July 31, 2007 - When John Kennedy was killed in Dallas the US military deployment to South Vietnam stood at 16,000 troops. He had confided in his Secretary of Defense, Robert McNamara that he intended to withdraw the American contingent following the 1964 election. Kennedy understood what his successors would not. It was not America’s war to win. It was South Vietnam’s war and the Vietnamese people would determine whether it was won or lost. He did not make it to the 1964 election.

We are again involved in a war that is not our war. The comparison to Vietnam is admittedly not exact. But the issues are similar and the situation on the ground is enough like that of four decades ago to obscure the differences that do exist. In Vietnam we thrust ourselves between the antagonists; the Republic of Vietnam on the one hand and the Democratic Republic of Vietnam with their Viet Cong surrogates on the other. In Iraq the identity of the antagonists is less clear. The alliances among the antagonists are in a constant state of flux. On the surface it seems a sectarian conflict between the Shia dominated Al-Maliki government on the one hand and the Sunni insurgency on the other. But beneath the surface Iran’s surrogate Mehdi Army is independent of and frequently opposed to the Al Maliki regime as rival factions of the Shia. Sunni tribal leaders array themselves against the foreign fighters of Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia but continue to defy the Al Maliki government and its Army of Iraq. It is into this boiling cauldron of shifting antagonisms that America’s soldiers are thrust. Who is the enemy? One had just as well have asked what day it is for today’s attack may come from any direction.

How do we define victory in this war in Iraq? Is it when Shia Iran governs in Baghdad through a coalition of Al Sadr and Al Maliki and in the process controls another 25% of the world’s oil reserves? Is it when Saudi Arabia, armed to the teeth by the US Taxpayer imposes its will on Baghdad and, coincidentally, another 25% of the world’s oil reserve?

Or does victory come when a puppet to be named later signs off on a perpetual oil concession with a BP-EXXON cartel? The fact is that we cannot define victory in this war. Victory and the resultant peace in Iraq will come when one or the other Iraqi faction concedes authority to the other. Only then will the war in Iraq be over and we can’t end it because, as in Vietnam, it is not our fight to end.