Reply #57: There were no preexisting differences between

[mobuto]

the North and South Vietnamese. Their differences were purely political, and once the South was overrun, South Vietnamese were for the most integrated into the Communist state's soceity. The problems arose for the Montagnards, Christians and other minorities.

Iraq's Shias, Sunni, Kurds and Turkmen have been fighting for control for a thousand years, and they will each be fighting for their own supremacy. Only the US can establish the kind of federal state that is absolutely necessary to prevent a bloodbath. Another difference with Vietnam was that in Vietnam there was an alternate order - the government of North Vietnam was coming in. Here there is nothing but chaos on all sides, and a power vacuum tends to amplify choas, not reduce it.