Learning from Vietnam

Dick Tunison uses some historical analogies, concluding that the military should always be willing to change when it comes to warfighting:

Wall Street Journal writer Greg Jaffe wrote recently that “A half dozen Vietnam histories — most of them highly critical of the U.S. military in Vietnam — are changing the military’s views on how to fight guerrilla wars.” This is an important change that must be made if we are to be successful in the immediate future. Those who have advocated increasing the numbers of our forces in Iraq are erroneously falling back into the old mold that seems not to apply in today’s situation. The new argument that the military must exercise restraint is a central element in the Army’s developing counter-insurgency doctrine. Jaffe wrote “It involves everything from strategy development to intelligence gathering.” We need to remind ourselves wars are variable and tactics and strategies for winning them should not be written in indelible ink.

I agree with the above statement about cries for troop increases. When learning from old wars, we shouldn't attempt the mistakes of those conflicts.