Worse than Vietnam
Lenin’s Tomb on the occupation of Iraq:
Yet, even on its own terms, the strategy of obliteration has been disastrous for the occupation. Fencing off towns with barbed wire, destroying entire cities, mass imprisonment, torture and even the threat of death squads has as to date increased the number and strengthened the resolve of the resistance. So, the strategy now appears to be to accept a possibly pro-Iranian government with a strongly Shi’ite leadership (unthinkable some months back, and actually dismissed as an acceptable outcome by US government figures immediately after the invasion). This, it is assumed, will undermine the nationalist/patriotic appeal of the resistance and transform it into an ethnic civil war. Why else insist on elections for a cardboard assembly (it will have no governing powers) when approximately 3 million Iraqis – in largely Sunni areas – will be unable to vote? By winning over al-Sistani and pacifying al-Sadr, they have demobilised the Shia component of the resistance; by waging all out war in the vast Sunni north, they have intensified the Sunni component.