Iraq as America's Stalingrad?

* we get trollery:

"Must feel like sweaty ass every day living like a paranoid cynical jerk off. I love how you believe you have everything figured out and everyone else is just too stupid to realize how amazingly smart you are to figure out who is really at fault for everything you think is wrong in the world.

I know people like you would have been English sympathizers during the Revolutionary War. If you don't like the tough decisions that people in the Bush administration have to make to ensure our safety, move to Iran and join the Islamic revolution. I am sure you will love how they protect the human dignity of their own citizens and their enemy. You think they would respect you just because you fight their cause here in America. They would as soon kill you as piss on you."

* william lind:

"To the region, America's apparently unconditional and unbounded support for Israel and its occupation of Iraq are part of the same picture. For a military historian, the question arises: will history see Iraq as America's Stalingrad? If we kick the analogy up a couple of levels, to the strategic and grand strategic, there are parallels. Both the German and the American armies were able largely to take, but not hold, the objective. Both had too few troops. Both Berlin and Washington underestimated their enemy's ability to counter-attack. Both committed resources they needed elsewhere and could not replace to a strategically unimportant objective. Finally, both entrusted their flanks to weak allies-and to luck.

Let us hope that, unlike von Paulus, our commanders know when to get out, regardless of orders from a leader who will not recognize reality."