“U.S. military, intelligence and law enforcement officials say that after six months of intensifying guerrilla warfare, Iraqi insurgents know more about the U.S. and allied forces — their style of operations, convoy routes and vulnerable targets — than the coalition forces know about them. Indeed, U.S. intelligence has had trouble simply identifying the enemy and figuring out how many are Iraqis and how many are foreign fighters.

With local knowledge and the element of surprise on their side, the guerrillas are exploiting their intelligence edge to overcome the coalition’s overwhelming military superiority. Insurgents routinely use inexpensive explosives to destroy multimillion-dollar assets, including tanks and helicopters. Using surveillance and inside information, the guerrillas have assassinated many Iraqis helping the coalition, gunned down a member of the U.S.-appointed Governing Council, killed the top United Nations official in Iraq and blasted the heavily guarded hotel in Baghdad where Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz was staying.” —USAToday

Here is another sense in which this is Vietnam all over again — and a sense in which we have not learned. The insurgents evade detection by blending into the general populace; the conspicuousness and unwieldiness of the lumbering U.S. military beast makes it an easy target; and superior firepower and military technology and prowess confer no advantage over simple weapons craftily used. Of course, the ‘simple weapons’ here include RPGs and portable SAMs that can take out tanks and helicopters, rather than the carbines and sharpened bamboo sticks that defeated the U.S. in Indochina. Moreover, US vulnerability may be due as much to our remarkable cultural insensitivity and bigotry as our reliance on high-tech warfare. And, as if that analogy isn’t telling enough, there’s the Battle of Algiers depiction of the post-conquest Algerian insurgency against the French. Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz should rent it and weep — before they pursue their potentially disastrous ‘Iraqification’ strategy.