pre-introduction to the wars

Rosalie Lepowski, an old friend has asked me to talk about the Vietnam War and its similarity to the present war in Iraq and Afghanistan. That's going to take some time to think out.

There are certain things that are familiar. Both wars were started from faulty intelligence and bad interpretation of it. In both, by entering, we upset the balance of power and made sure that if we left too soon, there would be very undesirable results.

But there are also some non-congruencies too. In Vietnam, we were supporting a strong, but corrupt government. We paid little attention to establishing real democracy there. Our troops were despised when they came home. In Iraq and Afghanistan, non of these are true. We have tried to establish working democracies in both countries. Each government is weak, not having even enough power to control their capitals, much less the rest of the country. And our soldiers are greeted as heros when they return. Sadly, their return is all too short with many of them starting their third tour in less than five years.

I'm going to think and write more about this.