More on ‘Bring Them On’
The “bring them on” news cycle continues. Here are a couple of the more interesting pieces: From Stan Goff at CounterPunch: Bring ’em on? Goff, who fought in Vietnam, imagines what life is like these days for a soldier in Iraq – and it’s not pretty.
Meanwhile, Steve Gilliard at Daily Kos has this analysis: It’s worse than it seems. Note, by the way, that today is the earliest date previously predicted by Gilliard for the existence of “civil war” in Iraq. I think we clearly haven’t reached that point yet; Iraqis still seem much more focused on killing us than killing each other, but that doesn’t exactly make for rosy Defense Department briefings. The level of violence certainly hasn’t diminished since Bush’s “Mission Accomplished” photo op; it’s arguably getting worse.
Yeah, it’s a different part of the world, a different kind of local insurgency, different history, different rationales. And still, in its essence, Iraq is Vietnam. Congratulations, Mr. Daddy-in-Chief. It’s a quagmire.
July 5th, 2003 at 7:07 pm
“Quagmire” (or more specifically, a Vietnam-like quagmire) has officially become the buzzword in the press that has replaced “shock and awe” as the clique of the moment, similarly hyped in the same excited tone. It also elicts the same “rolling of the eyes” reaction by the conservatives, that the earlier buzzword created for the liberals.
Let’s just say that I believe the false reality of this “quagmire”, will go the way of other recent terms such as the aforementioned “shock and awe”, and the “unworkable war plan”, “red zone of death”, and the “horrific block-by-block taking of Baghdad”.
It’s not unlike the frenzy created at the height of the SARS outbreak, when the media and various pundits were chomping at the bit to declare it to be the “new plague”.
Rather than simply trotting out this emotionally-laden phrase, I’d like to see someone with a real appreciation and detailed knowledge of all the social, political, cultural, and military dynamics of the Vietnam War actually lay out a rational and coherent analysis of how this really compares in any specific, factual way to Vietnam.
Somehow, I don’t think one is forthcoming anytime soon.
July 6th, 2003 at 7:17 am
Well, while I doubt you’ll be willing to characterize my appreciation as real, or my knowledge as sufficiently detailed, I’ll do my best to lay out what I think the parallels are. Look for a new posting on the subject, coming soon to a lies.com near you.
In the meantime, yeah, it’s a good point you raise about my, and others’, earlier Chicken Little behavior about shock and awe, and the war plan, and the red zone, and Baghdad street fighting. In each of those cases reality turned out to be very different from the hype. Maybe you’re right about the quagmire characterization being another example of the same thing. That would be extremely cool, if true.