[M. Dodge Thomas]

I don't think the parallels with Vietnam are very strong – for starters, there is no North Vietnam - let alone a China or a USSR - arming or financing the insurgents.

The best US parallel that I can think of (and it's far from exact) was the counter-insurgency effort in the Philippines: a long drawn out low intensity conflict against a determined insurgency at least tacitly supported by a substantial portion of the population.

The biggest difference is that that was a low-tech low-cost effort, basically a police action conducted by pre WWII 20th century infantry, and fielding a modern hi-tech force to conduct such an effort largely in urban areas is something else entirely. For one thing it's hideously expensive – at least 100 billion a year plus opportunity costs. And if we intend to pursue this effort and still have the ability to do anything else on short notice, we will have to increase the size of our combat forces by 50%, and perhaps double them - which I don’t think would be possible without a draft.

So if we are serious about this, we will find ourselves in a situation quite different than anything either Bush or Kerry is willing to discuss at the moment.

[Cold Heat]

I don't think the parallels with Vietnam are very strong –

More of a parallel with Guadalcanal. The cleanup was the real story and very costly.

The end did come for the holdouts, and we did the right thing, as we do now.