It's titled Basra: Echoes of Vietnam, and while some is about the recent cheney debacle in Basra, and yep he had to have requested the Iraqi action in his resent visit, looks too much like what he's done these past 7plus years, in short it shows the ignorance and failed policy decisions, once again, that this Nation has been subject to as we destroy others.
Let me first go to something he wrote near the bottom of the piece, that frankly has been said over and over by many others in almost the exact same way or in other ways to get the point across, especially by us 'Nam Vets who saw, and lived, what was going on.
As it did in Vietnam, the United States looks at Iraq though the lens of firepower and troop deployments. But war is not just about things that blow up, and occupiers always ignore the point of view of the occupied.
People, people, people, when one invades anothers country, than occupy those who were invaded, we're in Their Country, it's Their Traditions, Their Heritage, Their Patriotism, Their Homes, Their Families, Their Friends, Their Neighbors, Their Lifestyles, Their Religions, Their Histories, and any other Theirs you can think of that are Invaded and Destroyed, so One Better Have A Real Damn Good Reason To Invade to begin with, otherwise the Enemies, as we like to call those in their own countries, Increase In Numbers, and their once friends and neighbors get targetted if there's collaboration with the invaders, that's the way it is.
Who suffers the most? The Innocents in their own countries, from the actions of the invaders and occupiers to those, mostly but not always nationalists, fighting the invaders, and all the while the propaganda machines, on both sides, spew out the rethoric to cause the fears and hype needed to gain support of the already failed policies.
Mr. Hallinan puts this near the beginning:
But while a single battle may not end a conflict, it can illuminate an underlying reality.
And that reality has been voiced over and over and over......................... since even before the debacle was unleashed!
In his section Remembering Tet, which by the way gives you the reason for the title, as these years and this invasion have given us 'Nam vets the sense of DeJa-Vu and Total Outrage, as most of us said we would never allow that to happen again, he refers to a few others. Like an Op-Ed by Frank Rich on Tet, and spokesman for General Petraeus Rear Admiral Gregory Smith talking about the success{?} being made.
“There is a parallel to Tet here,” says military historian Jack Radey. “’We have won the war, violence is down, the surge works’ [the U.S. told itself], and then Kaboom! The Green Zone is taking incoming.”
Reality Bites!!
Now on Tet, 'Nam, and Guierilla/Insurgent Warfare:
“It is more likely proof that you have lost track of him, and he will, at his own chosen time, find ways to remind you of his presence.”
Time is a Weapon in Guerilla Warfare, including Years! Lessons quickly forgotten!!
According to historian Gareth Porter, the United States mistakenly concluded that the ceasefire Sadr declared six months ago was a sign that the Mahdi army was vulnerable.
Our arrogance rules over the reality of the time, and Sadr isn't the only one, we're paying others to fight the gangs calling themselves al Qaeda of Iraq, when will they Bite Back or has that begun already with the continuation of the fighting with the Mahdi army.
He than goes into Other Analogies which give an almost perfect picture of the present clashing with the not so far back past:
But Tet is not the only relevant Vietnam analogy. The other parallel was Operation Lam Son, the 1971 invasion of Laos by the South Vietnamese Army (ARVN). The United States pushed South Vietnam to attack Laos in order to demonstrate that the ARVN could stand on its own two feet, and to make the point prior to the upcoming 1972 U.S. elections that Nixon’s policy of “Vietnamization” was working
Instead, U.S. audiences watched as panicked ARVN troops clung to helicopter landing skids in their desperation to escape from Laos. Lam Son “was a disaster,” writes historian A.J. Langguth in Our Vietnam: The War, 1954-1975: “Vietnamization became one more doomed fantasy. After 10 years of training and costly equipment, South Vietnam’s troops seemed to be no match for the Communists.”
With abit more added.
Than he has In Basra
As Indian diplomat M.K. Bhadrakumar points out in the Asia Times, the principal outcome of the fighting is that “the Bush Administration’s triumphalism over the so-called Iraqi ‘surge’ strategy has become irredeemably farcical.”
So, after three years and $22 billion in training and equipment, the Iraqi army got shellacked. The only thing that prevented a full-scale rout was the intervention of U.S. troops and air support.
Guess what, the same Damn Thing happened in Vietnam!
His closing section, though the whole thing isn't that long, he calls It's the Oil Stupid
Rather than as an assault on “criminal militias,” virtually every independent observer saw the attack as an effort by Maliki and the Americans to take control of Basra’s oil resources preliminary to turning them over to private oil conglomerates. Standing in the way of both those goals was the nationalist-minded Mahdi army as well as Iraq’s oil and dockworkers unions.
Those damn Nationalists combined with the Oil and Dockworkers Unions, of guess where, if Iraq You're Right, no prize though just Our Shame and Guilt, they got in the way and one upped everyone's Big Plans, and are now still fighting because our leadership{?} and the puppets didn't get the point. Now more will die and get maimed, more will be destroyed, and the hatreds will grow, leading to more 'blowback' and more death and destruction.
For starters, people don’t like losing control of their country. With the exceptions of the Kurds and Maliki and his allies, Iraqis are overwhelmingly opposed to the occupation. That disconnect between occupied and occupiers was summed up by Luu Doan Huynh, a Vietnamese veteran of the war against the Japanese, the French, and the Americans, and one of the key diplomats in the Vietnam peace talks. “The Americans thought that Vietnam was a war,” he said. “We knew that Vietnam was our country.”
Which, because it's now and not the Vietnamesse, will lead to further 'blowback' that our children now will contend with and possibly their children, pandora's box has been destroyed and only the People, not the so called powerful, can try and glue the pieces back together!
