MB Civic

By Richard Cohen | Tuesday, January 16, 2007 | The Washington Post

This is a marvelous piece of “you are there” journalism. On a recent trip to Vietnam in the company of Senator John McCain, political analyst Richard Cohen explored the Cu Chi tunnels. What he saw there gave him a powerful insight (the “tunnel vision” of the title) into why the US lost the Vietnam War: the Vietnamese believed in their cause enough to tolerate living for years at a time in truly miserable conditions: dark, cramped, stuffy and hellishly hot. People were willing to live there in order to resist a foreign power they saw as an occupier. They were consumed with a nearly frenzied belief in their cause – someting we in the US lacked. The similarities to the situation in Iraq are striking and cunningly introduced. Our government has not learned the lessons of Vietnam, thus we are doomed to repeat it…BS

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/01/15/AR2007011500966.html