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Date Posted: Tue, May 24 2005, 18:14:04
Author: Larry Lusk
Author Host/IP: 66.214.115.70
Subject: Re: An Act of Desperation?
In reply to: Jeff Northridge 's message, "Re: An Act of Desperation?" on Tue, May 24 2005, 13:28:03

Jeff, in Vietnam, at least on the Communist side, politics was religion. In Iraq, religion is politics. Other than location I can’t see the difference. In Vietnam we were the running dogs for our capitalist imperialist leaders. In Iraq the Sunni’s and I suspect a fair number of the Shia population see us as Satin's Army lead by non-believing infidels. Six of one, half dozen of another. The big difference is that in Vietnam more South Vietnamese saw us as friends trying to help than we will ever see in Iraq. We are doing a few good things ( see www.cav57.org) but it’s a drop in the bucket when you look at what we have destroyed.

Jeff, the insurgents do have a place to hide and will, just like in Nam, continue to have that place to hide. In Vietnam the insurgent round-ups started in the same somewhat limited way. I say somewhat because you toss off six to eight hundred “detained” in a way that suggests that we had hard evidence on all of them. Come on, it took our intelligence apparatus over a year after we invaded to figure out there were no WMD’s in Iraq. Well, that limited type of round-up didn’t work in Vietnam and I strongly doubt it will work in Iraq. There are over five million Sunni’s in Iraq and I suspect that the Shia population won’t feel secure until all of them have been processed. There is also the assumption that all of the attacks and bombings are being done by the Sunni’s or "outsiders". Money and religion is what talks in Iraq and we are as short on the money side as on the religious. No matter how much money we offer, the backers of the Fundamentalists can offer more. The Viet Cong stopped being a problem in South Vietnam only after we had killed most of them. Maybe after we kill a million Sunni’s they’ll give up. I don’t know but it will be a lot more than we have killed so far.

We do not have enough boots on the ground, period. Not that I’m completely sure that more would make a difference. What I have heard reported, and I trust the source, is that at least ten percent of those boots are spending their tour in Iraq in relative comfort and security. I’m not too sure how long the Pentagon is going to continue to let him report what is really going on but the impression I get after reading his reports is that things are going downhill fairly fast in Iraq (My opinion, not necessarily his). You can read those reports at the above web site. Right now the “rebel’s” seem to be having an organizational problem but are still managing to kill a lot of our troops and other Iraqis. The Viet Cong went through similar periods then came back stronger than before.

Look, what I’m trying to say is that we lost in Vietnam because our leaders had unrealistic ideas and concepts of what we were trying to accomplish. We were not willing to take on the backer of North Vietnam and the Viet Cong so we gave up. Fortunately and I think partially because of our sacrifice in Nam we beat the Soviet Union. For the most part it fell apart due to flaws in it’s own ideology. Small consolation to the people of what was once South Vietnam. I see the same failure to face reality in Iraq.

Let’s have it out with the backers of the Sunni’s and the Islamic fundamentalist’s or let’s get out before we get hurt worse than we have so far. We know where the money is coming from we are just too afraid to go after the source. I question if the American people have it in them to risk their comfy lives to take the fight to where it needs to go. I also question if our current leaders have any desire to take us there. They would lose too much personally in the process.

So tell me how this is really any different than Vietnam. Do we have to wait until the equivalent of the NVA marches into Iraq? I hope not because we will have to nuke them to stop them. There are more of them than there are of us and their backers economy will only collapse when ours does and maybe not even then. There is a reason why Europe for the most part is staying out of this conflict. Funny, they stayed out of Vietnam also, I wonder why?

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