To: Sun Tzu who wrote (143100 ) 8/14/2004 1:21:00 PM From: Bilow Read Replies (1) | Respond to Hi Sun Tzu; Re: "Her first sentence implies very strongly that Iran is waging a proxy war against US by supplying Sadr with weapons, money, and men (in the form of AQ fighters). All these implications are more likely to be wrong than right, but she just presents a neatly packed image free of all doubts to convince us for the contrary. "(4) The South was blockaded by water on all sides, Iraq by contrast, has difficult to seal borders . This factor makes Iraq more likely to resist.It also shares a religious heritage with Iran, another neighbor. This factor makes Iraq more likely to resist. #reply-18132324(5) South Vietnam was connected to the rest of the Vietnam ethnic nation (their natural ally against a foreign invader) by a very small piece of land (the DMZ). By comparison, Iraq has incredibly long borders with the Arab nations of Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Syria, as well as an impossible to govern border with Iran. We're going to see every weapon produced on the planet smuggled across those borders. #reply-18780150No. What's happening is that the local minor powers are combining together in order to kick our asses . There's no reason for them to attack us directly, all they have to do is allow movement of weapons and "volunteers" across their borders . And since we've bitten off more than we can possibly chew, there's no way that we can widen the war to include those countries. (If we invaded Iran, for example, all it would do, at best, is vastly increase the number of draftees we'd have to collect up to garrison the badly controlled territory, and further increase the periphery that we would be unable to control the movement of men and weapons over.) The US is a sea power. It is not possible for us to win land wars in Asia without the assistance of a land power. Certainly we're not going to make the Rumsfeld mistake in Syria or Iran. #reply-18784276It would take a complete moron to believe that the US could conquer and occupy Iraq , with the intention of changing the government to one supportive of US interests, and with the further goal of eventually changing the governments of the surrounding hostile states (i.e. Syria, Iran and Saudi Arabia), without concluding that those surrounding states would contribute forces to impede US progress in Iraq . Only a complete moron would think that Iraq could be cut off from its neighbors and dealt with alone, and that our enemies would sit around without causing problems for us. By the way, that Shiite town where the UK lost 6 soldiers appears to be under the control of Iranian trained Shiite guerilla forces : #reply-19070282This is true, and the reason that the North Koreans were unable to develop a guerilla war in South Korea are quite illustrative of the limitations of US power. Since the US is fundamentally a sea power, South Korea, especially with the border at the narrow point it is now at, was a country where the vast majority of the border was relatively immune to infiltration. Iraq, by contrast, has long, sometimes mountainous, and never very well policed borders, especially with Iran. #reply-19117951Here are the facts: The US has accused Iran of fomenting and supporting attacks against the US in Iraq. By contrast, Iran makes few complaints. I'd say that they're coming over the border at us in droves. In fact, Iranian trained guerillas / civilians / whatever recently killed 6 British soldiers in the worst guerilla war incident since Bush declared victory on May 1st. #reply-19218542
