I think we're being lied to about our war casualties...

Discussion in 'Free Speech Alley' started by Rex, Jun 22, 2005.

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  1. red55

    red55 curmudgeon Staff Member

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    It just ain't true, amigo. The media did not lose the Vietnam war, nor was it lost at home. All the media does is report. They sometimes report things that you don't like. Get used to it. They report things that I don't like either, but I am not so foolish as to blame them. The politicians we elected are responsible for the Vietnam debacle and they are also responsible for the Iraqi debacle.

    Clinton. Yugoslavia, 1999. Yugoslavia surrendered after an American air campaign with no ground forces committed and with zero American casualties.

    You keep repeating this Giap quote like a mantra. The enemy's comments were very self-serving wouldn't you expect? Of course, a free media would surprise a dictator with controlled state media. Try reading a legitimate history of the Vietnam War, like "Vietnam: A History" by Staney Karnow or "Vietnam: the 10,000-day War" by Michael Mclean. Or perhaps an opinion by an American participant like "About Face" by Col. David Hackworth.

    We didn't actually lose the Vietnam War militarily. How can you lose a war in which you win every battle? We quit the Vietnam War because it was gaining us nothing for the 58,000 dead young men and the billions of dollars badly needed elsewhere. It was a quagmire guerilla insurgency with no way for us to win. We have failed to learn the lesson of Vietnam, clearly.

    It was an unwinnable war, as guerrilla wars often are. And the opposition to Vietnam was much broader than the sterotyped college peace protesters of the movies. Joe and Sue Average were opposed to this war. We were all for Vietnam in the beginning, too. As it went on, the lies and mistakes from the administration became more and more obvious. Anti-war feeling increased and spread from just politically-minded students to Mom'N'Dad and Joe Average and eventually Cronkite himself.

    By 1972 nobody in the friggin' country thought we should still be in Vietnam. It went on for eight years, while politicians defended their failed policies. Eventually both Nixon and McNamara admitted their mistakes. Lyndon Johnson never did, although the dropping of his reelection bid in 1968 may have been accepting tacit responsibility. History will be as unkind to George Bush and Donald Rumsfeld as it has been to Lyndon Johnson and Robert MacNamara.
     
    red55, Jun 25, 2005
    #61
  2. Sourdoughman

    Sourdoughman TigerFan of LSU and the Tigerman

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    There is no doubt that an incompetent Democratic administration lost this war, Lyndon Johnson is one of the worst presidents ever.
    The media played their role to undermind the war then just like they are
    doing today in Iraq.
    The war wasn't lost militarily?
    Well we sure didn't win it, We lost the PR war in Vietnam and some people
    are trying to make sure we lose that war in Iraq and at Gitmo.
    These people would want to cut our heads off and kill us and we want to treat them like school children or set them free.
    I don't understand this mentality.

    Zero American casualties? Try again
    I wouldn't really count this little operation, NATO was with us.
    Iraq was a total different situation I think, we were more on our own
    and had more resistance.
    http://www.cnn.com/WORLD/europe/9905/05/kosovo.02/

    Self serving maybe but most people are honest in their memoirs.
    I might need to read a few books for the heck of it but explain this...

    "Gen. Giap had thrown some 70,000 troops into a strategic gamble that was also designed to overwhelm 13 of the 16 provincial capitals and trigger a popular uprising. But Tet was an unmitigated military disaster for Hanoi and its Viet Cong troops in South Vietnam. Yet that was not the way it was reported in U.S. and other media around the world."

    It was television's first war. And some 50 million Americans at home saw the carnage of dead bodies in the rubble, and dazed Americans running around.
    As the late veteran war reporter Peter Braestrup documented in "Big Story" — a massive, two-volume study of how Tet was covered by American reporters — the Viet Cong offensive was depicted as a military disaster for the United States. By the time the facts emerged a week or two later from Rand Corp. interrogations of prisoners and defectors, the damage had been done. Conventional media wisdom had been set in concrete. U.S. public opinion perceptions changed accordingly."
    -----------------------------------------------------------
    Yes, the politicians lost the war but the media saw to that also in the end.
    I never said the media was the only reason we lost the war but they sure
    contributed to it.
     
    Sourdoughman, Jun 25, 2005
    #62
  3. Sourdoughman

    Sourdoughman TigerFan of LSU and the Tigerman

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    One more thing...
    We still have troups in Bosnia, no one is complaining and saying we should pull them out like in Iraq.

    Its funny, If Bill Clinton does it and goes into Bosnia or Yugoslavia its ok.
    If George Bush does it they are against it and its not ok.

    There is no real difference between Yugoslavia under Milosovich and Iraq under
    Saddam, they were both ruthless dictators that were involved in ethnic cleansing.
    If anything Saddam was worse!
     
    Sourdoughman, Jun 25, 2005
    #63
  4. G_MAN113

    G_MAN113 Founding Member

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    You're a typical lifelong civilian, Red. You seem to think that all wars can be conducted and won this way.
     
    G_MAN113, Jun 26, 2005
    #64
  5. red55

    red55 curmudgeon Staff Member

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    Of course not. Sourdough asked for an example of a war with fewer casualties than Iraq and I gave him one.
     
    red55, Jun 26, 2005
    #65
  6. red55

    red55 curmudgeon Staff Member

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    Richard Nixon presided over the last five years of that war, did you forget?

    Nobody has suggested that we "treat them like school children or set them free", you made it up. What has been suggested is that we should treat prisoners the way we want our prisoners to be treated. For surely we will have soldiers captured in the future and we don't want them tortured, held indefinitely without trial or Geneva Convention rules. Our future POW's will pay for this, I fear. We are Americans, we are supposed to have higher moral and ethical standards than the ragheads we are fighting.

    The media report the story, Sourdough. When the story is bad, you don't shoot the messenger. Americans insist on being an informed public because we are a government "of the people". Our elected officials don't tell us what to do, we tell them! And we have to know the truth in order to do that. Censoring bad news from the public is as un-American as it gets.
     
    red55, Jun 26, 2005
    #66
  7. red55

    red55 curmudgeon Staff Member

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    The difference is how he did it. We went into Bosnia in support of our NATO allies to end a conflict right in the middle of Europe. We went in in a limited role and incurred limited casualties and spent limited money. Furthermore we did not try to occupy Yugoslavia, we just pounded them with airpower until Milosovich surrendered and we didn't try to own the place. The biggest difference in why we still have troops in Bosnia is that the Bosnians are coorperasting with us and want us to be there. The Iraqis hate us, want us gone, and are killing our soldiers every day. If you can't see these differences, you aren't looking very hard.
     
    red55, Jun 26, 2005
    #67
  8. Sourdoughman

    Sourdoughman TigerFan of LSU and the Tigerman

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    Richard Nixon also did something no one else did, he ended the war.
    Nope, I haven't forgotten, I think less of Nixon than most others.

    I didn't make it up, people in our own government want these guys to be
    put on trial or set free.
    http://www.cnn.com/2003/ALLPOLITICS/12/13/detainees.senators/
    Like their own countries are going to prosecute these people?
    Does anyone think there is enough evidence to prosecute these people?

    It is insane to think our pows will be treated worse or pay for this.
    How much worse does it get when innocent civilians are killed by these people including soldiers at times.
    How about beheadings for example, what could possibly be worse than this?

    Nope, I'm for an all out war, I want to make most middle eastern countries
    that support terrorism ground Zero.
    No need for prisoners then, just the way Truman ended WWII.
    Geneva Convention? Get Real.
    We aren't fighting a country, we are fighting renegades not insurgents.
    Most people fighting and killing innocent people in Iraq are from Saudi Arabia,
    Syria, Pakistan and Iran.
    This isn't a conventional war and I don't see how our POW's or civilians could be treated any worse than they already are.
    Then there is Al Quada and others outside of Iraq.
    We really treated them badly before :911: didn't we, look what it got us.

    http://jurist.law.pitt.edu/paperchase/2005/06/us-senators-slam-gitmo-interrogation.php
    We really treat them very badly compared to the way they treat us! :dis:
    I think our own politicians want to treat everyone very nice even if it means
    we get 3,000 more innocent civilians killed.
    I personnally don't think this country will ever wake up, :911: surely wasn't enough, they declared war on us years ago.
     
    Sourdoughman, Jun 26, 2005
    #68
  9. KTeamLSU

    KTeamLSU Founding Member

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    The government lies to the American people regardless of what party is in control... the CIA is not partisan, do you think they tell the American people all the illegal **** they do on a daily basis ?
     
    KTeamLSU, Jun 27, 2005
    #69
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