The "Maginot Line" around Baghdad

Once apon a time, there was a very distinguished and highly intelligent Frenchman named Maginot, (see photo at left) after whom was named the most insanely and utterly useless defensive project in all of recorded history: Though the French had 10700 artillery pieces, and their British allies could muster an additional 1280, the German attacking forces could muster only 7378. Same for the other military ingredients for the battle. The allies had 108 division, the Germans only 93; the allies had 3894 tanks, the Germans only 2493. Nevertheless, the German army went around the Maginot Line and destroyed or captured the entire allied army.

The French commanders, unlike the brilliant French comanders in their distant past, were apparently ignorant of the lessons of history: For instance, the "Great Wall of China", so much admired by tourists, was a similarly tragic farce: By spreading their vast armies across such an enormous distance, the Chinese leaders guaranteed that a determined and intelligent enemy would take advantage of this dispersion and, though inferior in total strength, annihilate the enormous Chinese army, one isolated unit at a time.

Now our "president" George "W" Bush, who had the guts to fly National Guard planes around Texas, while I was wimping out of that kind of hazardous duty, content to fight North Vietnamese Regular Forces from a tiny RVN outpost at Ngo Trang, a few miles north of Kontum, and hardcore Viet Cong at Trung Lap, at the edge of the "Iron Triangle", the most hotly contested piece of real estate in South Vietnam, and the target of numerous B-52 bomber raids, whose rude impact often disturbed my unsavory dreams, usually while local VC units bombarded my advisory compound with 60mm motars, feels that he wants to repeat that brilliant Anglo/French strategy, by throwing a "Maginot Line" around Baghdad.

Apparently one of his deranged advisors, who does not have a clue about military strategy or tactics, has decided to dust off the Maginot Line strategy to win a final victory in Iraq (the Nazis called that "endsieg", and history records that it did not work out exactly as planned.

May God have mercy on our brave military, and grant that many of them survive this insane strategy, initiated by the tactically and strategically illiterate among Bush advisors! I shall indeed be praying for them, for they do not deserve this clueless commander-in-chief!