Red and I often debate this and many discuss how Iraq is a bunch like Vietnam. While the 1st Gulf War may have erased much of the "Vietnam syndrome" we as a country had, the same old ghosts of Nam prevail in this country. I think this guy is right.....any war can be made into Vietnam. I think that is what we are doing......making Iraq into a Vietnam situation while on the ground, the similarities are no where close. The homefront lost both wars. I believe this is true and therefore, we shouldn't go to war anymore......at all. Just let people defeat us here at home and get it over with. My weak countrymen have made me a pacisifist. So the legacy of Vietnam in Washington, Vietnam “back home,” hangs over a war with little similarity to Vietnam in the field. The Marine commander at Base TQ sees no similarity to Vietnam, yet on his entrance table sits a journal from back home comparing the two. Notwithstanding the actual situation, politicians and the media can turn Iraq (or any situation) into a “Vietnam” if they work at it long enough and hard enough. Then the fears and predictions of our troops in Iraq could come true — we could lose the war over here even while were winning it over there. http://www.nationalreview.com/comment/lehtinen200602270756.asp
The similarities are enormous, numerous, and obvious. I've posted at length on this before. Nonsense. I'd like to see you try to back up this one. Sourdough has surely tried. Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon's political bungling is responsible for Vietnam. George Dubya Bush's political bungling is responsible for Iraq. It's clear that both are failed foreign policies followed by mismanagement of American military power resulting in a protracted guerrilla civil war that is impossible to win. Even you just said that this war is lost. In fact, we can't win or lose these wars . . .we can only quit, either sooner or later. And then the apologists will try to blame those who recognize a blunder instead of the ones who committed it. It it increasingly clear the the citizens that it will take a new president and perhaps a new party to get us extricated from Iraq and back on track in foreign affairs, sensible government spending, public trust, and . . . oh yeah, finding Osama Friggin' Bin Ladin and his boy's--the failed and apparently forgotten mandate of 9/11.
i agree with sabanfan. we had let stuff go so long, we couldnt anymore. and just because something is tough and takes a long time and americans die, it doesnt mean it wasnt worth doing. one more time: the only thing that will save the world from murdering religious fanatacism and endless violence is the transition to free rational democratic societies. it won't be easy, but it needs to happen, and if not now, things could get a lot worse before they get better. sometimes you gotta beat sense into people. especially if they are loonies and they think of you as an enemy of allah. if we keep it up, one day we will be as likely to go to war with middle eastern countries as we are now with canada or japan. it could take a while, and lots of peeps could die, but i can think of no more worthy goal. (we could help the long term cause at home by abandoning our own superstitions)
I just went down to get the mail and stepped on every crack in the sidewalk. I didn't worry when my black cat walked across in front of me. I walked under a ladder and in doing so knocked a mirror off the wall in my garage and it shattered. There is a little black boy who lives across the street. I will no longer rub his head for good luck. Whatever it takes for the war effort.........:hihi:
I believe you are the kind of person the column was speaking to Red. This type of person who was so scarred by Nam that no war will really ever be justified for you guys again. If it's not done in 2 weeks and things get hard, you and your ilk will make sure it ends up like Nam. That's what we've done here. And to be honest, if we aren't better than that as a country....if we can't silence and not give a much larger voice to the Sheehan's of the world, then quite frankly, we are defeated already. Sadly though, we aren't defeated by the enemy.....we're defeated by our own whussy countrymen. That's why I say, if we're going to let our wars be turned into come Nam replica if it isn't over in 2 weeks, then we should never do it again and wtach out our windows as things fall.
Most Dems. want us to lose this war so bad they can taste it. I hate most of those pessimistic bastards!
It's NOT a fact. The opposite is true. Explain to me why Saddam needed to be taken down? Osama wasn't there. WMD's weren't there. "saving the world from murdering religious fanatacism and endless violence" was NOT the reason Bush took us to war! Being the world's policeman is a role that even you and SabanFan would have scoffed at, had it been proposed as a reason for invading Iraq. We were told it was "The central front of the War on Terra.
