I’m going to come right out and say it: the situation on the ground in Iraq is increasingly beginning to resemble that in Vietnam during the war down. No, I haven’t become a commie-lib. Let me finish. The situation on the ground in Iraq, by all appearances, turned into a slow war of attrition. Insurgents and foreign terrorists are being slowly defeated. Above all other things, the situation appears to be under control.

Iraq is not Vietnam in 1968: Iraq is Vietnam in 1972. The enemy has slowly, but surely, been brought to heel. The fighting has been difficult and things have not always gone perfectly. But they’ve gone well enough. Iraqi forces, while not perfect, are fighting. Over the next several years, US forces will be able to reduce their numbers while the remaining forces will assist local Iraqi forces in fighting local enemies.

When people think of the end of the Vietnam War they always think of Saigon in 1975. I suppose that’s normal. But it also distorts the military lessons of the war.

People often mock the claims of those who say that the US had effectively won the Vietnam War by the time of the signing of the Paris Peace Accords. But their derision does not alter the essential truth of that statement: when direct US involvement in South Vietnam ceased in 1973, US war aims had been achieved. The insurgency from within South Vietnam had been defeated and South Vietnamese forces were strong enough to, with continued US aid, maintain South Vietnamese independence. It was only a series of improbable and unexpected events which led to the defeat of the Republic of Vietnam. Had US aid continued at expected levels, there would be a free South Vietnam to this very day.

In Iraq, Secretary Rumsfeld and President Bush adopted the strategies which brought about the US victory of 1972 early. That’s the simple and plain reason why they’ve refused to introduce additional troops into the Iraqi theatre of operations: more troops simply means more targets for the enemy and more responsibilities assumed by the United States. That’s entirely the opposite of what’s being sought here.

The President has held back from deploying additional troops, even when the short-term benefits would have been high, because the risk of being sucked into a Vietnam-style conundrum, where the United States is forced to assume virtually all local responsibilities, is much too high. This has mean talking a tight-rope. There have to be enough US troops in the country to respond to major challenges, but not so many that they become expected to assume total command and that Iraqi forces are ignored and allowed to languish.

The last few months and the next month will probably mark the highest single-month death tolls for the war. Obviously US losses were going to be high during the Battle of Fallujah, which was the largest urban engagement by the United States Marine Corps since Hue during the Vietnam War. Further, it’s fairly obvious that insurgent attacks are going to pick up during the run-up to Iraq’s first democratic elections. That’s all to be expected.

All of this, however, disguises the essential truth that all attempts to create an uprising of a truly national character: all attempts to forge something which might be credibly claimed to be a true “resistance movement” have failed. The enemy in Iraq is not a broad uprising of the Iraqi people: it’s a motley collection of bitter-enders, foreigners, and the sort of riff-raff who would be members of street gangs had they been born in the State of California instead of Al-Anbar Province.

I don’t think that anyone has a firm idea on the actual number of insurgents in Iraq but, from what I’ve been reading, I don’t think the number of actual fighters is very high at all. There might be 10,000 or so (and perhaps many more) in the whole of the country if you count everyone who screams “Allah Akhbar” at a meeting as a full-fledged resistance fighter. But, as some of my devoted readers are very fond of reminding me, people who scream are, for the most part, not all that likely to do.

Read the casualty reports and the reports of terrorist attacks. They’re all basically the same. Occasionally it’s gunmen. More often it’s bombs planted by the side of the road. US casualties are unacceptably high but, given the level of weapons and resources known to be at the disposal of the terrorists, they’re also rather low.

There just aren’t that many terrorist fighters actually conducting operations in Iraq. Probably no more than a few hundred full time. This is good news and bad news. The good news is, of course, that the scale of the problem is smaller than popularly believed. The bad news is that individuals operating in the way described are extremely hard to catch.

Think back to October of 2002 when the DC Snipers were operating. Major law enforcement resources were devoted to catching these people by a number of states, the District of Columbia and the Federal Government. During this period, the two Snipers were actively killing people with a rifle. They were killing people who they had to be close enough to see. Still, it took weeks to catch them and, when it did happen, is occurred as much by chance as by anything else.

This, of course, was with police who intimately knew the country they were going over. Now, imagine that Muhammad and Malvo had been leaving improvised explosive devices by the side of the road. How long would it have taken to catch them doing that?

So that’s both the good news and the bad news. This insurgency can’t win, but it can go on killing people for a long time. Look at the length of time it took Germany to deal with the Red Brigades during the 1970’s: and those only consisted of, at the most, a few dozen people.

As in Vietnam in 1972, there is exactly zero chance that the internal forces operating within Iraq will be capable of defeating the forces of the government. Similarly, Iraqi forces are reaching a point where they will, with American assistance, be capable of handling external threats as well.

The danger is not a military defeat for US forces: the danger is demoralization leading to a defeat as it did in Vietnam in 1975. Iraq could probably hold together for a little bit after a US withdrawal at this point, but not for more than a few years. It’s vital that the United States maintains its resolve to assist the Iraqi Government in fighting the insurgency and that it guard against Syrian or Iranian moves against the new government.

Fundamentally, the situation in Iraq calls for the US to respond by simply staying the present course. There’s no need to radically alter US strategy. A gradualist approach will bring victory over the course of the next several years.

If the US keeps fighting terrorists, training Iraqi forces, and gradually distributing reconstruction aid, then everything will turn out fine in the end. The danger lies not in the present course, but in radical alterations to it.

There’s not going to be a day when we know that we’ve won. The fighting may continue sporadically for many years. It might even go on for decades. But a secure Iraq will be preserved. As Iraqi forces improve, some US forces will be withdrawn. There will probably be a large (at least Division-sized) residual force in Iraq for decades, to act in emergencies. But troops numbers will decline.

Above all we must maintain confidence that, if we remain confident, things will work out in the end.