Reply #23: How? [View All]

[DivinBreuvage]

With all due respect, NNN0LHI, I've heard this argument from several sources and I still don't buy it. Does anyone really think the US can be more brutal and repressive than the Nazis in Eastern Europe or Napoleon in Spain? Yet it didn't work for them either. I think it might be a different story if you're applying all that force within your own territory, but not when you insert your handful of troops into a populous foreign land whose combattants have access to so many nasty weapons, so many lines of supply, the sympathies of the population, a real reason to fight, and the willingness to keep dying until they bleed you to death with a thousand tiny cuts, or whatever the saying is.

Of course one thing the Nazis and Napoleon didn't have was that magical wonder weapon that kills every living thing within the charmed circle of its range and then starts burning others to death with varying degrees of slowness. But I'm still not sure that even that would guarantee a stable US presence in Iraq for very long. Granted, the Iraqis wouldn't be causing trouble any more, but I'm not sure how the rest of the planet would respond to it.

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