Ed Weathers: It’s not Vietnam that we should remember when we look at Iraq

[Dudley_DUright]

American soldiers are dying daily, killed by fervent, faceless, loosely organized foes who wear no uniforms and melt into the landscape, or the cityscape, after they attack. American helicopters are being shot out of the sky by shoulder-mounted surface-to-air missiles. Back home, the American public begins to grow disenchanted with a military enterprise it initially supported. No wonder anti-war commentators are saying that the U.S. occupation of Iraq threatens to turn into a quagmire like Vietnam. But the commentators don’t have it quite right. They have the wrong quagmire.

The more appropriate historical analogy for what the U.S. faces in Iraq is a different war: the one the Soviet Union tried to fight in Afghanistan from 1979 to 1989.

The similarities between the current U.S. occupation of Iraq and the Soviet-Afghan war are uncanny. Consider:

A superpower, in defiance of most world opinion, invades an Islamic Middle Eastern nation. The superpower is hoping to effect regime change and, citing an “imminent threat,” declares the invasion “an international duty.” Initially, the invasion goes well. Within weeks, all organized military opposition in the invaded nation appears to evaporate, and the invading superpower basks in its success, praised by its domestic media for its military prowess. The superpower imposes its own government on the invaded nation and settles in to oversee a comfortable, presumably temporary occupation.

<snip>

I write this on a day when 15 American troops were killed when their Chinook helicopter was shot down over a field in Iraq. It is a day when the world press is not on America’s side, when many Iraqis are losing faith in America’s ability to reconstruct their nation, and when the American people--and more and more American soldiers--are growing demoralized with a war whose justification seems flimsier by the week. I hope George W. Bush--or whoever does his reading for him--is studying the analyses of the Soviet -Afghan war. I wonder if he and Donald Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz possess a “national will” and a “moral commitment” that goes beyond the election of 2004. And I wonder if our soldiers will still be fighting and dying in Baghdad in 2013.

more...

http://www.memphisflyer.com/onthefly/onthefly_new.asp?ID=2644

[Capt_Nemo]

1. Exactly!

It is not Vietnam but a cross between Lebannon and Afghanistan.

[Noordam]

2. And Georgie has us in NOT ONE but TWO

We are in both Iraq and Afghanistan and losing troops in both countries on a daily basis.

[TexasEditor]

3. It's not Vietnam, it's not Afghanistan, it's Algeria.

I got this snippet from Salon.com, the story is archived on The Guardian website, and requires payment to read the article.

Robert Fisk in the Guardian (U.K.)

Understanding the brain. That's what you have to do in a guerrilla war. Find out how it works, what it's trying to do. An attack on U.S. headquarters in Baghdad and six suicide bombings, all at the start of Ramadan. Thirty-four dead and 200 wounded. Where have I heard those statistics before? And how could they be so well coordinated -- well-timed, down to the last second?

So here's the answer to question one. Algeria. After the Algerian government banned elections in 1991 that would have brought the Islamic Salvation Front to power, a Muslim revolt turned into a blood-curdling battle between the so-called Islamic Armed Group -- many of its adherents having cut their battle teeth in Afghanistan -- and a brutal government army and police force ... And the very worst atrocities -- the beheading of children, the raping and throat-cutting of women, the slaughter of policemen -- were committed at the beginning of Ramadan.

At Ramadan, Muslim emotions are heightened; in these most blessed of days, a Muslim feels that he or she must do something important so that God will listen to him or her. There is nothing in the Koran about violence in Ramadan or, for that matter, suicide bombers, any more than there is anything in the New Testament to urge Christians to carry out genocide or the ethnic cleansing in which they have become experts in the past 200 years, but Sunni Wahabi believers have often combined holy war with the "message", the dawa during Ramadan...

Some of America's enemies may come from other Arab countries, but most of the military opposition to America's presence comes from Iraqi Sunnis; not from Saddam "remnants" or "diehards" or "deadenders" (the Paul Bremer titles for a growing Iraqi resistance), but from men who in many cases hated Saddam.

They don't work "for" al-Qa'ida. But they have learnt their own unique version of history. Attack your enemies in the holy month of Ramadan. Learn from the war in Algeria. And the war in Afghanistan. Learn the lessons of America's "war on terror". Kill the leadership ... That was the message.

[MissMarple]

4. Brzezinski says the same thing about Algiers in the The Am.Prospect.

It's in a speech he gave in October that they have reprinted. He makes some interesting points. And he seems to have a sense of humor.

http://www.prospect.org/webfeatures/2003/10/brzezinski-z-10-31.html

[teryang]

5. They've got our number

in Iraq and they are going to kick our butts. Iraq isn't Nicaragua. Nor is it Algeria.

The attempt to dissuade Americans from looking at the Vietnam experience is to avoid self scrutiny. This war is about us losing our democracy, just as Vietnam was. Both wars followed coup d'etats after liberal regimes threatened the social order ordained by the super rich who like to think they are the rightful rulers of this country. Machiavelli 101. To distract the public from the enemy at home, start a war abroad.

To the people who sponsor Zbig, the government is like high school student government good for a show but not for the real decision making. They don't give a damn about American ideals or the shining city on the hill. It's the bottom line baby. Democracy interferes with the bottom line. We need those lines of communication in Central Asia. In fact, we need their oil and gas as well and the weak fractured friendly governments over there are gonna give it to us. Right Zbig?

Both wars served the reactionary right wing plutocrats at home who staged coup d'etats to save themselves from all further democratic "dialectic." The wars were the further distraction from the illegitimacy and treasonous acts upon which their rule was based. Who attacked Congress with anthrax? Did the terrorist flight students' landlord's husband find a little anthrax at the office? Did a biological warfare defense contractor screw up national exit polling in 2002? Who sponsored the anthrax in the mail drill?

Things are woefully wrong at home. All the checks and balances are gone. We have a slavish corrupt legislature afraid of its own shadow that might as well let diebold and wackenhut take over the drafting of legislation. I've got an idea says the architect of Asian Empire, let's look in Algeria to see what the problem is. There was a nexus and a dynamic between the plutocrats and Vietnam which brought us catastophe. That same nexus and dynamic exists with respect to the Iraqi war. It's a cancer at home.

I like the part where he accuses the Russians of carrying Imperial baggage. What a laugh! Look who's talking, the muhajadeen puppet master who said, "we need a Pearl Harbor like event...."

You know, it isn't like Vietnam. It is much, much worse.

People like Pipes the lesser and Ledeen are so easy to peg. Zbig has everyone fooled.