Had We Learned the Lessons of the Vietnam War . . .

Had our political leaders paid closer attention to our experiences fighting the Vietnam War, they would have realized that disenfranchised people would endure tremendous sacrifice and struggle heroically and steadfastly against foreign occupiers and aggressors. Tactically, they would have anticipated the difficulty of fighting a counter insurgency war. How the guerilla/insurgent’s “hit, run, and disappear” tactics not only nullifies the superior weapons technology of the invading/occupying force, but also provides vast war-fighting advantage in concealment, confrontation, intelligence, and communication. They would have foreseen the frustration of fighting an enemy indistinguishable from those we claim to be liberating and protecting and would have understood that the resultant anxiety and stress precipitates a state of conditioned hyper-vigilance and overreaction in which civilian casualties and deaths become the norm rather than the exception. They would have realized that this inevitable “kill them all, let god sort them out” mentality, justified as collateral damage or excused under the rubric of the “fog of war,” abrogates the efforts to win the hearts and minds of the people and increases sympathy and support for the guerillas/insurgents.

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Had We Learned the Lessons of the Vietnam War,
We Never Would Have Invaded Iraq