It is now very intuitive and fashionable for some people, inside and outside the United States, to compare the US-led war in Iraq with the US's military intervention in Vietnam in the 1960s and 1970s.

Given the differences in time and space as well as some similarities in other tangible and intangible factors, is Iraq and Vietnam comparable? To what extent the two cases are comparable? How would these differences and similarities affect the final outcome of the current Iraq War?

Recently, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia's Prof Lee Poh Ping - an expert on US policies in East Asia - delivered a critical analysis of the question in an academic seminar held in the Bangi campus.

Later, this writer conducted an email interview with Lee who is a long-standing observer and commentator of US foreign policies for his insights.

The full text of the email exchanges is published here:

There is a school of thought pointing out that, in the 1960s and 1970s, the united military power of the former Soviet Union, People's Republic of China and their allies could provide a global and overarching strategic balance of power stretching geographically from East Asia to Central Asia, the Middle East, North Africa and Eastern Europe that worked to the military, diplomatic, political and psychological disadvantages of the US intervention in Vietnam, but, in 2003, it seems that there is no such real and tangible balance of power anymore to serve as a structural constraint or impediment to US in the case of Iraq. What is your opinion?

You are right. One crucial difference between Iraq and Vietnam is that the Vietnamese communists i.e. North Vietnam and the Vietcong had the backing of two powerful nuclear communist states, the then USSR and China which borders North Vietnam. This meant that the US would be extremely careful about invading North Vietnam (which they ultimately did not) as this could drag the two communist powers, particularly China, to war with the US. Thus, crucial aid could flow to the Vietcong from North Vietnam and also from the two communist giants which the US could not interdict successfully. Iraq has no powerful allies bordering it to turn to for help against the Americans.

I would not put too much weight on the opinion of the rest of the world to constrain the Americans should they choose to invade a weaker country. As you know, the US invaded Iraq with no UN support just as it sent troops to South Vietnam also without UN support and which may even be in contravention of the Geneva Conference of Accords of 1954. The Americans pulled out of Vietnam not because of world opinion but of domestic American opinion which, after 58,000 American dead and much expenditure of treasure, simply did not want to continue with the Vietnam War.

It has also been observed that in the Vietnam years, the United States itself was socially and politically very divided at home and the anti-war movement and sentiments were very high and persistent, but in the case of Iraq, the political and ideological sentiments inside the United States are different. For example, in 1968, President Lyndon Johnson was under anti-war pressure so much that he finally decided not to seek re-election while President George W Bush successful got himself re-elected in 2004. What is your assessment between the two periods in the American home front?

One should not forget that in the initial stages of (both) the Vietnamese and the Iraqi wars, the American public was behind both. What turned American opinion against Vietnam was the realisation that winning the war would entail unacceptable sacrifices of American lives and money. If there was a turning point, it would be the Tet Offensive of 1968 which showed on the American TV screen a Vietcong able to launch a nationwide offensive (even attacking the US embassy in Saigon)when it was supposed to be already beaten. The American public realised that there was not going to be any 'light in the tunnel' (i.e. the war was soon coming to an end and US troops would go home) and believed they were lied to by the Johnson administration. Even then it was another five years (January 1973) before a peace accord was finally signed between the US and the North Vietnamese.

George W Bush was re-elected because Americans still believe (though doubts are increasing) that Bush could still pull it off. Thus the sacrifices are acceptable. For how long I am not sure. So far, there are only about more than 1000 American dead (58,000 in Vietnam) and the financial sacrifices have not as yet hit home. If Bush asks for vastly more troops, particularly if he reintroduces the draft, and American inner cities burn and other violence erupt that could be attributed to a mis-allocation of resources arising out of the war, then you can expect opposition to the war to intensify.

In the case of Vietnam, the United States and its allies were on the defensive resisting the offensive advance of an armed and high-morale opposition. But in the case of Iraq, the United States and its allies are on the offensive overthrowing an established ruling regime whose armed forces seemed to be of very low morale, and attempting to establish a new government. What does this difference or reversal of roles mean in practical or operational terms?

You are right to make a distinction in at least the rhetoric of both cases. In Vietnam it was to defend a friendly regime from aggression. In Iraq the goal was regime change i.e. the overthrow of an existing regime. The Iraqi war has been made possible on the doctrinal level by the new Bush administration's National Security Strategy of 2002 which allowed for preemption.

The operational difference could also be significant. When you defend a regime you assume that regime has legitimacy. What you need to do is to help the regime militarily and by other means. You do not have to create a new government. But when you overthrow a regime as in Iraq, you not only have to provide the necessary aid (but) you also have to create a new government and this can prove very messy as the Americans are now realising in Iraq.

Some observers of military affairs have pointed out that the geographical and physical terrains of Vietnam and Iraq are different. How would such differences affect the final outcome of the war? What about the roles played by neighbouring countries which share land borders with Vietnam and Iraq respectively?

The Vietcong operated primarily from the jungle which made it difficult for the Americans to track them down. This does not mean that the Vietcong had no urban supporters. In the Tet Offensive, there was the famous or infamous statement by an American military commander, while attacking the city of Hue, that the Americans have to destroy it in order to save it! But the Vietcong operating from an urban area is an exception rather than the rule. That is not the case in Iraq where there is little or no jungle in Iraq. It is a terrain of cities with a lot of open spaces between them. The insurgents will thus have to hide in the cities or outside of Iraq.

In Vietnam, American strategy, apart from hunting the insurgents in the jungle, also aimed at getting them out into the towns, either by bombing the villages (a 'forced draft urbanisation' a term used by a scholar), or by defoliation of the jungle by chemical agents. In Iraq, it is by hitting and perhaps obliterating cities as the case of Fallujah demonstrates.

What about the differences of the structure of population as well as social morale and cohesiveness between Vietnam and Iraq? How would the differences affect the final outcome of the war?

This is another important difference. Vietnam was basically a homogeneous society. There were of course small minorities of Chinese and of the Montagnards or the mountain people. The Montagnards may have fought the Vietnamese communists with arms from the Americans but they together with the Chinese do not constitute serious political factors in Vietnam. There was also a small Catholic minority which mostly supported the Diem regime but religious differences were not important. The ultimate difference was ideological.

Not so in Iraq. There is a deep ethnic-religious difference there which might in the end confound the American attempt to create a stable political order that will allow them to leave. There are about a quarter of the population who are Sunnis, historically the rulers of Iraq and very likely to lose their power in a true democratic elections to the Shiites who constitute about sixty percent of the population. Then there are the Kurds who are agitating for autonomy, if not a separate state. How can you devise a stable political order through elections which will likely bring the Shiites to power? Such could lead to a civil war.

There is a school of thought that the technological breakthroughs and advances made by the United States since the late 1970s would reduce casualties among US military personnel as well as collateral damages among civilians and thus increase the degree of political acceptability of the war in Iraq as compared to that in Vietnam some 30 years ago. Do you agree? Why?

There is no question that the US through this revolution in military affairs can conquer weaker states quickly and with fewer casualties. But that is only half the story. The other half is pacifying the conquered people, and this needs not a military but a political solution. I am reminded of the perhaps apocryphal story about a wise Chinese gentleman telling the first Han emperor that he might have been able to conquer China from horseback, but could he govern it from horseback? Iraq is showing that it is not that easy to govern from horseback.

In your observation, what are the similarities and differences of the role of media in the situations of Vietnam and Iraq respectively?

Like over Iraq, the American media in the early stages of Vietnam were also supportive of the war. They accepted many of the administration versions of events. For example, the mainstream media then were not very investigative of the circumstances leading to the Gulf of Tonkin resolution in 1964 as the mainstream media now had not been skeptical of the present administration's claim that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction. The media in both cases were too inclined to give the government the benefit of the doubt.

There is however an important difference. In Vietnam the journalists were not 'embedded'. Many could go out of the field to investigate on their own and very often came out with accounts different from those given by the American military. Their accounts influenced the public perception of the war. The journalists in the Iraqi war did not have this freedom as they had to go along with the military to report what was happening in the field. It was also too dangerous for even the most intrepid journalist to venture out by himself in Iraq. Thus their reports have been greatly influenced by their 'embedded' status.