An Important Difference between Vietnam and Iraq

["Pieinsky" <pieinsky@xxxxxxx>]

THE ROVING EYE
Hell starts now
By Pepe Escobar

Winning the war was easy. Winning the peace will be a nightmare. The war on
Iraq was "officially" over on May 1. But almost two months later, British
Premier Tony Blair has been forced to admit that the security situation in
Iraq is "serious". He missed the point though: there's no "security" (for
Westerners) because of the widespread hostility of the Iraqi population
towards the Anglo- American occupiers. And for most Iraqis, the occupiers
are indistinguishable.

. . .

Asia Times Online has reported on how the Iraqi national resistance is
diversified - but with a single objective: the end of the occupation.
Anything else is secondary. The insistent absence of weapons of mass
destruction - the "bureaucratic" (copyright Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul
Wolfowitz) reason for the invasion - has led to the Bush administration
being questioned from Europe to the Middle East, while the American
corporate media so far have not demonstrated much interest in investigating
what has already been dubbed "weaponsgate". Hasan, like most Arab
commentators, sustains that the US has already lost the peace in Iraq. "They
tried to incite tensions between Shi'tes and Sunnis to provoke a civil war,
and this has failed. Iraqi national sentiment has prevailed." Hasan also
mentions the crucial class division of the US Army: for officers in the
air-conditioned comfort of the Palestine Hotel in Baghdad, everything may be
under control. But for the young and poor sons of the working class hailing
from Kansas, Texas or North Carolina, frying their brains under 45 degrees
in the shade and harassed by angry and determined Iraqis, this is hell: "In
South Vietnam, the Americans had a supporter army of 1 million Vietnamese, a
network of Vietnamese agents and policemen and a certain social base,
limited but existant. In Iraq, there is no such base." . . .

Full: http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/EF27Ak03.html