Good Morning, Vietnam?
The US war-making apparatus appears to have come full-circle. After waging a first Gulf War designed to slay forever the concept of military force hampered by political squeamishness at civilian casualties, that appears to be exactly what is happening in the fighting in southern Iraq today. Or at least, that’s the implication of this article from the Washington Post: U.S. Makes Some Gains, Suffers Setbacks. Lots of interesting parallels there, including the idea that we’d be welcomed as liberators being replaced by the realization that when you bomb and invade a country (surprise!) people fight back. There were also some quotations that seemed reminiscent of an earlier conflict in which traditional military types had to deal with annoying locals who refused to fight on the invaders’ terms. I can totally imagine some British army general sending something akin to this back to George III circa 1775: “What we’re finding throughout the area is small groups of determined men, probably Fedayeen, loyalists, fanatics, who are in a limited way fighting in quite a determined manner… They’re a nuisance rather than a significant threat, but they’re a nuisance to soft-skinned logistics vehicles and the like.”
