With no prejudice at all towards David Brooks or Andrew Krepievich, I do

wish people would stop using the Malaya “Emergency” as an analogy for

anything.

The enemy in that conflict were almost entirely Chinese communists, mainly

under foreign (i.e. Chinese) command. They were deeply unpopular with

practically all Malays: with the Bumiputra, who didn’t much care for Chinese of

any political orientation, and also with the Chinese Malays, who (a) were

mainly small capitalists, and (b) felt they had enough problems getting on

with their Malay neighbors without the added irritant of a Chinese-sponsored

insurgency.

I don’t want to minimize the sacrifice of those British soldiers killed in

the “emergency” (which was filling the front pages of British newspapers

about the time I started reading them), but Vietnam was, and Iraq is, very,

very much harder than Malaya.