The other day I was watching a program about Viet Nam on the History channel. They mentioned that the United States found that a conventional army could not defeat an unconventional enemy no matter how poorly armed or undisciplined they may be. One of the many problems the United States faced was there was no "front" line and the enemy could not be differentiated from the friendlies. Also, the enemy was willing to lose 10 of their soldiers to kill just one of our soldiers. Sound familiar?
Later the History Channel had a program about the last days of WWII and Iwo Jima specifically. The Japanese had a tunnel system on Iwo Jima making them "invisible" to their enemy. The tunnel was the length of the island; high enough to enable a person to stand up; wide enough to accomodate traffic in both directions; contained a 400 bed hospital; 750 concrete bunkers; food and other supplies plus 21 million rounds of ammunition. The tunnel was built by Korean slave labor. During the fighting the Japanese would quickly move their dead and wounded into the tunnel and the United States Marines were never sure of the affect they were having. Sound familiar?
One marine said they could not understand the Japanese willingness to die; they, the marines, wanted to live. Sound familiar? .
As someone said those that don't know our history are condemned to repeat it. My guess is our President and the leaders of our military did not do well in history.
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