Vietnamization

I don't know about the rest, but even a bad decision by the Iraqis is a welcome one at this point. At least they are ponying up and acting like a government. If we bicker with them and disagree, all the better--that means that they aren't our puppet and maybe will gain some legitimacy and confidence and KEEP acting like a government. Even a corrupt but decisive government that is not totally inept would be good. It's a start, and it's probably more than we had in Vietnam.

As for Vietnamization, I can only hope. I've said for almost four years now that building a competent, legitimate Iraqi government and security forces are the ONLY way we can ever hope to leave Iraq without an implosion. The problem with Vietnamization in Vietnam was that they didn't do anything for the entire war and then tried to slam the process through in a year or two, then we screwed them, declared them ready to fight, left the country, gave air support for the 1973 fight with the NVA, then totally left them on their own to get mauled in 1975. The problem with Vietnamization is that we did NOT build ARVN and prepare them. We pushed ARVN aside for the whole war and fought the NVA and VC ourselves and allowed them to become dependant on us to fight for them. They began to take our combat power and logistical support for granted and did not take their part in the fight as seriously as they should've because we did it for them. Then the dream was over and they had to learn to fight on their own, but we set them up to fight like we did and they relied on our logistics support to do that. They barely held the line in 1973 against the NVA, but we were so eager to get out of the fight that we declared them ready to stand on their own. Then in 1975, in the midst of the Watergate scandal, they were begging for ammunition, aide, etc. because they were being overrun. Congress ignored them.

The lesson from all of that? I hope it wasn't "don't trust the US, because they will forget about you and leave you hanging", but unfortunately, I think that's exactly what a lot of our allies learned then. The silver lining to that may be that the Iraqis would take some ownership for their survival and start making sure they don't have to rely on us (cough in 08 cough).

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