"to support your personal liberal points of view, which he hardly shares."
I love the way some here have this check list of conservative values, if someone deviates from even one, they get a label of "liberal" and that brings along a whole long list of attributes that, even if they don't fit, the other is assumed to have...
John's concern here is that the US has gone down this road many times already. Iraq is shaping up like Korea with out the mountains, or Vietnam with out the jungles. It is not a one to one mapping, but the overall shape is the same. Korea was different because South Korea was almost totally taken when we invaded. We fought our way to the DMZ and stopped. What followed was just a senseless waste of lives, nothing has changed there to this day. Vietnam was different, but we still didn't learn a lot. The Tet Offensive saw us having to pull back and regroup, we then pushed the North Vietnamese back to the DMZ...
In Iraq, there isn't a DMZ. However, we are still far from "winning the hearts and minds" of the Iraqis. Now in all of theses cases, the average Yong/Minh/Abdul in the street just wants to get through life, feed and house his family and doesn't want any trouble at all. But, right or wrong, they don't see our troops as providing and insuring that happens. And that leaves to door open to a never ending quagmire. Our military is second to none for offensive action. But where do they go on the offensive? How do you root out an enemy who is embedded in the population? That is a job for secret police, and we aren't good at that. Nor should we be, countries that field effective secret police are not ones I want to be associated with.
For what ever reason, the situation in Iraq has gotten to the point where there isn't an easy solution. It might be that things will progress quickly and people will stop dying there needlessly, but history is against it. It looks to be one of those situations where a long term military presence, on the order of generations, will be required to keep stability. That has not long term win scenarios, it is just a struggle to maintain the status quo. I once thought that some sort of victory was achievable in Iraq, I don't think that any more. The fact that the armoring of trucks is even an issue is an indication that things are in a bad way. Trucks generally aren't armored for a reason. One reason, of course, is that it is too expensive. Trucks are intended to travel in areas that are controlled. True, they can still be subject to mortar fire and possibly mines, but that is about it. However, we have been reduced to the firebase concept that we had in Vietnam. To top it off, we can't even guarantee safety in the firebases as we saw in Mosul. This is bad... |
