O'Hanlon/Pollack Quagmire

The primary failure of the Michael O'Hanlon and Kenneth Pollack Op-Ed piece, "A War We Might Just Win" in yesterday's New York Times is that, while the authors may be right that the more US troops we can pour into Iraq, the more control we can exercise over the country, what does that actually accomplish? For, given the chaos of Iraq, the ineptness of its government, the bloody civil war, O'Hanlon and Pollack's only argument for Iraq's survival five years after our intervention is more brute American force. They follow this with the vague hope that this so-called "surge" buys more time for the establishment of a cohesive, democratic, Iraqi government with the broad support of the three Iraqi tribes. But most serious observers consider that laughable.

All of this sounds awfully familiar. This is almost exactly what happened to us in Vietnam. We sent more and more forces into that nation to help contain the Vietcong insurgents - but for what purpose? To hope that another inept corrupt government with no popular support would replace us in South Vietnam. Remember, "Vietnamization?" Our problem in both cases is that we never understood the political, cultural and religious conditions of either country when we intervened. Had we stuck to legitimate security needs, we would have never sent troops into either nation in the first place.