Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Politics : Politics for Pros- moderated -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: JDN who wrote (120626)	6/17/2005 4:25:05 PM
From: cnyndwllr	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 793917

JDN, re: "Sorry, it was that SAME type of mealy mouthed excuses, lies and defamations that allowed us to lose in Vietnam. Yes, but those lies were from the mouths of Johnson, McNamara and Nixon, and these are from the mouths of Bush, Cheney, Rice and Rumsfeld. Before you get too excited, (more too excited?), I did know what you meant but your initial point that the Vietnam War was lost because we didn't fight it hard enough or long enough is just plain nonsense. It's one of my most deeply held peeves with the "America's a winner in wars" crowd. Let's take a logical look at this hyper emotional "lost war." First, so we didn't "win?" Over 3 million lives were lost trying to prevent Vietnam from unifying under a communist rule, irrespective of what the majority of Vietnamese people wanted. We failed and they became communists. Now what exactly did that cost America? We now trade with them, our airlines now fly there and they seem to like Americans. Their people are voluntarily returning from countries like the US to live there and the great tragedy is ......WHAT??? "We lost" nothing there but the lives of almost 60,000 soldiers, many of whom were conscripted to serve, and the health of many hundreds of thousands more soldiers. Second, and the point that people with your view will seemingly never understand, is that you don't win wars of occupation by winning battles, no matter how soundly you win in instances like Tet 68. The insurgency doesn't die, the insurgents don't reject the ideas that drive them and the chaffing sore that foreign occupation creates just gets bigger and more inflamed. Ask the Russians who went into Afghanistan, ask the French who went into French Indochina (now Vietnam) and look at our own history in Vietnam and now Iraq. So, if you consider "winning" as not admitting defeat, then we could have "won" in Vietnam. But then we'd still be fighting there, still be sending billions down that rathole, still be killing innocent Vietnamese men, women and children (collateral damage and all that) and still be claiming that the war was necessary to (you choose): Make the world safe for democracy; "Help" the Vietnamese people; or, Show the world that we weren't pussies. What a morally bankrupt and foolish line of reasoning that would be. Ed