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

To: combjelly who wrote (437509)	12/2/2008 7:28:41 AM
From: bentway	3 Recommendations Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1575119

"But, what would that have won us?" My question with Iraq, what have we "won"? If we've just won a pissing match with the insurgents, was it worth a trillion dollars and hundreds of thousands of lives? We've put Iran in a MUCH stronger regional position. Iran used to have to worry about Iraq, and spend a lot of resources to protect themselves from Iraq. Now, Iraq is a Shia friend and ally. Going forward, expect Iraq/Iran ties to only get stronger. This is a benefit to us how?

To: combjelly who wrote (437509)	12/3/2008 12:51:07 PM
From: Joe NYC	1 Recommendation Respond to of 1575119

cj, 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. Maybe you need to add a third state to the levels of intervention: 1. running away without a fight 2. fighting a lot before running away 3. fighting to victory The consequences of #2 were kind of bad (Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam itself) but we lucked out when China stopped supporting the communists and in fact became a rival of Vietnam (which escalated to outright military confrontation). What is worth considering is #1, what would have happened if the communists were able to take over the entire south east asia without a fight, and whether they would have stopped there. Joe