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Politics : View from the Center and Left -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: ManyMoose who wrote (63699)	5/6/2008 11:23:31 AM
From: biotech_bull	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 542225

ManyMoose, once committed, go for victory not a humiliating exodus I agree with you that once we start something we can't abandon it halfway. But I would argue that the biggest lesson from Vietnam was not to jump blindly into a War as there are some Wars that just may not be winnable.

To: ManyMoose who wrote (63699)	5/6/2008 11:37:59 AM
From: Sam	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 542225

Fourth, once committed, go for victory not a humiliating exodus. Or fire JFK and LBJ before we even started. I'm not sure why, but for some reason many people ignore the fact that the initial commitment was made during the Eisenhauer administration. John Foster Dulles and the "Who Lost China" crowd are the ones who are really to blame. At least until LBJ escalated. Well, some of the people made it out. The people who didn't suffered great tragedy at the hands of the North Vietnamese. I don't want to repeat this in Iraq. What really happened was that we stepped into the middle of a civil war between the French-backed Vietnamese and the nationalist Vietnamese. If we had just let it run its natural course after 1954 when the Geneva Accords were signed, there still would have been violence, but nowhere near what it turned into. The French-backed Vietnamese would have been dispatched pretty quickly, they were far far outnumbered. Instead, we stepped into the vacuum that the French left, and pretended that there some strategic reason to back the colonial interests. The endgame was pretty predictable from the start, but the anti-communist fog that was common the US in the 50s and 60s blinded many people to the reality of the situation. The situation in Vietnam was quite different from the situation in Iraq, despite a few superficial similarities.

To: ManyMoose who wrote (63699)	5/6/2008 11:39:55 AM
From: Steve Lokness	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 542225

ManyMoose; Thirdly, lay off micromanaging the war with untenable rules of engagement. Surely you were not an adult during VietNam if you think all that was wrong with VietNam was micromanaging of the war? VietNam was tearing our country apart. We were destroying a generation of kids by sending them into a war that the American people NO LONGER SUPPORTED. The same is now happening in Iraq and it is why when a country goes to war you had best be sure you will have the support of the people. Well, some of the people made it out. The people who didn't suffered great tragedy at the hands of the North Vietnamese. I don't want to repeat this in Iraq. So we stay there forever so that their people who hate each other have someone to keep them apart? Just read a very interesting piece in Technology Review describing what is happening to our kids who are subjected to "blast" in Iraq. Increasingly they are find major and permanent damage to our kids. What about our kids? ......Are things getting better in Iraq? Hell no. I just read that in 2005 80% of the kids were in school, that level is now down to 50%. It just gets worse and worse. steve

To: ManyMoose who wrote (63699)	5/7/2008 4:57:54 PM
From: TimF	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 542225

In Vietnam we managed to make the local insurgency situation less than a vital threat to the government in the South. The vital threat they did face was convention invasion from the North. That's the threat that did them in, armored divisions and such not guerrilla groups. Continued support of the government in the South, combined with air support being on call to respond to any massive invasion attempt, could have kept South Vietnam intact without any need for a massive or very active American presence in Vietnam. If we can be as successful against the insurgency in Iraq as we where against the insurgency in South Vietnam, than we would have even less of a need for an in country presence of any serious size, because there is no "North Iraq". Well I suppose Iran could play that role, but I suspect they don't want open full scale warfare, at least not if the US doesn't totally wash its hand of Iraq, and pass legislation forbidding the funding of any military activities in or to protect Iraq.