are a bunch of liars. The only reason we're in Iraq is because of his Daddy (who kicked SH's ass before).

So, now that we're there and Saddam ain't, what should we do?

See, I wanna pull out cuz GWB is a liar but what I can't get outta my mind is Mom and Pop Lunchbucket Iraq. He's the guy who lived in fear all these years of the knock on the door that this time it would be HIS head being used as a soccerball in Saddam Stadium, or maybe his kids...Or of being executed for having a TV.

He's the guy who's gonna continue to live in squalor and fear still more when we leave and the power vacuum is switched on and the REAL killing begins.

I remember Rawanda...I remember the rivers turned red by blood and the bodies, too many to count. 1/2 million some say. Good thing we had the first black president then...We should stay out of civil wars except our own IMO.

Hell, Iraquis have a tradition of peaceful handoffs of power, don't they? Do they have chads in Iraq?

I wish all things in life were this easy..

In Vietnam we entered the fray with a few "advisors" and increased our troop strength throughout much of the 1960's.  We were never really on the offensive, our purpose was to insure a free South Vietnam, not to end the North Vietnam government.  It was a war prosecuted at the whim of some very witless politicians.  If Johnson would have listened to the counsel of General Westmoreland, Vietnam would be a "free" united country today.  

Contrary to Vietnam, in Iraq we went in with force, "Shock & Awe".  We eliminated the organized resistance very quickly and have captured the head of the snake in Saddam.  In hindsight our only mistake has been to withdraw too many troop too quickly.  Although even that has not been a huge obstacle.  Eliminating the fundamental Islamic cleric wackos who are indeed a minority in Iraq will quell much of the current resistance.  Working with the more moderate clerics, who are the vast majority in Iraq, helping them begin the process of self governance and the people believing in that governance will take some time, but will happen.

That we may face terrorist in Iraq for years to come is a no brainer!  The forces behind "fundamental Islam" al Qaeda, Iran,  etc, have a lot to fear from a free Iraq.  They will surely attempt to vilify us and the process.  Defeating them in Iraq is "in my opinion" of the utmost importance in the overall war on terrorism.  Vietnam, hardly, our armed forces were never really allowed to "fully" engage the enemy in Vietnam.  Every move needed Washington's approval.  LBJ once joked that "not a shot can be fired in Vietnam without my approval"!  Thankfully LBJ is not leading us in this war!

The Vietnam claptrap is nothing more than political hogwash!  Iraq bears no resemblance to it.  Here's another one of my opinions, I think Bob Kerry misses the limelight and is rather enjoying his time before the TV cameras, no partisan he!

Also noteworthy is the fact that we have never withdrawn from Germany, Italy, Japan or Korea.  We have troops in all of the nations since the end of hostilities after WWII.  It may be necessary to add Iraq to that list.

Good post, BK.  

Each day, the news informs us us of new horrors in Iraq.  Although I was just a young kid in the early 70's, I thought that Vietnam and Watergate were supposed to have taught us that our government lies, and that we should be skeptical of its claims.  I guess Pete was wrong when he wrote, and Roger sang, "we won't get fooled again."



-- Modified on 4/9/2004 3:48:09 PM

Although Vietnam may bear some similarities to our present war in Iraq, an alternative analogy may be the (eventual) ouster of the French in Algeria, profiled in Gillo Pontecorvo's "Battle of Algiers".

One outstanding similarity between Algeria and Iraq is that all of the action is taking place in the cities, not in the largely deserted countryside. In Vietnam, on the other hand, the cities were largely peaceful throughout the conflict, but the countryside was ablaze.

As indicated in Pontecorvo's film, the French went hard at their insurgents, ultimately resorting to the same techniques (e.g., torture) employed by their opponents. However, this served only to further inflame the conflict, hardening the resistance.

As an indication of how bloody this may become, the Iraqi insurgents are now kidnapping foreigners (i.e., Japanese and South Koreans). It was only in 2002 that Al Qaida kidnapped and murdered the Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl in Pakistan.

Bob Herbert of the NY Times had an excellent editorial today, in which he says "When you open the door to get a look at the Bush policy on Iraq, you find yourself staring into an empty room." The best estimate for how many troops would be needed to pacify the Iraqi nation is ~500,000 soldiers for 25 million Iraqis. This is the same ratio needed by the Brits to successfully police Belfast. That works out to around 3 times our present troop commitment, and would rival that in Vietnam.

Especially when you consider the likelihood of this conflict extending to other nations (Saudi Arabia, Syria, Palestine-Israel), I believe that Iraq could be much worse than Vietnam.



-- Modified on 4/9/2004 4:54:54 PM

-- Modified on 4/9/2004 4:56:22 PM

coming home.  My town lost a young man a few days ago.

I think that the current fighting is just how the political process in unfolding in Iraq today.  If no government is in place, this is how the political process will be expressed until a government is in place to provide physical peace.  

We are "in country" for at least 5 more years.  Bush cannot pull out before the end of the current term without losing the election.  The next president will face the same issue.  The "strategy" will be to sit there, hang on, and hope for the best.  

A brave soul would pull out the troops next year and hope the uproar died down by that point.

join us in putting troops more troops there, because they will have much to lose if the country goes to hell.

In Viet Nam the Cong limited their retaliation to US Military in-country. In Iraq the new terrorists we create every day target US Military and civilians worldwide. It's a modern day Hydra, with heads springing up everywhere.

"the new terrorists we create every day" WTF?

No matter how one feels about the Iraq war, to assert that these thugs and criminals were just ordinary nice guys before we invaded Iraq is just stupid. They are now and always have been low-life scums. These worms mutilate corpses for the fun of it. Coerce and threaten Iraqi business owners to close thier shops in "protest" of the US. They initiate gun fights w/ coalition troops while using innocent women and children as human shields, firing through their captive protectors without remorse. They hide themselves in Mosques while firing on the Marines and then call on Al-Jazeera to concoct a story on how the Marines are attacking holy sites! They are against a free, democratic Iraq and they will resort to any measure to de-rail that process. If anyone is to be blamed for "creating" these terrorists it's Iran and Syria, not George Bush.

RLTW

Vietnam was fought mainly in the boondocks, the city fighting was almost nonexistent.  Although there were acts of terrorism by the Viet Cong in cities during the Vietnam war, they were few and far between.  (They would toss grenades into crowed restaurants and market places)

This war is in the cities and towns of Iraq, almost nothing is going on in the boondocks!

"Modern day Hydra"?  And now I suppose that you are going to attempt to tell us that this "Hydra" wasn't springing up before we invaded Iraq?  The taking of hostages by Islamic Fundamentalist goes way back before Jimmah Carter as were Islamic acts of terror!

who hate us so much that they are willing to die to demonstrate it.  Of course, their pre-disposition was always to dislike us.  But there is a BIG difference between opposition and militant opposition, and by invading Iraq, we have tipped tens of thousands of moslems over that dividing line.  To deny it is simply naivete of the worst kind.  

What Syria and Iran are doing is simply facilitating and enabling those militants to actually become effective against us.  It is Bush who is MOTIVATING them to die for their cause.  That is what is so disastrous about our Iraq campaign - it has exactly played into the propaganda that Bin Laden has been using to recruit, and made what SHOULD have been viewed as the rantings of a mad man into credible rhetoric (at least when viewed from the perspective of a poor and uneducated moslem in the Arab world).

All of this goes hand-in-hand with George W. being a uniter. Already, W. has succeeded in uniting that most fractious of all groups in the U.S., the Democrats, to unprecedented levels. Combine that with the Sunnis in the Sunni Triangle and Shias in the South of Iraq now working together. There actually were blood drives among Shias to aid their wounded comrades in Falujah.

The betting line is that the June 30 "hand-off" will go to Ahmad Chalabi, erstwhile convicted bank swindler (Jordan) and darling of the neocons. This would be amazing, especially since W. has been promising 'democracy' to Iraq. Of course, you could hardly have a real democracy based on a plebiscite in Iraq, especially with 65% of the population being Shias. Who knows what ascendant Shias would do in Iraq, have the temerity to vote us out?

Should Chalabi be appointed on June 30 to take over Iraq, we haven't begun to see the blood and treasure that will have to be spent suppressing rebellion. If so, I would change my analogy that Iraq is either like Vietnam ('60-75) or Algeria ('60's) to Afghanistan ('80's), with us playing the role of the Soviets.

The political and theocratic extremists that we are battling in Iraq do not hate only us. You need to wake up to reality. They hate the democratic ideology of western culture. And they have not just  started hating the West becuase of Iraq. They most certainly hated Saddam also. The reason they did not rise up against him was becuase his boot was placed down firmly upon the backs of thier necks.

If the U.N. had acted upon it's own resolutions and upheld it's self claimed responsibility for protecting the oppressed people of the world and deposed Saddam, the murderous goat-fuckers would be using the same terror tactics they are using now. Syria, and more so Iran would be doing everything they could to subvert the process also.

This type of hatred has been around a long time. George Bush did not cuase it, but he will certainly confront it. You are letting hatred of Bush cloud the reality that is staring you  in the face.

RLTW

attacks.

Unfortunately, I am afraid that I'm not, and that Bush's foreign policy is the biggest disaster for world security since Chamberlain's appeasement of Hitler in the 1930s.

The fact is, the only way Bush's policy leads to success is to ERADICATE all of the Moslems who get driven into the anti-U.S. camp by this.  Which, essentially, is a WW III scenario.

The problem in Vietnam came down to the fact that there's a heavy presumption against the foreigner.  If there was ANY problem, it becomes ours.

Same in Iraq.  We take it on ourselves to "fix" things for them, how likely is it we're gonna make half of them happy?

The best we can hope to do is drop the problem on somebody else, and I don't see anybody quite that stupid.

We leave, we leave a power vacuum that will be a festering boil for decades, until the local powers sort it out among themselves.  We stay, we lose oh, maybe a man a day.

You can't make people happy by invading them.  It's just plain a no-win situation, and perhaps the best solution would have been to just let Mossad assassinate Saddam, and let them figure it out for themselves.

Well the response has to be multi-national.  Why should we carry the load for everybody that doesn't dig terrorism, and why should we be so stupid as to take on the entire world?

We should be sitting down and figuring out who will and can support us in what ways, and go from there.   It's gonna take setting aside some of our more parochial issues.

Yabbut, what the hell does your Aunt Martha know about it, except from some poll SHE read?