From the NY Times front page
We’ve seen the Enemy and they are … who, exactly?.
A year and a half after Baghdad fell, the insurgency has yet to develop a full-fledged political wing, or a coherent political program.
Well, sort of. Yes, many insurgent factions disagree with each other on politics and ultimate goals. However, they are completely united on one goal – driving out the US.
A senior official in the Muslim Scholars Association, a group of Sunni clerics that has close ties to insurgent leaders, acknowledged that the goals of the cells are “sometimes even antithetical to each other.”
“But they all have one goal, and that is to kick the Americans out of Iraq, and I don’t think they’ll be flexible in this goal,” the official, Muhammad Bashar al-Fadhi, said.
The Pentagon didn’t understand this in Vietnam and they don’t understand it now. And the end result will be the same, a US defeat.