Should Republicans go ahead and add Supreme Court Justices to head off Democrats

Vietnam comparisons

via Stephen Spruiell:

Say Anything has a brilliant note to our friends in the media who, in an effort to relive their 1960s-70s glory days, persist in comparing Iraq to Vietnam. Just a few examples from his list:

Vietnam: The common people expected to be empowered by a Communist victory.
Iraq: The Kurds and Shias would have only the boot of the Sunnis to expect. They won’t give up.

Vietnam: The VC weren’t fighting alone. The North Vietnamese Army fielded full-on military divisions. In fact, Saigon fell to 4 corps of NVA regulars. From what I remember, no guerrillas in history have won without the help of a regular army.
Iraq: The insurgents rely on homemade IEDs. They have no regular army support.

Vietnam: The media and liberal Democrats undercut the war effort, sapping public morale and snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.
Iraq: Well, maybe the two aren’t entirely dissimilar.

There are some significant disparities in the corelation of forces. In Vietnam the US was fighting division size communist units. In Iraq the enemy cannot mass a platoon size force without significant risk of having it destroyed immediately. In Vietnam the enemy focused on attriting US forces. In Iraq, the enemy avoids direct attacks on US forces and concentrates on killing non combatants. Thus while the US is attriting his forces the enemy mere nibbles around the edges of US forces using passive weapons. There are many more differences that are significant, some of which you can find at the Say Anything link.