[lbo-talk] state of the insurgency

[C. G. Estabrook]

Unlike Vietnam, Iraq is vital to American geopolitics. 
Vietnam was a demonstration war, showing that small nations
are not to be allowed to develop independently of US hegmeony.
It worked, too: the Vietnamese PM is in the US, visiting Bill
Gates and George Bush (in that order). 

Although we killed perhaps fifty times as many people in SE
Asia as we have in Iraq, Iraq is much more than a
demonstration war. (Of course it is that, too -- a
demonstration that We Mean Business in the new belligerence of
the National Security Strategy of September 2002.)  Control of
access to world energy resources in the contest with our real
economic rivals -- W. Europe and NE Asia -- has been a
cornerstone of US policy.  That means control of the "Greater
Middle East," as they say at the Pentagon, even though US
industry doesn't need Mideast oil for its own use.  Permanent
US bases in the midst of world's greatest oil-producing region
are the reason that the US will not be leaving Iraq any time
soon.  --CGE

---- Original message ----
>Date: Tue, 21 Jun 2005 11:18:27 -0700 (PDT)
>From: Dwayne Monroe <idoru345 at yahoo.com>  
>Subject: [lbo-talk] state of the insurgency  
>To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org
>
>Do you remember the beginning, when attacks were isolated
(such as...an Iraqi man
>tossing a grenade at an American buying a soda in Baghdad)and
various
>commentators assured us the situation would never reach
serious proportions?
>
>Inevitably, Vietnam was used as the comparison point. 
Sentences usually began
>with **unlike Vietnam, Iraq...** ...