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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: neolib who wrote (236618)	6/10/2005 2:10:17 PM
From: tejek	Respond to of 1576642

Perhaps the Iraq government will prove weaker and less effective than the South Vietnamese government did, and won't be able to contain the insurgents even with US assistance, and without a serious threat of a massive convention invasion from any neighbor. If so all that will show is that a weak unpopular government can fall. It doesn't say much about counter guerilla or anti-insurgency warfare in general. Unpopular governments tend to be the type that attract insurgents. Weak unpopular ones tend to be the type that are defeated by insurgents. IMO, that says rather a lot about counter guerilla or anti-insurgency warfare. Defeating insurgencies is difficult unless you deal with the root problem. This is what I learned in southern Africa, and I believe the USA has so far failed to learn in Iraq. Well said.

To: neolib who wrote (236618)	6/10/2005 9:35:39 PM
From: TimF	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 1576642

Defeating insurgencies is difficult unless you deal with the root problem. This is what I learned in southern Africa, and I believe the USA has so far failed to learn in Iraq. The root problem in this case is that you have some Islamic fundamentalists and some Baathists who would rather rule the country than have the current government be in charge. In the long run the result will depend on how Iraq's government deals with the situation. We can weaken the insurgency and give the government time to grow, but we aren't going to completly eliminate the insurgency. I don't think Iraq's government is really all that unpopular. The insurgency isn't a mass movement against some corrupt abusive government, but rather a movement be people who would impose an abusive government. But the various factions of the insurgency still have enough support to be dangerous. An insurgency doesn't need majority support to be a serious problem. Tim