Some have pointed out that the presentation of the voting in S Vietnam under US protection/occupation was very similar to the presentation of the voting in Iraq recently. They are definitely comparisons to be made. But I ask you, if Iraqi insurgents are comparable to the Vietcong, who do you compare to China and North Vietnam?
Other islamic countries, southern Iraq?
Further, I’m not sure it’s really an analogy, so much as a point that high voter turnout in an occupied, manufactured democracy is not necessarily a real indicator of support.
The distinction of South and North Vietnam of course was fictitious. In the end in Iraq it may be that we can recognize the unity of Iraq as the fiction, or not. Strong voter turnout does not proove the new Iraq government a veneer, but neither does it deny it.
Given that I’m one of the people who has posted such analogies, I’ll point out that I pointed it out, not because I think that the situation in Iraq will definitely turn out the same as Vietnam, but because the press is using _exactly the same language_ now as they did back then. Even to the point of some of the sentences being exactly the same. As such, all the sunny pronouncements from the government based on the false report of 72% voter turnout need to be considered in light of past history that shows that one successful election does not necessarily mean a stable government will result.
That said, remember that there really weren’t separate countries of “North Vietnam” and “South Vietnam” – that was really a civil war the US stepped into, because the group trying to take over was “communist” and the group they were deposing was friendly to the US government. Iraq didn’t start as a civil war, because we came in from outside, but between the insurgency, the Sunnis making claims that the election was fradulent, the faction of the Shiites clamoring for and Iranian-style Shiite religious government, not to mention the overall tensions between the Kurds, Sunnis and Shiites, Iraq is looking like it has a rather high potential for turning into a civil war.
Oh, and if you want an analogue for China, Iran and Syria seem to be trying to fill that role, though not as overtly.
I would rather say that there was no civil war. There was the remaining propped up French-backed government which the native population was steadily working towards removing. We took over the foreign-power role, and occupied their country for a while, but they eventually convinced us to leave, as they have with many other occupying powers over the centuries.
Actually the comparison fails miserably in that way. Actually The Shia could be seen as North Vietnam, intent on unifying a split nation. It is defacto split, into Kurdistan, the main Sunni areas, and those dominated by the Shia. South Vietnam, the spurious, bastard child of a unified Vietnam would be the Sunni enclaves.
I really don’t know who to slide in for China. China tried to help as little as possible, and was paralyzed by the Cultural Revolution. They have a historical enmity with Vietnam. The Soviet Union on the other hand was helping a great deal, so I would say they could be Iran, helping their “brothers in arms”