By Eric Margolis
"We all know what "deja vu" is. But I recently read of a condition psychiatrists call "jamais vu." That's where one sees something very familiar, but cannot identify it.
Both the White House and U.S. military seemed gripped by jamais vu.
Many of the same mistakes made in the Vietnam War are being repeated in Iraq and Afghanistan, but neither the White House, Pentagon, nor U.S. field commanders seem to recognize or understand them......
U.S. commanders in Iraq, like their Canadian counterparts in Afghanistan, keep proudly reporting how their men have occupied villages or towns, killed scores of "suspected terrorists" (usually thanks to air attack), and forced the enemy to flee.
They do not seem to understand they are fighting a fluid guerrilla war in which territory and body counts mean little......
Mao Zedong perfectly described the principles of such guerilla war: "When the enemy advances, withdraw; when he stops, harass; when he tires, strike; when he retreats, pursue.".......
I have covered numerous guerilla wars in my time and have never seen Western powers win a single one. Yet we keep forgetting this hard lesson.
We have also forgotten the great Gen. Douglas MacArthur's warning after Korea, "never fight a land war in Asia."......
Meanwhile, the administration refuses to admit Iraq has no real government or army, and is an anarchic stew of competing Shia militias, tribal chiefs, death squads, 22 Sunni resistance groups, and breakaway Kurds. Iran is becoming the real power in Iraq.......
History does not repeat itself, but men's mistakes and follies do.
The latest sombre example is Iraq, where our memory of Vietnam is ... jamais vu."
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