corrente

Richard Cohen is good today:

Here are the reasons Iraq is not Vietnam: It is a desert, not a jungle. The enemy is not protected and supplied by major powers such as the Soviet Union or China, not to mention a formidable front-line state such as North Vietnam. The Iraqis are not, like the Vietnamese, a single culture fighting a long-term war of liberation from colonial masters. They are fragmented by religion and language, and they have been independent ever since the British left lo these many years ago. In almost every way but one, Iraq is not Vietnam. Here's the one: We don't know what the hell we're doing.
(via WaPo)

The cynical view, of course, is that we thought we knew what we were doing. There seemed to be no real reason to light the match by closing down Sadr's newspaper, leading me to think it's all election year politics: burst the guy's bubble now. Too bad it wasn't a bubble, there was no back-up plan, and that the unintended consequence has been to bring about a nascent Iraqi nationalism—directed against us.

Even with our eyes open, we were blind as a bat.

It is the same in Iraq. We went to war for the wrong reasons, and with too few troops and too few allies. Just about every expectation turned out to be misplaced. The occupation has not been financed by oil revenue, as we were assured. The Iraqi army and police are not, as promised, up to the task of maintaining order. Americans were often greeted as liberators, but also as conquerors. The United States did not commit enough troops to intimidate looters and the civilian leaders we backed turned out to have larger followings in Georgetown than in Baghdad. Victory remains possible, but first we'll have to figure out what victory is.

The lesson of Vietnam is that once you make the initial mistake, little you do afterward is right.

Yep, quagmires are like that.