I disagree with you on the desert issue. They have the home court advantage. Most GIs don't come from deserts and the Iraqi desert isn't a huge, flat expanse of sand, rather hilly, rocky and full of ravines. Guerilla warfare would be more difficult in Iraq than in Vietnam, but it wouldn't be impossible. Electonics are notorious for not functioning well in dry dusty and hot conditions and the US is increasingly relying on them.
I'm not saying that guerilla warfare will take place nor that the Iraqis want it but that if it did, it wouldn't be as one-sided as you think.
In twenty years, my friend, the families of those civilian victims will care that their relatives were killed by the Americans during the war and that many, many more died because the US lacked a post-war plan. Or, in your mind, do the opinions of the Iraqis not matter?
The Muslim world has many problems and how to make the transition from a rural, agrarian, religious ruled lifestyle to an urban, post-industrial, secular one is a very difficult problem indeed. It has been progressing in fits and starts for the last 100 years. We've seen a few successes but far more failures. It has often been said that if if weren't for the oil that the US, UK, Dutch, French, Russians etc, etc, were so interested in, the Muslim world would have dealt with its internal strife long ago. Unfortunately the imperialists have said that they know better than those poor devils in the desert and as a result, the religious and internal strife continues.
It remains to be seen whether the US in its new role as nation builder will be able to succeed where so many others have so utterly failed. Did gw do the right thing? History WILL tell us one way or another. Does gw and the US have the guts to stay in Iraq for the next decade or so to ensure that another Saddam will not take over? It is going to cost many more lives and billions and billions of dollars at a time when the US can not afford it and at a time when the military is spread too thin already.
Evil is only relative in a religious context. That America is an empire is unquestionable, the neo con policies have proven that. That all empires are eventually toppled is a history lesson that gw must have slept thru at Yale.
BAGHDAD, Iraq, July 3 ? Two months after President Bush declared the end of major combat, the commander of allied forces in Iraq acknowledged today that "we're still at war," and the United States announced a reward of up to $25 million for the capture of Saddam Hussein or confirmation of his death.
The statement from the commander, Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez of the Army, came on a day in which 10 American soldiers were wounded in three separate attacks.
Link
Well, this guy seems to have a different opinion....