The US forces are prisoners in their own fortresses

[annabanana]

We, who are ignorant of the past are, indeed, doomed to repeat it. This article was published this past weekend, but deserves some attention. Just how stupid ARE we, anyway?

(see the second article)
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/040305Z.shtml

[punpirate]

1. Oh, I think we know it...

... and the troops know it. The ones that don't are the upper echelon commanders and the commander-in-chief.

The latter are so insulated from reality that they're never going to figure it out. Never.

[leftchick]

2. Yikes! Thank you for posting this...

sadly, the neo-cons don't think history repeats....


~snip~

Indeed, the Crusaders in Lebanon - men with thunderous names like Tancred and Bohemond and Baldwin - used a system of control remarkably similar to the US Marines and the 82nd Airborne. They positioned their castles at a day's ride - or a day's sailing down the coast in the case of Lebanon - from each other, venturing forth only to travel between their keeps.

And then out of the east, from Syria and also from the Caliphate of Baghdad and from Persia came the "hashashin", the "Assassins" - the Crusaders brought the word back to Europe - who turned the Shia faith into an extremist doctrine, regarding assassination of their enemies as a religious duty.

Anyone who doubts the relevance of these "foreign fighters" to present-day Iraq should read the history of ancient Tripoli by that redoubtable Lebanese-Armenian historian Nina Jidejian, which covers the period of the Assassins and was published at the height of the Lebanese civil war.

"It was believed that the terrorists partook of hashish to induce ecstatic visions of paradise before setting out to perform their sacred duty and to face martyrdom..." she writes. "The arrival of the Crusaders had added to ... latent discontent and created a favourable terrain for their activities." Ouch.

[annabanana]

3. same show....

different costume department.