Don't compare Iraq to Viet Nam............

.....compare it to Napoleon's misadventure in Spain. So says Gregory Cochran and the similarities are truly amazing.

No two wars are ever the same any more than you can step on the same banana peel twice. That said, Napoleon's invasion and occupation of Spain, from 1808 to 1814-the war that gave us the word "guerrilla" and was immortalized in Goya's "Third of May," the war that drained France's army, smashed Napoleon's reputation for invincibility, and left Spain thrashing like a broken-backed snake for decades-has striking similarities to our invasion and occupation of Iraq.

Both wars started under the influence of similar delusions. Napoleon thought that the Spanish would roll over and play dead as so many other European states had; he thought marching to Madrid and placing his brother Joseph on the throne would complete the subjugation of Spain. We pretty much thought the same: crushing Saddam's army would be easy; we would then install a pro-American government (Ahmad the Thief) and have most of our Army home by fall.

The invasions went well, as expected, but in each case a tiresome guerrilla war broke out. The French eventually lost over a quarter of a million men in "the Spanish ulcer," as Napoleon called it, while Iraq has tied down half of the Army and is costing us more than $75 billion a year. What went wrong? As it turns out, Boney and Bush made some of the same mistakes.

He points out that Spain and Iraq both had horrible undisciplined armies. A disciplined army will fight together, put up a hell of a fight and then surrender together when it's all over. An undisciplined army on the other hand won't fight together, won't put up much of a fight and most important, won't surrender together so it's never over. Mr. Cochran points out that we got the word "guerrilla" from Napoleon's Spanish war.

And then there is Religion:

Religion mattered in Spain. It matters in Iraq, too. Napoleon didn't think it would, and certainly the seers who created our Iraq policy didn't. In Spain, priests told the peasants that the invaders threatened their festivals, their saints, and the heart of their way of life. They portrayed the French as unwholesome enemies of God who deserved any punishment the peasants could come up with. We're a lot milder than French. We aren't bayoneting mullahs, but we are definitely a lot less wholesome. After Abu Ghraib, it's pretty easy to portray us as giggling perverts.
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Wolfowitz of Arabia said, "The Iraqis are among the most educated people in the Arab world. They are by and large quite secular. They are overwhelmingly Shia, which is different from the Wahabis of the peninsula, and they don't bring the sensitivity of having the holy cities of Islam being on their territory." He really said that, on Feb. 26, 2003. He forgot that 40 percent of Iraqis are illiterate (more than any of their neighbors), forgot that Najaf and Karbala are the holy cities of the Shi'ite majority, forgot that Islam would be the only ideology left in Iraq with the fall of the Ba'athists. We now hear about martyrs and jihad every day of the week, while Sistani, a mullah's mullah, acts as the unofficial powerbroker of Iraq. I can't read men's souls, but it certainly looks as if our decision makers and Napoleon mirror-imaged the foe: they personally didn't take religion seriously and so found it hard to believe that anyone else did either.

And this should sound familiar.

Napoleon's army in Spain ended up controlling only the ground it stood on. The roads weren't safe-every supply convoy needed an armed escort. The struggle against guerrillas was never-ending. The French, who had thought of themselves as bringing enlightenment, ended up hating the Spanish.

Sounds a lot like Iraq to me.

The problems in Napoleon's Spain and Bush's Iraq are a result of the same thing, Ignorance and Hubris.

The Bush administration can always plead ignorance. Certainly few of the players knew much about Iraq, the Middle East, or Islam. Judging from their frequent confused historical references, it seems as if Condi and Rummie really don't know any history at all. But the administration didn't check with anyone who did know. In fact, it rejected every form of expert advice. I'm sure someone said "wouldn't be prudent"-but Bush wasn't in a mood to listen, and no advice, no intelligence briefing, can trump that.

So now you know, don't compare Iraq to Viet Nam. There is a much better comparison availalable. Unfortunately the ending is the same.