Quote:
Originally posted by Rich
Hate to break this to you, but most people look at a war as more than US casualties. How old are you? If you can't understand how this is a replay of Vietnam, well let's just say that explains a lot of your thought process.
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The excellent and respected military historian John Keegan wrote this recently, "Iraq 2004 is not Greece 1945, not Indochina 1946-54, not Algeria 1953-62 and certainly not "Vietnam". "
In his words, "the war has not done much harm but has broken the power of the state and encouraged the dispossessed and the irresponsible to grab what they can before order is fully restored. What monopolises the headlines and prime time television at the moment is news from Iraq on the activity of small, localised minorities struggling to entrench themselves before full peace is imposed and an effective state structure is restored. The news is, in fact, very repetitive: disorder in Najaf and Fallujah, misbehaviour by a tiny handful of US Army reservists - not properly trained regular soldiers - in one prison. There is nothing from Iraq's other 8,000 towns and villages, nothing from Kurdistan, where complete peace prevails, very little from Basra, where British forces are on good terms with the residents."
What has caused the insurgency, and it is that, at the hand of a few clerics - was a lightning-quick campaign that occupied a capital in just 21 days without destroying much of the Iraqi munitions. It did not leave most Iraqis feeling defeated, certainly not the militias in Najaf and Fallujah. This combined with the police and military apparatus being disbanded has permitted a criminal element to appear.
It is localized to a few cities and organized by just a few clerics.
Now do
you see the difference?