phil hunt vented spleen or mostly mumbled...

Seventy-one
per cent were concerned that the US occupation of Iraq would be
"expensive, long and deadly".


I seem to remember that the occupation of Germany was expensive, long and
deadly...

From the personnel lost in the airlift, to all those folks who died in
everything from training accidents to car wrecks between 1945 and 1990, the
human toll may have been relatively less awesome than 45 years and the
cumulative expenditures, but tiresome and objectionable though they may be,
"our" Germans remain somewhat preferable to what would have been created
had we simply sailed home in '45.

While I doubt we can conytibute any more than a semblance of a Western
democracy in Iraq, I am sure that we'll manage in a half century to produce
there a generation of the same historically mis-educated escapists from
reality who carp and moan about US evils as are found in Germany today.

From back in '45, I remember my grandmother's loud cries to get my young
uncle back from Germany before September so he could re-enroll and finish
his degree, interrupted by a couple of years as a LT of the Armored Corps.
They got him home for Sep., '46....

I'm sure public opinion was strongly on Gran's side back in '45, but wars,
my uncle's, the later one I briefly visited, or this one, have a way of not
conforming to some optimal process curve. The mindless mindset which has
grown since the end of the USSR, that we can downsize and not maintain a
large military force, since all our technology allows precision strikes or
highly skilled specialist actions remains a recurring "bull****" theme
throughout history....the "By God, we'll have no more of these sorry massed
levees. I'll hire a troop of mercenaries who provide their own weapons and
gear!" school of thought, proved wrong on a repetititve basis for 3000+
years.