Hi Sig; Re: "Comparisons to Viet-nam and Guatemala can fail for many reasons." No situation can ever be repeated exactly.
Re: "Iraq is open country."
Is this something that has only just happened? We were taking heavy casualties in Iraq last month, did the country suddenly open up between then and now? And if open country is all that is needed to quash a resistance, then why are the Israelis still taking casualties from the Palestinians?
Re: "Saddam was everywhere."
He's gone now, or at least in our hands. If you think that Saddam really was a factor in the resistance, then walk out on a limb, and give me the month that the CPA death toll will be less than our June minimum of 33. As far as I can tell, our soldiers are still dying, and at about the same rate.
Re: "The economy was almost totally dependant on the huge income from oil which can still exist ..."
This isn't very logical. Many primitive places on the world have some sort of dependence on one natural resource or another, but there is no correlation with their ability to fight a guerilla war.
Re: "... and represent a great hope for any straight-thinking Iraqi."
This is a classic. The war would end if the Iraqis would only simply listen to reason (in the form of money). Hey, if the Vietnamese had understood the economic advantages of capitalism, then we would have won the war there too. The situation on the ground is that way too many Iraqis are convinced we're in their country only to steal the oil, not to give it to them. And given that we're exporting as much as we can, selling it, and not giving the receipts to the quisling government we've set up, their estimates of the situation are difficult to argue against. Of course Iraq can't possibly have enough oil to pay for our expensive occupation, but the locals don't see it that way.
Re: "Iraqi insurgents do not have any useful or powerful outside supporters such as the Communists to provide arms,troops, food or moral support."
This is completely wrong, as a day's worth of watching Al Jazeera will convince anyone. The Iraqis have sympathizers in every neighboring nation.
Re: "No friends in Iran ..."
Then why did the US government warn the Iranian government to quit meddling in Iraq, LOL.
Re: "... no friends in Kuwait ..."
This is close to true, but the fundamentalist elements in Kuwait are in support of the resistance in Iraq, and as their hatred of Saddam dissolves into feelings of unity with their Arab brothers, the Kuwaitis will also end up supporting Iraqi resistance. It's just a matter of time.
Re: "... no friends in SA ..."
While Saddam has no friends in Saudi Arabia, the SA fundamentalists are very happy to assist in kicking us out of Iraq. In fact, the 9/11 hijackers were largely Saudi, not Iraqi.
Re: "... no friends in Turkey ..."
Turkey voted into power an Islamic government. The population there is very much against the US in Iraq. Sure we've got pretty good support from them, but there are no assurances that this will continue forever.
Re: "... nor even among the Kurds."
The Kurdish Islamic groups regularly kill our soldiers. They are not aligned with Saddam, but our boys and girls are just as dead when they get blown up by a Kurdish bomb as when they get blown up by a Sunni bomb.
Re: "With Saddams entire powerfully armed nation overrun in three weeks, how long would Syria last?"
Right after the end of the war, the US was making noises like it would do the same to Syria or Iran. These noises are gone, because no one now believes that the US has sufficient military forces to keep the lid on Iraq, much less to keep the lid on both Iraq and Syria. Syria is immune from invasion.
As to how long they would last, just as with Iraq, the invasion would be easy, but the occupation would be impossible. This is what I was saying about Iraq long before the war began. With the events in Iraq unfolding as poorly as they have, the experts in Washington who agreed with this assessment are now in ascendency, so there will be no invasion of Syria. The Syrians aren't stupid, they know this too.
Nor is the support for the Iraqi resistance a thing that can be controlled by favorable governments in the neighboring countries. The basic problem with an insurgency is support from the population, not support from the government. The populations of Syria, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Jordan generally support the Iraqi resistance. This means that it is no more possible for their governments to prevent them from assisting that resistance by smuggling assistance across the borders, than it is possible for the American government to prevent its own citizens from using drugs smuggled across our borders. The porousness of Iraq's borders have now been admitted by Washington, a problem that I long ago pointed out.
But this commentary on the neighbors of Iraq misses the heart of the issue, which is that the Iraqis have way more weapons stashed away than are needed to drive us out of Iraq. It will be years before they begin to run out, and only then will smuggling across the borders (into Iraq), as well as the production of home made bombs (as in Palestine) become a significant problem. At this time it is waaaaaayyyy too early to speculate on how much support the Iraqi resistance will receive from their neighbors. If the US continues to demonstrate its impotence and heavy handedness, it's likely that when the resistance does start running out of weapons, Iraq's neighbors will be heartened to provided assistance. As an example of this effect in foreign affairs, we need only look back to the history of this nation's founding, when the resistance against the King was only supported by foreigners (mostly French) after it had been going for years, and had demonstrated that it was strong enough to continue without foreign assistance.
-- Carl |
