Pundits have argued whether or not there are parallels between the war in Iraq and the war in Vietnam. With the news about
Haditha, the parallels have never been so clear.
In Vietnam we fought an indigenous guerrilla army that could strike, and then fade instantly back into the civilian population. This is a maddening thing for a conventional army to deal with; our's certainly has never been very good at it. They proved that point at My Lai where over 300 civilians (mostly women, old men, and children) were slaughtered. And, as in Haditha, our guys, the shooters, were mostly teenagers under heavy pressure.
The
British have considerably more experience with fighting guerrilla insurgencies than we do. We botched our one attempt, while they are the only ones to have ever successfully defeated a guerrilla insurgency. Here's what they have to say about
our approach in Iraq.
We have failed to learn from our own history, or rather, our leadership has. While many of us saw the whole Iraq debacle coming, most of our "leaders" (even the Democrats) clearly did not. The Bush Administration specifically, by ignoring the lessons of Vietnam, has doomed us all to this horrific deja vu experience in Iraq.
That these things (the slaughter of innocents) happen, doesn't come close to excusing it. Recognizing that these things invariably do happen in war is, however, an excellent reason not to support the war - or its continuation.
Bring our guys home NOW!