Comparing a Real Quagmire to the Conflict in Iraq: Tactical Doublespeak

In the tactical sense, eliciting the word quagmire conjures images of soldiers trying desperately to leave their home base, only to be assailed from every corner, hostile natives glaring dubiously at anyone patrolling the streets, explosions going off around every corner and death becoming more common than life. In the military history of the United States, there is an excellent example of this quagmire, just not in the conflict in Iraq.

While it has become popular jargon to assign the situation in Iraq the much aggrieved claim of "quagmire" there are plenty of videos alone that are readily available across such media outlets as LiveLeak and YouTube that diminish this claim - this is without considering the remarkably low casualty rates incurred in a situation named as such. While it is undoubtedly tragic that the number of American servicemen that have fallen in the line of duty in Iraq, it is important to not let bursts of emotions dictate a careful analysis and comparison of history.

In the truest sense of the form, the United States' largest quagmire was during Operation: Overlord, shortly after Operation: Neptune resulted in a successful take over of the Normandy beach head. With airborne infantry (now known as paratroopers) scattered across the French countryside, a beach head breakout necessary, and natural defenses that dated back to the Roman times favoring the Germans the idea of successfully taking France seemed gloomy indeed.

Contrary to the current Iraq conflict, the United States was still very much at war with an existing state when it entered into France and therefore territory was not just difficult to keep order in, it still had to be taken. Taken from thousands of stalwart defenders who, much like guerrillas, knew the country side much better than the American boys who had never seen such thick emplacements. The reality of how difficult these corridors of shrubbery must have been is difficult to understand without, at the very least, having been to the D-Day Museum in New Orleans, Louisiana, where a to-scale model has been constructed, complete with vehicles and small barrels sticking out from the hedges.

To move more than an inch from a current position could very well mean death - and move was exactly what NCOs and officers were expecting of their men. With a literal maze of dirt mounds reinforced by almost perfect camouflage it was not difficult for Wehrmacht rifles to lean out just enough to take out two nervous Americans - and in the following round of gunfire, the German was off, hidden safely behind these walls of green or covered by a thick mound of dirt.

To add to this aggravation, the Germans were keen to lay mines, hide whole vehicles such as tanks and half-tracks in wait, and had no qualms about launching indirect mortar fire every chance they had at clumps of American soldiers. By the time Operation: Overlord was complete, 29,000 Americans were killed, followed by another 106,000 wounded or missing in action.

The slow advance through these hellish green mazes took three agonizing months of not only frantic ambushes, but also brutal combat that has been noted as degenerating to hand to hand/bayonet charges.

So one has to wonder if, when one calls the conflict in Iraq a quagmire, such names do terrible injustice to those who did not have the benefit of a Green Zone. Such strong language should be reserved for times of equal catastrophe - because when comparing quagmires, Iraq's stabilizing situation simply doesn't seem to compare to that of the Norman Hedgerows.