"Every asset of the nation must be applied to the conflict to bring about a quick and successful outcome, or don't do it," said Haig, an adviser to presidents Johnson and Nixon who says more troops are needed to succeed in Iraq. President Bush's father had 660,000 coalition soldiers for the 1991 Gulf War invasion, more than twice as many as his son had for Iraq's initial invasion.
Haig, who was Nixon's boy-wonder general, makes the point that the flower-and-candy battalions of the never-served Neocons missed: you don't do wars on "the cheap". There's nothing cheap about the sacrifices of the men and women who wear the uniform of our country, unless you are a republican who needs them for a photo-op.
Alexander Haig at least speaks with the benefit of experience. I don't recall whether or not he bought the Neocon line about the urgency of invading Iraq, and removing Saddam...likely he did, since he's a party-man through-and-through. Now he's making the point that the parallels are becoming so close that the success or failure of the misadventure in Mess O'Potamia will depend on revisiting what went wrong (in his opinion) in SE Asia.
I guess that the one thing that won't be the same is that Beloved Leader can't head down to work on the Senate campaign of some minor family retainer and play water volleyball with ambitious secretaries, or maybe he can, as long as Darth Cheney doesn't play with firearms for the next three years or so.
