Has the Bush Doctrine failed?

[Hippikos]

Originally Posted by Undertoad

In that case Iraq should have much greater legs, since there are about 2,800 coalition body bags so far as compared to over 60,000 in Vietnam.

US public support trailed with the public perception that it was going poorly. The public would still be majority in favor, if the deaths led to the sort of productive changes that were hoped for. In fact it seems like the insurgency has been largely addressed at this point but simply leading everything into sectarian violence is also considered an unacceptable outcome.

World has changed. Vietnams are not possible anymore today. JDAM´s instead of napalm, cluster instead of carpet bombing, asymatric army instead of peoples army. World opinion doesn´t accept high casualties both civillian and military.

Must say that the rate of civillian death in iraq is rapidly approaching the old norms.