THE SKY IS FALLING, THE SKY IS FALLING...:

War Could Last Months, Some Military Officers Say (Thomas E. Ricks, March 26, 2003, Washington Post)

Despite the rapid advance of Army and Marine forces across Iraq over the past week, some senior U.S. military officers are now convinced that the war is likely to
last months and will require considerably more combat power than is now on hand there and in Kuwait, senior defense officials said today.

The combination of wretched weather, long and insecure supply lines, and an enemy that has refused to be supine in the face of American combat power has led to a broad reassessment by some top generals of U.S. military expectations and timelines. Some of them see even the potential threat of a drawn-out fight that sucks in more and more U.S. forces. Both on the battlefield in Iraq and in Pentagon conference rooms, military commanders were talking today about a longer, harder war than had been expected just a week ago, the officials said.

"Tell me how this ends," one senior officer said today.

James Fallows was on NPR today comparing Iraq to Vietnam. It sounded familiar, A Military Quagmire Remembered: Afghanistan as Vietnam (R. W. APPLE Jr., October 31, 2001, The New York Times):

Like an unwelcome specter from an unhappy past, the ominous word "quagmire" has begun to haunt conversations among government officials and students of foreign policy, both here and abroad.

Could Afghanistan become another Vietnam? Is the United States facing another stalemate on the other side of the world? Premature the questions may be, three weeks after the fighting began. Unreasonable they are not, given the scars scoured into the national psyche by defeat in Southeast Asia. For all the differences between the two conflicts, and there are many, echoes of Vietnam are unavoidable. Today, for example, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld disclosed for the first time that American military forces are operating in northern Afghanistan, providing liaison to "a limited number of the various opposition elements."

Their role sounds suspiciously like that of the advisers sent to Vietnam in the early 1960's, although Mr. Rumsfeld took pains to say of the anti-Taliban forces that "you're not going to send a few people in and tell them they should turn right, turn left, go slower, go fast." The Vietnam advisers, of course, were initially described in much the same terms, and the government of the day vigorously denied that they were a prelude to American combat troops.

In the most famous such denial, Lyndon B. Johnson vowed that he would not send American boys in to fight the war for Vietnamese boys.

Despite the insistence of President Bush and members of his cabinet that all is well, the war in Afghanistan has gone less smoothly than many had hoped. Not that anyone expected a lightning campaign without setbacks; indeed, both Mr. Bush and Mr. Rumsfeld have often said the effort would be long and hard.

Within two weeks, if not on first reading, Mr. Apple's column looked idiotic, Eyewitness: The liberation of Kabul: The Northern Alliance moved in at dawn (John Simpson, 13 November, 2001, BBC)

Hopefully it won't take two weeks to make Mr. Fallows and Mr. Ricks seem as silly, but if it does or if it takes months, so be it. Let it last: "Until justice rolls down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream."

MORE:
-The making of a hawk: From Kuwait to Kosovo to Kabul, American firepower has been on the right side of history. The odyssey of a former dove. (David Talbot, Jan. 3, 2002, Salon)
-Blundering Into Afghanistan: The Great Game has repeatedly foiled the great powers. (David Greenberg, September 20, 2001, Slate)

Posted by Orrin Judd at March 26, 2003 9:40 PM