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12/01/2005:

"Analysis: Bush wants to 'Vietnamize' Iraq"

...The new National Strategy, therefore, appears a welcome and, indeed necessary sharpening of strategic focus for the United States on what needs to be done in Iraq. But it looks unlikely to achieve its goal of cutting off support for the until-now overwhelmingly Sunni insurgency.

That is because the more the U.S. goal of pushing through the new constitution and establishing a democratically-elected Iraqi government is achieved, the more resentment has grown across the entire Sunni community -- 20 percent of the total Iraqi population -- and the stronger the insurgency has become.

Nor can the new National Strategy guarantee that the ambitious goal of building up the Iraqi army stand on its own two feet will work in the long term.

That strategy was applied 35 years ago in Vietnam when the United States built up the Armed Forces of (South) Vietnam, or ARVN, to be being able to maintain security in the country after U.S. troops were withdrawn and in the short term that strategy, in fact, worked well. But the ARVN could not defend itself or its state from a full-scale military invasion launched with overwhelming force in 1975 by North Vietnam.

Similarly, even if the new Iraqi army serving a predominantly Shiite governing majority proves able to crush the Sunni insurgency, it may prove unwilling or unable to defend itself and its government against an eventual invasion from neighboring fellow-Shiite Iran.
upi.com