Someone Actually Agrees with Me About This. Wow.

While reading Michael Totten's review (h/t: Instapundit)of Sandra Mackey's Mirror of the Arab World: Lebanon in Conflict, I was fascinated to find the following sentence:

Rather than look at Iraq as an echo of Vietnam, she finds a closer parallel in the ferocious civil war that pitted sect against sect and local against foreigner in Lebanon during the 1970s and 1980s.

I came to this identical conclusion in a piece I posted in 2006:

The violence is caused by the same noxious mix of motives: sectarian hatred, private militias supported with funding from other nations (such as Iran, which is dabbling in this conflict just as it did in Lebanon 20 years ago.), and plain vicious street crime.

With that in mind, I'm linking that piece here.  Please overlook any broken links or mild anachronisms; after all this post is two years old.

History, Rhyming and Repeating