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Politics : I Will Continue to Continue, to Pretend.... -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Brumar89 who wrote (25633)	2/17/2007 1:50:03 AM
From: Sully-	Respond to of 35834

Hat tip to Tim Fowler **** Kenneth Pollack replies: While I am the first to say that Iraq is not Vietnam, it is equally unfortunate that we have allowed popular misconceptions about the nature of our defeat in Southeast Asia to further confuse the debate over Iraq. Once General Creighton Abrams took over as commander of the Military Assistance Command in Vietnam, and Robert Komer was brought in to head the civilian side of the effort, the United States pursued an extraordinarily successful counterinsurgency campaign, presided over by precisely the sort of unified command structure that is needed in Iraq. Far from being a failure, as conventional wisdom would have it, the Komer-headed Civil Operations and Revolutionary Development Support program virtually eradicated the Vietcong as a force in South Vietnam by about 1970. At that point, Hanoi was forced to begin mounting conventional invasions. The first was smashed by U.S. airpower in 1972, in the Linebacker II campaign, while the second, in 1975, ultimately succeeded because of the absence of U.S. airpower. Turning to Iraq, the working group I headed advocated the strategic and tactical approach often described as a “spreading oil stain” because it has been proven repeatedly to work. When American formations have employed versions of this approach—as the 1st Cavalry Division did in north Baghdad, the 101st Airborne did in Kirkuk, and most recently the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment did in Tal Afar—the results have been unqualified successes. Indeed, American military commanders are increasingly pushing to adopt precisely the sort of changes we recommended, and often doing so on their own initiative. As far as Iraqi self-expression, the Iraqis are constantly being asked what they want—by pollsters, by journalists, and by people like myself who interact with them on a regular basis. The great shame is that more Americans don’t bother to listen to them. The Iraqis’ greatest desire is not to see the American presence ended but to see it actually start to provide them with the safety, jobs, clean water, sanitation, gasoline, and other necessities they need to live normal lives. In fact, the most recent polling data available shows that a healthy majority of all Iraqis (and the vast majority of Shiite and Kurdish Iraqis) do not believe that U.S. forces should leave Iraq for at least two years, although the same poll showed that most were very unhappy with the inability of the United States to provide basic services and public safety. theatlantic.com