<< I would say that we realized that the <Vietnam>war "could not be won." And I say that knowing that in the extreme ..... we might have destroyed their will to fight on. But..... the ideas wouldn't have died no matter how many of them we killed.>>
Hi Brother:
In the context of the Iraq conflict, you said on 8/22/04 that if Sistani issued a fatwa to kill Americans and drive them from Iraq, "I believe it would be a bloodbath and the number of Shiites that would take up arms would be remarkable."
You spoke of a "hive" that has been riled, of people "who bleed and sweat their lives away," of Bush's disdain for the "power and pride" of the average Iraqi people.
I responded: " (Y)ou have a romantic, "Frank Herbert" type vision of a courageous Iraqi people, united in a jihad against the United States" and that this was crap. I also wrote a long post on HOW AND WHEN a People find the valour to fight. <http://www.siliconinvestor.com/readmsg.aspx?msgid=20463837> You promised a response which still has yet to come.
My belief is that you are still engaging in a romantic, Frank Herbert type vision of a united Vietcong/North Vietnamese People who would fight to the last man; that their "idea" would not have died until we killed the last man holding that idea.
In fact, the evidence is against you. From March 1973, when the Paris accords were signed, until 10 days before the fall of Saigon in 1975, there were few, if any, INTERNAL disturbances in South Vietnam. The South Vietnamese Army was defeated in a conventional war by mainforce NVA battalions.
Finally, the fact that North Vietnam may now be friendly does not support your argument that it was right in 1975 for the United States to ignore the NVA violation of the Paris Accords and refuse to help the South Vietnamese: the happenstance of the result can not justify the morality of the original decision.
Bruce |
