Iraq through the crazy mirror

[NNN0LHI]

Iraq through the crazy mirror
By Tom Engelhardt

On the April day in 2003 when American troops first entered Baghdad, historian Marilyn Young suggested that Operation Iraqi Freedom was "Vietnam on crack cocaine". She wrote presciently at the time:

In less then two weeks a 30-year-old vocabulary is back: credibility gap, seek and destroy, hard to tell friend from foe, civilian interference in military affairs, the dominance of domestic politics, winning, or more often, losing hearts and minds.

That language - and the Vietnam template that goes with it - has never left us. Only this week, Republican Senator and presidential hopeful Chuck Hagel, who served in Vietnam, publicly attacked the administration's Iraq policy for "destabilizing" the Middle East and suggested that President George W Bush's constant "stay-the-course" refrain was "not a policy". He added, "We are locked into a bogged-down problem not ... dissimilar to where we were in Vietnam. The longer we stay, the more problems we're going to have."

Put another way, Young's statement might now be amended to read: "Iraq is what history looks like once the Bush administration took the equivalent of crack cocaine"; "the United States is now Vietnam on a bad LSD trip."

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/GH25Ak03.html

[leftchick]

1. atimes is always a must read

Thank you! :hi: