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

To: Neocon who wrote (130194)	4/28/2004 2:22:04 AM
From: Bilow	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 281500

Hi Neocon; Re: "If the North Vietnamese could have prevailed, the Japanese could have prevailed." BWAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!! LOL!!! BWAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!! Where do you learn your history, LOL!!! The North Vietnamese did not "prevail" over the US. *North Vietnam prevailed over South Vietnam.* Can you distinguish between the US and South Vietnam? Do you think that they were part of one country, like North Dakota and South Carolina? By the way, do you know what the rates of pig iron production were for South Vietnam and North Vietnam? Tell you what, North Vietnam was the industrial heart of the combined country, go look up the details for yourself. A better question you might ask is why the US left when the US was so much stronger than either South Vietnam or North Vietnam. I've already, repeatedly, answered that. Man is a territorial animal, and he fights hardest over his own territory, in terms of a society's willingness to accept casualties of war. The US got out of Vietnam because it was, to us, an unimportant, sh:77y little country on the opposite side of the world, and not worth an ongoing cost of 14,000 KIA per year. Re: "They were operating on the theory that we were a decadent, commercial civilization, as most of our adversaries do, and therefore that we could not sustain the will to fight." Since we were not then, and are not now, a "decadent commercial civilization", what's your point? Ability to fight war is mostly about will, and the rest is about wealth and the willingness to spend it on weapons. Our problem in Vietnam was that our will was far weaker than that of the Communists, but that was only because the fight was over Vietnamese territory. What would have happened to a division of Vietnamese troops sent over to set up a Communist puppet state in California, Oregon and Washington? Would the commies have "prevailed"? (Or did they, LOL.) Re: "You would have had a much better case saying that ..." The simple fact is that the signal event that caused most Japanese to cease fighting was simply an order to surrender from their emperor. Hell, most of them didn't know that there was any atomic bomb explosions until that radio broadcast itself. Go ahead and deny the historical fact, it's hardly the first time. If Hirohito had told them to surrender because monkeys were flying out of his butt they'd still have surrendered. Re: "... there[sic] situation was hopeless prior to the dropping of the atomic bombs, but they would not recognize it until the bombs were dropped." People fight on even when a war is clearly hopeless. Humans are creatures of habit, and run in packs. The ability to recognize that the war was hopeless was induced not by the dropping of the bombs, but instead by the radio announcement by their leader that the war was over. Your point would support your original contention (that the Palestinians differ from the Japanese because the Japanese quit fighting a hopeless war while the Palestinians soldier on, see #reply-20064722 ) if there was a Moslem Hirohito that sent out a radio message to the Moslems telling them to surrender. But Hirohito was a "God" to the Japanese, there is no corresponding Palestinian leader to order the surrender. Never has been. So each Palestinian will be instead guided by his own delusions, or by those of some authority figure he respects. Since a lot of these authority figures are clearly heavily delusional (as were those members of the Japanese cabinet you referenced), hoping that ALL of these authority figures will put out radio messages announcing the surrender of the Palestinian people is hopeless. For that matter, the Palestinian situation is clearly not nearly as hopeless as the Japanese situation in August 1945. The Japanese were getting killed at a rate of something like 100,000 per week. The "recognition of hopelessness" analogy also fits to Vietnam in a way that you probably haven't noticed, LOL. Nixon never told you that the Vietnam war was hopeless, so like those clueless wartime Japanese, or the postwar ones who never heard the broadcast, you're still wandering around believing that the war could have been won, LOL. And now, with Iraq, you're in the same situation. Beaten, but refusing to recognize it. Hey, if you were actually fighting in Iraq I'd have some respect for your attitude, it's the right one for a junior officer leading troops. But what you're doing instead is contributing to an ongoing fiasco from the safety of the rear lines. -- Carl