STEVE PIECZENIK TALKS

Imminent Fall of Baghdad Reminds Me of the Fall of Saigon fifty years ago!

I have sadly concluded that with the furious advance of ISIS supported by ‘the Great Pretenders’  our erstwhile DESPICABLE Sunni allies: Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Qatar, U.A.E, Dubai, Jordan, Iraq, and Syria this entity will eventually through conventional and unconventional tactics enter Baghdad within a week or so. Once again America finds itself at the tail-end of the jackass of all wars,  the initial Iraq Invasion and then the subsequent consequences of incredibly incompetent civilian, military and intelligence leadership. No one can be spared from this denouement of trillion of dollars spent on unnecessary wars, drone attacks, and indiscriminate civilian massacres.

I failed as a teacher, lecturer and national security operative to make certain that our brave men, women and their families would be spared the agonizing call of defeat beckoning our country into a combat scenario reminiscent of the Vietnam War.  Many pundits have claimed that Vietnam and Iraq were two different species of warfare. Their arguments of dissimilarity were enticing illusory, allowing our civilian/military/intelligence planners to ignore the basic lesson of Vietnam: Don’t fight a war in a distant land that you do not intend to win.

It should be simple history.
Yet ignorant narcissism of our civilian leaders  [Clinton, Bush jr. Obama] combined with the egregious cowardliness of our political generals [Tommy Franks] allowed us to to repeat the hell of Viet Nam, this time in Iraq. There are too many to blame for this incredible foolishness; including the CIA; military Intelligence, legislators; and a military officer corps that had no idea of how to fight counter-insurgency [Gen David Petraeus] combined with an ossified CIA [Tenet; Panetta; Brennan].  These dolts repeated the mantra of ignorance “arm the moderate rebels” and “we have no HUMIT”.   The citizens are also to blame for not going to the streets and protesting this absurd shameful war which will mark this country as both a ‘paper tiger’ and ‘a decaying Empire’.

  According to OSINT, Stratfor, October 7, 2014 (posted earlier)  three thousand ISIS fighters have succeeded in capturing the key strategic areas a few miles from Baghdad---RAMADI and FALLUJAH!! The town of Fallujah has a special resonance just like the ‘Tet Offensive’ has to me—our marines were successful in capturing that town, they won that battle; but our leaders LOST THE WAR!!
Coalition airpower bombing day and night will not make the slightest indent in the actual membership of ISIS or it’s force structure. Like the carpet bombing of Vietnam all that we had accomplished was the spread of napalm over the bodies of innocent Vietnamese civilians as well as poisoning our own troops with Agent Orange (thank you, Admiral Zumwalt).

As ISIS comes ever closer to Sunni Baghdad; the Sunni ISIS soldiers will change their combat uniforms into one of a ‘local resident’ of Baghdad; wherein they will continue to implement their successful terrorist tactics (suicide bombers, IEDs)  attacking both soft and hard targets using counter-insurgency techniques. Our fighter jets can no longer distinguish ISIS from innocent civilian targets.  ISIS will advance into the center of the capital just as they did in Damascus, Syria; and drive both the Shi’ite Iraqi Prime Minister; as well as, the American Embassy Officials out of Baghdad, if they don’t slaughter them all.

Most likely,  Obama will send in more Marines in order to ‘protect’ our useless, bloated American embassy until it becomes apparent to all that we must evacuate all American personnel from there to our naval fleet.  This naval fleet that is standing by for one more evacuation of American personnel.

How do I know this?
I was involved tangentially in the evacuation of the American Embassy in Saigon and I remembered debriefing Ambassador Graham Martin whose only words were:

“What happened? How could we have lost this Vietnam War?” Unfortunately,  I had many obvious answers but out of respect for him and Ambassador Ellsworth Bunker, I remained silent.  The answer lay in our ignorance of Vietnamese history and what Prime Minister Le Duc Tho, reminded me years later “that you Americans are lazy and arrogant”.

He was right!
Americans have been incredibly stupid and boisterous,  screaming out about how we could change the course of thousands of years Middle East History in the vast deserts that really had no boundaries, despite the Sykes-Picot Treaty. Our intelligence was akin to a ‘fact-idiot’; we knew the coordinates of the geography without understanding the complexity of the ethnic tribes woven in the incestuous cobweb of Shi’ite and Sunni Factionalism.

Allow me to quote Former Special Forces General Jerry Boykin who once said very poignantly, ”the American military has not won a legitimate battle since 1944.” In Iraq, despite all the military assistance we provided the non-existing Iraqi Army, ISIS just defeated the 7^th, 8^th, 9^th Divisions [located in Hit; Ramadi; and Fallujah, respectively]. 

Eventually, you will hear on the mainstream media how ISIS infiltrated Baghdad and then raised the ISIS flag on top of the American Embassy.  Remember that history does repeat itself and these deadly games are played over and over.  Let me remind you that the Viet Cong,  like ISIS, was the creation of the OSS, the precursor to the CIA. If you ever travel to Hanoi,  you could see the pictures of Julia Child [yes, the famous chef] and other OSS Operatives, teaching the VIET MIN how to throw hand grenades. In WWII,  we had trained HO CHI MINH himself,  an ardent admirer of American culture,  to fight against the Japanese.

Today we have trained ISIS, the CIA’s creation, to fight against ourselves. How ironic and pitiful!  America has become more self destructive over the past fifty years as we ignore the history lessons that our fathers paid for in blood.