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

To: cnyndwllr who wrote (154731)	12/23/2004 1:50:06 PM
From: jlallen	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

I didn't realize that we were allowed to base deadly aggressive policies on wild fears and what ifs Have you forgotten 9/11?

To: cnyndwllr who wrote (154731)	12/23/2004 1:52:21 PM
From: stockman_scott	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 281500

Commentary: It's Vietnam Again! ________________________________ Iraqis understand how to defeat the U.S. military machine, and they are; America, here comes another Vietnam! By Stewart Nusbaumer With each Iraqi our military kills, more Iraqis join the insurgency. The longer our troops occupy Iraq, the better Iraqi insurgents become at killing our troops. In Iraq, violence is a great recruiter, and time is a wise teacher. We are losing in Iraq, and next year we will be losing more. Iraq is our second Vietnam. Tonight on ABC evening news, a U.S. military general whined: “There are no front lines in Iraq, they can be anywhere.” It was a jarring flashback, the general sounding exactly like a general speaking about Vietnam. American political leaders insisted we would wipe out those Iraqi terrorists and criminals in no time, but it didn't happen. Just like in Vietnam. The U.S. media insisted that nearly all Iraqis welcomed U.S. occupation and that Iraqis would love Americans for giving them democracy and freedom. But Iraqi insurgents are killing Americans, and U.S.-trained Iraqi troops refuse to die for the U.S. occupation of their country. In Vietnam, Vietnamization failed. In Iraq, Iraqization is failing. In the Mekong Delta, an Army officer said, “We had to destroy the village to save it.” In Iraq, an Army officer said that the destroyed Fallujah is now “free.” Last week we were told that many of the roads in Iraq are too dangerous for U.S. armed truck convoys, forcing our military to use aircraft to ferry supplies to outer bases. Vietnam taught us that when you give up the land, you give up the people; when you leave the roads, you have lost the war. Yesterday we learned that 18 U.S. soldiers died in, as The New York Times put it, “one of the deadliest attacks on American forces in Iraq.” What The New York Times did not say is that these “deadliest attacks on American forces” will continue and will become more deadly. We have killed 100,000 Iraqis: children, wives and husbands, mothers and fathers, grandparents, neighbors, cousins, aunts and uncles, school friends--we have killed so many Iraqis that there is a limitless supply of outraged Iraqis who want to kill Americans. Americans believed the recycled myth that as a superpower we have super power--a silly, dangerous idea that has led us directly into another bloody Vietnam-type quagmire. Believing our military technology can incinerate any ragtag opponent, hubristic thinking (or the suspension of thinking) enabled us to also bury history. Our national hubris obliterated the memory that those ragtag Vietnamese defeated the world’s greatest military, our military. Like the Vietnamese, the Iraqis will not fight a war that allows U.S. war technology to be effective; and the U.S. is incapable of defeating the Iraqis because its counterinsurgency warfare is ineffective. So the war will drag on. But the Iraqis understand that they do not have to win the war against the United States, merely not lose the war. They only have to stay clear of the overwhelming firepower of the U.S. military and survive another day, another month, another year. The latest public opinion polls show that Americans are growing frustrated with the war and wary of the Bush Administration’s handling of the war; over 60 percent are disturbed with the way the war is going. In the media we hear it is going badly because the Bush Administration did not plan for the peace. Fox News insists that liberal war dissenters are betraying our soldiers; a man in Nebraska screams that the media is defeating our war effort. Just like Vietnam. During the Vietnam era, we heard that America lost the war because of the cowardly politicians, the unpatriotic antiwar demonstrators, and the traitorous media. The truth is, we could not have won in Vietnam, and we cannot win now in Iraq. The world of insurgents understands our military and knows how to wear down the great military leviathan. Our chances of winning in Iraq are the same as they were in Vietnam: zero. _________________________________ Stewart Nusbaumer is editor of Intervention Magazine. He served with the U.S. Marine Corps in Vietnam on the DMZ. You can email him at Stewart@interventionmag.com Posted Wednesday, December 22, 2004 interventionmag.com

To: cnyndwllr who wrote (154731)	12/24/2004 1:06:41 AM
From: KLP	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 281500

Continue to be sure of that, cnyndwllr....at your peril. Saddam gave not one single iota of being anything like human during his 30 year tenure...unless you think that sending people through a shredder is 'human'.....or having them chopped up, and delivered in a plastic bag to their relatives front door, and all the other etcs our soldiers saw. Remember Eason Jordan from CNN? I remember what he had to say, and why he/CNN didn't report any of the truth for 11 years....Do you? Saddam had ample time to show his true colors, Ed. Perhaps you liked what you saw. I didn't, and don't believe most humans did either. cnyndwllr: If we hadn't gone into Iraq, think how much less powerful the insurgents might be now. In fact, there wouldn't be any insurgents at all or they'd be fighting against Saddam and certainly not killing our soldiers. Saddam would still have no wmds and maybe he'd have seen the light, become pious, paid reparations and allowed our own giant oil companies into his country to make obscene profits while still keeping our oil prices cheap. He might have taken the oil revenues and funded an AIDs research program that not only cured AIDs but also unlocked the keys to curing all human illness and preventing aging.

To: cnyndwllr who wrote (154731)	12/24/2004 5:16:50 AM
From: SirRealist	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

My Dad used to point out that a jury can reach a 'not guilty' verdict, but it is impossible to 'prove' innocence. Yet many persist in suggesting that the failure to 'prove' innocence is sufficient cause to defend foreign policies rife with error, and with the top-down advocacy of torture tactics that used to be restricted to CIA operatives acting covertly. That there is greater evidence of that can only be defended by what-ifs. And so far, every time the what-ifs have been before the conservative-tilted Supreme Court on these matters, they've been rebuked. On the other hand, the what-ifs have been a huge boon for the Saudi economy, so at least they are benefitting somebody...