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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Bilow who wrote (101317)	6/12/2003 7:22:57 PM
From: TimF	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 281500

Hi Carl. No, the Vietnamese are nowhere near as fanatic as the Arabs. Not even close. The Arabs strap explosives to the bodies of their own children and send them to blow up women and children. And the Vietnamese set themselves on fire as a protest and sent kids with grenades to try and kill Americans. Go read our own generals. They'll tell you that the resistance is "organized". On a local scale possibly but there it isn't coordinated across the country. The resistance wasn't even that coordinated before Baghdad fell. Already we're facing guerilla soldiers from Syria, Jordan and God knows where else. Not in the type of numbers that we faced in Vietnam. The populations of those countries (or even just Iraq) are large enough but the % that want to fight us is much lower. And the absence of a direct analog to the North Vietnamese Army is more than fully compensated by the absence of a South Vietnamese Army on our side. I don't think it is. Not even close. Neither the Baathists nor the Vietnamese communists ever really posed a threat to devastate the whole US military presence but absent a real army the remaining Baathist have no ability to threaten any American unit except perhaps one no bigger then an isolated platoon. In Vietnam the opposition often chose to run away from combat when we attacked or when we organized a good defense to their attacks, but when they thought the time was right they can and did defend territory or maintain sustained attacks. There is no force in Iraq capable of doing that against the US army. It is a well known military axiom that guerilla warriors need essentially no military supplies. To be effective at more then harassment they do need supplies. If they have the support of the people, and if they are committed then they can maintain the harassment for a long time with little in the way of supplies but to take an serious military initiatives or pose any real military threat they need more some supplies. The Viet Cong and the NVA units operating in the South had the Ho Cho Minh Trail and the active support of a superpower. The die hard Baathists do not have that. Even Iran and Syria, countries with governments that don't like the US much are not making a serious effort to support a strong military resistance to US occupation. Re: "... and had much more rugged and difficult terrain." Wrong. The most difficult terrain for the US Army is cities, and with the larger population, Iraq has plenty of those. Our city problems in Vietnam were largely controlled by the South Vietnamese government. It is extremely difficult to prosecute military operations in cities without inflaming the locals. Vietnam had cities too and we had some tough fighting in them. In addition to that they had highlands and jungles and an enormous network of tunnels. Main force NVA regular army units could move around without the Americans knowing where they where. In the cities they could mobilize forces and actually take control over whole areas for a time, or even the whole city of Hue. Yes over time Iraq could develop a stronger resistance but it's no Vietnam. There isn't as many people there who are violently anti US at this point and there is no government that is organizing resistance or an intact army trying to fight us. For that matter, our assistance to the Afghan guerilla warriors was minuscule, and was sufficient to defeat a Soviet Union capable of far more brutal use of power than we are. Our aid to the Afghanis wasn't massive but it was more then minuscule and it was well targeted for their needs, in particular the Stingers. And while the Soviets might have been more brutal they where also less competent and cohesive then the US army. They even had soldiers selling fuel and even weapons to the enemy. For that matter their very brutality helped boost the hatred and opposition to them. When guerrilla forces first become operational, they usually engage in limited or small-scale operations. If they reach more sophisticated levels of organization, equipment, and training, larger operations using more conventional tactics may be expected. Many guerilla forces never go beyond the limited and small-scale operations. We read more about those that do because they where more significant historically but for every guerilla army that mounts sophisticated large scale operations there are dozens that are never able to do so. The fact is that official US military doctrine does not list terrain as being that important for guerillas. It just don't matter as much as other factors I agree with that. I didn't list is as some special factor that stands out, just one more factor on a list. The fact that it might not be the 1st or even the 2nd third or 4th most important factor doesn't mean it isn't a factor at all. In Iraq, the political factor is that the locals think we're there to steal their oil. The economical factor is that all the 16-yearolds are unemployed and have time on their hands. The sociological factor is that they think we're the same Christian infidel, LOL. You really couldn't dream up a more vicious guerilla war to fight. Some Iraqi's think we are there to steel their oil, some are religious fanatics who think we are Christian infidels, but others are grateful for us freeing them from Saddam, or are neutral or muddled about the whole thing. I don't think any of your points in that last quote is false but I think all of them are exaggerated. I think the potential for serious resistance is there but the potential is not as much as it was in Vietnam and potential is often never realized. If we really F things up then its possible that a significant fraction of that potential could be realized but if we don't F things up badly then I think most of it will go forever unrealized. Tim