There was a large segment of South Vietnamese society that definitely believed in fighting off the communists and we trained their children and armed them with the best our superpower military had to offer. They still collapsed and many of them risked death for not only them but their wives, mothers, fathers and children to escape the communist north. How did this happen?

Vietnam split in two because a large segment of the population embraced the western culture against a conservative ideology of monarchism cloaked in communist rhetoric and hidden behind Ho Chi Minh. The former were defeated by the simple fact that they were considered tools of outsider enemies and liberation meant freeing Vietnam from colonialism in support of anything, no matter how bad just to be an independant Vietnam. Unlss of course you believe that all Vietnamese were politial wonkettes following each nuance of the debate between foreign injected communism versus foreign injected democracy. Bottom line, they just wanted us to leave.

Iraq is in the same position right now. People who don't care about an Islamist state, equally don't care about a Western style democratic government. They just want to leave their homes without being shot or kidnapped, would be happy if the lights didn't got out before bedtime and most of all (by 80 percent) just want us to get the fuck out.

We may not like what turns out, but all the marines in the world won't change the fact we can't create an army dedicated to something they don't believe in or keep some group we don't believe in from being the first to offer them what they really want. Security and electicity.

Three and a half years into this, we a superpower, can offer neither.

I'm speechless.

Somethings missing, but I need to digest this.