I wrote two posts for Biased BBC about the BBC’s reporting of President Bush’s “admission” that there were parallels between the present situation and Iraq and the Tet Offensive. The BBC, of course, is neither the only nor by any means the worst offender among the media organisations that have seized on this.
Those who think that a clueless idiot can get and keep the office of President of the United States may well be good children or pleasant neighbours but there is no need to take anything they say about politics seriously. Whatever criticisms one might justly make of Bush, one thing he cannot be is a simpleton. For all that there is a kind of truth behind it: Bush is a simple man. As I wrote here, precisely because he is a child of privilege “in important respects his values are more normal than is normal in his milieu.” Poor guy. Of course he had thought about the similarities to the Tet Offensive. Like some prince letting slip that there might be something to this Copernican system in front of his less enlightened bishops, he just forgot for a moment to keep one of the taboos that it is safer to observe when so many of the intermediaries between him and the populace are either ignoramuses or hostile.
He forgot that so many of them rejoice that the American media managed to turn that offensive, which General Giap viewed as a failure, into “proof” that the war could not be won. He forgot that so many of them view the conquest of Vietnam by a regime so detested by its own people that thousands of Boat People preferred the mercies of the open sea to enduring it any longer, and the deliverance of Cambodia into the hands of the democidal Khmer Rouge, to be their finest hour.
You know, thinking about it, his moment of forgetfulness might make a few people remember these things. It may not do him such harm after all.
My undestanding (from Reason magazine and that part of the blogosphere) is that the higher-ups at the time where insistent that before Tet, the NVA were not able to mount such an offensive. That the NVA did made them look clueless. Regardless of the failure of the NVA, faith was lost in the ability of the planners to wage war successfully.
A bit like Mark Steyn’s post-Saddam capture “The insurgency will continue for a few weeks yet, but it will peter out, like the dictator, not with a bang but a whimper.” Take that as Whitehouse-level thinking on Iraq, and there’s the $0.02 Vietnam parallel.
“””Those who think that a clueless idiot can get and keep the office of President of the United States may well be good children or pleasant neighbours but there is no need to take anything they say about politics seriously.”””
I think that the office of president was recently held by a man suffering from a degenerative brain desease who was going senile, and the office of vice-president was recently held by a man who couldn’t spell “potato”.
In your opinion, should people take what I say about politics seriously?
Not really.
NVA= North Vietnamese Army. Uniformed and regular soldiers, with a chain of command, operating in usual units of platoons, companies, brigades and so forth.
VC= Viet Cong. Local residents of South Vietnam, with out uniforms, usually operating as partisans or guerillas or irregular forces.
You were thinking of VC, and save that, the higher command was correct, in a way. They knew that if the VC did do what happened at Tet, it would be suicidal. Irrational. That it would be a decisive loss and mostly unrecoverable. So, logically the higher command didn’t place that as a high probability. Up to Tet the VC were noted to be rational and stingy spenders of what military strengths they had.
Anyways, there were plenty of signs and warnings. But again it didn’t make sense. No more than the German high command’s operations known as the Battle of the Bulge did, which also because of it’s irrationality caught the Allies off guard. Stuff happens.
Tet was a gift to the Americans and the South Vietnamese. The VC and NVA made themselves found, stayed fixed and were killed en mass. It wiped out the VC and set back the NVA for a couple of years. The only ones that saw and made it a victory were the leftists outside of Vietnam.
That’s certainly one way of looking at it. The other is, of course, that the Tet Offensive served a specific purpose to the North Vietnamese government – to virtually eradicate the Viet Cong and thus pave the way for an eventual complete NVA victory without various other factions becoming involved.
Regarding poor GW the man seems, as ever, to be in situation of ‘damned if he does, damned if he doesn’t’. If Bush recognised the similarities between the Tet Offensive and Iraq (and personally I don’t see any resemblance at all between them) he is ‘suggesting’ that there might be parallels between a current conflict and a conflict which to all intensive purposes the USA lost. If he however fails to recognise it, then the demopress will castigate the poor man for it.
The one thing you all are not taking into account is the degree the hapless US press is held in contempt by the majority of Americans. I believe that the last polls I saw had them far below GW at his lowest point some months ago.
Anyway, the informed Americans are well aware that Tet was a huge military victory for the USA but a huge propganda defeat, entirely engineered by the US press. This same segment is the one likely to vote and I am convinced that the Bush statement was meant to cleverly let out that he views the US press as complicit in the carnage in Iraq. Every one in “fly over” country understood immediately what Bush placed between the lines and the press did too. That is why they have been furiously spinning it.
I wouldn’t argue that to all intents and purposes the US lost the Vietnam War, wasteful as it was. South Vietnam was conquered by the Soviet-proxy North, and the evil that the Communists fostered there and elsewhere lives on, but, until its recent culturing, at taxpayer risk, by international corporations and pusillanimous (or worse) politicians, organized Communism was essentially contained.
What do you suppose would’ve happened had Comintern agent Ho been given free rein? I doubt the USSR-PRC struggle would have posed a serious limit.
Interesting speculation about NV wanting the VC dead; along with the propaganda victory it does help render Tet rational. Killing their allies had long been a Communist modus operandi.
the office of vice-president was recently held by a man who couldn’t spell “potato”.
Dan Quayle was fine with “potato”, it was the plural he had problems with.
Actually, it was the teachers who had a problem with “potato(e)”. Quayle was at a photo-op at a school giving words to little kids to spell, and he declared “potato” to be a misspelling because that’s not what the card said.
“I’m sorry, the card says ‘Moops’.”
Phil Hunt’s link:
Your link had a misspelling in the third sentence. I guess we shouldn’t take you seriously either.
The left has been a fifth column in the west in general, and in the US in particular, since the late 19th century.
The only time they have supported the military efforts of the US and her allies was when they were ordered to do an about face after Germany broke its agreement with the SU and invaded during WW2.
Before that, and immediately after the war was ended, they opposed any and all military action by “imperialist capitalists”, and a continuous string of spies and traitors came from their ranks to demonstrate their allegience to international socialism by betraying the interests of the west and the US in every conceivable way.
The high water mark of their influence and success was the cultural turmoil and political convulsions brought about by Vietnam, the “counter-cultural revolution”, and the resignations of LBJ, (for all practical purposes), and Nixon.
Finally, after the disastrous military, economic, and political fumbling of the New Left influenced Carter administration in the late 1970’s, the resurgence of a more prideful and assertive US political coalition took place with the election of Reagan in 1980.
The only President I have ever seen subjected to the unrelenting venom of the media, the chattering classes, and the entire leftist cultural structure before the current Bush Jr. was Reagan, and, if examined, it is remarkable how much of the deranged criticism of the 1980’s has been recycled in the current campaign against Bush.
It is no accident that the left yearns for the current military situation to be reminiscent of Vietnam, whether it is or not. The defeat of the west, and esp. the retreat of the US, after the North conquered the South in Vietnam, and the rest of SE Asia either fell to marxists or tottered dangerously close to collapse, was a dream come true for those who actively hate and despise everything the west stands for and has brought to the world.
The visceral hatred of capitalism and representative government, free of the control of the rightful vanguard of society, i.e., the leftist intellectual, is such a powerful religious movement, such an all consuming emotional and intellectual committment, that it is no surprise at all to see the the grandchildren of those who were willing to kiss the feet of Stalin, climb in bed with the nazis, wave little red books for Mao, apologize for Pol Pot and Kim Il Sung, and rhapsodize about the glories of Uncle Fidel, now align themselves with the Islamic fascists who are plotting every conceivable kind of atrocity against the west they can conjure up.
Until the nature of collectivist hatred and opposition to the culture of the west is clearly understood by the common citizen, and their relentless capacity for betrayal exposed for the danger it is, their entrenched interests will continue to undermine and seek the destruction of western culture.
Those who preach and support the slavery of the individual to the ideology, or religion, of an authoritarian culture in which all choices are reserved for the powers, and nothing is left to the ordinary citizen, must be defeated and utterly destroyed.
In this conflict, there can be no compromise, no accomodation. The result will either be the victory of individual rights, and a free society of responsible citizens with the authority to live their lives as they see fit, or the imposition of a collective embodying both religious and civil constraints so severe that no individual liberty is left untrammelled, no aspect of human life uncontrolled and open to free choices by independent minds.
Let there be no confusion on this point: the attack against western culture is an attack on the very concept of the independent person, with a rational mind capable of independent thought, and the freedom of independent action.
Nothing less than complete victory in the intellectual, military, and cultural battlegrounds is acceptable.
The anti-mind is the anti-life.
I read a great book this past summer;
“His Excellency” about George Washington by an author named Ellis (just gave it to a friend recovering from cancer, so sorry about the first name). I had always had a romantic notion that the 1790’s recently independent USA was a happy land of men of virtue. Sadly, the vitriol that the Washington put up with, including traitors in his own cabinet, a libelous and traitorious fifth column press, had disturbing parallels to the tribulations of the present George who resides in the White House.
It saddens me that a post on Bush’s admission that he learned so little from Vietnam as to repeat it, has led to people questioning who won in Vietnam.
Well, let me help out: It wasn’t the French, the Americans, or the puppet regimes they bankrolled. They all lost. The North won. It isn’t taught in school books in the States, just the same facile way it is called a conflict not a war, but we lost. Saigon is Ho Chi Minh City. Regardless of why, this is what happened.
Actually, it seems Bush learned more than you.
Only the Daily Kos nutters would say we lost the war. We won handily. The Vietnamization of the defense of the South was near complete. Again, it was the complicity of the US media that lost the peace and the *democrat* controlled congress that left the SVA without material support and set the stage for the NVA tanks to roll south.
It’s obvious that Bush very cleverly brought up what *informed* US voters know and left the hapless US press sputtering in rage that their complicity in the Iraq carnage was being called by none other than the president of the United States.
When the capital we defended is occupied and renamed by the conqueror, this is strong evidence we lost. What’s next, a detailed discussion of the last moments of Byzantium while you round on anybody who lets slip the small fact that the Ottomans won? Does the map say Constantinople or Istanbul?
When we evacuated Vietnam, it wasn’t because we’d just had a roaring ticker-tape parade through Hanoi and strung up the Reds. It was because we were sick of fighting a pointless war that, no matter our battlefield success, we could not win politically. Blame the American media and the Democrat Congress, if you like. But that goes a good way toward denying that the American people are sovereign. They elected those Congressmen, they bought the toothpaste and Buicks advertised between reports of martial pointlessness.
Vietnam was a tragedy for America, and it grates to hear it endlessly reinterpreted decades later to promote partisan points of view. LBJ and GWB are a lot closer to each other than they are to me.
Good lord Michiganny, we were’nt even there doing anymore fighting when saigon was conquered in 75′. Maybe i’m just misunderstanding what your saying?Weren’t you aware our ground fighting forces were all back in the states in by 73′? To say other wise is to ignore the darn fact that the ARVN had born the fighting alone for two years before the final NVA/VC push into siagon.
Might i also add, while the NVA had been continuously and most generously supplied by their benefactors throughout both the conflicts. Our congress denied our government in fulfilling any of our signed treaty commitment’s too the beleaugered South Vietnamese nation!
i.e. we only lost our will politically. The South Vietnamese lost the war absolutely!
Uain, I think Michiganny is correct… it is really hard to see Vietnam as anything less than a US defeat.
The war was fought to prevent communists taking over South Vietnam… the communist took over South Vietnam, ergo, the communists won and the USA lost and in the end every US military victory just delayed the outcome, it did not prevent it.
I agree that you may have a point that a major componant of that defeat for the USA was the actions of America’s ‘enemy within’, but the defeat’s other main cause was the ability of the communists to keep fighting regardless of the damage dished out by the US military (i.e, they avoided strategic defeat regardless of how many times the US defeated them tactically and operationally).
In short they hung in there in the battle of attrition longer than the USA could and thereby acchieved 100% of their war aims in the end, which is pretty much the definition of victory (the reunification of Vietnam under a communist government ruled from Hanoi).
I get the impression that Michiganny versus Uain and Panther are talking past each other here. Let’s not get hung up on definitions of “we”.
Natalie: Good point.
If ‘we’ refers to the USA as a nation, then we lost, because the we decided it was not worth sustaining the fight, and we gave up.
If ‘we’ refers to the members of my family who fought in it, then we lost, because I asked us, and we seemed pretty damn sure that from where we were standing we lost. I dunno, I wasn’t there.
If ‘we’ refers to the large minority of the US who, during the war, wanted to continue the fight, but who were voted down by the rest, then we still lost, but I can see how we’d be pretty pissed off about it decades later and would continue to claim that we’d won, and it was the other people who had lost, not us, no sir.
Hey ho.
Everyone knows that, thanks to the traitor known to us as Ephialtes (“Nightmare”), the Greeks lost the battle of Thermopylai. But without Thermopylai, Plataia, which was lost by Greek mercenaries (and some others), the Persians having left, would not have been possible. (Ironically, it was Persia’s use of Greek mercenaries that led to its later loss to Alexander.)
The battle of Thermopylai was not fought in a vacuum. The larger context was the attempt by Persia to conquer the Greeks, to keep them from stirring up trouble among Persia’s Greek subjects. That aim was thwarted. Thermopylai, narrowly viewed, was a tactical loss, but broadly, a strategic victory.
Similarly, the US clearly won the Tet Offensive, and clearly lost the Vietnam War, in narrow, military senses. But in the former case it lost the broader aim of preserving South Vietnam from external conquest, and in the latter case, it won the broader strategic struggle (for a time) to stop the expansion of the domain of the Communists, the biggest mass murderers, by far, of their own people in history.
It is myopic, at best, to claim that the Vietnam War was merely a loss for the US. It was an indispensable part of thwarting a great (arguably the greatest) evil.
BTW, Artemisia, active at Salamis, would be on my list of historical figures to meet.
I think the problem is that for the left, the loss of Vietnam as a total defeat of the USA is religious doctrine. So when anyone tries to point out the complexities, then it’s like talking to a wall. If the same cynical malfeasance had been executed by the US press and Conress during the march to Berlin, Germany would have stayed Nazi, even after they were militarily defeated. Such is now the case in Iraq. The terrorist have been reduced to blowing up shoppers with the odd IED aginst the US thrown in. This is the tipping point at which the enemy can regain the upper hand, with a helping hand from the US press and leftist politicians.
… seems sad the only ones who learned the lessons of Vietnam are the Communists.
As has been pointed out above, the United States military pulled out of the Republic of Vietnam (apart from guards at the embassy and so forth) years before the Republic of Vietnam was taken.
People seem to have forgotten the Paris Peace Accords. Certainly it could be predicted that the Communists would break the peace agreement (I predicted it and I was only about seven years old at the time), but the attack of 1975 was not part of the America versus N.V.A. and N.L.F. war.
One might as well say (from a legal point of view) that the United States lost the First World War because the Germans captured Paris in 1940 – sorry different war. And, of course, Congress never formally declared war in the Vietnam case anyway.
Presently a lot of “clever” people are suggesting the the United States have “talks” with Syria and Iran (the main powers behind the violence in Iraq – they even support some of the Sunni violence although the Syrian government is made up, mainly, of secular Shia [of a special variety] and the Irainian government is made up of strongly religious Shia – indeed so strongly religious they regard it as their sacred duty to kill or enslave all nonIslamic people everywhere).
Actually it would be quite correct that if the United States signed an agreement with Syria and and Iran where they promised not to do X.Y.Z. and then pulled out of Iraq, this would NOT technically be a defeat (as the war would be over).
However, I am sure that many of the people who have wrote in saying that the United States lost the Vietnam war will be quick to point out that it is fairly predictable that the leadership in Syria and Iran would break the agreement.
This does not stop many people from saying that President Bush is “stupid” and “intransigent” for not having talks with Syria and Iran (I heard a person from the supposedly conservative Hoover Institution using these words about President Bush on B.B.C. Radio 4 yesterday), even though they would (of course) break any agreement they signed.
The Iranian government would break the agreement as its various factions regard it as their holy duty to lie to nonIslamic people (although they especially hate the United States, as the main nonIslamic power, what I mentioned above must be remembered – they regard it as their Islamic duty to exterminate or enslave all nonIslamic people), and the Syrian dictatorship just does not care about keeping agreements (it is not a matter of religion with them – they are just bad boys).
I did not support the judgement to go into Iraq (although I accept that a legal case can be made for it if one argues that the war of 1991 never formally finished), but I do not think that a “clever” way out of the war (i.e. make a deal so that one can formally declare the war over – then get out and look away from what happens next) would be good policy.
Although technically this would indeed avoid defeat, I think most people would come to the conclusion that the United States had been defeated. The influence of the West would collapse as would the influence of moderate voices within the Islamic world – and the influence of radical Islam (both Shia and Sunni) would greatly increase.
By the way it was not “thousands” of people who tried to flee from Vietnam – it was millions.
On the point about “how can a war be won if we are no longer in control….”
Well the United States is no longer in control of many places that it defeated (such as Germany and Japan).
But sometimes a power may even allow an unfriendly government to come to power in an area where it has won a war.
For example, after World War II the political elite (of all parties) accepted that the British Empire was finished. But in no country (that I know of) was independence allowed till armed resitance to the British Empire was defeated – very unlike the 13 American colonies in 18th century.
It may be considered quite insane, but everywhere (post WWII) I know of, the local armed resistance was first smashed (and great cost of British lives and money) and ONLY THEN was independence allowed (even if the politicians then elected were connected to the armed groups just killed of).
When asked why they were doing this British soldiers (such as Mad Mitch) would reply “it is the principle of the thing”.
The “lesson” of Tet was succinctly put by Taranto in a recent column as, “the press got the story completely wrong” (paraphrase). This is good to keep in mind, as it was demonstrated yet again in the utterly revolting excesses, and mistakes, as yet uncorrected, in the media coverage of the Katrina hurricane story.
The lessons of Vietnam were many, but the two most important for me are:
One, we were lied to and actively deceived by every faction of that conflict, from the pre-election lying of LBJ leading up to 1964, through the massive deceptions of the world anti-war community as they openly supported a marxist military conquest that they denied was occurring, to the debasement of the MSM from its traditional position as a reporter of fact to its current corrupted situation as a conduit for an unending stream of collectivist propaganda and misinformation.
As the former head of CNN admitted, the news media and its celebrity driven gossip machine will make any accomodation necessary with anyone, no matter how vicious or destructive, in order to maintain access.
Thus, many aspects of the depravity of Saddam’s regime, or the brutal, amoral tactics of the “insurgents” and their allies, are glossed over and played down, while every pimple on the butt of some GI is examined and re-examined endlessly to cast as negative a light on the US and its allies as possible.
There are some naive children in this world who are constantly amazed and dismayed that collectivists will look you right in the eye and lie about anything and everything, even when the evidence to the contrary is sitting right there for everyone with eyes to see.
When the purpose of one’s existence is not the validation of reality, but the perversion of it to an ideology that has no connection with the actual world of human life and its processes, then “truth” and “lie” become reversed, as in a “Bizarro” universe, where Superman is evil, and Lex Luthor represents the good.
In such a reality, it is desirable that the west be defeated, in Vietnam, Iraq, or anywhere, and the forces of individualism, capitalism, and representative government be forced into retreat, while the forces of collectivism, authoritarianism, and utopian ideology are encouraged and flourish, no matter how many millions die or are repressed as a result.
Until this moral inversion is understood, the seemingly incomprehensible and relentless march of those who advocate suppression and violence against anyone who believes they have a right to their own life is mystifying.
Once it becomes clear that the motivations of of those we oppose are EXACTLY what they have always said they were, and that they believe that anything is permissible in the pursuit of their objectives, then the situation clarifies, and the need for firmness of resolve and careful, thoughtful action is finally in focus.
And that is the second lesson. We lose only if we surrender.
We cannot be defeated militarily, intellectually, morally, or economically, unless we lose our resolve and capitulate. By any objective standard, there is no comparison which would favor the disastrous circumstances inherent in the rule of a thoecracy under Islamic fundamentalism, or collectivism under marxist-maoist-kim il sungism, over the bountiful and productive societies found where politcal freedom and individualism flourish.
That is because the former were constructed from the minds of fanatics disinterested in life on this earth, and the well being of men and women, but consumed with a desire to fabricate something never seen, never intended for human happiness—life as their dreams and fantasies said it should be.
The evidence of the entire 20th century is overwhelming and compelling. Repeatedly, millions have died, and millions more fled in terror, as collectivism marched onto the scene, its proponents consumed by the blood lust of true belief, and its victims consumed by the fires of its ovens, their skulls piled up, as Tamerlane intended, serving as a warning to us all.
Something wicked this way comes. It is a fundamental human duty, and a priviledge, to oppose it.
I “think” i understand your point Natalie and hopefully i won’t be adding to the confusion by offering my opinion’s with this post. My apologies to Michiganny as well, if i came across as rude.
Now, i must ask if everyone will forgive my rather long and possibly boring post or any of my typographical errors. I’ll try too keep my thought and opinon’s as simple and brief as i can (All that is too follow is just one perpsective, generally mine as an American.):
I think the large part of the vietnam arguement that is still raging today and why we’re constantly talking passed each other, is primarily because in the time of the pull out during 73′, we (i’m primarily referring too everyone in the US as a whole) had thought it really knew all that had transpired from the beginning to the end of the war. When i think the sad fact is, there had never really been an honest public assesment or debate, in regards to that particular war to this very day. As we can still see and hear today throughout the news media.
It is an absolute shame, that once the war was over, most of the public in this country wanted too forget everything about it because of the prevailing thought that there was nothing else to learn about a failed war. Looking back on that war over thirty years ago, it is much more easier to get more of a historical perspective to the long term effects of the war and it’s geopolitical fall out, in which our military efforts seems too have been clearly subservient to. Here are a few of my thought’s on this subject, though not really in detail.
There had been constant talk at the time of the domino effect of any US pull out of S.E. Asia. Many in the know believe this to be true, while many dismiss it as completely irrelevant to the percieved fact’s of the conflict.
At the time of the conflict, there was a western effort to set up an Asian equivalent of Nato known as Seato to contain the spread of the communist movement, that Washington was busy trying too build as much regional support as it could in the midst of the war. The main thing working agiainst it of course, were most of the Asian countries coming out of years of being occupied by imperial powers, were afraid that this was yet another attempt of a western power trying to set up imperial shop in their countries and were loathe to join it, the communists percieved these fear’s and played it up to their benefeit with great effect.
There were a couple of Asian countries that did belong to this organization, but it was primarily made up of more western Nato member’s than anything else, which really didn’t calm any fear’s in the region and did give added weight to the communist message. In effect, Washington was going completely against the flow of the regional history and i think, it would have taken more luck then all it’s political skill too pull this all off! Washington’s messages to S.E. Asian countries were almost always and constantly lost in translation.
Also… with the rise of television, made the vietnam war more personal too all of those sitting in their recliner’s or on the couch in their living room after thier evening meal. It had brought the war home too millions like no other war before it had in the past. It had also made information and the dissemination of it… quite a bit more easily controlled by the more (un)scrupulous, into either pro or anti-war messages, or… in essence, two camps that had a message to get out, which only added too all of the confusion. In essence… the communists had the more anti-war (Ironic) message here in this country, and played up the fears and horror’s of war to the average american, because of what they had stood to lose in their own regional backyard if the democracies had actually succeded in their efforts.
While the democracies had the more pro-war message (Again, very ironic – i think), due to the potential gain of a more stable and eventually more democratic S. Vietnam government, with alot of the then comparison to the S Korean model. I like to refer to the Vietnam war personally as… “as the dawn of the media battlefield”, as well as the then relatively new term coined “Proxy wars” or “Limited wars”. In which, that can be just as brutal as and unforgiving as what all previous war’s before it could be! Primarily, because of the involvement of the emotion’s of the uninvolved or the misinformed thousands of miles away.
Now with all that said, the US pull out of the area did see the fall of quite a few regional governments, with the mainly Chinese backed communists making a brutal bid for power in the surrounding countries. The one that stands out the most amongst all the others, is what is today known as Cambodia. I do feel that i don’t need too go into alot of detail or taking up more space than i need too in this post too explain the immediate after effects at the end of the war, other than too say that the domino effect did indeed happen in the surrounding countries and with Washington in effect… quietly letting Seato die an ignominous death due to the opposition here at home.
I do find it completely strange that many have strangely chosen too focus on the vietnam war as a military defeat of the west, instead of, for what is was… an embarassing political defeat; Particulary in light of what we are up agianst today, is not exactly a nice version of barney the dinosuar. When everything i have seen, in this regard, points mainly in the other direction of constant military superiority belonging to the US and it’s allies throughout the conflict. Now, i’m not going too push any theory that the war didn’t have a direct negative effect on our military, when it is incredibly obvious today that the current US military bare’s absolutely no resemblance to it’s predecessor 33 years ago. It had shown the many flaw’s of conscription, while at the same time, raising many a fear’s of the loss of civic duty, i think that is still debatable. But, it’s more clear to me, that i’d rahter have a dedicated volunteer military force, than a bunch of coerced and unmotivated civilians who have no desire too be in a place where they would rather not be.
Anyhow, i think i’ve taken up more space than i originally intended and i’ll stop here by just saying thank you to this website for letting me add my two cents worth to all of this!
If Iraq = Vietnam, it’s because of what might happen in the next weeks and months.
Say the Democrats gain control of the House and/or Senate. They’ll interpret that as a mandate and zero-fund the Iraq effort, resulting in a pullout, leaving the baby democracy in a bloodbath and the next Saddam will rise to power and all our effort will be for nought.
Wasted troop deaths? Yes, if that scenario unfolds. I can think of no stronger way to “waste” our servicemen’s deaths.
The baby democracy needs some babysitting. Let’s hold Iraq’s hand and help her learn to walk.
Is the West a tired old whore. ready to retire into oblivion, ready to conceal her wrinkles, gray hair, and saggy boobs under a burqa?
Ditto veryretired’s speech. This cultural cynicism and self-hatred is taught to our children DAILY.
kentuckyliz is correct.
If the Democrats take either house of Congress (let alone both) they will tie up the Administration in “investigations” and defeat in Iraq (and in Afghanistan) will follow.
But then the Administration does not seem to want to win the midterms – if it did it would pick up the living or dead body of O.B.L. his deputy Z, and or Mullah Omar of the Taliban (sure they are in Pakistan but the Administration could announce “President M. was quite correct we found them in Afghanistan just where he said they were” – what is President M. going to do say “but I know they were in Pakistan because….”).
Either the Administration does not want to win the midterms, does not have the wit to simply lie (or at least not say where the big three were found) or it REALLY DOES NOT KNOW WHERE EXACTLY ANY OF THE BIG THREE ARE.
If the Administration (after more than five years) really does not know where O.B.L. his deputy or the founder of the Taliban (who was sending out more messages today) are (not even one out of three) then they do not deserve to be in command. “It is the fault of intelligence” – sorry after more than five years of search (and almost six years of being in command) you have had enough time to get rid of failures and replace them with people you have more confidence in. After this length of time the buck must stop with the President himself.
It is simple enough. Pick up (alive or dead) one or more of the big three (even O.B.L.’s deputy would do – thanks to all the films he makes), or lose the midterms. And if you lose the midterms you lose the war (and not just in Iraq).
As for Vietnam versus Korea:
As people going right back to Ike in the 1950’s have said, the difference is Korea had the sea on both flanks. Vietnam has land (for enemy supply lines) on its left flank.
To hold the Republic of Vietnam one must hold Cambodia and Laos (Cambodia on its own will not do – look at a map).
And one must hold them with large conventional forces on the ground. The C.I.A. (and so on) mixed with air power will not do on their own.
So to win the war (in the long term) without invading North Vietnam one would have to at least hold the hill country of Laos – and hold it with large scale conventional forces.
Again nothing special in this. As I said loads of people going back to Ike knew all of the above about Vietnam.
Kentuckyliz-
I would submit that the leftist socio-political aspect of the West is the tired old whore. The problem is will this whore infect us all with a dread disease before being swept from the stage. The US election in 2 weeks will answer alot of this. I am getting more optimistic since I am working in it and I see normal folks in my neck of the woods getting more revolted with the empty rhetoric and non-ideas of the democrats.
… Go GOP, the alternative is frightening.