European Press Increasingly Comparing Iraq to Vietnam

By Lucy Jones

from: WRMEA

With almost daily attacks in Iraq claiming the lives of an increasing number of Iraqis and U.S. soldiers, the word "Vietnam" began creeping into Europe's newspapers in October. "U.S.troops were in Vietnam for 10 years, and have only been in Iraq since March. How bad are things going to become?" Germany's Markische Oderzeitung asked on Oct. 28, after a series of car bombs rocked Baghdad, claiming dozens of lives. "The security situation is catastrophic, and more aid organizations are just going to pull out," the paper said.

"The situation in Iraq has gone awry," wrote Bonn's General-Anzeiger on the same day. "The attackers are getting support from Islamic terrorist circles. Even large sections of the Iraqi population are helping them," it noted, "because the Iraqis see Americans not as liberators but as occupiers."

"Iraq presents a two-fold vicious circle," wrote the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung of Oct. 27. "On the one hand, reconstruction and a more positive atmosphere cannot be achieved without re-establishing internal security, while at the same time, they are its prerequisites," the paper said. "Iraq will neither be secure if the U.S. occupation continues nor if the U.S. left."

Funds for Iraq Conditional on "Sovereignty," Says Spain's El Mundo

At the major conference held Oct. 23 in Madrid to raise money for the reconstruction of Iraq, donors pledged $13 billion, in addition to the $20 billion already promised by Washington. According to World Bank and IMF estimates, $56 billion is needed to get the country back on its feet.

"It should be pointed out that the U.S. has not yet decided if its $20 billion will go in hard cash or in the form of credits, and that other countries, like France, will not hand over a cent until sovereignty is completely returned to the people of Iraq," Spain's El Mundo wrote the following day. (By the end of the month, the U.S. Congress had acceded to the Bush administration's insistance on aid being in the form of grants rather than loans.)

"Rather than a meeting of donors, the gathering in Madrid was a conference of moneylenders, wrote Spain's El Pais the same day. "More than two-thirds of what was collected will have to be paid back."

France's Le Figaro said Oct. 25 that the U.S. "wanted to wage war practically single-handedly and without the backing of the U.N.