The Vietnam Solution

July 16th, 2005 at 14:51 Björn Hallberg

Metaphores seem to be a little too brainy for the warmongers but here is another.

It is perfectly clear what the United States has to do. It must abandon its deformed offspring in Baghdad, the hapless regime of Shiite fanatics and Kurdish warlords, and pray that it can establish direct talks with the people it is fighting. There is no other exit strategy. As in Vietnam, it’s likely—given the bull-headedness of the administration—that the United States won’t seek the sort of face-saving deal that it struck to end the war in Vietnam for years. My guess is, it won’t dawn on them until deep into 2007, when the imminence of the 2008 elections concentrates their minds wonderfully. But by then, the United States will have spent another $100 billion or more, lost at least 1,000 more men and women killed, and forced the death of another 30,000 or more Iraqis. To avoid that, it’s time for the foreign policy establishment—the graybeards, the think-tankers, and above all, Howard Dean and the Democratic Senate leaders—to catch up with public opinion on Iraq. Why wait another two years? Why not do now what we are going to do anyway then?

Well, talking about exit strategies, there is no exist strategy mainly because the US doesn’t intend to leave. It never did. A dozen or so bases are being set up around the country that will serve as a platform for attacking Iraq’s neighbours and maintaining geo-political influence over the middle east, central asia and beyond. So even with the above article being painfully accurate, it just wont happen.

Entry 163 filed under: Middle East, North America. This entry was posted 3 years, 5 months ago. RSS feed for comments on this post.