Thursday, April 12, 2007



Out of troops

The US has again extended the tour of duty of its troops in Iraq, from a year to 15 months. And the reason they're doing it is pretty clear: they're out of troops. Longer deployments will allow them to maintain higher troop levels in Iraq, but at the cost of eroding the army's long-term capability. But I guess anything is better than having to admit that the war is unwinnable and that the US has been defeated again, just as it was in Vietnam...

Posted by Idiot/Savant at 4/12/2007 01:46:00 PM

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4 comments:

The Republican Party has always worked closely with the fundamentalist Moslem movement - that alqaeda movement wouldn't be the fascist dangerous threat it is today had there not been close support for their efforts in Afghanistan from '79 through early '80s; Fundamentalist Sunnis also supported in their campaign against Shiia Iran in the 1980 invasion of that country by Western backed Saddam Regime which was funded by US proxies (eg the "Governments" of Saudia Arabia, Jordan, Egypt and the Gulf.

And today, four years of U.S. policies have somehow managed to create a Sunni fundamentalist terrorist movement in Iraq - once the bastion of secularism in the Arab world.

They are like hand and glove - Republican & Fundamentalists.

It is pitiful. There is good material updated daily on the catastrophic effects on secularism, liberalism and hope in the MidEast of the Bush/Blair/Howard strategy at:

http://www.juancole.com/

 Posted by Anonymous : 4/12/2007 02:55:00 PM

..."that the US has been defeated again, just as it was in Vietnam..."

has it really lost in Iraq ? Surely a loss will be the insurgents/foreign fighters destroying all the American forces there (which they have hardly done).

WHile the Americans didnt win in vietnam (ie they didnt permanently crush the vietcong), who have to remember they were there assisting the South Vietnamese. it was only well after the americans left in 1975 that the north vietnamese won, so really it was a draw.

 Posted by Anonymous : 4/12/2007 03:40:00 PM

Anon2: has it really lost in Iraq?

Yes. The success or failure of a war isn't measured by how many you kill or whether you eliminate the enemy (real life is not a computer or WFB game); rather it is measured by whether the war achieves its aims. America's aims in Iraq were to create a stable, peaceful, democratic and pro-American client state. They haven't achieved it, and if you think they ever will, then there's a man in Nigeria you should talk to.

Likewise in Vietnam; America's aim was to prevent the fall of South Vietnam to communism (out of fears of a "domino effect"). They failed, and were humiliated in the process. Unfortunately, they didn't learn their lesson: that you can't militarily defeat a popular insurgency. You can win every time on the battlefield (and the US is doing this in Iraq), but that isn't enough to win a war.

 Posted by Idiot/Savant : 4/12/2007 04:04:00 PM

It amazes me that so many people still haven't worked out you can win every battle and still lose the war.

 Posted by Sanctuary : 4/12/2007 09:57:00 PM

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