I have read the books, and I read the daily newspapers all the way through that war. I have personal friends on The Wall, amigo. The troops were NEVER abandoned by the American people. The failed goverment policies were abandoned by the American people. The people were sickened by the waste of these fine troops in a hopeless political fiasco. I apologize for my laziness, but I answered this months ago in another thread, so allow me to repeat it: 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 from my generation and 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. You will begin to see the politics in America turn against this war in Iraq. 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. Bush won't allow the caskets returning home to be photographed, but he is not fooling the public. There may only be a few dissenting voices now, but everybody will be getting on the train as this drags on. By 1972 nobody in the friggin' country thought we should still be in Vietnam. Just like Johnston in 1964 the war is what got George Bush elected in 2004. But in 2008 the continuing Iraqi occupation will leave him discredited, will be a millstone around the neck of his party and it will get the opposition elected. Deja vu. History will be as unkind to George Bush and Donald Rumsfeld as it has been to Lyndon Johnson and Robert MacNamara. And for good reason. This war is not only a disaster, . . . it is a snowballing disaster. If Vietnam taught us anything at all, it is to either go in with everything you've got and get the job done quickly or don't involve ground troops at all. And you damn sure don't get bogged down in the enemy's kind of war. The Iraq occupation is clearly deteriorating going into its third year and there is no end in sight. Do we hang around for a decade or so at 5,000 casualties and $75 billion a year? It took eight years and 375,000 casualties to get out of Vietnam and still left it in communist hands. We're still in Korea after 50 years and Korea is now a nuclear powder keg. Whether we leave tomorrow or decades from now, the place will go to hell when we're gone. Panama, Grenada, and Kuwait were smart wars, won quickly with overwheming airpower and a massive ground invasion followed by a prompt withdrawal of troops. Libya and Kosovo were smart wars involving airpower alone, no ground involvement, and won with 2 casualties (Libya) or none at all (Kosovo). Iraq, like Vietnam, Lebanon, and Somalia, is an unwise war where we are occupying a country where they hate us for reasons that are hard to understand. We didn't win any of these wars, nor did we lose them. We just walked away, because it was in our best interests to do so. Sooner or later we will have to leave Iraq, too. What exactly would constitute victory in Iraq? People keep telling me that we have to win this Iraq war. Well, how exactly do we do that? The security is worse than it was three years ago. We've already beaten their army and occupied the country. In that sense, we have already won. There is not a democracy anywhere in the Arab world and Iraqis clearly don't understand how it works. We could be there for decades, endlessly patrolling, still taking casualties from people who hate us. I say, just leave them to stew in their own juices. If the Iraqis won't cooperate in the rebuilding of their country so we can turn it over to them and leave, then we can just LEAVE. Civilians, military, everybody. Let them kill each other instead of us. We tried to help the poor starving Somalis and they sh!t all over us. So, we took our guns, our food, and our dollars home and left the bastards to fend for themselves. It was the same fools errand in Vietnam and Lebanon. It is a waste of our lives and our treasure trying to occupy a country where they hate us and are trying to kill our soldiers. Let them have the friggin' place. We don't need it. Saddam is gone and Iraq is defanged as a military force. Al Qaida only came there when we offered them all of these easy American targets. We gain nothing by hanging around any longer.
I didn't want to quote the whole thing but anyway: I know why we lost Vietnam and I agree, you either go in and win or don't go at all. And you can blame the Johnson administration IMO for f'en the whole thing up with Johnson and advisors planning bombing missions on a map in the oval office and the like. I read something you wrote yesterday. You were worried about N. Korea and their bomb and Iran and their's and we should be out of Iraq (not cut and run) but never should have gone in the first place. I saw where you wrote for our troops to be on standby, on alert or something for these places. What I want to know, weren't you worried about Iraq and their quest for the bomb also? Cause if you were, then what should we have done? IMO and many others opinion, the guy had used WMD to kill people before and the risk of him having a bomb or not was to great to take. The Bush Admin. had momentum to take out a risk too great to take IMO and they went for it. Through that, they wanted make Iraq a democracy in the middle of the vast Muslim wasteland as a beacon of what can happen. I know we don't need to rehash the reasons we went to war, but it just seems like if the worry is so great for these countries and their bombs, hell Saddam and Iraq were acquiring the necessary means to make one, were thumbing their noses at the UN and us, had the experience in gasing thousands before and weren't afraid to do it again. They didn't even have to make a bomb, just have the materials, give it to a group to blow up in LA. I know we have the same problems in Iran and N. Korea, but I'm talking about Iraq. This country and their leader had already launched missiles at Saudi Arabia, Israel, had taken over Kuwait.......I mean what else do you want to do with a country like that? I'm asking everything in a sense of friendship and trying to get an idea of where you are coming from. Not in sarcasm or anything else. As a side note IMO, the people marching against the war for the most part then and now, care nothing about the men losing their lives. I know we lost a bunch of men....too many then and too many now. They talk about the poor boys dying but they at heart loathe the military, the men who join it and what they stand for. There is a loathing by many for their own country, of which I will never understand......but I think I know why. It's because they have had to give nothing for their freedom. It's too easy for them......they gave nothing so without a second thought, they go and march against the WHO, WMF, against the war, the killing of innocents of which they care nothing. It's just to march against the policies of their own country that they blame for the world's problems. I think the war in the middle east in all ways is making us safer, not less safe. We saw what happened when we did nothing. We lost the USS Cole, the towers in Africa, almost the twin towers twice. And we responded by doing nothing. IMO, we give Iran an ultimatum to stop the bomb or else. As soon as troops begin coming home next year in Iraq we turn the sights toward Iran and we move on them. The same with N. Korea.............our freedom and way of life is too important to wait for the UN to step in a stop these people. If their utlimate goal is to defeat us, that cannot happen. I start from the basic premise that we are right, and they are wrong. If we as a country do not follow that same premise at start, then over the long haul, we were already defeated and will be defeated literally over the next century or 2.
Above all we must be ready for all contingencies. This is the lesson of Pearl Harbor. I think I see war clouds on the horizon in Korea, Iran, Pakistan, and Taiwan. We must be ready for any of these contingenices. Was I concerned about possible Iraqi WMD's. Of course, everybody was. Fortunately, We had been flying no-fly missions over Iraq for 12 years, suppressing their defenses and occasionally conducting air strikes (Yes, Clinton bombed Iraq twice). The UNSCOM inspectors spent ten years on the ground destroying thousands of tons of chemical weapons and all of their nuclear facilities. Those inspectors declared that the WMDs had all been destroyed. Our own chief inspector, Scott Ritter, went way out on the line to emphasize that we would not find any WMD's in Iraq (he was blasted by the adnministration, but he was right. CIA intellligence was ignored which totally soured Bush administration/CIA relations. Our top military brass were sucessfully conducting a special operations war against Al Qaida in Afghanistan and were not in favor of invading Iraq. Colin Powell warned that our post-9/11 international support would disappear . . . and he was right. So, No, I didn't think that Saddam was a threat. He was a braggart third-world dictator that was actualy serving as a counterbalance to truly radical Iran. Saddam and bin Ladin did not get along. There were better ways to deal with Iraq than invasion. The senior Bush knew this when he wisely decided not to Invade Iraq in 1991 when we had a 500,000-man army on the ground. In his his 1997 memoir "A World Transformed" he said, "Trying to eliminate Saddam ... would have incurred incalculable human and political costs... . We would have been forced to occupy Baghdad and, in effect, rule Iraq ... there was no viable 'exit strategy'. Had we gone the invasion route, The United States could conceivably still be an occupying power in a bitterly hostile land." Untrue. The costs of war must be balanced against the welfare of the nation. Americans are willing to make great sacrifices when the need is great, the cause is just and the leaders are capable. They are unwilling to do this when they do not trust the management of their leaders. You are making assumptions that are invalid. Many of us feel that we are doing our duty as citizens to stand up for what is right for America. I care nothing for the world's problems and certainly don't blame America for them. It is a mistake to think that anybody that disagrees with the war hawks is not patriotic. Sometimes the war hawks foul up and the people refuse to ride the Hellbound train. Nope. Clinton attacked Al Qaida in Afghanistan with missile attacks in response to the embassy bombings and the USS Cole bombing. We stepped up anti-terrorism policy, creating a Bin-Ladin section in the CIA and appointing a terrorism coordinator in the executive branch. We stopped the millenium bombings, which was terror on a 9/11 scale, and we caught and prosecuted the '93 WTC bombers. Far from nothing. After 9/11 we wiped out the Taliban and severely impacted al qaida in Afghanistan. It is important to realize that most people who do not beleive the Iraq war is in our interests, believe that the Afghanistan war was. It's not about support of the military. Its about support of the policies that place our militray in action. We advocate good war decisions and we fail to advocate bad ones.
landlocked blues, by conor oberst... If you walk away, I’ll walk away First tell me which road you will take I don’t want to risk our paths crossing some day So you walk that way, I’ll walk this way And the future hangs over our heads And it moves with each current event Until it falls all around like a cold steady rain Just stay in when it’s looking this way And the moon’s laying low in the sky Forcing everything metal to shine And the sidewalk holds diamonds like the jewelry store case They argue walk this way, no, walk this way And Laura’s asleep in my bed As I’m leaving she wakes up and says “I dreamed you were carried away on the crest of a wave Baby don’t go away, come here” And there’s kids playing guns in the street And ones pointing his tree branch at me So I put my hands up I say “enough is enough, If you walk away, I’ll walk away” And he shot me dead I found a liquid cure From my landlocked blues It’ll pass away like a slow parade It’s leaving but I don’t know how soon And the world’s got me dizzy again You think after 22 years I’d be used to the spin And it only feels worse when I stay in one place So I’m always pacing around or walking away I keep drinking the ink from my pen And I’m balancing history books up on my head But it all boils down to one quotable phrase If you love something, give it away A good woman will pick you apart A box full of suggestions for your possible heart But you may be offended and you may be afraid But don’t walk away, don’t walk away We made love on the living room floor With the noise in background of a televised war And in the deafening pleasure I thought I heard someone say “If we walk away, they’ll walk away” But greed is a bottomless pit And our freedom’s a joke We’re just taking a piss And the whole world must watch the sad comic display If you’re still free start running away Cause we’re coming for you! I’ve grown tired of holding this pose I feel more like a stranger each time I come home So I’m making a deal with the devils of fame Saying “let me walk away, please” You’ll be free child once you have died From the shackles of language and measurable time And then we can trade places, play musical graves Till then walk away, walk away So I’m up at dawn Putting on my shoes I just want to make a clean escape I’m leaving but I don’t know where to I know I’m leaving but I don’t know where to
You don't understand what parallels are, do you? I don't believe that I've ever contended that this war is exactly the same as 'Nam. But I have contended that we are continually making many of the same large-scale mistakes that we did in that war. And you're more foolish than I ever gave you credit for if you buy into that constitution garbage. Until Iraq is capable of defending itself and has a self-sustaining government/military, anything that we 'install' is meaningless. It's called 'sovereignty.' Nice cop-out. I don't blame you, though. Your ignorance becomes increasingly difficult to conceal as the conversation continues. It's always only a brief matter of time before your immaturity gets the better of you. LMAO. The e-thuginess in 'a)' is a pathetically blatant example of how childish you are, and the horrible grammatic execution of 'b)' is brutally ironic given its context. Go Tigers.
This makes no sense. Any "contingencies" and you nominate Pearl Harbor? I think a good example of any contingency is when Saudi calls and tries to give an American president the ringleader of a mass murder mission like the Khobar Towers you take the gift. Clinton did not do that. Next, like the former FBI director Louis Freeh said, when we have a mass murder like we had in Africa, we have a leader who demands we get to interview the men who were captured instead of asking for a presidential library donation, like Clinton did. Freeh was a Clinton appointee I remind you. True, you feel you are doing what is right but as we all learn in economics, there are hidden costs to every decision. The cost is the lost of further life on the ground, where you and the peaceniks aren't. You and the rest of the peaceniks are safely isolated in your homes that were provided for by the blood of patriots. Men who fought and died to give you that right. But you so haphazardly use that right to undermine American needs at home and abroad of which you can only get the full truth from the Washington Post. For every soldier coming home from Iraq with a bad story to tell are 1,000 others who believe we are doing the right thing and can see the good coming from our efforts. Like you said, you could care less about the world's problems, so why worry about US servicemen who want, who have volunteered to fight and die for the world's right to freedom? If they want to do it, and they believe in it, then why do you care? Let them give the world a taste of what you were given by others. This is complete and utter BS. The reason the 911 even happened at all was the lack of response by the Clinton Administration to every previous terrorist attack. Al Qaida has said itself that they were shocked at the lack of a response after Khobar, the Cole, the first WTC bombing. Clinton wanted to use the American justice system to prosecute these people when they had obviously declared war from their bastion of Afghanistan. It has been shown again and again that he was offered bin Laden by the Saudi's and could find no legal reason to take him. He lobbed a couple of cruise missiles from a ship to get the focus off of the Lewinsky investigation. All this while the world laughed, mocked and the terrorists planned their next missions........you call yourself nonpolitical but every comment takes up for 99.99999% of the problems: the improperly focused Clinton Administration. It's obvious what you are. You advocate hindsight and bull$hit. Afghanistan was easy to see was right because we won and are still winning it. If the Iraqi's had thrown roses at our feet, which many did, and there were no terrorists coming from Syria and Iran you wouldn't be saying anything. Just like Gulf War #1, most democrats in Congress called it a bad idea but after we won in 100 hours, they called Bush a coward for not going to Bagdhad. You know yourself that when GW Bush invaded Iraq, Dem's were saying that if his dad had done it the first time we wouldn't have to do this. But they didn't want us in Iraq to start with. With friends and countrymen like you people, why do we need enemies? Dem's like Kennedy and Schumer will be the ultimate demise of our country. There's enough warhawks as you and MSNBC call them to keep this country safe. One day, all the Rumsfeld's who have kept your asses free will be gone. Then you'll have to count on Hillary and Kerry to keep you safe. Good luck with that and I hope I'm dead by then.
You said guerella warfare. That is not a mistake, that is a type of warfare. That in and of itself is not a mistake. Name what similarities. You still haven't. One war we lost 50,000 men because Johnson was too big of a pussy-wimp to ignore the hairy-bushed hippies back home and the other is we've lost 2,000 men while the country we invaded just voted at a 65% clip for their new Constitution, women can vote and friggin drive a car, families are not taken to prisons and killed for speaking their minds....etc, etc. Remind of again of the definition of similar.
It took you that long to repeat yourself? I have named similarities, you just refuse to believe them. Blaming the ineffectiveness of 'Nam on domestic opposition...how brilliant. Yeah, I suppose it was all those hippies that killed the 50,000 troops. That makes a lot of sense. Think about what you are saying before you type it. Large-scale mistakes: attempting to force our system of government on people that have no knowledge of it, nor the desire to institute it; undermanning/undersupplying our troops for such an unreasonable task; wasting money and valuable resources/lives on a mission that has absolutely nothing to do with defending our own freedom. Of course, there are plenty of dissimilarities: no draft, different country, different enemy. Any knitwit can see that.
