In the following article, conservative opinion columnist makes the somewhat surprising case for the similarities between Iraq and Vietnam. The similarities he offers, however, while obviously having a bit of "gotcha" quality to them, are nevertheless interesting - and I'm interested as to what some others here think about them.
http://www.nationalreview.com/lowry/lowry200404160949.asp The unrest in Fallujah and the Moqtada al-Sadr revolt have prompted comparisons to the Tet offensive. They are apt, just not how the people making them intend. Tet was a disaster for the Viet Cong. The South Vietnamese people resolutely refused to rally to its cause, and the Viet Cong suffered devastating losses. Al-Sadr today is retreating after Shiites rejected his putsch. In Fallujah, the United States is inflicting stiff casualties on the enemy. The insurgents there have done us the enormous Tet-like favor of presenting themselves to be killed. But Tet played in the liberal press as a world-shaking victory for the Viet Cong, just as a hyperventilating media has portrayed the Fallujah action and Moqtada al-Sadr's aborted revolt as the beginning of the end of the U.S. occupation in Iraq. The relentlessly downbeat coverage matters, because national will is important, and as in Vietnam, the consequences of failure in Iraq would be catastrophic. Consider the humanitarian cost. More than a million South Vietnamese were sent to reeducation camps after the U.S. defeat, and more than two million South Vietnamese fled the country in a mass flotilla of human suffering and desperation. Saddam's crushing of the revolt against him after the Persian Gulf War in 1991, killing tens of thousands, is a taste of what would come if former Baathists prevail in Iraq, and radical Shiites would be no less brutal. JDG _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
