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Politics : High Tolerance Plasticity -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: chowder who wrote (21783)	10/8/2004 6:18:43 PM
From: cnyndwllr	Respond to of 23153

Dabum, re: Johnson lacked the will or courage to win his war. Bush has the will and courage to win his. Stop and ask yourself this question, "how much 'will and courage' did it take for Johnson or Bush to "win" their wars? Did the Japanese lose their war because they lacked "will and courage?" Did the Germans lose WW11 because they lacked "will and courage?" Both countries fought until there were hardly any more fighting men left to continue. Isn't there a little something else involved in deciding whether you will "win" your war? If you make it all a simple "will and courage" question, then I can't talk to you. The questions are, first, what is required to "win," second, is winning within the reach of those with "will and courage, and, third, will it be worth the price? Instead of just looking at Vietnam and Iraq in terms of your either/or view, expand your view to take in more of the realities of conflicts and the factors that determine a rational nation's ability to stay the course. The reality is that the Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon war in Vietnam was not winnable no matter how much "courage and will" we exercised. Even if you think nearly a decade of getting our heads handed to us was "weak," you must ask how we were going to help Vietnam go in a direction that the true fighting men of Vietnam didn't want to travel? The fact is that we only have the will to fully control ourselves, not others. When we try to control others that creates a never-ending task of bribing or coercing others. When the "others" care enough to die fighting and killing you to resist, you better have a good reason to continue. In Vietnam we didn't. In Iraq we didn't before we invaded but now the answer is less clear. So don't tell the families of the dead and crippled, or the families of the soon to be dead or crippled, that it's an either/or question of having "courage or will." It's a much more involved cost/benefit analysis and the Bush people are losing on both ends of that question as more and more facts overcome the spin. Ed