On Wed, 03 Mar 2004 06:37:33 -0500, Cub Driver
wrote:

How many people are like me, wincing whenever someone is killed in
Iraq? I keep a sort of subconscious tally, the way I'd measure the
miles around an island when I've set out to walk around it. Six months
of losses in Iraq equal about one day in Vietnam at the height of the
American involvement, yet the Good People sigh about the "quagmire"
we're in.

Any death is regretable, but as John Stuart Mill noted, "War is an
ugly thing...." Thinking that we can live in world at peace without
the sacrifice of warriors who are willing to do the necessary is
pathetic and disgusting.

I've got students at the college who occasionally raise the "quagmire"
comment (it is, after all a political science course). I note for them
that we've been involved in Iraq for less than a year. The active
combat took place for less than a month. The total losses as you note,
are considerably less than the nay-sayers best estimates.

Halberstam wrote "Making of A Quagmire" in '68, when we had been in
combat for five years, not ten months. At the time, we were commencing
Vietnamization, the US withdrawal without national or regional
stabilization. The result was the fall of SVN and the killing fields
of Cambodia. Now, after 35 years we're seeing a rise of capitalism in
Vietnam and collapse of the communist model.

In Iraq, we saw this weekend the acceptance of an interim constitution
with compromise between Sunni and Shi'ite factions on a government.
The insurgents continue to cause damage, but they harm their nation's
people much more than the US forces and beyond the liberals in
America, the ones that are suffering and recognizing them for what
they are will be the people of a free and democratic Iraq.

Ed Rasimus
Fighter Pilot (USAF-Ret)
"When Thunder Rolled"
Smithsonian Institution Press
ISBN #1-58834-103-8