The essence of our Iraq problem

This is from a story by Ann Scott Tyson in the Washington Post:

“What sucks the most,” says Miller’s platoon leader, Lt. Tom Lafave, of Escanaba, Mich., “is we sweep an area and five hours later an IED goes off in the same spot.”

Miller’s squad leader, Staff Sgt. Steve “Shaggy” Hagedorn, is more blunt. “We spent three days clearing a route and I guarantee it’s worse now than when we started,” he says. “So everyone’s asking, ‘What are we doing it for?’ Everyone’s asking, ‘Am I next?’ “

As I’ve pointed out several times before, this is eerily similar to Johnson’s and Westmoreland’s policy in Vietnam: Send men on circular missions through jungles to clean out Vietcong and amass body counts, and then come back to base, and the Vietcong move in again.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at June 24, 2005 12:45 PM | Send