Basra: Echoes of Vietnam

Now that some of the dust has settled over the recent battle of Basra that pitted Muqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi army against the armies of the United States and Iraq, it is time to examine what that clash meant, and what are some analogies that might help bring it into focus. There were certainly echoes of Vietnam in last month's fighting, and some of those parallels, particularly to the 1968 Tet offensive, are worth a closer look.