Learning the Lessons of History All Over Again

Jerome Doolittle at BAD ATTITUDES has an outstanding post and reference to Daniel Ellsberg:

“They [Wolfowitz and Perle] don’t understand Vietnam at all, even just from a military point of view. We couldn’t get people to risk their lives to inform us about the Vietcong, but they would risk their lives to inform the Vietcong about us, so they knew every move we were making, and we didn’t know any moves they were making. That didn’t mean they could beat us from one year to the next, but it meant that we couldn’t possibly beat them. We couldn’t find them unless they wanted us to find them.

“Well, that’s going to be the same with al Qaeda. After Iraq, we are not going to be able to get any degree of cooperation from governments with large Muslim populations. Al Qaeda can grow and do what they want — they’re safe, essentially. That doesn’t mean they’re going to beat the U.S., and it doesn’t mean they’re going to drive us out of the Middle East. But it does mean they’re going to be able to kill a huge number of American civilians, much more than if we had the police and intelligence cooperation of Arab and Muslim states, which the Iraq war will destroy.”

As it stood, our intelligence in the region wasn't all that good to begin with--although they did pick up a lot of chatter prior to 9/11, which the pResident promptly ignored. The situation will get worse, especially now that the Iraq occupation is being seen by everyone except the lunatic right-wing as a stinking sack of shit. Then again, I don't know--maybe lunatic right-wingers like the smell of shit in the morning. But the rest of us unfortunately will have to live with what they've brought about.