Nice alliteration. Appropriate choice of consonants.

If you're saying Iraq is no Vietnam you're right, it isn't. It's something far worse. In the darkest days of the Vietnamese conflict it was possible for a G.I. to move freely about Saigon, or any other South Vietnamese city. Vietnam was never the chaotic hell that parts of Iraq are now. Vietnam, once abandoned, sought only to export its ideology to its immediate neighbors. The terrorist state which threatens to take over Iraq will not be satisfied with that. We lost Vietnam to the communists and still won the broader struggle, as much because of the inherent contradictions within Marxism as due to our military diligence. It remains to be seen what our tragic exercise in futility will yield in Iraq while we continue to outlast this latest manifestation of worldwide madness.

Tick tock, Captain.

I am not sure that Vietnam was a better situation because GIs could safely get layed in Saigon. Fighting an enemy backed by a superpower with one hand tied behind your back had to suck even if you could hang in Saigon.

Iraq is not going to become a terrorist state. Even Murtha wants us to stay in the region as a 'rapid reaction force.' Even if it does go islamist, we'll turn it to glass. When we leave it will be the best governed country in the region. I hope we leave next year and I'm a right wing warmonger. Of course I hope we leave by via Damascus.

Besides islamism has contradictions that make Marxism look airtight. It won't work enough to get started. I think the Taliban got per capita GDP down in the $200 buck range and that's counting the opium.

Dennis:
"In the darkest days of the Vietnamese conflict it was possible for a G.I. to move freely about Saigon, or any other South Vietnamese city ..."
And it was also routine for G.I.s to be fragged by some passing woman or child in Saigon.

Posted by: jd watson at November 18, 2005 7:28 PM

My point about Saigon was that, in contrast, we have little control anywhere in Iraq outside of the heavily fortified Green Zone. Soviet and Chinese backing of the North Vietnamese was one thing, but the apparently inexhaustible supply of weapons available to the Ba'athists and broad, open borders between both Iran and Syria are much harder to police than the Ho Chi Minh trail, and most importantly the brutality of targeting civilians and using suicide bombers makes this new enemy that much more difficult to subdue. As for the poverty Islamism tends to breed, it only seems to create a more fertile environment from which they recruit their suicide assassins. Let's not forget they seek control of an oil rich state, and have supporters in virtually all of the MidEast nations, some in high levels of government. As for the "rapid reaction force", we had that already. I'm no peacenik, and I feel we are stuck with Iraq; abandoning the Iraqi civilian populace and our supporters there would be an act of cruel cowardice at this point. But let's understand it for what it is.

JAB, the road to Damascus has produced some very interesting occurences in the past, no?

Dennis: One supposes that abandoning the South Vietnamese populace and our allies was something other than an act of cruel cowardice.

For all that, what does BDS say we should have done with Iraq? Left Saddam Hussein in place? What are we supposed to do now? Give a "timetable" so that the enemy can win if he can hang on long enough?

No terrorist state is going to take over Iraq. Superior terror will prevent that, long before it should ever come to pass. The terrorists are mostly killing Iraqis now. Furthermore, they have no "inexhaustible supply of weapons," having been reduced to the tactics of desparation and dispair like car bombs and suicide explosive belts. This is what fanatics do at the bitter end, on the way to collapse.

Abandoning South Vietnam was arguably our most dishonorable moment. I hope you're right about no terrorist state taking over Iraq. As for "superior terror", it was already in place in the guise of Saddam's Ba'athist dictatorship; sinister and bellicose but sufficiently afraid of both the Islamists and us that, yes, we should have left Saddam alone--for the time being at least. Better a known quantity which isn't an immediate threat than the ongoing meltdown which we find is very much an immediate and costly problem, growing more costly every day.

Dennis: Of the 18 Iraqi provinces, the terrorist attacks occur basically in the three with major Sunni populations. The rest are peaceful and Kurdistan is developing rapidly. This is just a question of where the front line is.

The supply of weapons seems 'apparantly inexhaustable' because it is really a low intensity conflict amplified by the media. It's not like the Vietnamese who kept getting new shipments of MiGs and SA-2s.

David is correct. Most of the country is peaceful. The fight in Anbar province is against exactly the type of dirtbags who did 9/11. In fact it's become an attractor for them. Bagdhad is dangerous to patrol, but we are turning over a lot to the Iraqis. The real war is in Anbar, Mosul and a couple of other hotspots where the Army and Marines are killing these people by the truckload.

Don't get me wrong, it's dreadful what's happening, but the strategic aspects are poorly reported.

Dennis -

If you want to keep up on military strategy, tactics, and action in Iraq, check out Bill Roggio's blog (The Fourth Rail). Damn fine stuff.

At least we tried in South Vietnam and left them in a position to fight. We not only betrayed Poland but helped cover-up the murder of their officer corps.

leftists don't want facts, they want fuel for their fantasies.

Thanks for the tip, ghostcat, good blog. I'm sure you've already checked it out but if you haven't Michael Yon has been blogging from an embed with the 24th Infantry--compelling stuff.
Here's hoping you more gung-ho types are right and I'm just a hopeless cynic.

I'm not a gung ho type, but this is necessary if we hope to avoid having to kill them all and its going quite as badly as the media indicates.

No offense intended, JAB. Or should I say, I didn't mean to take a jab at you.
Okay, they're not all gems, folks.

"Pity poor Pat--imagine waking up in bed with all the folks you properly despised the entire Cold War and realizing you'd become one of them?"

How about the commies, don't they have feelings too?

Support for Z is coming from less, way less, than 20% of the population. When next month's election is over we'll be free to step up the campaign in Anbar Province with sizeable forces.

2006 will be a new ballgame in Iraq and the Iraqis will be winning ... and I don't mean the terrorists.

look for the US and Israel to come up with a pretext in early to mid 2006, that results in:

1. total annihilation of the iranian nuclear
program, including personnel involved

2. capturing and holding the oil fields of
iran

No need--Khameini will take care of it.

not according to Hoffer. look for the mullahs to meet with a calamity soon.

No, Hoffer said that the quality of the original Revolution would have a significant influence on how it ended up. The Shi'a basis means that Iran's Revolution will turn out okay in all likelihood.