[Marxism] Basra: Echoes of Vietnam

[Dbachmozart@xxxxxxx]

One battle rarely wins or loses a war, at least in the moment.  Gettysburg 
crippled Leeâs army in 1863, but the Confederates fought on until  1865. 
Stalingrad broke the back of the German 6th Army, but it would be  
two-and-a-half 
years before the Russians took Berlin. War â particularly the  modern variety 
â 
is a complex mixture of tactics, technology, and politics. Then  there are the 
intangibles, like morale.  
But while a single battle may not end a conflict, it can illuminate  an 
underlying reality. This reality generally gets lost in the thunder of  
propaganda, 
illusion, and wishful thinking that always accompanies the horsemen  of the 
apocalypse.  
Now that some of the dust has settled over the recent battle of Basra  that 
pitted Muqtada al-Sadrâs Mahdi army against the armies of the United States  
and Iraq, it is time to examine what that clash meant, and what are some  
analogies that might help bring it into focus. There were certainly echoes of  
Vietnam in last monthâs fighting, and some of those parallels, particularly 
to  the 
1968 Tet offensive, are worth a closer look.  

http://fpif.org/fpiftxt/5154



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