We're dealing with the same idiots who thought we could have won in Vietnam

[NNN0LHI]

http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2004/04/11/1081621832400.html

Who will rescue the US?

America is slowly learning that it is Iraqis who will decide their own future, says Martin Woollacott.

Since the end of the Second World War, a cycle of military victory and defeat has been evident in American politics. It has taken the country from the apex of its military strength in 1945 to near disaster and then qualified victory in Korea, and then to failure in Vietnam, victory in the Gulf War, and now to Iraq. In each phase, but particularly after Vietnam, the impact of defeat has been to set in train a rebuilding of American military strength and, eventually, its confident and sometimes over-confident reassertion in a new situation.

The formative years of the men who have shaped the foreign policy of George Bush's Administration were influenced by the humiliation of defeat in Vietnam, and by the idea that if only the country's military power had been properly exerted, without condition or obstacle, Vietnam could have been won. snip

Iraq is not yet the defeat for the US that it could become. But America is chastened and perplexed. The Bush Administration, which believed so devoutly that it could move mountains, may now know better. It may even grasp that the concept to which it has always paid lip-service - that it is Iraqis who will decide their own future - is now more than just useful rhetoric. It is Iraqis, in the accumulation of their choices, decisions and actions, who will largely decide whether America's intervention ends up as a success or as a failure.

The Americans went to Iraq to rescue the Iraqis, and now stand in need of being rescued themselves.

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[kentuck]

1. That's right ! We should have just leveled Viet Nam...

Never mind that we dropped more bombs on Viet Nam than we dropped in WWII...

[chookie]

2. Perplexing matters

I agree that the sentiment that one hears from supporters of this administration is that Viet Nam was easily winnable, and was lost due to public opinion going against it, which led to a loss of nerve in waging it. This belief is behind their efforts to silence those who are critical of the administration.

I disagree. They may wish to paint the opposition as nothing but a bunch of latte-sucking America-hating elists whose principal foreign policy objective is appeasement, but the truth of the matter is that opposition is very wide, and very deep. It's not just peaceniks -- many of us opposed the war on strategic grounds, and not just moral issues.

What I don't get is if these idiots wanted their winnable war, why have they gone about waging it so badly? They have really BUNGLED the operations due to their haste to get in. They also seem to have had to trade good generals for less competents ones who were less argumentative over the orders.

The Ghost of Viet Nam is a presence in this war, and we will be told that if we just hold on a little longer, that we will prevail. They seem to feel that the more badly things go, the more "resolve" America is showing. I think they believe that when the terrorists see Marines being slaughtered, they are quaking in their boots, as they see how willing America is to have its young men and women killed in order to rid the world of them.

Gee, I dunno. I have this feeling that the world has reached another conclusion -- that America has gotten involved with another unwinnable war, one that was completely avoidable, and that this was just plain stupid. I personally believe that the US looks pathetic, yet again -- all that wealth and might, and STILL unable to prevail over small mobile bands of utterly determined terrorists. As if we needed to prove this again.

The weird thing is that every reversal in Iraq is treated by the administration as a victory -- after all, we are fighting "terrorists" there, and not in the streets of NYC, and that all terrorists are so eager to join the struggle in Iraq that they will not be considering other operations.

Ah well -- thus is the nature of modern warfare. I think superpowers have to choose their wars very very very carefully. One's man resolve is another man's quagmire.