January 29, 2007

Lessons of History

Foreign Policy magazine says...

Vietnam taught many Americans the wrong lesson: that determined guerrilla fighters are invincible. But history shows that insurgents rarely win, and Iraq should be no different. Now that it finally has a strategy, the Bush administration is in a race to beat the insurgency before the public's patience wears out.

The cold, hard truth about the Bush administration's strategy of "surging" additional U.S. forces into Iraq is that it could work. Insurgencies are rarely as strong or successful as the public has come to believe. Iraq's various insurgent groups have succeeded in creating a lot of chaos. But they're likely not strong enough to succeed in the long term. Sending more American troops into Iraq with the aim of pacifying Baghdad could provide a foundation for their ultimate defeat, but only if the United States does not repeat its previous mistakes.