There is a saying about those who don’t learn the lessons of history are bound to repeat its mistakes. This is a true statement to which I would like to add,

“Those who don’t learn the lessons of history are bound to relive its painful memories.”
(copy right Fadel Abdallah, 2006)

These two statement summarize the story of Vietnam in relation to Iraq.

The idiots in charge of the US and UK know only one kind of diplomacy bomb em, kill em, torture and imprison without trial em. They never learned ANY lessons from Vietnam they still believe they have the right to interfere and preferably take over any country they see fit. But not those who can hit back harder, because they’re plain old fashioned bullies. War dead? I care as much about the so called coalition dead as they care about the Iraqi dead. They don’t even want to count them!

Its not Vietnam. Its Suez. We British thought we could topple a dictator (Nasser) get “our” property back and re-establish control over the middle east. It was the last time a British Prime Minister thought we were an international force to be reckoned with. We won the war (a simple walk-over) but lost the peace. And discovered the British Empire was finished. Pax Americana? It’s over guys.

I love the conservatives blamming dems & libs for VN while overlooking the fact that even after Saddam had committed his atrocities, Reagan, Bush41/Chney armed him and the armed Osama helping create the terrorists we now face.
They also overlok the fact that Bush41/Cheney turned down the people of Iraq when they rose up against Saddam and by the way here is the reason that we didn’t depose Saddam after Gulf War 1 as stated by the dick Cheney
http://web.archive.org/web/20041130090045/http://www.washingtoninstitute.org/pubs/soref/cheney.htm

In response to Mark (29400 & 29418), I would like to say that it is refreshing that someone who is not “part of the choir” is reading Molly and visiting the sight. I believe though, that perhaps some background would be useful for them/him.

The statement that
“Vietnam would be have been won in short order if the US military was allowed to do its job.
Today, politicians have sent our soldiers in with one hand tied behind their backs and orders not to fire unless fored upon.”
is somewhat naive and seems to come from one who has never been to an actual shooting war. The statement ignores the very real fact that in order to ‘win’ in Viet-Nam, we would have had to invade and conquer the North, which would not have been well received by their neighbor to the north - China. The results would have been catastrophic, so, ‘winning the war’ was never going to happen from the beginning.

Mark also seems to be still caught up in the ‘Democrat vs. Republican’ and ‘Liberal vs. Conservative’ diversions which have overshadowed the real debates and clouded the real issues here.

We can all (Democrats, Republicans, Liberals, or Conservatives) agree on certain issues (hopefully):

1. Killing people is not a good thing - ever.
2. A lasting Democracy cannot be forced upon someone at the point of a gun.
3. Without justice for all, there can be no peace.
4. Every war which has ever been waged in history (yes, even the “good War” - WWII) was waged for power and influence.
5. Every war in history has been fought and paid for in blood and taxes by people other than those who chose to start the war.

If you want to know what any country’s real intent is, look at the military spending. This link: http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/spending.htm
tells the whole story. The U.S. spends as much on it’s military as the entire rest of the world combined! That’s not DEFENSE spending - that’s OFFENSE spending. We are living in the most aggressive nation on earth, whether you choose to believe it or not. And it hasn’t changed that much from Democratic administrations to Republican. If you have wondered why people around the world hate America, now you know. They don’t “hate our freedoms”. They hate our aggression. Wake up and smell the napalm.

A SHORT STUDY OF THE HISTORY OF CIVILIZATION REVEALS THE PATTERN THAT WE SEE REPEATING ITSELF BEFORE US, AT THE PRESENT TIME. LITTLE MEN, WITH SMALL PENISES, STRIVE WITH SUPERHUMAN STRENGTH TO PROVE THEIR MANLY WORTHINESS, BY SCREAMING SUPERMACHO THREATS TOWARD ALL GROUPS THAT THEY PERCEIVE AS THREATENING,...WOMEN, ARTISTS, HOMOSEXUALS, INTELLECTUALS, JEWS, AND PEOPLE OF COLOR. THESE ARE A DIRECT THREAT TO THEIR “ORDER”, BECAUSE THEY ARE MENTALLY, PHYSICALLY, AND SPIRITUALLY SUPERIOR TO THEM.  THEY SPARE NO MERCY IN THEIR QUEST TO EXTERMIMATE THEM ALL.  THE NAZI’S SPENT MILLIONS IN THEIR QUEST.  NOW, THE NEOCONS SPARE NO BILLIONS IN THE SAME QUEST.  THEIR PROCLAMATION OF THEIR GOALS, WHICH ARE THE EXACT OPPOSITE OF THEIR ACTUAL GOALS…ARE SHOUTED WITH PASSION, JUST AS THE ROMANS, THE MANDARINS, THE RUSSIANS, AND ALL OF THE BUTCHERS OF HISTORY SHOUTED WITH ZEAL.  OUR ONLY HOPE IS THAT THE MAJORITY WILL AWAKEN BEFORE THE TARGETS ARE ALL EXTERMINATED

The vietnam war ended with north vietnam signing a non-aggression pack saying they would leave the south alone.  After the Democrates took congress they voted to not support south vietnam like the US haad agreed to.  The north seeing this descided to not honor there agreement and took over the south, 2 million inoccent people died.  The only way Iraq will be another Vietnam is if the US lets democrates turn it into one.  oh and by the way, the JH bloomberg school came up with there estimate in a totally different way then the Iraq government, our government and the united nations all of which had a much lower count

Here’s a chart explaining the Vietnam model.

http://community.middlebury.edu/~scs/maps/oilnames.gif

I raq does prove we have learned nothing from Vietnam. But it is not what lonny lefties think it is we have not learned.
It is clear that we have not learned that wars can not be run by poll driven politicians.
Vietnam would be have been won in short order if the US military was allowed to do its job.
Today, politicians have sent our soldiers in with one hand tied behind their backs and orders not to fire unless fored upon. 
The Press in the US no longer “reports” public opion but instead tries to manipulate it.
We see screaming left wing lunatics presented as “main stream Americans.” This is just plain crazy.
The same people that want us out of Iraq want to send our troops to even more dangerous Sudan. But they see nothing wrong with that stance. They applauded Bubba Clinton for acting without UN sanction in Bosnia and we are still there to this day. Yet not a single word appears in the press about that. Most Americans are not even aware of this fact.

Does anyone even remember the 17 U.N. resolutions condemning Iraq?  What about them shooting at our planes or flying in the “no fly zones?”  Has everyone forgotton that Clinton, Kerry and the like all said that the Iraqi regime was evil and had to go?  Does anyone realize that Bill Clinton’s appointee, George Tennet was the one assuring the world that WMD’s were abundant and told the President that it was a “slam dunk?”  What about the undisputed fact that Saddam Hussein murdered thousands of his people?

The only fair comparison to Vietnam is that brave Americans and our allies (except for the French this time) are fighting to free the oppressed.  All wars are ugly, costly events and the only acceptable solution is to win.  Winning wars prevents other wars.  We would likely be on our way out now if it weren’t for the sectarian violence being fueled by Iran and Syria. Jihad, my eye!  Is the purpose of jihad for muslims to kill other muslims?  That’s like the Baptists killing the Methodists.

When liberals have no solid arguement, they resort to rhetoric.  Code words such as failed policy, lies, deception, quagmire, cronyism, greed, and war for oil are the mantra.  Tell me folks.  Where is all the oil we are supposedly after?  I guess that we must be piping it to a ranch in Crawford.

Yes is we cut and run like we did in VietNam we will see the same blood bath that happened afterward.

Iraq follows Viet Nam model: Remember Viet Nam?
Let’s look briefly at the comparison of the two.
Gulf of Tonkin incident = Viet Nam
..........9/11 incident = Iraq
..........???? incident = American People
What’s next?  See any similarities? When we blindly believe and allow the falsity of the incidents, we allow ourselves to operate in a dream world of fantasy, nightmarish as it may be.  Wake Up.

OK, since it’s obvious that Iraq is tne new Vietnam, competition is on to predict the NEXT “Vietniraq”. A place where warlike right-wingers will want to send U.S. troops to “protect our way of life” by killing other people. They’ll do it as soon as the American public has forgotten how many people got killed in the last failed war. And people forget really quickly nowdays.

Guesses?

A few months ago, I would have said Colombia. After getting kicked out of the Middle East, warmongers will need to fight closer to home. And it’s vital to the American way of life to protect our country from the flood of illegal narcotics those evil South American narco-terrorists send us(to supply the insatiable demand from North American druggies…) That will make a lovely jungle guerrilla war in, say, 2012.

But we won’t have to wait that long! Cuba’s government will crumble after Fidel carks it, and U.S. troops will need to “restore democracy” and “protect the lawful rights of Cuban Americans to reclaim the property that was stolen from their fathers half a century ago” (long before the present inheritors were born…) That will make a lovely jungle guerrilla war in, say, 2010.

But it’s not the next Vietniraq that interests me most. It’s the one following that, after the collapse of the “United” States. I’m predicting it will be in the secessionist Pacific Northwest, as the U.C.S. (United CHRISTIAN) States) government fights to protect the American way of life from those gay-loving, pot-smoking, abortion-permitting hippies who want to split away from the righteous country that God gave our forefathers. That should make a lovely mountain guerrilla war in, say, 2020…

Is there really anyone out there who doesn’t believe that the Iraqui oil wasn’t a central goal of this administration’s ‘War on Terror’ in Iraq.  Why else did they let the entire city of Baghdad go to hell, looting and stealing all those antiquities, while their first priority was to secure the Oil Ministry?  It’s easy to see that these greedy fools let their love of gold blind them to reality - I guess, if you’ve never had privation, fear, chaos or danger in your life, it might even sound exciting!!  Like a Bruce Willis movie!!  These ChickenHawks made certain that they were never placed in harm’s way during their generational opportunity for “glory” - but they sure don’t waste any time sending our sons and daughters off to be killed, maimed and psychologically ravaged, to fatten the bottom line.  Any coincidence that everyone of these guys have many business ties to all the key players in the no-bid “war profiteering” this administration has taken to new lows.  Conflict of interest has no meaning to anyone in this administration - Neither does Accountability to their employers, the American People.  The foundation of our nation, the Constitution and Bill of Rights are nothing but inconvenient ‘antique’ documents, as is the Geneva Conventions.  I have been a cynical person by nature for many years because I study people and cultures - yet, if you had told me that it would take only 6+ years to bring our great country to this position in the world - our asses getting kicked in a 3rd world country that never attacked us, North Korea testing nukes and thumbing their nose at us, Iran looking like the next staging ground to take everyone’s eyes off of the domestic problems, and boy, do we ever have domestic problems!! - graft, fraud, sex scandals, manipulated ‘studies’, suppressed facts and suspicious financial connections, cronyism, negligent deaths during and after Hurricane Katrina - the list goes on and on and on…..  (and never, ever forget the power of all that lovely war contract and lobbying $$$$)
It’s just incomprehensible to me that the average American citizen has allowed these liars to manipulate and rob them so thoroughly.  Wake up!  The house is on fire!  The Barbarians are at the gate!!!!  Oh yeah, Karl’s got the election machines all set up to win big for Republicans again - will anyone in the media finally figure out why the exit polls (in the past, very reliable) were so far off in the last two “elections”?  Don’t be surprised if the exit polls in this next election are “wrong” too. It breaks my heart to see things in such an utter mess - the American people are good - our LEADERS ARE NOT!!!  These are all the same names and faces from my generation’s war, Viet Nam - even down to that evil, old demon, Henry Kissinger!!!  They learned some more tricks under Reagan and Daddy Bush - as soon as they finagled their way into office (it was never a real election) - they went about gutting every law and custom that was used to stop them in the past - give them credit, Karl’s very good at what he does.  How he can sleep at night is beyond me, though.  Another example of acute denial syndrome.  This administration is rife with it.  The point is, if there is no way to get an honest election anymore, and anyone can be named an “enemy combatant” (Look out, Cindy Sheehan) - how are we to ever take back our country from these folks?  The October suprise is probably Iran, and the real October surprise will be just before the next Presidential election, when elections will be suspended due to some kind of Terror event.  I predict!!!

Despite the obvious!
Despite the Iraqi quagmire!
Despite the lies, deception and evil!
Despite the hundreds of thousands killed and crippled for life!
Despite the billions spend to benefit the merchants of death and destruction…
It’s business as usual in this Great America!
With the drunk behind the wheel staying the course of shame and evil, and giving America another day of shame by signing a bill that can give innocent people the death penalty based on hearsay!
And despite all this, the majority of Americans are in their deep slumber not unlike the sleepers of the cave!*

* If anyone is curious about the story of the sleepers of the cave, I’ll be happy to write a separate posting when requested!

We are not the necessary force for peace. By the policies of the civilian
leadership in the West Wing and enabled by the boot-licking collaborators
in Congress, we are the discredited peace-brokers with our military forces
being seen, at best, as the velvet glove of the iron fist of anti-muslim
policies.

What is needed is a pan-Islamic/Arab-Sunni-Shia force to replace us as
guarantors for the safety of the Sunnis and the Shias from the outrages
committed by the extremes of both factions. All the surrounding countries,
including Syria and Iran, need to be included in providing the replacement
forces.

The U.S. should abandon the construction of its largest foreign embassy in
Baghdad. We should be as inconspicuos as any NGO office working for the
benefit of the Iraqi people,rather than the geo-politics favoring an
inflexible and increasingly Israeli land grabbing government.

Withdrawl when replaced by Islamic countries with Sunni and Shiite troops
is THE EXIT STRATEGY before the political dust and struggles settle in a
land held together not by democracy but by autocracy and imperialisms.

Bucco- .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address),
“No longer having our troops being props for insurgency training, and NOT
having the Iraqi civilian population further suffering the ravages of
Bush’s Enduring Hollow Freedom, where they cannot walk the streets with
out fear of explosions, kidnappings, assasinations, mutilations and
killings.”

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Re: comment #29203 by Patt Needham on 10/17

The first time I heard that was in Asian History class in college, CA 1953. The Battle of Dien Bien Phu was March 13-May 8, 1954. My history prof told us about the attempt to get American help to end colonialism in Indo-China after World War Two. President Truman turned it down and participated in the reinstallation of French colonialism in Indo-China. That was the scene that took us into Viet Nam in 1965 for combat duty rather than advisory.

The latest generation of the ol’ boyz club is running on fumes. They have run out of surrogates to distract civil egoes by having the “we’s” as supposedly part of the club of power..  Their “gravitas” of authority nolonger is intimidating or awe-inspiring. The peasants and plebians are irreverent and uppity in their dissent.

Title and authority are undermined and nearly anachronistic in receiving moral subservience. Only that last predictable portion of the probability curve hangs on in wishful clutching that the Great Oz isn’t what by demonstration and sarcasm is testifying…

The old radicals who left the streets to raise a family and join the American Dream are returning to the consciousness that fired the Days of their Youth.. Some are doing more than dusting off their acerbic tongues of rhetoric of the 60’s and 70’s.

A draft is not needed to send us to the streets. More is at stake which the still elitist, cow-camouflaged aristocrat is ignorant of: The love of liberty and freedom for all, not just the privileged few. The call of the 70’s is the call of 2006.. The government needs to be put in its place. The FIRST Amendment with its companion in rhetorical and materiel ARMS, the SECOND Amendment ,are coming together for another blowing in the winds of times needing a changing. 9/11 is Bush’s raison d’etre, but the evil Bush’s actions personify are OUR raison d’etre to storm the ramparts of the ballot box to begin our own preemptive regime change.

We will not allow another country and ourselves to be abused by the machinations of resource and money-grubbing social darwinist imperialist and elitist hiding behind patriotism and morality as the cover for their cynicism.

Bucco
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If only there were a draft. The “stay the course” and ” we’re fighting them there so we don’t have to fight them here” would become echos of a failed policy.

Sow the wind, reap the whirlwind. 

Theoretically America could have been about democracy, equal rights, mutual respect.  But instead it chose to be about capitalism, the pursuit of accumulation for the sake of accumulation at the expense of everything else.  Torture is nothing new to a country that practiced 300 years of brutal slavery, obtained its land through genocide, achieved its colonial objectives by propping up dictators, and fed its young to wars of greed.

Naively, I had hoped Vietnam would be a turning point for us.  So wrong. And no lesson will be learned from Iraq; it’s just a prelude to Iran.  Only a blind fool can fail to see the gathering storm in the world—gathering against America.  The Bushly dunces think it’s radical Islam.  Wrong.  It’s the Ancient of Days, sick and disgusted with America, and slowly preparing to make her drink from her own cup as so many empires before us have done.  They all had a psychopath at the wheel, too.

Life will get very painful, but it goes on as we know from the peoples we’ve bombed, burned, nuked, sanctioned, embargoed…

Molly is absolutely correct - this war has been prosecuted with the same script as Viet-Nam. Any student of history can recognize this.

The problem is that we have a leadership (Democrats as well as Republicans) who couldn’t care less about those lessons we might have learned. Why? Because history also shows that the results will always be the same - a few people will become fabulously wealthy as a result of the war, and it will only cost thousands (maybe millions) of lives of people they have no connection to, certainly none of their children.

The only way this war will be ended is when public opinion decides to quit supporting it - exactly the way Viet-Nam was ended. The people getting rich will milk it till the last day, make no doubt.

The oil is only part of the equation. The bottom line is money and power. We, the public, give our son’s and daughter’s lives along with our taxes to enrich these people with each war. The majority of people in this country (or any other, for that matter) are sheep who will blindly follow the lamb (our “leaders”) to the slaughter. So, to say “It wont happen again” is naive. It will, as long as religion and/or patriotism overrule good judgement and moral values.

We could have been out of Iraq a long time ago if we had allowed a neutral U.N. force to supervise the reconstruction, but then Halliburton et al. would not have been able to execute the no-bid, cost-plus contracts which have made them and their friends in government incredibly wealthy.

They did learn something from the lessons of Viet-Nam: How to maximize the profits through privatization, while keeping the costs the same - our children’s lives.

I’m a Viet-Nam veteran, and sadly, I know of that which I speak.

And it’s again time for US to escape the ‘Raq!

John. if I sound upset, it is because I am. I had a neighbor in Houston during the most violent years of Vietnam who was doing a residency in psychiatry at the vetran¨s hospital…...after having practiced general medicine in a small town for 13 years….I tell you this to tell you this was no 25 year old, but a mature man who had seen almost every the human race could throw..he thought. He came by my house in the afternoon after work and I served as the psychiatrist´s psychiatrist by listening to his fears of what he was encountering. He was terrified because he was getting the young boys, not a few, lots, whose officers and fellow soldiers were afraid of…these were the ones who got sent home early, but he also knew that as we were sending hundreds of thousands of boys over there who were not being sent home early to his hospital but were still the victims of what they were expected to do….and the extremes of what was actually done that we are only very late finding out.I am aware it is an uncomfortable subject, but it is still a cost of war and we need to take it into account…..not to blame the soldier…..we do enough of blame the victim in our society….but to recognize this cost both for the soldiers returning and make sure they receive the care and counseling needed as well as other types of medical care our wonderful corpgov has seen fit to cut, BUT ALSO THE COST TO THEIR FAMILIES WHO HAVE TO TAKE CARE OF SOMEONE WHO IS OFTEN A STRANGER WITH DEMONS NOT UNDERSTOOD BY THOSE OF US WHO DID NOT EXPERIENCE THE HORROR. IF WE SEND OUR CHILDREN INTO SITUATIONS WHERE NOT ONLY THEIR BODIES ARE IN DANGER BUT THEIR MINDS AND VERY SOUL THEN WE NEED TO TAKE HEED AND BE PREPARED TO DEAL WITH THE AFTERMATH…...WHATEVER THE COST.
IF THAT IS EXTREME…..DEAL WITH IT.

Miriam: You aren’t getting replies because your extreme tone of voice implies that ALL U.S. soldiers are committing crimes in Iraq.

Oh yes, crimes are being committed, and the invasion of Iraq itself is a crime of historic magnitude. But the average soldier is human and -like the rest of us - wants to believe that s/he is doing something good in life.

The human mind can put up formidable barriers of denial when one’s moral behavior is challenged.  Our troops are also burdened by military indoctrination, loyalty to their peers, and the fact that they swore an oath to obey orders… they can’t just “quit their job” as easily as you and I, so they bury their conscience deep and do their job.

I agree that our country is to be burdened with another generation of veterans who’s sense of betrayal will emerge in the decades to come - slowly for some, quickly for others.

If history is any guide, a few will act out violently, others will engage in self-destructive behavior, and most will just cope with it - in silence or with the aid of their families.  Some will sustain the denial for their entire lives.

... like our fellow poster Daniel, who has just shared with us his astonishing notion that the U.S. successfully “contained” communism in Asia by losing the war in Vietnam!

While “Communism” was “busy” fighting with us in Vietnam, China subjugated Tibet, Cuba became a Russian missile base, Inda cozied up to Russia, Africa sprouted Marxist movements in Angola and Zimbabwe and socialism expanded in Europe and South America… that’s some containment!

Now, he says, America has a duty to “contain” or even “pre-empt” Islamic “expansion”.

Daniel’s belief that he is a good person and a good citizen of a good nation is a force powerful enough to bend truth the way Superman twists steel with his bare hands. His X-ray vision allows him to see right through the pages of history books and read only the words that support his convictions. He can leap over contrary arguments with a single bound.

Sorry Daniel… but America is only half-good.
The other half grabbed North America by the “ethnic cleansing” of its native inhabitants. The other half grabbed the Southwest from Mexico by war. The other half grabbed the Philippines from Spain and then fought a ruthless war to put down a native insurgency.

The other half tried to grab Vietnam when the French lost their grip on it. And the other half will lie, cheat, steal and kill to keep it’s grip on the Persian Gulf and its oil.

Then as now….

They lied to me,
They lied to you,
They lied to our troops.

Wanna see something REALLY scary?  “Why We Fight” is about how the military-industrial complex dear old Ike warned of 46 years ago has totally overtaken our foreign policy. Bush has said we’re not leaving Iraq while he’s president and he’s right.  If we left what would we do with the 14 permanent bases we’re building there?  DDE must be rolling over in his grave as the Eisenhower strike force steams toward the west coast of Iran - and for what purpose?  To be targets in an authentic Tonkin Gulf-like provocation resulting in an all-out Mid East war?  Halliburton el al are salivating like Pavlovian dogs.  Sorry, Ike.  America’s not in the democracy business.  We’re just in business.

People also forget that Ho Chi Minh wasn’t particularly Marxist or communist until he asked the U.S. for aid, we said “No”, he asked the Russians and they said “Yes”.

At his core, he was a nationalist trying to get free from colonization.

So Dan Weintraub, the question remains, “George W. Bush:  Great President or Greatest President?”

Rather than keeping on with the insidious verbiage of “cut and run” versus “stay the course” let us think outside that childish circle of incompetence. My way, your way,—- instead let’s find a better way.
As it stands now, we are engaged in a war that cannot be won. There is no conclusion to this. Iraqi Sunni troops will never defend Shiites against other Sunnis and vise versa.  If you try to leave Iraq as one nation then the civil war will continue and U.S. troops will forever be bogged down in futility, a tragic futility that will keep on killing.
Perhaps the only logical solution left is—- the inevitable?
Or can you come up with a better and quicker solution in Iraq. Innocent lives are being torn apart – American and Iraqi. If there might be a way to stop it—- would you?
The Iraqis are fighting amongst themselves for control, the inevitable will happen. Why delay it—- to kill more lives?
This article below was published in Ovi Magazine in 2005.
—————————————————-
 
“The Inevitable”

The Bush Administration keeps stating that “we” cannot leave Iraq: until the votes for democracy are complete; until Iraqis establish a democratic government, until Iraqi forces can protect their citizens, not until…
Well, not until we realize The Inevitable will the true Iraqi solution come forth. It’s the obvious one, the one that Iraqis are in the midst of forming themselves through violence.
This “insurgency” is not going to end until the most important lines are finally drawn,—- the boundary lines, separating each “tribe” into their own ruling domains.
Mankind has always and will always fight to the end for their country, their territory, their religion, their everything….
That is a Truth of any country, any heritage. Call it nationalism, call it anything you want except an untruth.
Presently, lines already mark territories guarded by numerous militias that answer only to their own leaders.
Therefore—- The INEVITABLE—- divide Iraq into three (countries?): Kurds, Sunnis, and Shiites. And most important, divide the wealth equally. Then and only then can true nation building take place. That should have been the goal from the beginning.
Iran will control the south no matter what. If Turkey invades the Kurdish “nation” then NATO is nothing more than a farce. Central Iran (Sunni) can then play out it’s power over itself, as will the others.
If it’s still not too late, perhaps it’s worth diverting our efforts towards that solution.
But would the Bush Administration condone such a change in its policy, it would mean admitting a mistake—- and aren’t they all infallible—- in their own words, in their own minds, it’s always someone else’s fault - (does “faulty intelligence” come to mind?)
“Stay the Course” has been their eternal mantra, a course mapped by lies.
Truth requires Courage, while Strength requires character, and Wisdom will ensure a lasting and true peace. Yet none of those qualities can be in effect until the curtain of lies is lifted. And that is where Courage still waits its turn.
Does the Administration have the Strength, Courage, and Wisdom to understand the future—- and not use the excuse of, “...nobody could have predicted, nobody could have imagined.”
Republicans used that excuse in their past, from the fall of the Berlin Wall to the insurgency in Iraq. It’s become an idiot’s answer to the very end of time.
If they only saw the Truth….. they could predict the future!

Iraq is not like Vietnam. In Vietnam there were jungles, in Iraq there are deserts. Its much easier to find somoene in a desert.

Other than that Molly, RIGHT ON!!!!

It is amazingly sad to me that the generation that lived through Vietnam has been so easily fooled by this administration. It is even sadder that a great Nation can be brought to almost complete collective idiocy by simply stating “9/11.”

Oh, and finally, didnt Cambodia and Laos go communist? Hardly a success for containment as Thailand and Malaysia were never in danger of communisy takeover.

Hi Molly:

Virtually every historian would agree that our Vietnam policies during the post-WWII era were a failure. We supported the French for eight years as they sought to reclaim a lost colony, and they in turn lost the country. We attempted to construct a non-Communist South Vietnam by “installing” and backing a series of puppet regimes. This didn’t work. We created an international incident out of the Tonkin Gulf attacks and used them to justify a massive bombing campaign against the Communist regime in Hanoi. Another failure. In 1967 William Westmoreland told us that we were winning the war when we were not. In 1968 Lyndon Johnson promised victory when all evidence pointed to the contrary. We used defoliants on the jungles and napalm on the enemy soldiers, and in 1975 we fled Vietnam in defeat. And so it seems quite reasonable that historians would deem our Vietnam policies a failure.

It is time that we reassess these so-called failures.

Our Vietnam policy was built upon a strategy of containment. Our goal in Vietnam after 1946 was clear: isolate Ho Chi Minh’s Marxist regime. Do not allow the Viet Minh’s brand of Communism to overrun Southeast Asia. In order to see this goal realized, a number of strategies were fashioned by policymakers in Washington D.C. Each of these policies was unique to its time: support for the French during the first Indochina War; nation-building after the 1954-Geneva partition of Vietnam; and eventually, an American war against the Communist regime in the North.

The truth may be that these policies did in fact succeed.

Let us not forget that the doctrine guiding our twenty-nine years of involvement in Vietnam was based upon the principle of containment: do not allow the Communists the opportunity to annex any more territory in Southeast Asia than they already have. And while the Vietnamese were “busy” fighting wars with France and with the United States, Communism was in fact contained; our goal of containment had been realized.

Historians will point out that the Vietnamese were engaged in a national struggle for independence; that had we left them alone, the Vietnamese would have “liberated” the South, proclaimed national reunification and independence, and not, as the domino-theorists had preached, attempted to spread Marxist doctrine throughout Southeast Asia. The reality remains—-regardless of Vietnamese aspirations for simple autonomy or whether instead they dreamed of a global Maoist revolution—- that while Vietnam fought a war with the United States, Communism did not overrun the countries of the Malay Peninsula.

It is true that we did not win the war. It is also true that over 58,000 American personnel and an estimated million Vietnamese soldiers and civilians died during the conflict. What cannot be denied, however, is that these policies had succeeded in containing Communism.

By the time the war had ended and the U.S. had left Vietnam, our doctrine of containment would face challenges in other parts of the world: growing Marxist movements in Nicaragua and El Salvador demanded our immediate attention; a Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979 called for a new policy in Central Asia, and support for Bin Laden’s Mujihideen “freedom fighters” was just such a policy.

It is imperative that the American people recognize that our public officials must ultimately gauge the success of individual policies vis-à-vis the doctrine upon which the policies are constructed. The questions that our elected officials must ask as they examine individual policy decisions include the following: Was the policy successful: were the ends achieved? Were the actions in support of these policies justifiable and defensible? Citizens, on the other hand, tend to gauge a policy’s success in more basic terms: Was it necessary? Was it ethical? Was it moral?

As we enter the new millennium—an era with a new doctrine; one of pre-emption rather than containment—the American people must become willing to acknowledge that policies such as those being debated on Iraq and North Korea may not appear necessary, nor might the actions in support of these policies seem ethical or moral. But clearly these policies will be consistent with the emerging Bush doctrine, and members of the Bush team will calculate the success and failure of these policies not on moral nor on ethical grounds, but instead they will measure the success of their actions by employing one simple equation: did these policies deter an attack on the United States and its interests.

I have said it before and I will say it one more time. George Bush, Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney and the rest believe that victory over the Muslims is THE ONLY OPTION. By the time THIS war is over, the 57,000 American—-and 2 million Vietnamese—-deaths are going to seem like the good old days.

Dan Weintraub

Molly, I keep asking this question, and get no replies…..DO ANY OF YOU THINK THAT OUR CHILDREN, WHO ARE DOING THIS WHOLESALE KILLING, RAPINE, AND TORTURE IN IRAQ ARE GOING TO BE ABLE TO COME BACK HOME AND TAKE UP WHERE THEY LEFT OFF, TEACHING SCHOOL, BUILDING HOUSES, DELIVERING MAIL, ETC.? AFTER YOU HAVE ACTED THE PART OF A REAL LIFE MONSTER FOR SEVERAL YEARS, HOW DO YOU SLUFF THAT OFF LIKE A SNAKE SKIN? PLEASE GO ONLINE AND READ, DAILY, THE NEWSPAPER IN FAYETTEVILLE, NORTH CAROLINA AND KNOW ABOUT THE VIOLENCE AND DEATH BROUGHT HOME.
WE, AS A SOCIETY WILL PAY SEVERAL TIMES FOR EVERY BODY WE LEAVE IN IRAQ.

At it’s core, The United States of America is a bigoted, racist, imperalist nation.  Always has been, always will be.  The only difference now is that we have ‘leaders’ who are unafraid to put our actual national character into policy.  We kill anyone who stands between us and what we want.  We sacrifice our children’s lives for $1.00 off a gallon of gasoline.  We turn our backs when Africans die of disease or are slaughtered by rebels.  Is it a disgrace?  No.  Just as a puppy cannot be born to attack a black person, a human cannot be born racist.  We acquire this trait from our culture and absorb it into our character.  U.S. citizens elected Republicans to guide our country.  They are guiding it exactly as they said they would.  If we truly want to change our character, it will take more than one election to do it.  It will take more than an attack by extremeists.  I fear it will take a total breakdown and rebuilding of society.  It will take the death of millions.  It will take nuclear winter.  God help us all.

Molly and others who’ve been opposed to the Iraq misadventure from the get go have certainly been vindicated. Unfortunately in the case of such an unmitigated tragedy as the Iraq war there can be no solace in being right.

If Scott Ritter, who was among the first to challenge the propriety of invading Iraq, is correct, then Iran is next.

If there were a God in Heaven surely a comet would hit Washington, DC. and eliminate the crew who couldn’t shoot straight that currently occupies the halls of power there.

There seems to be a growing trend among commentators to cite Colin Powell as if he has credibility. He may have said “never again” in reference to Vietnam but he clearly intended “forward march” when it came to Iraq despite all the contrary evidence about the threat that nation posed. The result: we have another Vietnam. Powell may justly spend the rest of his life (and a long one may it be) vying for redepmtion but he should never attain it. His bloody hands should be his just punishment and his disgrace. He should only be remembered for his testimony before the UN General Assembly, nothing more.

Oh yes, Vietnam was also originally about oil, but not like this one. This one is about controlling a tithe of the world’s known oil supply, and it is something which a lot of politicians on BOTH sides of the aisle, and a LOT of journalists of every kind of persuasion, want to cover up because the admission of that fact will doubtless cause all the money they have amassed to become worthless.

As soon as it became known that Enron was a double-dealing, crooked, thieving bunch of slimeballs, the public confidence disappeared and the company failed just as the worthless piece of crap it showed itself to be should have done.

Think about it: our national debt is not getting smaller; it is going larger almost exponentially. Our negative balance of trade isn’t being diminished, it is growing larger daily. Where is Ross Perot with his charts when you need him?

And the sad thing about it all is that there is no saving us; all the oil in the mideast, which amounts to over half the oil on the planet, will not save us, only put off the inevitable crash.

I understand that an admission that we went there for oil would be also to admit that we coveted, lied, stole, and murdered, but what OTHER reason can you think of which would cause our leaders to make up stories about how we would have invaded and occupied an oil free Iraq so as to free her people from the thuggish martinet that WE installed over them and courted for years?

Shhhhh! Don’t mention it; it might be the tipping device which causes the run on the US bank and reduces us to the same status as Argentina. Don’t cry for me; I’m old and gray and fat and ugly and poor, but at least I’m HONEST.

Maybe we ought to rethink picking our national bird: switch from the soaring eagle to the ostrich with head in sand.

My wife and I just watched “Hearts and Minds” last night. Anyone who thinks Iraq is not Vietnam again ought to check it out. See if you recognize any of the talking points.