I object to the comparisons made between Bush’s Iraq mess and Vietnam, because I think what Bush has gotten us into is fundamentally far worse.

I know: Bush’s quagmire hasn’t - yet - killed nearly so many Americans as Vietnam did. But, still, the total likely eventual damage of the Iraq war and the larger “war on terror” dwarfs the consequences of the Vietnam war.

Vietnam was a fiasco, yes - but we recovered. America remained America - rich, proud, safe, powerful, free. Domestically, while the Vietnam war raged, America even continued steady progress toward becoming a more equitable and just society for all its citizens.

By contrast, Bush’s war on terror has severely undermined the very bedrock of our constitutional republic and ruinously indebted us at a time when we already suffer from severe structural economic problems.

Moreover, if - as he shows every indication of intending - Bush expands this crusade to a preemptive and possibly nuclear attack on Iran - we are looking at an apocolyptic national downfall that makes the Vietnam war seem but a quaint political scandal.

Dear Robert:

RE: The Iraqization of Vietnam

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-� -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 Islamo-Fascists 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
Fine Dining Waiter
Quechee, VT

Great piece and a insightful historical analogy. The closing thought was in my mind as I read the entire article, “Truly frightening on this Day of the Dead, though, is that Bush probably won’t listen to reason, unless the voters first soundly repudiate him in next week’s election.” And that reminded me of a quote from a Greek historian Thucydides:
“I am not blaming those who are resolved to rule, only those who show an even greater readiness to submit.”

November 7 is going to say alot about America now that we know everything that we know.

A secret US/UK Protocol was drafted more than fifty years ago by A.Dulles S. Lloyd in regard to the future of Kuwait anf the Gulf region should there are national interests tha American interest in regard to oil supplies. I believe they drafted an administration to be more or less like the Swiss or Federal.

I will try to dig the exact format of the Protocol. I think it is in the form of a cablegram.

Given this info, dop you think you can truthdig?

Regards

George Fondis

Iraqi P.M. Nouri Maliki was inclined to bet his life on King George lastest assurance that there will be no timetable for withdrawal U.S. troops from Iraq. Use his life to bet with a dishonor gambler the P.M. is so naive and wagers his own life with lowest price ! One wise advise to Mr. Maliki that “don’t listen to what the King says, but keep looking and looking at what the King was done” then you’ll have second thought to decide for your kingdom future and to know more about the meaning of “allies”. There’re absolutely no “allies” but obviously there’re only “Lord” and “servants or mercenaries”.

One advise for King George that a withdrawal plan ought to be prepared on time and never wait until the Iraqis yelling “Yankees Go Home”. Do you remember Cambodia and Vietnam almost 40 years ago when we left these countries in hurry and without any glory ?

One more information that I have to tell everybody is the King and his delegate, including 950 members, had been registered with APEC meeting in Vietnam this month. Is a huge delegate ? Who cares ? But we only expect that the King don’t bring any bad luck and scourge to this tiny nation as he’s doing in our beautiful America.

LIES AND DECEPTION COST LIVES!

“In his last news conference in the Eisenhower Executive Building on December 20th, 2004 before The President departed for his Disneyland trip to Camp David and his Magic Mountain Texas Ranch Retreat until next year, 148,000 American Perdue remain in Iraq.

The President did not argue with Senator Warner’s assessment of Iraqi Security Forces. The Senator learned from General John P. Abizaid and General John W. Casey Jr. that the problem extended well beyond shortcomings in training the Iraqi forces. ‘They have got some Generals in place and they’ve got some foot soldiers in place, but the whole command structure necessary to have a viable military is not in place.’ The President acknowledged that ‘no question about it, the bombers are having an effect’ in sowing terror among Iraqis and said they were trying to shake the will of Iraqis and the Americans who see scenes of the resulting carnage on their television sets nightly.

Where was this honesty from this phantasmagoric President who seemed to have suffered a paroxysm during the campaign? To date, two thousand and eight hundred plus American Soldiers have died and twenty thousand plus have been maimed, one hundred thousand plus Iraqis have been killed and no one can enumerate the Iraqis injured. Where is the outcry against the man who is intertwined with ideology, theology and enosimania [An irrational state of terror] that created the Twenty First Century Vietnam? In 228 years and 43 Presidents, this man, George W. Bush, is personate, audacious, lacks intelligence, holds a surplus in arrogance and is unequivocally ‘alogical’.”

Written by Sheriff Ali November 1, 2006

Robert, I recall this as central to the lecture you gave on your book tour when I saw you in Portland. As you spoke then, everything you’re saying here is clear insight. And as I commented then, I’ll say again, no argument you or any other progressive makes on Iraq does anything to erode the regimes support. The die hard, again I’ll say, will only be broken by the obvious treason on the part of the regime, illuminated by the emerging truth of 9/11. Their blatantly criminal demeanor during the coverup was worse than Nixon’s and the provocation immeasurably worse than Gulf of Tonkin. It makes no sense that progressives do not close ranks on this issue. My greatest fear, and I know you share this, is that they will do it again to give a pretext for war with Iran. Please reconsider.