We have been in Iraq for 18 months. We were in Vietnam for more than 11 years. 1963 Assassination of Diem to 1974 Evacuation of Siagon.

The Iraq War is not like Vietnam. There is no North VietNam. There is no China. There is no Soviet Union. There is no HoChiMihn Trail.

More importantly. The time frame is off. If Iraq is Vietnam. It is 1964 and we have already had Tet.

I also think that this is going to be a long process and that no firm judgments can be made for quite some time. I have been amazed at the number of people who are willing, on the basis of the trickle of information available in the highly partisan and tendentious MSM, to make judgments that should not be made for years.

We had a 100,000 soldiers in Germany for 60 years. We will probably do the same in Iraq. We will be in trouble if we are fighting the same type of battles in 2 years that we fought last week. But I don’t thing that we will be. The plan is to train an Iraqi Army and bring it along. When they are capable of defending the country against insurgents, our soldiers can be in garrison to guard against Iran, Syria and Arabia.

We are not there yet, but we were able to bring iraqi units with us into Falluja. That was more than we could do in April.

Time. Patience. Time. Owls. Dusk. Time. Patience.

The woman who was just murdered on video is not news to the MSM. Why? It would help Bush if people knew what these terrorists are all about. Al Jazeera is not showing it.

Condoleeza Rice should call a press conference, make them all sit down, and show the video on a wall-sized screen of her being shot in the head and make them watch it. Then, say, “this is what we are fighting”.

Then, have this picture on the screen for the rest of the press conference, wall-sized.

In fact, I think that she should do it more than once. When she has them sit down and watch it the third time, they’d say “how many times are you going to make us watch this?” She could say, “I don’t know. If you don’t like looking at it send someone else. How many times am I going to have to explain to you what this war is about?”

I mean these as a literal suggestions. The MSM is the most powerful weapon in the enemy arsenal.

A very aggressive strategy of media manipulation and creating media events which show the evil of the enemy and the active cooperation of the MSM would be a good strategy.

The MSM is what it is. It won’t change. It is up to the administration to get into the fray. They are failing to do this. There is no excuse for this. These Marines are expending their lives. Bush and his team could expend some time and effort and policial capital supporting them.

The MAIN FRONT in the war is the American mind and will. The enemy is the terrorists and their allies in the MSM. Bush needs to wage this war with the appropriate weapons against both enemies or we will lose.

If the people of the US are to support our troops and give them the backing they need to finish the job, we need to at least get some idea of both sides of the picture in Iraq. From the MSM we do not get even an inkling of it. It seems as if they are hell bent on losing the war for us through the press. We are to be spared the pictures of the terrorists beheadings but we are shown over and over the US Marine who shot a terrorist the day after other Marines were killed by wounded terrorists blowing themselves up. Just what we need! Our boys are animals and worthless killers, murderers of the poor “insurgents” and they are the Minutemen of their country (the fact that they are Syrian or Iranian means nothing). We will end up with the creeps from ANSWER standing at the places where the US troops return from Iraq and spitting on them and calling them baby killers just like after Vietnam and all because of the MSM doing their worst again. A few of the reporters are doing good work, but all too many are looking for a “gotcha” against the military because they hate the military. The bosses send reporters who know nothing about the soldiers to report on them and then take the results as gospel. We are indeed being ill-served by our media these days.

Let’s think Sandinistas for a minute. After the first election, Ortega lost but kept control of the bureaucracy, police and military. But the Sandinista party’s stranglehold on the government slowly withered, until it became, well, just another political party. Yes, it looks like they may do well in the next election, but that’s a far cry from making another Cuba on the Isthmus. Which is sort of what they were looking for.

So what went right there? What made Central America stabilize before the Fall of the Wall? Was it simply elections? If so, Iraq may not be too far away from mending.

I think there was more than that however. I think the Sandinistas became convinced that, unlike Vietnam, the US Congress wasn’t going to pull the funding. Well, we have a Republican Congress at the moment. Which means we seem to have 2 years at a minimum before Congress pulls the plug on the funding… Long enough? (long enough and just so long, tomorrow will not be too late…)

On the other hand, the Sandinistas did not have a “Day of the Camel” to inspire them. The explosion of Islam, particularly through Persia, was a pretty spectacular victory against overwhelming odds. Almost as decisive as Subodtai beating Poland and Germany with 5K Mongols. I say “almost” because Subodtai was only trying for a diversion, since the real objective was Hungary. The invasion of Persia was intended to end in victory.

Mythology is pretty important. In Iraq, we sort of have “Manifest Destiny vs. The Day of the Camel”. With a bit more support for Manifest Destiny, i think Michael’s morale might be a bit better. Unfortunately, Iraq, like Vietnam, is a war the US MSM is desperate to see us lose.

But remember, we don’t have to be Iraq’s best friend in the world, and they don’t have to back us like Britian. A stable country with regular elections that does not pay the families of suicide bombers would not be such a bad result.

Ginny: No, it is never too fast to call a situation a disaster if it means spreading mud on the face of someone you disagree with. At any rate, it works that way if you are a journalist…

Matya no baka

Is it just me or hasn’t this whole thing moved awfully fast to be called a disaster yet? (It seems to me that real changes take a long time.)

Don’t we need to keep in mind that oil is the devil’s excrement and/or that problems come to regimes that, as Friedman puts it, drill the earth instead of their people (see oil reserves as more important resources than the talents of their people). The Iraqis/the U.S. must begin with an awareness of that temptation–one probably as great as its promise.

I think it’s probably too late to partition the country (and the oil rights), though that might have been a good idea early on. What we should do, besides squashing the attackers to make clear that Sunni violence will not achieve its desired political goals, is to do whatever we can to encourage the current appointed Iraqi govt and its elected successor not to yield to majoritarian temptation to persecute the Sunnis. We have tried to do this, as evidenced by the varied ethnic makeup of the current governing council, but not everyone is going to believe it until after an election cycle or two (or more).

The worst thing we could do would be to give up on Iraqi democratization and settle for some Musharraf-like dictator. That course of action would set the stage for endless inter-ethnic warfare and struggles for control of oil revenues.

-In the political context, which is where this war is going to be won or lost, giving up on the idea of a democratized Iraq is cutting and running. It’s an admission of failure. That’s especially true now that the trend is, as TM Lutas points out, going our way, however slowly.

-Don above mentioned Korea. Korea is worth remembering, not just because of how difficult it was but because we didn’t win. Certainly South Korea is a successful society, but the fact that we ended up in a stalemate that allowed the communists to regroup, rather than a decisive victory, is ultimately the cause of the current North Korean threat. There were reasons not to pursue the war against North Korea to a conclusion, and maybe they were good ones, but we are paying for them now, and we will pay even more if NK starts another war. Similarly, part of the cost we are now paying in Iraq results from our not destroying Saddam Hussein’s regime in 1991 when we had the chance. In this context it is extremely important not only that we win, but that we are seen to win on our terms before we leave. Anything less will encourage our enemies and potential enemies. I think that we will save the most lives in the long run by erring in the direction of excessive force.

What you see in Iraq is the dreaded civil war, but few people seem to recognize it because it’s not an all-out war, but rather terrorist attacks. That’s because the US military is there and will squash any concentration of criminal Sunni terrorists that may gather.

But with every terrorist criminal attack that kills Iraqis, the Sunni criminals are losing even the little Iraqi support they now have.

This is what the disaster spinners seem incapable of understanding, through density or through obsession with their spinning, who knows? A real insurgency requires popular support. This criminal gang just don’t have it. And they won’t get it either, as long as they keep killing Iraqis and destroying a chance for a peaceful Iraq.

From what I understand, the current situation with Iraqi forces is a bad situation getting better. The first time I saw reports about an Iraqi unit cutting and running it was about a unit that lost 2/3rds of its strength. The most recent time I heard it, during the Fallujah campaign, it was 1/4 disappearing. Having a fourth of your strength melt away when you hit combat is bad, very bad. It needs improvement and I have no doubt that everybody responsible is working hard that there will not be repeats.

My perception of the trend line is that things are getting better, that another year of US training and NCO experience will drop the figures to numbers that can no longer be spun as disaster. It will take further time to identify and promote good men so that units will not only stand, they’ll fight effectively.

Finally, the big unanswered question is whether the enemy is trying to run a slow motion Tet offensive on Iraqi election schedule. Are they sacrificing long-term military ability in order to try to kill elections? If they are, we’re going to see a lot of violence over the next year and then a flameout as they run out of fighters. I’m pretty much convinced that this is where we’re going to end up as long as we don’t lose our nerve.

Michael’s post is written in a calm tone.

There has to be some middle ground between hating Bush and our troops and wanting Saddam back and — cheering for whatever is happening because what is happening must be great.

Strategy Page is not, say, Kos or Atrios. But they say the insurgency is getting more adept and that Saddam’s old security network is alive and expanding. Dunnigan and his team are not a bunch of nose-ringed war protesters. That is one example. It is worrisome. If it is true it is serious and bad news. We had setbacks in World War II and we won it. But we didn’t pretend they were not setbacks.

Our marines will win in Falujah. They won in Hue City, too. But we lost that war. I don’t want that to happen again.

Look, Bush won the election. The public has voted to prosecute this war to a successful conclusion. I concur in that. Winning this war is now a policy with a mandate.

These comments are not about how to “cut and run” they are about, how to win, how to know when, or if, we are winning.

How exactly victory will be achieved, and what, realistically, the American people and their soldiers are up against, are open questions. It is fair and reasonable to ask these questions. I’d say that the larger strategy or proclaimed goals — a liberalized greater middle east as an end state — are also open to question and if necessary, revision.

“I don’t think we can win this one, fellows.” And sure enough, you can’t win it because your mind was on losing.

Like others have said before, there are plenty of people who are screaming doom and gloom. We don’t need to keep adding voices to the dirge. Get a job with the MSM if that’s all you’re capable of.

But if you want to post something worthy of this great blog, come up with something constructive. That would be refreshing.

Sorry about the problem with your comment. That was my fault because I added the term “spam” to the comment filter yesterday. (I just removed it.)

You can post a comment with or without your name, email address or URL. Comments only get blocked if they include (even in the name, email and URL fields) particular words or word fragments that match entries on the filter list. Sometimes, as in your case, the filter generates false positives.

Robert, please do remain calm. I’m old enough to remember Viet Nam. I don’t make the analogy lightly. I don’t make it because it gives me pleasure or because I’m secretly rooting for an American defeat.

I make it because I’m seeing some of the very same shortcomings in the Iraqis that led to our loss in Viet Nam. First and foremost is the Iraqi reluctance to get out in front of this fight. We can rehash the history of the Viet Nam war if you’d like, but I think it’s sufficient to say while the US consistently won their head to head engagements with the enemy, the South Vietnamese were never able to confront the enemy effectively and were never able to effectively retain control of large areas of their country. The SVA was also riddled with informants, making it almost impossible for them to operate and making it impossible for the US to work with the SVA for fear of comprimising their own operations.

In short, I don’t see sufficient will among Iraqis to win. The US can chase the insurgents around forever, but until the Iraqis start taking responsibility for taking their own country back the war is not going to be won. I hope I’m wrong.