23, 2007

With rhetoric that would stir any patriot but logic that should persuade few, President Bush on Wednesday waded into the historical quagmire of the Vietnam War. Then, as now, Bush said, “people argued the real problem was America’s presence and that if we would just withdraw, the killing would end.” He then listed the tragedies that followed the U.S. withdrawal from Southeast Asia — the Khmer Rouge slaughter in Cambodia, the harsh communist rule in Vietnam. “The price of America’s withdrawal was paid by millions of innocent citizens whose agonies would add to our vocabulary new terms like ‘boat people,’ ‘re-education camps’ and ‘killing fields.’ ” Likewise, he argued, innocents will pay if a U.S. withdrawal from Iraq empowers Al Qaeda.

The president’s Vietnam-Iraq analogy begins with a large kernel of truth, but goes astray. First, no serious Iraq expert believes U.S. withdrawal would end the killing. The debate today centers on whether the civil war that has been only partly suppressed by the surge of 30,000 U.S. troops will inevitably rage until the Sunnis and Shiites reach a rough equilibrium on the battlefield.

It’s true that millions of Iraqi civilians have already paid a terrible price and may suffer even more as fighting may well worsen after a U.S. withdrawal — whenever that occurs. But it seems equally clear that the civil war cannot be suppressed indefinitelyunless the U.S. plans to occupy the country for decades. Killing fields? Iraq’s already got them: A dozen or two corpses are found dumped in the streets each morning, and bombs go off daily. Boat people? Two million Iraqis have already fled the country, and perhaps 50,000 more leave each month. Could it get worse? Absolutely. But can we stop it?

There is one Vietnam analogy that unfortunately does apply. U.S. frustration over Prime Minister Nouri Maliki’s failures surely rivals the disdain President Kennedy had for the first South Vietnamese president, Ngo Dinh Diem. We can only hope the Maliki-Diem analogy proves false, because Diem was ousted in a CIA-approved military coup, then executed. Perhaps Maliki is better compared with the last South Vietnamese leader, Nguyen Van Thieu? The hated Thieu never managed to make “Vietnamization” work — and the U.S. refused to keep 500,000 troops in South Vietnam for another decade or three to help him.

The real lesson of Vietnam is that its civil war was a nationalist struggle that toppled no communist “dominoes” across Asia. Bush’s rhetoric implying an Al Qaeda “domino effect” in the Middle East has the same false ring.