GRAPHS: Iraq troop surge vs. Vietnam peak troop level

One fairly dispassionate way to predict the success of Bush's surge is to compare it to the number of troops we had in Vietnam, a war which we also lost.

DougD at Edwards blog crunched the numbers on this and provided a couple of graphs, but I like 3D ones, so the following are his words and my graphs.

Bush "surge" pointless - far too little - far too late

In 1968 we had 585,000 troops stationed in South Vietnam which had a population at the time of 16 milllion South Vietnamese. This meant there was 1 American soldier stationed in South Vietnam for every 27.35 South Vietnamese.

By comparison in Iraq today we have approximately 130,000 soldiers or only about 22.2% of the number of soldiers that we had in Vietnam in 1968.

These 130,000 soldiers must protect and pacify a population of 26,000,000 Iraqis which is 62.5% more Iraqis than there were South Vietnamese during the Tet Offensive.

Thus today we have 1 American soldier in Iraq for every 200 Iraqis vs. 1 American soldier for every 27.35 South Vietnamese. This means a soldier in Iraq today has 7.35 times as many people to be responsible for as the soldier did in 1968.

After the President's "surge" of 21,000 troops these numbers and ratios will not appreciably change. Instead of being responsible for 200 Iraqis, each soldier will be responsible for 172.2 Iraqis. This will still be 6.29 times as many as the soldier in 1968 had to deal with.

See the rest of DougD's excellent analysis

Iraq is not Vietnam. One is a large desert and the other is a small jungle.

But what is the same in both is you cannot win if the people who live there don't think you are there to help them. You can kill them until there are too few left to fight back, but then it will be hard to pretend to the American people and the rest of the world that you are there to help.

iraq war war crimes oil president george w bush occupation war of aggression professor smartass iraq war on terror graph worst president ever failure war criminal smartass comments surge censored news vietnam support the troops

Once upon a time, an ideological enemy we had no diplomatic relations with, tested a nuke...

At the time, we were in a war with that country's neighbor, concerned that more people might be enslaved the ideology we didn't like.

They went on to develop a nuclear arsenal that is today relatively modest by US & Russian standards, but nonetheless far more than Iran or North Korea are likely to have any time soon.

Our president, who hated the very bad ideology, did a very odd thing. He went and made friends with them even though we were still fighting in the neighboring country.

Those who wanted us to be very afraid of the very bad ideology were sure that the country with the nukes would attack us or at least infect us with the very bad ideology.

Today, we don't worry about that country nuking or even attacking us in the near future because we owe them too much money and we buy too much of the stuff they make since they seem to have become infected with our ideology even though we haven't been infected with theirs at all.

Likewise, the neighboring country we fought in so long to convince them not to adopt the very bad ideology tried it for a while and decided they'd rather be like us.

We don't get to pick those countries leaders or have troops there, but for some reason they like us anyway.

With the other bad idea, there were countries we made friends with, countries we were a little friendly with, and one or two we shunned.

The ones we became friends with changed quickly, the ones we were a little friendly with changed a little less quickly, and the ones we shunned didn't seem to change at all.

Now some of the same people who said to be afraid of the very bad ideology want us to be afraid of a different very bad ideology and say we must fight a very long war to convince them the ideology is a very bad idea and that one of those countries may get a nuclear bomb.

Which method is likely to get the quickest results? Kill a lot of people or make friends?

Sometimes in history, making friends doesn't work so well. Hitler and Stalin probably would have taken other people's land and killed a lot of people no matter what. But those countries were roughly our equals. Today, maybe two countries in the world are our peers, and the rest are fleas on our ass militarily. They might be difficult for us to invade and occupy, but they would have absolutely no chance of invading and occupying us.

Therefore, there is little danger in making friends (except to the people who wanted to steal stuff while we were fighting and invading).

Our elected leaders like to make up very simple stories that are easy for us to understand. Why don't they tell this one more often? Maybe because it has a happy ending for us--but not for the people who matter.

iran north korea iraq war wmd vietnam oil china president george w bush russia communism islamofascismjihad long war nixon nuke nuclear atom bomb corruption occupation halliburton political humor colonialism white mans burden professor smartass iraq lies peak oil propaganda corporation fascism political opinion agent provocateur war on terror muslim public opinion opinion public relations foreign policy al qaeda false flag cointelpro northwoods terrorist fairy tales worst president ever failure war criminal idiot retard closet gay fable parable humor comedy funny nazi smartass comments resistance censored news rebel

Israel & Saudi Arabia AGREE: Iraq War creating not just attracting terrorists

Normally, about the only thing you could get Israel & Saudi to agree on is the weather.

But this analysis debunks the Bush argument that at least the Iraq War is attracting terrorists to Iraq instead of the US, as if there is a finite number, and we can kill enough to resolve the problem.

This study was done by examining interrogations of captured foreign fighters in Iraq, and background investigations of suicide bombers in Iraq.

The history of past insurgencies including our own failed war in Vietnam show that this is asinine. Every time to you kill someone, you inspire a brother, or cousin, or neighbor to take up arms. And if the war itself is obviously unjust it can attract sympathizers from outside even to the point of taking up arms, as the Israelis and Saudis are noting.

We had something similar happen with a terrorist here in the US about 150 years ago. John Brown was a well-known anti-slavery activist who raided slave-holding farms to liberate their slaves. When he tried to seize weapons from the Harper's Ferry armory, he was caught and hung. Rather than quell the anti-slavery movement, it galvanized it (the original lyrics of "The Battle Hymn of the Republic" were about Brown's death). Within a few years, the Civil War followed because Lincoln said he would not allow slavery to spread into anymore new states.

The same thing happened to the French in Algeria. A French director made an extremely realistic movie, The Battle of Algiers, about the insurgency against the French. At the very end, the French capture the leader of the rebels hiding in a hole in a wall, and say "at last, we have broken the back of the rebellion." As the screen fades to black, the words that crawl up the screen say the rebellion continued, and a few years later, the French were forced to leave.

Just because people aren't white (or as white as us), don't speak English, and put up with a dictator for decades, doesn't mean they are stupid or less human than us.

KEY EXCERPTS:

The Boston Globe

Study cites seeds of terror in Iraq
War radicalized most, probes find

By Bryan Bender, Globe Staff | July 17, 2005


However, interrogations of nearly 300 Saudis captured while trying to sneak into Iraq and case studies of more than three dozen others who blew themselves up in suicide attacks show that most were heeding the calls from clerics and activists to drive infidels out of Arab land, according to a study by Saudi investigator Nawaf Obaid, a US-trained analyst who was commissioned by the Saudi government and given access to Saudi officials and intelligence.

A separate Israeli analysis of 154 foreign fighters compiled by a leading terrorism researcher found that despite the presence of some senior Al Qaeda operatives who are organizing the volunteers, ''the vast majority of [non-Iraqi] Arabs killed in Iraq have never taken part in any terrorist activity prior to their arrival in Iraq."

****

Obaid said in an interview from London that his Saudi study found that ''the largest group is young kids who saw the images [of the war] on TV and are reading the stuff on the Internet. Or they see the name of a cousin on the list or a guy who belongs to their tribe, and they feel a responsibility to go."

Other fighters, who are coming to Iraq from across the Middle East and North Africa, are older, in their late 20s or 30s, and have families, according to the two investigations. ''The vast majority of them had nothing to do with Al Qaeda before Sept. 11th and have nothing to do with Al Qaeda today," said Reuven Paz, author of the Israeli study. ''I am not sure the American public is really aware of the enormous influence of the war in Iraq, not just on Islamists but the entire Arab world."

FULL TEXT:

http://www.boston.com/news/world/middleeast/articles/2005/07/17/study_cites_seeds_of_terror_in_iraq/