The Longest War
I have some sympathy with the difficulties experienced by the President and Secretary of State as they tried to articulate the meaning of Vietnam to them, and to cope with its incongruous application to their policies in Iraq. The terrible, long wars of Southeast Asia were, to the thinking of neo-cons, pragmatically justified as a check on communism. To this day the neocons argue that South Vietnam was lost only because Congress cut off funds for military aid after the American military withdrew, and in any case Thailand and Malaysia remained safely within the sphere of American influence and capitalism because the United States drew the line in Vietnam and Cambodia. This is, however, an almost completely upside-down revisionist description of the actual history of the region. Thinking clearly about Vietnam should lead, if logic mattered, to thinking clearly about Iraq. It would even lead to a less defeatist approach than now being spun by repeatedly misguided Washington media.
The chief lesson of Vietnam is that in any civil war, the interests of peace and economic development are both served by having someone win.
From the American perspective, or indeed the perspective of the entire West, the fastest path to victory by someone is typically the most useful. In the case of Vietnam it is quite clear from even a cursory retrospective review of history that Ho Chi Minh, or more generally the Hanoi-centered political movement that was Viet Communism, was the likely victor from the early 1950's. Furthermore, while that movement was nationalistic and anti-colonialist, its leaders were sufficiently interested in support against China that they would have and could have built in Vietnam a kind of leftist version of Taiwan, had the United States been willing to support them. This would have required very different thinking than that engaged in by Dulles, Rusk, and Kissinger: it would have required a post-colonial frame of mind. One might have hoped that the French defeat at Dienbienphu would have led to the epiphany, but it didn't, and the United States tragically repeated the French error for most of the 60's and nearly half the 70's. The domestic cost, as with Iraq, was political upheaval, dissension, distraction from other real problems, much loss of life, reduced global leadership, and some contribution to declining standards of living for all Americans.
The lesson then is that someone needs to win in Iraq. That someone doesn't need to dominate all of what is called Iraq, just as it was not necessary that the North Vietnamese dominate Cambodia in order for peace and economic development to commence in that region. Who are the plausible winners, or victors, in Iraq? Plainly the answer includes the Kurds in their region; it's ludicrous to think that the path to peace and economic development includes dispossessing the Kurds (again). In the western Sunni areas, Syria and Jordan can and should play a role. This may be anathema to the ideologically blinded Administration, but it is part of the answer. In the east, the United States should lead a coalition of Western nations into immediate discussions with Iran. Again, this may be impossible for this Administration, yet in truth Kissinger achieved a much harder task when he brokered a deal with North Vietnam. That deal empowered his enemy, and over the course of the next 30 years laid the groundwork for the current rapport between Hanoi and Washington. That (and not Kissinger's deceptive complaints about the Democratic Congress) is the real lesson from Vietnam that applies to Iraq. In truth, if the United States could work out with Iran a suitable approach to the troubles in Iraq, the reasonable long-term outcome would be a productive relationship with Iran, as well as peace in Iraq. For Secretary of State Rice to bluster about the need for Iraq to remain unified, even as it plainly is in the civil war that the Administration denied existed only a few months ago, is not a step in the right direction. Hopefully Mr. Kissinger is telling the White House the truth, at least behind closed doors.
So Rice is still blustering about the need for Iraq to remain unified. She apparently is unacquainted with the term "Churchill's folly" - his folly being the "unified" jerrybuilt country called Iraq.
Judging by present conditions in Iraq, it doesn't seem like the Iraqi people have any great nationalistic fervor. Perhaps what you suggest in your post makes sense.
November 19, 2006 12:12 PM | Reply | Permalink
The 'chief lesson of Vietnam is that in any civil war, the interests of peace and economic development are both served by having someone win' ? Really! I thought the chief lesson of Vietnam was that if you invade another country the people will fight you until you leave.
The chief problem with Reed Hundt's politics in this posting is that there's no morality. Would Mr Hundt argue that in the US civil war the interests of peace and economic development would have been served by a Confederate victory?
The US invaded and occupied Iraq utterly without provocation or justification, and continues to attack the Iraqi people with a savagery that astonishes and repulses the entire world.
The lesson is that one can't do what the US has done. Don't invade. Don't occupy.
And for the US at present? The lesson is to get out. Anything now the US can do for the Iraqi people must be determined by somebody not the US: the Iraqi people, if they can get it together to make coherent demands; the UN ditto; and the International Criminal Court to clarify in detail the responsibilities of the US leaders who violated recognized standards of human rights and international law.
Kissinger's 'lesson' from Vietnam is that it was bad because the US didn't win; for all his bluster, Hunt agrees with him and argues that the lesson from Iraq is that the US isn't winning. The position is morally vacuous.
Peter Miller
November 19, 2006 12:52 PM | Reply | Permalink
J. McCutchen
No morality in peace? For three +years now we've been sliding ever so surely downward through the circles of Hell and taking that country along for the ride. The situation will be resolved on the battlefield but not by US troops fighting MWF against Sunni insurgents and TTh against the Shiite and other militias.
November 19, 2006 1:41 PM | Reply | Permalink
J. McCutchen
I watched CNN's Combat Hospital the other night. Bloody, very bloody. It took me two viewings to finish but it wasn't the scenes of pain and death and gore that unnerved me it was the nagging question "why?". Why did that soldier lose his leg? Why is that orderly mopping up pools of blood from the ER floor?
The reason, painfully obvious, is that the US political leadership and opinion elites cannot admit their failure and get the hell out.
November 19, 2006 1:51 PM | Reply | Permalink
J. McCutchen
In Vietnam our leaders were forever hallucinating those "lights at the end of the tunnel". Thirty odd years later, instead of "peace with honor" we are endlessly admonished that "failure is not an option" and in grave tones "the next four to six months are critical"
Here's a sampler. Fifty like it can be found here
Sen Reed: "Gen Abizaid, how much time do you think we have to bring down the level of violence in Baghdad before we reach some type of tipping point where it accelerates beyond the control of even the Iraqi government?"
Gen Abizaid: "Four to six months."
"The next 75 days are going to be critical for what happens”
General George Casey,
Testimony to the Senate Armed Services Committee
"The next few months will be critical as the new government must establish security, continue to rebuild Iraq’s infrastructure, and prepare the Iraqi people for national elections scheduled for January 2005.”
Senator Richard G. Lugar
Statement to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee
"The next six to seven months are critical."
Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton (Democrat - NY)
Quoted in the Washington Post on November 30, 2005
"I think the next few months will be crucial."
Seantor Pat Roberts
November 19, 2006 2:32 PM | Reply | Permalink
Iraq was as hopeless of a cause as Vietnam before the first U.S. troops ever arrived. It was a war based on lies and we will lose badly whether we stay 1 more year or 10 more years.
Rob
robwire.com
November 19, 2006 3:35 PM | Reply | Permalink
G C Wall
It was assinine for the PNAC and others to forget, disregard, or arrogantly believe that the lessons of history had no bearing on their choices.
If the civilian population supports the enemy, the only way to win such a war is through genocide. Vietnam supposedly taught the U.S. that a war of attrition is a loser.
Assuming that the lessons of Vietnam were not lost on the current leadership, then the purpose for invading Iraq changes. The war of opportunity, (war crimes,) is not a war meant to be won. What is desired is an ongoing conflict in which American losses can be limited to a level that the public will accept, and civilian casualties can be hidden or are received in a disconnected manner that permits the killing of the innocent without remorse or conscience.
How can the U.S. end the cycle when too many years of peace hurts the economy, and instigates leadership to start another war?
November 19, 2006 3:38 PM | Reply | Permalink
Unlike Mr. Reed Hundt, I have no sympathy whatsoever for anyone -- especially any government -- who would listen to Henry "Der Bomber" Kissinger about anything. Not too long ago, he advised Sheriff Cheney and Deputy Dubya: "We have to humiliate them." By "them," of course, he meant any Iraqis who thought they had the most to say about their own country and how they should organize and govern it. Now, with the "humiliation" business appearing more of an American attribute, the long-discredited influence peddler has started to change his tune again. He does that quite frequently, depending upon which official ass he needs to kiss at the moment to maintain "access" for his corrupt clients. I have good and numerous reasons for this view.
During my desultory days in the Nixon-Kissinger Fig Leaf Contingent -- spent vainly trying to Vietnamize the Vietnamese -- we used to sardonically joke:
Q: "If President Nixon has a plan to end the war and withdraw the troops, then why do we have to go and fight in Vietnam?"
A: "You fool! Don't you know anything about Tricky Dick? How can he possibly withdraw us from Vietnam unless he sends us there first?"
Q: "But won't lying about his so-called 1968 plan and going back on his promise cost him his re-election in 1972?"
A: "No way, man. The American people never like to change dicks in the middle of a screwing."
We drafted or bullied-into-enlisting bullet catchers (or, Ordnance Absorption Technicians, if you prefer) used to pass the time entertaining ourselves with stuff like that. The career lifers, of course, loved it all and couldn't get enough.
"Don't knock the war," they exulted. "It's the only one we've got."
"We're here because we're here because we're here because we're here," we'd reply.
"Happiness is a hight body count." "Kill a Commie for Christ." "Kill a gook for God." "Aw, just kill them all and let God sort it out," they would add.
"We are the unwilling led by the unqualified to do the unnecessary for the ungrateful," we would summarize.
And so on and on and on the interminable, never resolved argument raged; even long after the conflict that engendered it had petered out in exhausted ignominity for America.
Thanks for monumentally less than nothing, Henry Kissinger. Regarding your influence-peddling comments echoing nothing more than the already discredited conventional "wisdom" about "victory" in Iraq (see Andrew Marr's 11/19/06 BBC interview), let me just introduce you to a Vietnamese victor over your vainglorious viciousness who would slightly paraphrase your insipid, inane insanity for the benefit of Iraqi patriots:
"We mean by 'military victory,' an Iraqi government that Iraqis can establish; whose writ runs across the whole country; that gets the civil war under control and sectarian violence under control in a time period that has absolutely nothing to do with the irrelevant political processes of "the democracies" and what they will or will not support. Believe us Vietnamese, such a victory over American colonial imperialism is not only entirely possible, but a virtual certainty."
Why doesn't this ghoulish gargoyle get a clue and stop trying to rescue his ruined reptilian reputation by helping to pile even more Iraqi corpses onto the mountain of them he already has to his eternal "credit" in Southeast Asia? And we've got a novice monster like Saddam Hussein on trial in a cage?
November 19, 2006 4:26 PM | Reply | Permalink
G C Wall
"Wartime stimulus benefits economy" read the headline.
Killing a person and stealing his money stimulates the robber's economic circumstances, as well. Now multiply that situation by 100,000+ and it is Iraq.
I suppose the PNAC would have argued that somebody was going to kill the victim and steal his money, so why not us. This is the moral standing of the invasion of Iraq.
When did it become "cutting and running" if the intelligent action to take is to cut one's losses and get out? Russia woke-up and left Afghanistan.
What is preventing the U.S. from accepting reality and acting appropriately? A nation shouldn't continue to throw lives down a rat hole, just because it created the rat hole, and refuses to admit to the mistake.
Those who initiated and advanced propaganda for the war against Iraq will not admit to the crime, because if they do they will no longer be considered strategists, but will be perceived as war criminals.
November 19, 2006 5:55 PM | Reply | Permalink
Furthermore, while that movement was nationalistic and anti-colonialist, its leaders were sufficiently interested in support against China that they would have and could have built in Vietnam a kind of leftist version of Taiwan, had the United States been willing to support them.
I had a long post written up in response to this, but the more I wrote, the more absurd and "upside down revisionist" this statement struck me as being, and finally I decided to leave it at this: please examine Ho Chi Minh's life, and the history of Western relations with every communist/left leaning authoritarian government -- pay particular attention to Tito -- and then tell me how easy it is to come to terms with nations that have fundamentally different approaches to government than we have. Then, look at U.S. relations with Cuba (almost two decades after the Cold War ended), or what happened to the pinkish Chavez in Venezuela, and answer me this: even if these nations were willing to play nice with us, is this country willing to do what it takes to play nice with them? To do so would take a fundamental shift in the way we look at the world -- we'd have to be willing to accept that other people do things differently and that's ok, and we show no willingness to do this. Neither, for that matter, do the most extremist of folks in those countries.
November 19, 2006 6:34 PM | Reply | Permalink
I'd like the lesson of Vietnam to be, "Don't go around haphazardly invading other countries. That goes double for situations where the pretext for invasion is false, and triple for situations where killing people and breaking things won't bring victory. Even if they did, that wouldn't make it right."
-- Good people can have honest differences of opinion. Republicans bear a hefty burden to prove they are good and honest. (Jalmari)
November 19, 2006 6:53 PM | Reply | Permalink
Well I was on the side that was fighting against fascism in Vietnam and my side won.
There was precisely nothing in common between the spirit of the Vietnam solidarity movement (whose roots went back to the International brigades in the Spanish civil war) and the spirit of the craven "America Firsters" here pretending to be "progressive" while advocating that Iraqis should be ruled by the sort of corrupt tyrannies that America has always backed instead of helping their elected government defeat the fascist terrorists attempting to impose their rule over the Iraqi people by the same sort of open brutality that the Nazis were notorious for.
The lessons of Vietnam are very clear. The Vietnamese people won primarily through their own efforts but also with effective solidarity from their friends and neighbours who weren't in the least bit cowed by bluster about the war being "unwinnable" and not worth the sacrifice.
Exactly the same people who supported the American aggression in Vietnam are opposing American solidarity with Iraqis today. Paleo-conservatives like Kissinger and corporate liberal Democrats (who started the Vietnam war under Kennedy and escalated it under Johnson).
November 19, 2006 9:28 PM | Reply | Permalink
From"We had no business in Iraq" to "now we do". This I don't understand.
November 20, 2006 3:03 AM | Reply | Permalink
In Chavez' case, at least, there is the matter of our...err, Venezuela's...oil and that complicates the equation.
November 20, 2006 4:06 AM | Reply | Permalink
I think Mr. Miller you have really got to the core of this issue. The lack of any moral perspective in Mr. Hundt's post is more than a little disturbing. Of course the moral twistings and contortions of our immoral and criminal leaders (can Mr. Hundt deal with the question of the Bush-Blair crimes, or will it always be their mistakes and incompetence? Are we destined forever to repeat the immoral acts of renegade politicians?) demand a direct rebuke.
There are reasons al-Sadr opposed the American occupation even though on paper his Shi'a supporters were supposed to benefit from the American aggression; there are reasons that except for the sycophants Blair and Howard, the American acts repulse the world; and the moral stench of their acts even can be sensed here in the US and not just on the far Left.
November 20, 2006 4:19 AM | Reply | Permalink
Vietnam was not a civil war. Vietnam was a war of revolution against a colonial occupier. What we're looking at in Iraq is more like Rwanda or the Balkans, conflict between ethnic groups for control of the country. In Europe, as Tony Judt describes at length (among a host of other issues) in Postwar, the twentieth century is a history of genocide and forced migration. Yugoslavia was the last stage in that history. In Iraq, it seems unlikely that there will be any path other than genocide, forced migration and ethnic conflict. Yes, the Kurds have, up to now, successfully navigated this path--mostly because they had a decade to work out their political conflicts in a restricted regime.
There is no winner to be declared here. The violence will continue for as long as it takes to create substates of ethnic homogeneity, with Baghdad organized like Beirut. Some things might have help ameliorate this, like distributing a chunk of oil revenue directly to citizens. The US is finding, though, that Sadaam's ruthless rule was not entirely irrational.
November 20, 2006 5:53 AM | Reply | Permalink
This article by Mr. Hunt and the following thread of comments brings to mind a book which influenced my thinking when I read it in the early seventies and continues to do so. The book is “Small is Beautiful” by E. F. Schumacher”.
What first caught my attention when I saw the book was its sub-title. “Economics as if People Mattered”.
Perhaps a foreign policy that had as its base assumption that {other] people mattered would work better, even if only for pragmatic reasons. That which is morally and ethically right usually is, and always should be, pragmatically right too.
November 20, 2006 6:37 AM | Reply | Permalink
Jay, your points are well taken, but I would argue that VN was a civil war. But it takes some historical depth to make that argument. "Vietnam" was a French invention, amalgamating Tonkin, Annam and a large hunk of Cambodia (Cochin China) into at least the seed of what we call a modern "nation."
And this may in fact be a good point of comparison with Iraq, considering "Mesopotamia" was invented by the Turks, futher consolodated by the Brits and so on. Obviously the various groups organized under this banner of "nation" are competitive, often with disastrous results.
It's so ironic that the call for "unification" of Vietnam, championed by both sides, was a call for the return of the French model of the nation state, and not some indigenous model (which would have been medieval anyway.) But the human entities organized under this concept were not in accord with each other - and considering that the major players in the south were in fact Tonkinese, as were the major players in the north, it strikes me as a civil war. Essentially the Reds against the Catholics.
At any rate, that's the outline of my argument re: civil war. It gets a little more complex when the VC are thown in, but I think the argument would still hold.
Neoboho
November 20, 2006 8:32 AM | Reply | Permalink
You obviously know more about this than I do, so I will bow to your superior knowledge.
My reading of the history of Vietnam includes a claim that HO Chi Minh approached the US seeking support and was rebuffed, and that his movement was broadly popular. I may be misremembering. I may have read unreliable sources.
I was alive during Vietnam, and by 1972, which is about the time I could have formed an opinion that had any reasonable basis, it was pretty clear that the war at that point in time was a broadbased war against the Americans. So if you're right (and I don't doubt you), the American presence was a unifying force. In Iraq, the opposite seems to be happening--that the US presence is either irrelevant or even a destablizing force.
November 20, 2006 9:39 AM | Reply | Permalink
Perhaps is all boils down to what one calls a "civil war," heh. I think you're correct that Ho asked for US help and was rebuffed. BTW, Ho's political writings were typically introduced with verbatim language drawn from the US Constitution, Bill of Rights, Declaration of Independence.
As I recall the same thing happened in Cuba. As soon as Batista was deposed, there were some friendly gestures between the US and Cuban Rebels. At some point Castro declared a communist state - but I'm not sure what the factors leading up to that were. It's possible that the US traded in a democratic socialist for a marxist. My guess is that the breakdown between US/Cuban relationships during that interim period concerned property and investment - US capital in Cuba that the rebels were planning to nationalize.
At any rate, I think the big difference between VN and Iraq is the Cold War factor. The Bush Administration is trying to make international terrorism into a new "cold war" adversary. But the differences in terms of "threat" is enormous.
So the Reds v. the Catholics in VN - Tonkinese v. Tonkinese - was lopsided. Without the American military presence the 1 million Catholics couldn't have made much of a stand. This also demarks the big difference in Cold War foreign policies, since the US was spending much more in their role than the USSR was in its role. I can't help wondering if this is where Brzezinski got his idea to draw the Soviets into Afghanistan - a reversal of the US experience in VN.
Neoboho
November 20, 2006 11:06 AM | Reply | Permalink
The Bush Administration is trying to make international terrorism into a new "cold war" adversary.
Yes. It would have been smarter to just stick with the terrorist warning system than to introduce a hot war they couldn't win. Tristero over at Hullabaloo reminds us, again, that any reasonably satisfactory result of this invasion was of very low probability. It still boggles the mind that they thought they could just win this, install Chalabi, leave behind 50,000 troops and send the rest home all in the space of a few months.
That's all they have, you know. Fearmongering and character smears of their opponents are the tactics they have to use because the rest of their agenda is so broadly unpopular.
November 20, 2006 11:21 AM | Reply | Permalink
I value Reed Hundt's contribution. I find a lot of truth in it. I am amazed that no one else here thinks the same. Rather the response from everyone (if I may oversimplify) is that the Vietnam War and the Iraq war are both intrinsically immoral.
No no no. Quite the opposite. The moral ground is the ONLY real justification FOR either of these wars. And that just shows how dangerous it is to argue international relations on moral grounds, because of course the arguments AGAINST both of these wars are far far stronger.
Vietnam: 20th century communism was one of the worst scurges ever seem by humankind. In terms of the sheer number of people killed in the USSR and China, in terms of the passionless mechanism of killing, in terms of the soulless regimentation of everyones' lives, In terms of the enforcement of universal hypocrisy. Etc. To fight to save the Vietnamese from similar degradation was a noble and moral cause. I know I know the reality in Vietnam was very different -- that is actually the point I am making.
Iraq: Likewise, Saddam was indeed an evil dictator ... I don't have to elaborate. Especially today, the main argument for staying in Iraq is the moral one -- we broke it, it is our responsibility to fix it whatever the cost.
So if you want to argue that the Vietnam War was intrinsically immoral, that it was only about the evil US wishing to subjugate other countries, you will lose that argument in the eyes of US public opinion. Likewise Iraq.
November 20, 2006 12:09 PM | Reply | Permalink
That's a good way to look at it
Rather than seeing autonomy or 'partition' as an instigator of destabilization of nearby regimes, it can be looked at, as you do, as a strengthener of those regimes, of their spheres of interest
Shi'a Iraq will have strong ties with Iran, though there's no need for it to become another Iran, nor for the US to allow that.
Sunni Iraq will have strong ties with Syria, Jordan, etc
Kurd Iraq will have strong ties with US and with more secular and Western-leaning states in the former USSR and central Asia and *eventually* this could include Turkey
These areas and interests will be less pitted against each other when each can be given a decent piece of the pie, on all levels, with which to develop and celebrate themselves
A US hand and presence is needed, but can be vastly reduced and oriented towards stabilizing hot spots, borders and interface areas between the zones
November 20, 2006 12:39 PM | Reply | Permalink
Trying to draw historical parallels, I was first drawn to the Phillipine Insurrection of 100 years ago, when a cocky United States used its growing military might to "liberate" a people suffering from a dictatorship, and incidentally established ourselves as a world power. The problem is that the liberated didn't want us there either, and a bloody and brutal war followed. The natives had a charming habit of beheading our soldiers and we replied with genocide, killing entire villages. Eventually genocide won out.
I have heard it said the American people can't take the casualties. I don't think that's true. I think we don't have the stomach to inflict them. The sheer slaughter it would take to pacify Iraq would turn ours and the rest of the world's stomachs. Maybe we have grown up after all.
A more recent parallel is probably Somalia. Another broken country that fragmented down to militias. If you take our experience in Somalia and multiply it by several years and 100 times more troops, you have Iraq.
The problem with partitioning Iraq is the Kurds. Once an independent Kurdish state is established all hell will break loose with Iran and more particularly Turkey as the Kurds there will want to hook up.
Whatever the solution, it is obvious our soldiers should not be there. Mr. Bush needs to declare "Mission Accomplished" again and park our army somewhere a little more user-friendly.
November 20, 2006 12:47 PM | Reply | Permalink
I also agree with Peter Miller. I also disagree on other grounds with Mr. Hundt that peace and economic development are served by having someone win.
To begin with, this theory leads to an infinite regression. Ultimately, this theory leads to the conclusion that peace and economic development are served by having one nation rule every other nation.
Also, consider the specific case raised by Peter Miller of the American Civil War. There was never any realistic possibility that the Confederacy would have been able to conquer the rest of the United States. The most the Confederacy could have hoped for was a cease-fire.
In the realm of alternative history, what would the result of this cease-fire have been? Conceivably, the result would have been peace and economic prosperity for the North. The result for the Confederacy would have been more dubious, because the Confederacy had a regressive socio-economic system. From a purely economic standpoint, the war was devastating for the South, and they would have been much better off with a short war ending in a stalemate.
The moral question is more troubling. Slavery might have eventually died a natural death, after a very long delay, not until the boll-weevil cut the legs out from under King Cotton and the invention of mechanical cotton-pickers did away with the need for a large supply of manual labor. This delay would have been bad for black people, although it could be argued that the abolition of slavery was initially in name only. In the best of all possible worlds, one might dream that left to their own devices the Confederacy could have modernized and developed a more egalitarion society without the lingering bitterness of the Civil War. The KKK as we know it would not have been created, but does this mean that the Civil Rights Movement, when and if it came, would have been less heated? This is not clear. The example of South Africa is not encouraging.
On balance, it is clear that not winning would have been OK for the North. The case for the Confederacy is less clear.
November 20, 2006 12:48 PM | Reply | Permalink
What would be interesting to flesh out, for each of these regional interest groups, what sort of relationship does US want, strategically?
This would get us out of the tactical box of 'we can't do this because then such-and-such interest will 'win' some tactical victory, and that makes us look bad/weak and that's a no-no'
Rather, we should accept that Iran for example, will exist ... so what kind of Iran do we want and what kind of Iran-relationship, long-term?
Same with Syria
Not the same, however, with terror groups, where the strategy is clear
However, even with those groups, the question is how to you get to your strategic goal?
How do you enlist the regional interests in achieving that goal, in ways they can accept and are likely to actually perform?
Once you get the strategic vision for the area clear, then tactical options open up.
This also means getting clear about US bottom-line interests in Iraq and region: what are the minimum positive outcomes, and what are the true no-go outcomes?
Make those explicit and then negotiate a tactical path, a joint process with regional players to get there in some way.
November 20, 2006 12:55 PM | Reply | Permalink
What an absolute crock.
What a wonderful man marcf is saving all these people from his perceived evil. Hitler also had similar goals and a similar moral viewpoint, and spoke about Bolshevism in the same way. Why don't you adopt some of his effective methods for stopping the scourge of Bolshevism.
November 20, 2006 5:17 PM | Reply | Permalink
J. McCutchen
Eye on Iraq: Worse than Tet
By Martin Sieff
UPI
"President Bush is changing course on Iraq just as President Johnson did on Vietnam after the 1968 Tet offensive. But the situation facing U.S. policymakers now in Iraq is vastly worse than anything their predecessors faced after Tet."
November 21, 2006 9:20 AM | Reply | Permalink