European Press Increasingly Comparing Iraq to Vietnam

European Press Increasingly Comparing Iraq to Vietnam

(EXCERPT) By Lucy Jones

With almost daily attacks in Iraq claiming the lives of an increasing
number of Iraqis and U.S. soldiers, the word “Vietnam” began creeping
into Europe’s newspapers in October. “U.S.troops were in Vietnam for
10 years, and have only been in Iraq since March. How bad are things
going to become?” Germany’s Markische Oderzeitung asked on Oct. 28,
after a series of car bombs rocked Baghdad, claiming dozens of lives.
“The security situation is catastrophic, and more aid organizations
are just going to pull out,” the paper said.

“The situation in Iraq has gone awry,” wrote Bonn’s General-Anzeiger
on the same day. “The attackers are getting support from Islamic
terrorist circles. Even large sections of the Iraqi population are
helping them,” it noted, “because the Iraqis see Americans not as
liberators but as occupiers.”

“Iraq presents a two-fold vicious circle,” wrote the Frankfurter
Allgemeine Zeitung of Oct. 27. “On the one hand, reconstruction and a
more positive atmosphere cannot be achieved without re-establishing
internal security, while at the same time, they are its
prerequisites,” the paper s...

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