This is interesting. When I jumped onto Yahoo News earlier this afternoon, the headline said something along the lines of countires re-thinking the amount of troops they'd send to Iraq to support the U.S. Now, however, the current headline focuses solely on Japan's decision, and the article gives less focus to other countries. How wonderfully Orwellian.

This got me thinking about Iraq and the near-unavoidable comparisons to Vietnam, and in a stroke of syncronicity, Reuters released the story that the Official U.S. death-toll in Iraq now exceeds the death-toll in Vietnam over the same time period.

You know, there's a rant in here, but I just don't have the heart for it. It's a cluster-fuck. And while I'm loathe to claim Iraq is "another Vietnam", only a fool would miss the similarities. But the truth is, even at eight months it too damn soon to see how this will end. Vietnam--as a moment of history--encapsulated far more than Iraq has done. When protests songs become Top 40 hits, national guardsmen shoot student protestors, and this country nearly becomes torn apart along generational lines, then I'll say Iraq has become another Vietnam. right now it's just another cluster-fuck in a long history of cluster-fucks. (How many people called Vietnam "Another's Battle of Little Bighorn?")

I think the problem has a lot to do with the fact that our society has become so short on attention that it refuses to believe a war can last more than a few months. Think about it: imagine if you were living during World War Two. Do you remember what a horrible mess things were at the start of that war? America was getting its ass handed to it in the Pacific, and it took almost two years just to get a foothold in Europe. Can you imagine todays media reacting to that sort of tedious, prolonged fighting?

Bush declared an end to hostilities forty-two days after starting the attack. Is there any wonder what-so-ever that there's still resistance? Does anyone seriously think this resistance will be cleared up anytime soon? I have no faith in the Bush Adminstration what-so-ever, but even I understand that it's going to take a year or two before you can look at Iraq and decide whether any progress has really been made. These things take time. Even Bush and his adminstration know that. It takes time, and casualties, because people die in a war. So more people have died in Iraq since March than died in Vietnam; to get pedantic, that the death-rates don't match up should actually show people that this isn't another Vietnam; the situations, while similar, are fundamentally different.

I swear, Politics and War are two of the ugliest inventions the world has ever seen.