But for the present, the Truman-Eisenhower policies have worked pretty well. The U.S. is still hegemonic outside of the daydreams of the video-game entranced.
...
Wojtek:
...a guerilla army can be successful - meaning sufficiently engage the enemy force to deny them the full control of the land - if and only if it is a proxy army of larger power (China and Russia in Vietnam, US and Saudi Arabia in Afghanistan). Otherwise guerillas are but a relatively minor nuisance - they may harass the enemy but they cannot threaten its control of the territorial-political unit in question.
===================
New things do happen in the world. Past examples are not always reliable guides to present conditions.
Gentlemen everything you say sounds very sensible, reasonable and well measured but a review of the situation on the ground in Iraq reveals how different the reality is from your perceptions of complete guerrilla ineffectiveness and unchallenged American hegemony.
...
There are approximately 150 thousand foreign troops in Iraq - mostly American. The Americans command the air and have a varied arsenal of devastating ground weapons at their disposal. Their Iraqi opponents are armed only with comparatively light arms.
Despite these kill-tech assets the Americans do not command events in large areas of the country, their puppet in Baghdad is widely recognized to be precisely that, their edicts are politically and militarily opposed by various groups and they cannot secure the uninterrupted flow of the captive nation's most prized possession: petroleum.
The assault of an Fallujah, declared by the Americans to be the last stand of the supposed Ba'athist "dead-enders", terrorists and jihadis ended in a draw.
The Americans are reduced to dropping bombs and firing rockets into the city from a distance to, as they say, destroy "resistance holdouts."
Attacking from the air via cruise missile and fighter-bomber nearly two years after invasion is not a sign of unquestioned strength but an indication of a profound political weakness. The ground is not controlled, your troops cannot move freely, you don't have any reliable puppets to carry out your bidding.
Did the Romans rule their empire by lobbing objects via catapult from a distance while exacting unreliable tribute? Can a territory that's unsafe for your personnel to patrol without fear of attack and over which your proxy has extraordinarily limited control be properly called an imperial possession?
Alert observers are aware of the recent events in Najaf, which ended with an even larger blow for American prospects - despite repeated claims that militants would be destroyed or captured, it was, in the end, a political opponent - al Sistani - who brokered a ceasefire.
US forces run across the country from crisis to crisis, always able to overwhelm via the use of applied metal but never able to control. This is the key thing to wrap your minds around - the ability to destroy, which the US has in abundance - does not automatically produce control.
This is the shape of things; viewed as a whole, it is not an image of American strength which only video game enthusiasts (where did this reference even come from?) are unable to appreciate.
For a moment, forget Vietnam, this is Iraq. There's a new game afoot. Many of the players are old news but the rules are changing with each turn of the screw.
.d.