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To: lentulusgracchus

I have only one questyoion about anything working, LG.

If you had been a commander in iraq during bush’s 6 years , was there any point in time when you would have permitted your troops to walk into town to go to a restaurant?


34 posted on 02/15/2016 7:04:32 AM PST by xzins (Have YOU Donated to the Freep-a-Thon? https://secure.freerepublic.com/donate/)
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To: xzins
Your criterion question is based on a false analogy.

Before Vietnam, the wars we were involved in were conventional with clearly demarcated front lines. Therefore it was perfectly safe to eat in a bistro behind the lines in France in 1918, per your question, or in Italy in 1944.

Restaurant killings have been common in guerrilla wars since then. Example: My Canh floating restaurant in Saigon, 1963. And yet U.S. troops did walk around freely in Saigon before 1975.

This was never the case in either Afghanistan or Iraq, and I doubt it's true for the Russians in Syria or anyone in Libya. It has occasionally been untrue at Fort Hood.

So I don't know if your premise is well-founded, that the litmus test of success in a guerrilla war is whether partisans of one side can parade openly in areas contested or coveted by the adversary: the Parisian banlieus come to mind, and Harlem above 90th Street, and Nuevo Laredo.

37 posted on 02/15/2016 10:55:40 PM PST by lentulusgracchus ("If America was a house , the Left would root for the termites." - Greg Gutierrez)
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