History repeats itself in interesting ways. Take the parallels between what George Bush called Iraq's "defining moment" - the Iraqi army's offensive in Basra - and the events of 1971 in the Vietnam war.
The attack on militias in Basra was supposed to have been a show of strength by the Iraqi prime minister, Nouri al-Maliki, of the coming of age of the Iraqi army and the success of the US "surge". The recriminations are flying thick and fast with the Americans telling the press that it was Maliki's idea and that he launched the operation with insufficient preparation.
Maliki is a diminished figure, doubts are being raised about the surge and the winners are not America's friends in the region - the radical cleric Moqtada al-Sadr and Iran, which brokered a ceasefire, as Jonathan Steele writes in today's Guardian.
Something similar happened in operation Lam Son 719 during the Vietnam war in 1971. The Nixon administration and South Vietnam's president, Nguyen Van Thieu, thought it would be a good idea for South Vietnamese forces to launch an offensive into neighbouring Laos to disrupt the flow of supplies from North Vietnam down the Ho Chi Minh trail and to show the success of Vietnamisation - handing the war effort to local forces.
The offensive began in February, with the US providing air, artillery and logistical support. The operation proved very costly militarily. Out of a force of 22,000 men, 3,000 were killed and 7,000 wounded, and some of South Vietnam's best units were decimated.
Lam Son 719 badly undermined Vietnamisation and undid progress of the previous years, particularly the relatively successful operation in Cambodia in 1970. One year after the Laos debacle, North Vietnam launched its 1972 Easter offensive and, in 1975, it achieved complete victory.
