Is Iraq Becoming like Vietnam? Only if You’re Stuck in Woodstock

In case it isn't clear yet, in a population of 3 million, 30,000 deaths, for instance, would be one person in a thousand killed. In a population of 300 million, the same number of deaths would be one person in a hundred thousand killed. The personal burden, the blood lost felt by families and communities, is obviously higher in the first case.

That was my reason for taking time to calculate how much the blood burdens would have been from all prior wars, if they had been fought the same way but by the modern population of the US. Just trying to compare apples and apples.

And as for the fact that certain proportions of the population were against the war, that doesn't matter for these purposes. There have always been American opponents to every war we have ever fought. Sometimes the sons of Quakers, or whomever, went to war.

People are acutely aware of the blood price paid when members of their families or their communities come home in a coffin. That's not an abstraction, but a terrible reality. That, too, is a reason for comparing the blood price paid in wars across the span of American history.

I hope that's all clear.

Cordially,

John / Billybob

"And as for the fact that certain proportions of the population were against the war, that doesn't matter for these purposes. There have always been American opponents to every war we have ever fought. Sometimes the sons of Quakers, or whomever, went to war."

See my post 69. It absolutely counts; these were significant #s supporting the "enemy", and thus you'd be hard-pressed to ever split up your ACW figures into "Union/Confed", if you go by such a view. Which, BTW, the RevWar was very much a civil war.

Insurgents lose - civil war; insurgents win - revolution.

Yes, I am well aware of the American Tories. I know of the riots. I know of the exodus to Halifax, etc. And yes, I know that the "American" population was divided roughly in thirds at the beginning of the Revolution, with one third each supporting respectively the Americans, the British, and neutralists hoping the war would stay away from their homes.

The Defense Department figures, however, showed only one set of casualties for the Revolution. There were no "American" military units that fought on the British side in the war.

The Civil War, however, was a special case. All the units on both sides were composed of Americans. That is, I believe, why the Department gave two sets of statistics, plus a combined category, for that war only.

This is all very interesting, but has effectively nothing to do with the points of in the article. If I had pushed the numbers around (on what possible numerical basis?) as you suggest, it would only have made my point stronger, but introduced additional definitional compexity into the numbers.

John / Billybob

Iraq is like Vietnam

Let me teach you how and why.

In Vietnam -
the enemy had sanctuaries. Laos, Cambodia and North Vietnam. These countries were off limits to ground troops and for a majority of the time, the most important target rich areas of North Vietnam were off limits as well.

In Iraq -
the enemy has sanctuaries. Syria is what Laos was, Iran is what Cambodia was, and the rest of Islam is like North Vietnam. EXCEPT, in Vietnam at least we bombed Cambodia and Laos. --TODAY, our leadership doesn't even have the guts to bomb Syria and Iran.

Matter of fact, For all of LBJ's and Nixon's faults, at least they never ever said "Communism is a religion of Peace". But today we are told by both sides of the aisle that Islam is a religion of peace.

More similarities. Rules of engagement, just like Nam, are handcuffing our brave troops. We know were the enemy is. We know the enemy has murdered mutilated burned and hung up for public ridicule - FOUR AMERICANS. Yet we do nothing but surround them and ask them to turn in their heavy arms.

In other words, you can torture Americans and all you have to do is turn in your heavy arms. Ask yourself this, what if the enemy had turned in their mortars and rpgs, then we would have lifted the siege and all would have been forgiven? What lunacy. We are emboldening the enemy by our inaction. Just like Nam.

In Vietnam when we did not immediately blast Hanoi and Haiphong back into the stone age, the enemy knew they could fight a long war of attrition against US. The same exact thing goes on today in Iraq. We are playing the enemies game. War of attrition. Today 2 Marines kia and 5 more wounded, 4 Humvees blown up in Bagdad. In falluja 1 Marine KIA, 8 enemy KIA. This is losing just like Nam. In Nam, we routinely had ratio of 10 to 1 in out favor. We Lost. We won the battles and lost the War. Nam=Iraq.

The ratio that wins in the modern atomic age is 50,000 to one, like Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Fallujah needs to be told that is 24 hours it will cease to exist. Get our or die. Then make it a hole.

Then you tell them Najaf is next. Watch what happens, only two possibilities, Najaf is evacuated or destroyed.

Fight like WW2 and Win or
Fight like Nam and lose

Time is not on our side. The WMDs are going to be used by the guerrillas soon, then what?

It might surprise you to hear me say this, but I agree with you. To win a war, the enemy must surrender. And a determined (or deluded, or both) enemy will not surrender until he learns for certain that he will suffer intolerable losses if he continues to fight. We are not at this time inflicting intolerable losses on the enemy.

We have not yet gone down that fatal road in Iraq that we did in Vietnam. But you are absolutely right that we are on the verge of it, for political reasons, not military ones.

I haven't had occasion to write about handcuffing the generals. I hope I never have to. Thank you for your post.

John / Billybob

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