Saturday, January 19, 2013

Two sides to every story

Long-time overseas war booster Max Boot plugs his book on guerilla warfare in the Wall Street Journal --

A similar strategy of relying on international support was pursued by Cubans against Spain in the 1890s and Algerians against France in the 1950s; it remains a key Palestinian strategy against Israel. A spectacular vindication of this approach occurred during the Vietnam War, when the U.S. was defeated not because it had lost on the battlefield but because public opinion had turned against the war. The same thing almost happened in Iraq in 2007, and it may yet happen in Afghanistan.

With 3000 Iraqis a month dying during 2006 from mass casualty attacks, Max Boot thinks that the American public wanted out not because the war had gone disastrously wrong, but because Al Qaeda in Iraq had successfully targeted American public opinion.