Action in Iraq a mirror image of Viet Nam??

As Casualties in Iraq Mount, Will Resolve Falter?


http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/03/international/middleeast/03ASSE.html?th

The answer to that question it would seem bears a significant resemblance to Viet Nam. It drove LBJ out of office.

The USA seems to have a knack for creating their own "clear and present danger." As an example, however bad Osama bin Laden may be, it seems that under the Taliban, the heroin trade out of Afghanistan was pretty much quashed. Now that they have been ousted, it's a virtual free-for-all pipeline again for the business. This was apparently one of those 'unexpected' situations on the part of the US govt.

"Nearly quashed" is overstating things, but I thought this article was interesting:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/1590827.stm

ebrown_p- Yeah, I certainly do remember. I also remember bomb shelters, and hiding under our desks in school during bomb drills.

Have you ever seen this? It was written in 1989, and now appears chillingly prophetic:

http://www.d-n-i.net/fcs/4th_gen_war_gazette.htm

Pheonix, I am not sure I get your point.

The article that you linked to describes a type of guerilla warfare where an ideologically foe with inferior military capability attacks the "back" of an army to try to "collapse" it.

This is not prophetic at all! It sounds eerily like the tactics used successfully by the Viet Cong in the 60's and 70's.

It is also describes the tactics that the US is facing in Iraq.

You seem to be trying to support the US occupation in Iraq. I don't get your argument. Iraq has never attacked the US, before, during or after the war.

Our action in Iraq has made US kids vulnerable to guerilla attacks. Just like they were in Viet Nam.

From an article on the downing of the American Helicopter
.
The Iraqis were jubilant. “We still have many days left until Eid [the celebratory feast ending Ramadan] but for us, this is as good as a feast,” Hatem told NEWSWEEK, as a crowd of boys and men vigorously nodded their assent. Asked why he supported the killings of American troops, who were ostensibly in Iraq to help rebuild the country, Hatem, 30, shook his head in disgust. “They’re occupiers,” he said. “They kill civilians, and they’re lying when they say they don’t. If they hear gunfire at a wedding party, they think they’re being fired on and they shoot. Three of my friends were killed this way.” Asked if he knew who the insurgents were, he swept his hand over the crowd. “They are all of us,” he said. Ali al Issawi, a farmer who lives across the road from Hatem, predicted that today’s Chinook crash would mark a turning point in the guerrilla war. “From this point on the Americans will suffer dead in bigger numbers,” he told Newsweek. “Before it was just one, two, or three a day. Soon it will be 15 or 20.”
That may be an exaggeration, but there is no question that the American troops now face a dilemma familiar to other occupying armies. Without concrete intelligence about the guerrillas, they will remain powerless to stop them. Yet the very tactics that they have used in the past to ferret out information—cordons and searches, midnight raids on the homes of suspected cell members, destruction of crops of those suspected of supporting the insurgents—only alienate the population further. Trapped in this vicious cycle, U.S. forces now must contend with a surge of Iraqi nationalism and anti-American anger that has raised the specter of a protracted, bloody conflict. “All the people around here are with the guerrillas,” al-Issawi told Newsweek, casting a glance over the fertile landscape of palm trees and canals that conjured up a distant time and place still fresh in American memories. “This will end up making Vietnam look like a playground.”

http://www.msnbc.com/news/988544.asp?0dm=C25KN