What IS a Quagmire?

It is awfully hard to predict the consequences of any single action we take in Iraq, but the breaking news from CNN makes me think that things are about to hit the fan:

U.S.-led coalition announces an arrest warrant has been issued for anti-American Iraqi cleric Moqtada al-Sadr.

This is just the latest incident in what seems to be a neverending cycle of escalation on the part of both Iraqi insurgents and the US military. It continues to be hard to make sense of the big picture, when most of the daily news is focused on the death toll. More than anything, the big mystery to me is whether there really is this silent majority of Iraqis who favor a peaceful, democratic transition, or whether the Islamic insurgents have greater support amongst the populace than any of us want to believe. I'm not saying we shouldn't be going after this al-Sadr character. But it does raise the possibility that we are dealing not with a few hornets, but with a whole damned nest.

Once such questions become the basis for analyzing our approach to Iraq, I think the comparisons to Vietnam become inescapable. I am much too young to know much about the entry into Vietnam (though I have half a dozen books on my shelf that ought to give me a better understanding), but it seems safe to say that, if nothing else, few people in 1964 thought Vietnam was going to become Vietnam either. As we begin to hear calls (from Republican senators no less) for pushing back the transition to Iraqi sovereignty and/or sending even more troops, I can't deny that red flags start going up in my head.