Hi IQBAL LATIF; In response to my comment that Iraq was worse than Vietnam, you posted a reply that you probably felt was well thought out. I'd like you to comment on your assumptions with the advantage of hindsight:
Re: "In this 24 million take out the Kurds and the Shiites and the Sunni family members of the families mercilessly persecuted by Saddam."
Looks like you can't take out the Shiites after all. And Saddam's in prison, he's no longer a factor.
Re: "Policing North [Vietnam?] of topographically much more problematic due ot natural contours that encourage hit and run missions, in Iraq short of urban battle the opportunities for a guerrilla like campaign are negligible."
Here it a year on, and we've not only got a guerilla campaign, but it has progressed to "stage 3", where the guerillas are sufficiently organized that they own territory that we can no longer enter.
Re: "I think you completely overlooked the Peshmergas. There are 70,000 peshmerga ..."
A year later, and still no sign of pacification by the Peshmergas.
Re: "... and nearly 10,000 member strong Shiite forces based in Iran ..."
Unfortunately, those "strong Shiite forces" chose to fight against us. So are you now arguing that those Shiite forces actually weren't strong? They're keeping us out of several Iraqi cities.
Re: "Bogging down is a real possibility for any power but US supremacy based on tech advantage of the 90’s on land, sea and air in helpful regional theatre like Iraq makes it a very opposite case strategic studies ot that of North Vietnam. Saddam dreams of ‘Stalingrad’ type of urban warfare are unrealistic and logistically not possible for the entrenched diehard zealots."
The US can't even take back the small town of Falloujah without causing enough casualties to anger the rest of Iraq. As far as the comparison with Stalingrad, the Falloujah campaign has drifted into a sniper war. There was a recent movie on the sniper war in Stalingrad:
Plot Outline: Two Russian and German snipers play a game of cat-and-mouse during the Battle of Stalingrad.
imdb.com
Re: "They may resist and die but without a popular support that Ho chi Minh enjoyed he sat on a far higher moral ground."
Our enemy regularly has big demonstrations where the public shouts their approval. When our soldiers are killed, the locals show up on Al Jazeera all smiles. It's clear that most of them either hate us, or really don't care enough to stop the ones who hate us from killing us.
Re: "Sometime violent population is fond of the show of strength, a peaceful person turned into an enemy (in case of Buddhists) as he is pushed to the wall can be far dangerous than someone who is violent and can be subdued by equivalent show of strength."
Interesting theory. But we're seeing more action now than we did when we went in a year ago. This is compatible with my extensive commentary that it would be the occupation that ruined the war.
Re: "If the southerners or Iraqis who are hard marshland people (not urbanites Baghdadis who are far more refined ) owned guns than Brits would not have deserted helmets to Berets."
It's clear now that they did own guns. In fact, this was widely reported before the war so it shouldn't be much of a surprise. And the berets didn't last very long.
Re: "The nicer and gentler face of ALLIES is already at work."
You mean allies like Spain? I wonder how long the British will stick it out. I would think that they'll be the last to leave.
Re: "If this scenario of your would be true I should have seen a lot more weapons from Iran and huge number of Iranian volunteers already in the south of Iraq."
The Iranians were never under any time pressure. Politically, it worked better for them to wait until more of the Iraqi people were angry at the CPA.
-- Carl |
