Now it is America that desperately needs rescuing
http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,1188858,00.html
The limits of raw military power are being learned again in Iraq
Martin Woollacott
Friday April 9, 2004
The Guardian
Since the end of the second world war, a cycle of military victory and
defeat has been evident in American politics. It has taken the country
from the apex of its military strength in 1945 to near disaster and
then qualified victory in Korea, and then to failure in Vietnam,
victory in the Gulf war, and now to Iraq. In each phase, but
particularly after Vietnam, the impact of defeat has been to set in
train a rebuilding of American military strength and, eventually, its
confident and sometimes over-confident reassertion in a new situation.
The formative years of the men who have shaped the foreign policy of
George Bush's administration were influenced by the humiliation of
defeat in Vietnam, and by the idea that if only the country's military
power had been properly exerted, without condition or obstacle,
Vietnam could have been won.
Martin Woollacott
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