Another Vietnam?

Noam Chomsky says no, but his reasons are no cause for comfort or complacency among those opposed to the war in Iraq, or those who hope that the Democrats who voted for it will end it.

Iraq is not another Vietnam because in Vietnam the stakes for the U.S. were more purely ideological, rather than economic or even strategic. It was a loss that the U.S. ruling class could much more easily (though of course not happily) sustain.

Iraq, by contrast, has large and easily accessed reserves of capitalism's life-blood. It is located in the oil-rich heart of a region that the U.S. wants to control not only (perhaps not even primarily) to ensure its own access to oil, but also to ensure its control over its competitors' access.

Capitalism is about competition. Economic competition with Europe and rising superpowers like China easily shades over into international trade disputes and military conflict over markets and resources. In Iraq and in U.S. and Israeli plans to re-shape the Middle East, the U.S. is trying to establish a stranglehold not just on Arabs and Muslims whose resources it needs, but also on its world competitors, whose market share of the earth it covets.

Dream on, voters, if you think that the situation or prospects for peace really changed on November 7. Your government is building giant military bases in Iraq--the kind that neither party is building with the intent to abandon them.

Another Vietnam....If only it were. The challenge then for antiwar activists might be less daunting.