Iraq Is Starting to Look A Lot Like Vietnam (if it Wasn’t Already)

The Daily Sheeple – by Joshua Krause

Last Tuesday, the Iraqi city of Mosul was taken over by the “Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant”, also known as the ISIS. Formerly affiliated with Al Qaeda, The ISIS began in the early years of the American invasion of Iraq, and was responsible for some of the first insurgent attacks against Coalition forces. Now over a decade later, and only 3 years after the United States removed its forces from the country, the second largest city in Iraq has been taken by the insurgency.  

This isn’t the first city to be overrun by the ISIS either. The cities of Sulayman Beg, and the oft contested Fallujah were previously taken, and the cities of Baiji, Ramadi, and Kirkuk have been partially occupied. Their fight against Assad across the border in Syria (where they have occupied several cities as well), appears to have helped fuel their offensive into Iraq by giving their forces some much needed fighting experience.

The Iraqi soldiers that the United States spent billions of dollars to train and equip, appear to be completely helpless against the insurgency. When the ISIS first entered Mosul, rather than resist the attack, the police and military largely shed their weapons and uniforms as they fled the city. The Wall Street Journal is reporting that Prime Minister Nouri Al-Maliki declared a state of emergency, while also trying to spin these events into proof that the situation in Iraq is reaching a turning point:

Pentagon officials said they don’t view the attack as a dangerous turning point that requires urgent action…Some analysts said the scale of the disaster could force a rare agreement among the country’s divided political groups.

“It’s potentially driving all factions toward a government of national unity,” said Michael Knights, an Iraq expert and researcher at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. “If you wanted a wake-up call, this is it.”

How much is the Brooklyn Bridge going for these days? Haven’t we seen this before? How many times does the Iraq War need to be declared a victory, and how many times have we reached a “turning” point? And do these rebels happen to be the same exact forces that the United States supported during the Syrian Civil War? At least this time there aren’t a hundred thousand American boots on the ground to face the results of the United States’ Kafkaesque shenanigans.

The truth is, pretty much every major player in the alternative media predicted these events. Nobody in their right mind thought that Iraq was going to succeed after American forces made their exit. It was not a difficult prediction to make, because from start to finish the Iraq war played out the exact same way as Vietnam, and it was obvious that the United States never learned its lesson.

Much like Iraq, that war began under false pretenses to solidify public support for the conflict, while installing a puppet regime that was more compliant with U.S. Interests. The United States escalated the conflict year after year, as the military failed to adapt to the asymmetrical tactics of the enemy. After a generation of wrecking the nation and its neighbors, killing countless civilians, and destroying the environment with toxic elements, public support began to wane.

The United States had to find a way to exit gracefully, and thought that they could sufficiently train and equip the South Vietnamese Army to resist the North. They managed to hold on for a few short years before being overrun by the NVA. You probably remember what happened next.

If history is any lesson, there is one final prediction to be made with Iraq, and I’m calling it now. It ends with thousands of fearful Iraqi refugees fleeing the brutal reprisals of the insurgency, desperately trying to make their way to the heavily fortified American embassy in Baghdad. Will this war end with scores of civilians huddled on the rooftops of the embassy, praying to be airlifted, as the American war machine abandons military hardware in the desert? I can’t imagine it ending any other way.

Delivered by The Daily Sheeple

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Contributed by Joshua Krause of The Daily Sheeple.

Joshua Krause is a reporter, writer and researcher at The Daily Sheeple. He was born and raised in the Bay Area and is a freelance writer and author. You can follow Joshua’s reports at Facebook or on his personal Twitter. Joshua’s website is Strange Danger .

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