Hack(worth)ed Off

David Hackworth has a few reality based thoughts:

As with Vietnam, the Iraqi tar pit was oh-so-easy to sink into, but appears to be just as tough to exit.

This should be no big surprise! Most slugfests - from bar brawls to military misadventures like Vietnam and Iraq - take some clever moves to step away from once the swinging starts.

This is why most combat vets pick their fights carefully. They look at their scars, remember the madness and are always mindful of the fallout.

That’s not the case in Washington, where the White House and the Pentagon are run by civilians who have never sweated it out on a battlefield. Never before in our country’s history has an administration charged with defending our nation been so lacking in hands-on combat experience and therefore so ignorant about the art and science of war...

Col. Hackworth goes on to point out the similarities between the "trained" ARVN troops in Vietnam and the "trained" Iraqi troops in Mesopotamia. Short version: lightning CAN strike twice when it comes to training, equipping, and especially motivating an army of local auxillaries. Duh. The unreliability of auxillary forces has been known for almost as long as imperial armies have been conquering and occupying territory. Of course, it can hardly be said that Iraq is occupied, when some cities require repeated doses of liberation (which further reduces the ability to occupy other regions of "conquered" territory). But history has never been a strong suit for this administration, despite the fact that I think Mr. Bush majored in history at Yale. Go figure.