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

To: KLP who wrote (171360)	9/28/2005 9:53:58 AM
From: Mary Cluney	Read Replies (4) \| Respond to of 281500

I do keep wondering if the Rev War were being fought today, would it be successful in the end, or would the "children --who want everything now, this minute, thank you very much--" pull out, and we would lose as we did in VietNam? 1) I doubt the overwhelming majority of people who fought and died on our side have your understanding and appreciation of the Rev War. IMO much of what happened was serendipitous. 2) We did not lose in Vietnam. We chose to go in and we chose to leave. We could have stayed in Vietnam and we could have killed all the Vietnamese, but we chose to leave. When we left, the Vietnamese were not about to come and get us. In the end, it was not about Vietnam. It was all about us. It will be the same in Iraq. We chose the date and time to go in and we will choose the date and time to leave. The Vietnamese did not and can not ever defeat us. Similarly, the Iraqis will not and can not ever defeat us. We will decide how to end things. That may all sound very harsh, but that is the reality. I just hope we can do the right thing.

To: KLP who wrote (171360)	9/28/2005 2:58:23 PM
From: cnyndwllr	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 281500

Karen, re: Appreciate your commments Ed. However, I do keep wondering if the Rev War were being fought today, would it be successful in the end, or would the "children --who want everything now, this minute, thank you very much--" pull out, and we would lose as we did in VietNam? First, I don't think the rev. war has anything to do with the Iraq war. It's far different to settle your own differences than it is to try to settle someone else's differences, especially a half a world away in distance and light years in culture. Second, don't sell the "children" short. Fighting the wrong war is not a true test of whether people will fight. You might be surprised but I'd bet that some of the people who are adamantly opposed to fighting this war would be among the bravest volunteer fighters in a different war. The test of character and courage is not the willingness to blindly support poor leadership that takes us into a bad war but rather the willingness to make the choice that a cause is worth killing and dying for and then to have the courage to personally accept a full share of the risk. Finally, and I've made this point before, we lost in Vietnam when we were fighting the war, we won when we quit fighting it. I say that because winning and losing a war isn't like winning or losing a football game. Winning and losing should be defined in larger terms. When we were fighting the Vietnam war we lost billions of dollars, we were left with hundreds of thousands, maybe millions, of damaged Americans and, most importantly, we lost almost 60k American men and women dead while millions of Vietnamese died hard deaths. When we "lost the war," the Vietnamese birthed their own unified nation and we lost nothing. They are now a trading partner, we have commercial flights to Vietnam, Americans are welcomed there and from the time we left there has been absolutely no threat to America or America's strategic interests as a result of our leaving. If that's losing, I'll take losing over "winning" anytime. But maybe that's because I was there and the people dying there weren't faceless names to me. My bottom line is we should have "lost" in Vietnam much sooner and whenever we get involved in similar situation where we're trying to push strings at the cost of American lives and fortune, the sooner we "lose," the better. We owe that to the brave young men and women who go where we send them to try to do undoable tasks. Ed

To: KLP who wrote (171360)	9/29/2005 8:51:26 AM
From: Sam	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 281500

I do keep wondering if the Rev War were being fought today, would it be successful in the end, or would the "children --who want everything now, this minute, thank you very much--" pull out, and we would lose as we did in VietNam? There were huge differences between Vietnam and the Revolutionary War. Most obviously, Americans fought the latter on our home soil. There was no "pulling out." The people who led knew that most if not all of them after 1776 would be hung or killed in some other way if the war was lost. That fact sharpens the mind and steels the will. In Vietnam, the shoe was on the other foot--the Vietnamese were on their home soil. If you know anything about the history of that country, you will know that according to the Geneva Accords of 1954, the demarcation line dividing the south from the north was explicitly said to be temporary and not political in nature--the Accords did not set up two different countries. They also called for elections in the entire country. It was the US that split the country in two in 1956, with the connivance of the class that had been formerly favored by the French and was largely detested by most of the people in Vietnam, north and south, partly due to corruption, partly due to the excesses of the colonial past, and partly due to cultural/religious differences. This split, in defiance of the Accords, world opinion and the wishes of most Vietnamese, was what set the stage for an inevitable defeat there. The Vietnamese had already been fighting first the French, then the Japanese, then the French again for independence for over 30 years by then. They weren't about to sit around and acquiesce to this artificial split in their country. Many of the insurgents in Iraq are convinced that if they lose their battle, then the fate that awaits them will be similar to what would have happened to Washington et al if they had lost. Even if not at the hands of Americans, then at the hands of other Iraqis. And even if they don't get physically killed, they will get politically killed. In a shame/honor society, that can be seen as just as bad a fate. Vietnam and Iraq aren't identical, for sure. But one way in which they are similar is that we have once again not thought through the political consequences of our military actions. Even if the insurgency is put down, if a constitution is approved and a Shiite govt gets put in power in Iraq, it will not be one that will be particularly friendly to US interests, IMO, especially after a few years have gone by. They will be more likely to be partners with Iran in irritating us. I saw Bill Kristol on Charlie Rose last night talking about how he believes we are going "to win" in Iraq and the hope for better Arab societies he feels about developments in places like Egypt and Lebanon, and that these hopeful things wouldn't have occurred without US military action in Iraq. My belief is that he is thinking in terms of a few years rather than decades and the more permanent interests of Arab elites (who still control those cultures and governments) vs. the West. He is guilty, IMO, of the typical neocon/neo-Straussian intellectual error of thinking ahistorically, not taking sufficient account of cultural differences and historical realities. He and others also badly overestimate what military power can accomplish. Yes, a democratic Germany and Japan arose from the ashes of WWII. But those societies were so different from Iraq and the destruction they suffered so massive that paradoxically the job was far easier. I've said it before and I'll likely say it again--the biggest winner in this war in the longer term will be Iran (unless they badly misplay their nuclear options due to an imprudent impatience, which, admittedly, they are showing some signs of doing).