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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Nadine Carroll who wrote (129906)	4/23/2004 4:19:41 PM
From: cnyndwllr	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

You say. "[W]e have spent 20 years convincing the Middle East that we are soft and unwilling to fight; we must unteach that lesson for our own safety. In your arguments I don't hear that you understand the difference." I think I understand the difference. I've heard it all before and it's fear that's talking, not sense. I've taken these quotes out of the book by Stanley Karnow; "VIETNAM," Published in 1983. "Now we have a problem in making our power credible, and Vietnam is the place." John F. Kennedy. P. 247 "In Vietnam, too, we work for world order....Let no one doubt for a moment that we have the resources and the will to follow this course as long as it may take. No one should think for a moment that we will be worn down, nor will we be driven out...." Lyndon Johnson. P. 357 "I have asked the commanding general, General Westmoreland, what more he needs to meet this mounting aggression. He has told me. And we will meet his needs. We cannot be defeated by force of arms. We will stand in Vietnam." Lyndon Johnson. P. 395 "The Americans thought that the more bombs they dropped, the quicker we would fall to our knees and surrender. But the bombs heightened rather than dampened our spirit." Ton That Tung. P.435 "A feeling is widely and strongly held that 'the Establishment' is out of its mind...that we are trying to impose some U.S. image on distant peoples we cannot understand, and that we are carrying the thing to absurd lengths. Related to this feeling is the increased polarization that is taking place in the United States, with seeds of the worst split in our people in more than a century." John McNaughton. P. 479 "I will not be the first president of the United States to lose a war." Richard Nixon. P. 577 "We have finally achieved peace with honor." Richard Nixon. P. 623 "Vietnam is still with us. It has created doubts about American judgment, about American credibility, about American power-not only at home, but throughout the world. It has poisoned our domestic debate. So we paid an exorbitant price for the decisions that were made in good faith and for good purpose." Henry Kissinger. P. 9 Vietnam and Iraq; then and now.

To: Nadine Carroll who wrote (129906)	4/23/2004 6:38:10 PM
From: Bilow	Respond to of 281500

Hi Nadine Carroll; Re: "Even that's not true; the British put down some pretty big insurgencies in Kenya, for example. The Arab Revolt in Palestine had support but it was over by 1939, put down by the British." Get real. The Kenya (Mau Mau) insurgency only killed 95 Europeans and 28 Asians between 1952 and 1956. The Iraqis have done better than that just with the current month. It had neither the general support of Kenyans (who are so divided ethnically as to make a general rebellion very difficult), nor the religious differences of Iraq. Kenya was not awash with weapons before the war, so the Mau Mau had to get by with basically sticks and stones. In short, the Mau Mau revolt was not modern. It could be described instead by the 19th century poem: Whatever happens we have got the Maxim gun and they have not. And about the Arab revolt in Palestine in 1936-39, that revolt was ended through appeasement, hardly what you want to posit in Iraq, LOL. -- Carl