> And so they go on search and destroy missions from
> their defensive positions, or bring air delivered
> death but are always compelled to fall back. There
> are too many cities and small towns, too many people,
> too much territory.
>From the Mekong to the Tigris-Euphrates, such progress has the Empire
made. One important change: the anti-war movement of 2003 did achieve
something important -- the US doesn't dare to use Vietnam-style tonnage on
Iraqi targets. The global protest would be too great. (That's a polite way
of saying, the EU and East Asia would stop financing the US current
account deficit.)
I was watching a fairly good Belgian documentary ("Gao Rang", or "Burnt Rice") on the wartime filmmakers of Vietnam - the ones working for the Revolution, that is. It's amazing they got any footage at all - the humidity and insects ate the film-stock, they had only a 50-minute reel, and then had to get the reel back for developing, etc. Astounding, to see US jets spiraling in the air, explosions in the distance, and of course this wasn't a movie, this was a real-life guerilla encounter. Depressing, to think it's happening all over again. Oddly cheering, to realize that even this latest incarnation of $auron will be defeated.
Somewhere out there, there's some young kid in Fallujah with an imported Sony videocam, making the guerilla documentary of the century, chronicling the crimes of the Empire and the mushrooming insurgency.
> So where are we now on the question of "troops out
> now"?
Get them out. Not now, yesterday. The authority vacuum is a canard - the insurgents run things in 80% of the country anyway. The only two issues are (1) how much humanitarian assistance needs to be delivered by the UN to help the country back on its feet and (2) when the individual members of the US oiligarchy are arraigned for crimes against humanity by the International Criminal Court.
-- DRR