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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: tejek who wrote (437505)	12/2/2008 1:02:32 AM
From: combjelly	4 Recommendations Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 1574879

"And you know they'll keep peddling those lies until history is rewritten." It worked with Vietnam. They peddled the meme that we were winning in Vietnam until the Left forced us to capitulate. Now, they sort of have a point in that we weren't losing in Vietnam. But, it wasn't binary. There is yet a third state that exists between winning and losing. And that is where we were. I will even grant them that if we had transformed the country and focused everything we had, we could have scored a victory in Vietnam. But, what would that have won us? Would things be better now? Probably not. We would have been no better off, and probably would have been worse. Unlike now, we would have been more militarized, weaker economically and politically, and probably would be number 2 behind Japan. Or possibly even worse. Bagging out of Vietnam was humbling. But it was the best for the times. Cutting our losses was the best thing to do. Doing so was a blow to ego, but didn't matter a hill of beans to the overall flow of events. In some respects, it may have been beneficial overall. Because the USSR thought they had an opening, decided to blood their forces in Afghanistan before moving on Europe and managed to find out that they were too late to that particular party. The real lesson in history for empires is that cutting losses is rarely a bad thing. Standing and fighting to the bitter end is only productive for the underdog. As both Rome and the Brits have proven, it is important to choose the fight and what resources to expend. Fighting to the death is only important when you don't have the resources to live and fight another day.