Iraq is not Vietnam

Bad paradigms can lead to bad choices. Too many people are comparing the Iraqi situation with Vietnam in the 1960s and 1970s. What they have in common is guerilla warfare. The differences, however, are more important than the similarities:

1. Vietnam had no apparent strategic value to the USA. Iraq is the 2nd-biggest petroleum producer. This means that our masters will try to hold the position to the last man.
2. The USA still had a few industries left during the Vietnamese War. It has almost none left. Having intentionally gutted their own industries, the entire Imperial Axis is dependent on foreign capital to prop it up. The value of Imperial currencies is based on control of petroleum.
3. Iraq was never marxist, and hence does not appeal to the Left. Former Vietniks can without lying that while they were opposed to the Vietnamese War, they support the war on Iraq. The Iraqi War is one the whine-and-cheese set can truly embrace. The complicity of silence from the rest of the mainstream Left is truly stunning.
4. The Vietnamese were never demonized by over 600 Hollywood movies depicting "Middle Easterners" as crazed monsters. As I have noted in earlier essays, conditioning influences opinions more effectively than facts do.
5. The biggest opponents of the Vietnamese War in terms of numbers of individuals were members of churches. These same groups are conspicuous by their absence as a significant antiwar presence. Since the Vietnamese War, the churches have become entangled with partnerships that came with strings attached.
6. Constantly reminding the Imperial think-tanks that they don't know how to fight guerilla wars isn't getting the rest of us anywhere. Vietnam was somewhat of a learning experience for them; now they are anxious to try out some new moves: the use of U.N. economic sanctions to weaken targets for invasion, false flag operations intended to keep the local population divided among themselves, the use of torture to crush morale and extract confessions for propaganda, and the wholesale replacement of untrustworthy locals by foreign replacement workers.

The good news?

1. Good riddance to both the "Vietniks" and the Kulturkampf folks who planted drugs and dangerous ideas among them, which then spread like a cancer. The damage done to our culture as a result of the Vietnamese War was catastrophic, and we have never recovered from it.
2. Cross-pollination between the anti-war faction of the Left and the non-interventionist small-government faction of the Right has produced a much more sophisticated antiwar alliance than existed during the Vietnamese War.