so I read and listened to it today. I urge you to read or listen. The speech writer should receive an award.

It was close but Bush even pronounced "applicable" OK.

http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2007/08/20070822-3.html

http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2007/08/20070822-3.pod.a.mp3

we reinvade Viet Nam?

What's frightening is that you all believe your own billshit even after it has been proven to be wrong.

-- Modified on 8/23/2007 7:35:34 PM

The President’s speech was excellent. He is finally sounding like a statesman. The only part I disagree with him is that our war with Al Qa'ida started on September 11, 2001. Rather this war started nearly a thousand years ago when Pope Urban II at the Council of Clermont summoned European nobility and the people to claim the Holy Land away from Seljuk Turks.

Pope Urban’s words were: “Enter upon the road to the Holy Sepulchre wrest that land from the wicked race, and subject it to yourselves”. Then rang the battle cry; “dieu le veut “ It is the will of God". This history is ancient to us but for the Jihadists these events of the Crusades feel like they just heard it on the six-o-clock news.

We are in Holy War, and only a few of us in the United States of America understand the magnitude of this war. The President is right, these Jihadists despise us and appeasement is a word not in their vocabulary. Rest for them will only come when the Infidels (us) are gone from the earth.

To them we are the wicked race. The difference today as opposed to a thousand years ago is that now the Jihadists have the will and the means to bring the war home to Rodeo Drive.

I have trouble getting my mind around the factors involved in the generations of Jihadists. Is it simple or complex?

In the past, I have tried to make other analogies to the KKK/white supremacists of the 19th and 20th century U.S. They claimed themselves to be Christians and most performed their terror in the name of religion. They were a very small minority, but operated unchecked for decades due to the silent approval of the “masses”. Not until a federally backed force AND enough of their neighbors rose up to say no to them, did they start to recede.  Some remnants of them still exist but they are not the problem they used to be.

I do not think that the majority of Muslims want to “rule the world”, but until we find a way to motivate enough of them to help, this will be a long struggle. I would truly love to see some accurate polling of the Muslim world.

As far as the other non-thoughtful responses above yours…they deserve no answer. I’m positive Blunder (sic) never read the speech. Stamina may have skimmed over it, but hatred and bias prevented any thoughtful analysis. As usual, all they have (or care to put forward) is ad Hominem attacks.

I couldn't get through five minutes before my bullshit detectors were going full blast.  

After setting up all the popular straw men and knocking them down to the perfunctory applause of the believers, he delivers a snoozer.  There were no gaffes, but sheesh, his delivery drags.  What I thought listening to him: how I wish John Kerry were speaking. Now that's sad.  

About 25 minutes later I woke up to here him drawing comparisons to Vietnam. . . now wait!  We won the Cold War.  You can't argue that withdrawing from Vietnam left us weaker in the long run. As for the Vietnamese and Cambodians, the countries would have faced the very same sad outcome if we hadn't got in.  We bought them 20 years. At a very high cost.  

Yes, we turned Japan into a Democracy, and so on.    There were more differences there than I can count.  We can't count on an outcome like that every time-- especially when we've gone in as amateurs.  

Bush also doesn't realize that our actions very well bring discredit on democracy.

I notice he got the loudest and most emotional when he declared that it was up to the Iraqi people to judge Maliki. The audience helped him out with applause; yes, we know that must have really wowed them.

It's sad that the peak of this entire speech was correcting the diplomatic gaffe the administration made days before. "Send that sound bite to Malaki, and tell him were sorry!"

On a scale of 1-10.

Substance: 3, Delivery: 2, (On the Dubya curve that's about an 8) Accuracy: 2, Significance: 0, Rhetoric: 2

But it's Dubya, so you're right, the speech writer should receive an award.

and no comparisons to any other war America has fought. Oh sure this Holy War may have similarities but this war has no timeline and no boundaries. We are to the Jihadists the evil forces from the Crusader nations.

Like I said in previous threads, these Jihadists still speak of the events of Saladin and Richard the Lionheart as though it happened minutes ago. My personal opinion, most Muslims are not Jihadists and are gentle and want what most people want; that is peace, a place to raise a family and nookie.

To win this war we must also win their hearts and minds. We can offer Democracy, the rule of law, and Ben and Jerry's. WE must not however think the Jihadists will stop plotting evil mayhem against us just because we leave Iraq. 9-11 and the World Trade Center bombing, and 1972 Olympics et al, happened way before the Iraqi War. People forget, 3,000 of fellow Americans died on 9-11 whose only crime, only crime was going to work.

Thank you for taking the time.
You must have slept through the best parts. Go back and read it, pretending Kerry is talking.

I never gave Bush ANY kudos. I gave them all to the writer. I have never been able to listen to Bush with ANY enthusiasm. He has got to be the driest, most unemotional speaker EVER.

You gloss over or ignore most of the substance and content and even make up an excuse to discredit the Vietnam parallels. Instead you focus on the delivery and speaker, not surprising I guess since that is probably the only or at least your easiest way to try to discredit the speech. But hey, at least you tried. That's vastly superior to anyone else here (on the left). It shows you still have some kind of open spot in your thinking. I give you credit for that.

We will never win over the "die easy" jihadists (pun intended).

It is their neighbors that are desiring peace that must help. For policing to be effective the neigborhood locals must participate in order to be successful.

that have always been made, with the exception of his dubious comparison to the pullout in Vietnam.

I've always contended that for the Hawks, Iraq was to demonstrate that Vietnam could have been done right, and therefore totally discredit liberalism, since Vietnam had been its keystone issue.  Now that Iraq has totally backfired, the Hawks want to keep us there, arguing that we have to avoid another "shameful, costly" Vietnam-like pullout. No examination of how they made the same error twice is forthcoming.  

The reason why this comparison only comes out now is that Bush & Co. thought it better to avoid comparisons to that other calamity, even though I think "proving" the point was on their minds to begin with. It shows some desperation now.

I'll read the rest of the speech tonight.    

Of course they/we are desperate. When the popularity of the venture and tasks at hand are this low and there are so many people working to directly oppose the venture (and their only justification for doing so is their own selfish political gain), but yet the tasks need completing….how could one NOT become desperate? How in any way does that factor into analyzing what's right and wrong? If one’s not careful it could affect judgment. Get over the looking back blame game and help try to figure out how to move forward.

I was watching Bill Mahr last night (new HBO episode) and I couldn't get over the hatred and backwards looking (and thinking) exhibited by Tim Robbins. He has no desire to see anything happen other than the incarceration and apology of Bush.

"Same error twice is forthcoming"? You and I have read different history books on Vietnam and lived through different lifetimes “during Vietnam”. After we won the Tet offensive the North was preparing to negotiate, but the U.S. media declared it a loss for us. Even after we pulled and the South took over, they were doing OK, until the Left pulled the financial rug out from under them. The ONLY way Iraq will end up like Vietnam is if the Left achieves their goals, which is EXACTLY to RECREATE Vietnam.

All of the speech’s analogies from WWII to Korea to Vietnam were spot on. Poking a hole or two into an analogy does not discredit the comparisons. Some people think that analogies must demonstrate a 100% correlation to be useful. It's their only way to try to discredit the arguments.

InsanelyDelusional.

. . .contradictory ones, in fact. Somebody here his leaning heavily on ideology to inform him.

I managed read the speech, wincing my way through. It was just what I was afraid of: Dubya might be a terrible speaker, but if you actually pay attention to what he says-- it's worse.  Far better to snooze.  (I wished for Kerry not due to his superior ideology, but to his thrilling delivery compared to Bush.)

Here's Bush's logic: People were skeptical of Japan becoming a democracy.  People are skeptical of my occupation of Iraq.  They were wrong about Japan.  Therefore they are wrong about Iraq, too.   (You could substitute Korea for Japan.)  

I'd cite a couple of fallacies here, such as spurious relationship and gamblers fallacy.      

To have attacked Iraq so that we could do something like what we did in Japan or Korea or Taiwan (he didn't mention that one, lol) is spurious for a few reasons. We didn't have a lot of choice in what we did with Japan anyway, I mean we had to occupy it, making it Democratic was ad hoc. Democracy succeeded really due to the work of one man: MacArthur. With Korea, and unsuccessfully, Vietnam, it was part of a larger strategy of containment. That was, contain the Soviet Union from expansion.

In Iraq, as much as Bush tries to make the argument, we're not containing anything. We didn't stop training camps-- as Saddam had nothing in common with the terrorists. There's no monolithic geo-political power we can stop with Iraq. Iran is poor substitute for the Soviet Union, and has very ugly differences with Al-Qaida. I can't help to mention also: we attacked Iraq.  No matter what else, that does make a world of difference whether we're responding to a problem, as we did in Korea and Vietnam, and whether we created a new problem from scratch.  

Even so, Bush spurious comparisons, one after another, finding skeptics (not necessarily a liberal skeptic) to set up for the fall.  In some cases he (or rather his speech-writer) absolutely falsifies the meaning of other people's writing.  Example:  

"What earthly difference does it make to nomadic tribes or uneducated subsistence farmers in Vietnam or Cambodia or Laos, whether they have a military dictator, a royal prince or a socialist commissar in some distant capital that they've never seen and may never heard of?"  

What Senator Fullbright meant was: we couldn't win the populations because they couldn't discern the most important differences. He didn't mean they would be better off under communism.  It's absolutely clear what Fullbright meant.  This wasn't a mistake, it was just a lie. Really, if Bush's head were ever in his speech, as he was coached on it, he should have never said this.

http://www.waxingamerica.com/2007/08/bush-lies-about.html      

He does leave out a few things when he talks about how our pullout caused those Cambodian killing fields (bullshit, but it's a different subject).  Like: it was those communist Vietnamese who stopped the killing fields! Wrap your mind around that, RWU.  

On the subject of hatred for Bush that you find such a character flaw, like Tim Robbins I think Bush should be put on trial. I've noticed when a conservative says something shocking like that, such as Patrick Buchanan you admire his convictions and mettle, his refusal to compromise means strength to you-- you call it having a "moral compass." When Tim Robbins or another liberal says it, you characterize it as hatred and "backward looking."  

"Poking a hole or two into an analogy does not discredit the comparisons."  Why don't you just say your ideology won't let you reconsider things no matter what the argument is or what the facts are? When an analogy is knocked down, you'll switch to a more comfortable one.  

You aren't going to defeat terrorists with a conventional Army in the field-- unless your willing to commit mass genocide as the Russians did in Chechnya. That's our real model for victory in Iraq (as in Vietnam). Let's get out of our Army's way and let it win. Forget all this heart 'n' minds shit. That's for the survivors after the war.

His putting this on a parallel purpose with other American Wars is . . . brainless. We don't possess a magical ability to bestow democracy. To have read this lesson from history could only be done by narrowing history to the parts you find most entertaining. I believe democracy is extremely desirable everywhere, but citing it as something people will gravitate to is the same fallacy as Marx's "mandate of history." In the orient, as in Europe, people lived in despotism for millennia.  Democracy never occurred to them. It's not something people will gravitate to.  

Maybe we shouldn't put Bush on trial, maybe we should ship him and all his fellow chickenhawks to Iraq to clean up the mess they made.  It's their concept that this is like WW2, so let them pretend they're Eisenhower and MacArthur.

PS: I couldn't but fail to notice the political back-scratching going on.  He announces his budget proposal for veteran's benefits at the beginning of the speech.  Was it any coincidence that the audience was applauding what was really, a very poor speech?  I mean there was no way Bush was going to carry this without an "applause track."  Here's your $87 billion now help me out?

Does Bush intend to actually raise taxes to pay for increased veterans' benefits, or is this on our Bank of Beijing Mastercard? Is he making a political ploy to dare the Democrats to "cut" this laughably high proposal?  Just to say, when Republicans had the Congress, there wasn't much to boast about in veterans' benefits.

Really, we should take this lesson: a proposal  for the government to do something is bankrupt unless there's a way to pay for it-- besides credit.        


-- Modified on 8/26/2007 1:25:54 PM

You are one of the few people here (on the left) that actually use their brain, the wrong part of it admittedly, but you do use it, sometimes even effectively.

So you are actually claiming that all the Vets (or at least all the VFW) can be “bought off”, that they will accept a few more dollars in their pockets, in return for overturning their morals and standards.

You say,
“Why don't you just say your ideology won't let you reconsider things no matter what the argument is or what the facts are? When an analogy is knocked down, you'll switch to a more comfortable one.”

What a specious statement! Just because I claim that an analogy does not need to be 100% correlative to be useful, you then imply that I am blind to any and all evidence that does not fit the analogy. And then you talk about the disingenuousness of the use of the Fullbright quote.

To continue…There you go again, looking backward to make yourself feel good…using the “bad choice” of invading Iraq as part of the argument. No one ever seems to miss an opportunity to say or imply that if we hadn’t invaded Iraq then we wouldn’t be in this mess. True or not, that’s not part of any solution.

In your thinking…we were forced to reform Japan. We had to do so. We had no other choice. But we didn’t have to invade Iraq, so trying to reforming it will….
Wait a minute. You actually never finished your argument. I guess it’s sort of implied. The parallel Bush made was simple. People today say that for religious reasons and cultural reasons, democracy can never take hold in Iraq nor the Middle East, but many important people also said the same things for the same reasons about Japan. Their Shinto religion and monarchial culture with the Emperor was also said to be an impenetrable barrier. That’s all, no more, no less.

About containment…
You say that there is no “containment” factor as part of the Middle East problems?
Give me a break. You can’t actually believe that.

Not that it has anything to do with our arguments here, but your statement that “Saddam had nothing in common with the terrorists” is simply untrue. While not connected with 9/11, he definitely was connected to terrorists and Al-Queda. The 9/11 Commission Report even says so.

I don’t see that the “bigger” context of Fullbright’s comments matter all that much. The bigger context of the Fullbright quote was that he was really taking the welfare of the Vietnamese people into account. One can’t ignore the fact that Fullbright’s real goal was that he wanted the U.S. to make a complete and immediate withdrawal. He indeed tempered his views (in this statement) by adding the goal that stability of any kind was better than the status quo, so in effect he’s saying let’s pullout and let the move toward stability begin, since “we” can’t provide it. The bottom line is that Fullbright wanted the U.S. out of Vietnam and used the same arguments that many on the left are using today. Unfortunately the negative consequences of repeating that kind of end will be far more disastrous now than then

You say
“…communist Vietnamese stopped the killing fields”.
They stopped 2 million Cambodians from being murdered?
NO !
They invaded Cambodia and one Communist government overthrew another Communist government AFTER the fact.
Are you REALLY trying to say that the genocide would STILL have taken place had the U.S. still been (or been involved) in the region?

You say,
“We don't possess a magical ability to bestow democracy.”
You are absolutely correct. It takes hard work, perseverance and long term vision.

About Tim Robbins you say,
“when a conservative says something shocking like that, such as Patrick Buchanan YOU admire his convictions and mettle”
I know you are using Buchanan as an example, but you cannot find any quote by ME stating as much. Buchanan is a buffoon,
You would be more on target pointing out my admiration of Bush’s convictions. From your perspective Bush cannot and will not compromise. I can understand how you perceive that. His convictions don’t stem from hatred as Robbins’ clearly do. Bush may make “stubborn” decisions, but I believe he still listens and is rational (I know you don’t believe the latter).  Robbins sees or hears nothing as the result of his “stubbornness”.

You say,
“Let's get out of our Army's way and let it win.”
It may very well come to that. Pulling out of Iraq now will move us closer to that outcome.

And BTW, even though you didn’t include any remarks, the Tet offensive WAS a military victory, except not in the minds of Americans, for one reason only.


-- Modified on 8/26/2007 3:05:42 PM

by applauding here and there to spice his empty delivery. That's not immoral. I mean, for the sound of $87 billion to solve your problems and ease your injuries, wouldn't you applaud just a little? Especially when it's owed to you?  Would it be immoral?

Most people believe that others will react to a situation generally in the same manner as they themselves would react.

"What a specious statement! Just because I claim that an analogy does not need to be 100% correlative to be useful, you then imply that I am blind to any and all evidence that does not fit the analogy. And then you talk about the disingenuousness of the use of the Fullbright quote."

No, I was being sincere. Bush's speech turned on the analogies being pretty close and the "experiment" in Japan, Korea, (oops, did he forget to mention?) Germany and Italy, being reproducible in Iraq, which I pointed out was a gambler's fallacy and a specious comparison. For example, Japan was crushed; the Emperor himself had "submitted." There was no insurgency, no splintering, no danger that the country would fall apart. We of course had to attempt to make it into a democracy-- because that was our tradition, no matter what the argument. The only way it succeeded was because the right guy was in charge: MacArthur. He was no Paul Bremmer.

Also, Japan, Korea, and Vietnam were not in strategically vital locations.

The killing fields: Did you just not get this?  Okay, I'll make it clearer: The Vietnamese STOPPED IT FROM CONTINUING, and it would have continued unabated, period. Pol Pot wasn't going to stop, and I have to mention that the US wasn't going to stop it.

BTW, 1.1 million Cambodians were killed in the "Vietnam war" after 1963.  That alone argues that maybe we shouldn't have stayed in Vietnam.  

http://www.aiipowmia.com/sea/fields.html

"To continue…There you go again, looking backward to make yourself feel good…using the 'bad choice' of invading Iraq as part of the argument. No one ever seems to miss an opportunity to say or imply that if we hadn’t invaded Iraq then we wouldn’t be in this mess. True or not, that’s not part of any solution."

Putting Bush & Bunch on trial is big part of a solution. It tells the Arab people that we've renounced the colonialism, the deception and stupid excuses which led to this ill-conceived invasion and stupidly blundered occupation. More, that our country really submits to "the rule of law" itself, and won't let the guilty get away with it. It gains us some credibility in calling ourselves a democracy. You don't commit the crimes and make the negligent errors Bush&co have without being held accountable. Call that backward thinking. I call it regaining credibility.  

It also tells al-Qaida that we're not as stupid as the way we've been acting since their attack.    

When you call it "looking backward" I'm reminded constantly of "Monty Python and the Holy Grail," after Sir Lancelot rampages through the wedding party killing eight guests.  As the father says: "Let's not bicker and argue about o' killed o'."

I realize that's a very flawed analogy, but like a tune stuck my head, I can't stop thinking of it. Do you really think the "happy occasion" of founding of a democracy is going to happen after this invasion?  Now that's comedy.  In the real world, they'd turn to getting rid of Lancelot first, and the wedding later-- if ever.

Bush's entire plan was to knock down Saddam and let democracy flow. That's what "Mission Accomplished" was supposed to be. It's clear that he didn't think there would be any casualties. Never mind at that time he landed on that aircraft carrier, our troops were allowing the country to be looted. (Do you think there were better things for him to attend to?) Since then, the strategy has been to stay in there and wait till something good happens.

So, about Senator Fullbright, let me get this straight: it doesn't matter what he clearly meant by his statement, if his intent was to have us withdraw from Vietnam, then it's right in your mind that Bush gets to twist the meaning and lie about it?  

I'll repeat something I said: getting out of Vietnam was the best thing we did in the late Cold War. The only thing we messed up: we didn't spend that 20 years getting people out of there, but we did buy them 20 years.  Looking at its geography, it's a surprise we succeeded that long.  

Tet: (yawn) it made its point. The point being that South Vietnam was infiltrated and our Army didn't know about it. Just like with Iraq, we learned how shitty our intelligence really was.  

No I don't think the VC suffered the military defeat the Right wants us to believe they did, and that the only advantaged the VC gained was a "PR" victory. IMHO, that's just bullshit.

Of course it failed for the VC militarily in that there was no public uprising in South Vietnam. Without an uprising, it was just a massive suicide mission-- and believe me, General Giap planned on that.

The North's other military objectives were met. Fighting went on in some places till 1969, and the State Department said it strengthened VC control in the countryside. It might have been costly to the VC, but in no way was it a defeat.    

I'm glad from our previous conversation on the subject that you now call Buchanan a buffoon.

-- Modified on 8/27/2007 2:27:52 AM

Rather than guess and answer the wrong thing, I'd rather ask you to clarify this.

The speech itself was indeed well written. But the messenger of the speech, one George W Bush, has no gravitas or cachet to speak about Vietnam.
If Bush had the Vietnam era bona fides of a John McCain (or even a John Kerry) or anyone else serving in the Federal government who was in Vietnam... then maybe.

But from where I sit, its just another bountiful bouquet of Bush rhetoric bent on egregious pandering to the VFW. The $87 Billion dollars he refers to in his speech for instance..... how utterly repugnant to be so deceitful when in fact, Bush has actually CUT medical and pension benefits. That $87 billion was trimmed down from the $169 billion needed just to bring the VA back to basic standards. The areas cut included emergency care for aged and infirm Veterans.

But the speech was nice.

While irrelevant to my rebuttal, technically, Gambler’s Fallacy has little or no application here, unless you can show some applicable statistics of probabilities in the mix. The whole point was to simply to demonstrate that a culture that has inherently been non-democratic for centuries CAN convert. Certainly, one can point out factors that can and will affect the likelihood of success. Actually, I think your best argument would have been to point to the homogeneous culture of Japan in contrast to the non-homogeneous societies of Iraq.

So the 2 MILLION Cambodians that WERE killed don’t matter? Vietnam gets an A+ for coming in towards the end of the genocide? Why do suppose that they waited so long? The point was that the 2 million would NOT have died had we NOT pulled out. Plus how many South Vietnamese were “cleansed”?
The U.S. wasn’t going to stop it? How could you imagine that? We were no longer even engaged in the region. And the Cambodians that died during the Vietnam War would NOT have died if North Vietnam had NOT used Cambodia as a staging and hiding place (Oops, I used your own arguing tactic that something would not have happened if the lead up events had never occurred).

“Putting Bush & Bunch on trial is big part of a solution. It tells the Arab people that we've renounced the colonialism”

You are extremely delusional. The democratic “thing to put on display" is to vote out the person you now disagree with. That goes much further in educating non-democratic peoples than holding a trial that would rightfully viewed a nothing more than a lynch mob gone awry. You are in an extremely small minority of people that believe crimes have been committed concerning Iraq.

Also, you’re “TET” opinion is in a minority. Every HISTORIAN I've ever heard disagrees with you. Even Winfuckingpedia disagrees with you.

The part where I don't think you showed much regard for vets, assuming that their actions would not be true to their hearts.

Or the part where I said that that when some people think others will act in a less than honorable way, it is because that often, they do so themselves.

for years, his opponents have been making the Iraq/Vietnam analogy and he got tired of it, so he decided to fire back.

Has every historian that writes about war, been a vet? I think not. Careful, your getting close to the Jack0 line of reasoning.

See the link. It's not from a crazy leftist site.  Over one million had already died from 1970-75 due to the US incursion and bombing. It caused mass refugees in Phnom Penh, swelling it's population from 500 thousand to 2.5 million. It left a desolate countryside. You might argue about Vietnam, but there is no doubt that the US destabilized Cambodia. We killed twice as many people as the Vietnamese did in their invasion.

Our invasion of Vietnam aside, our illegal incursion into Cambodia was brutal, reckless, and an unmitigated calamity for the Cambodians. Over one million lives? Cambodia did not have an incursion that big. When the Khmer Rouge took Phnom Penh, they had 50,000 troops.

It's strange you say that Wiki. . .pedia disagrees with me.  I checked my statements against what their article about Tet said. It agrees with me on all salient points.

You say I'm a minority only because conservatives have been shouting about the great Tet military victory over and over for years. Just like they've shouted over and over that troops coming home were spat upon, even though there's no evidence to verify it. Say it enough and people believe it. I'd call both conservative urban legend

Here's what Wikipedia actually says:

"The first and most ambitious goal, to produce a general uprising, was a failure for the communists. While there was little support for the Saigon government, there was no general uprising and the communists, most with no plans for retreat or withdrawal, took heavy losses. While fighting in Hue and Saigon continued for some time, in most cities the communists were driven back within days. The effort (of the NLF) to regain control of the countryside was more successful. According to the U.S. State Department the NLF 'expanded their control in urban areas and have made pacification virtually inoperative. In the Mekong Delta the NLF was stronger now then ever and in other regions the countryside belongs to the VC.(2)'"

So a VC objective was reached-- and held. Everything I said, really, is confirmed in that statement.

About the propaganda victory of Tet, what you don't consider is that most important demoralization afterward was among officials in executive branch and the ranks of the troops.  It wasn't the press that turned these groups against the war. They had more direct sources that influenced them, as the Pentagon Papers showed.

Just how much of a departure is it for this government to embrace comparisons to Vietnam?

"I have also heard a number of observers, including some Senators, who have compared events in Iraq to what we went through in Vietnam. I happen to know something about Vietnam, and I know we do not face another Vietnam. I need not go into the long history of our involvement in that nation, the reasons for our failure, but the realities on the ground in Iraq are clear." -- John McCain, 2004

"The only thing the insurgencies in Iraq and Vietnam have in common is that in both cases American forces have fought revolutionaries. To make comparisons or draw lessons beyond that basic point misunderstands not only the particular historical cases, but also the value of studying history to draw lessons for the present." -- Fred Kagan, 2005

"Sen. John McCain rebuked his Senate colleague and good friend Chuck Hagel on Sunday, saying that the Nebraska Republican was wrong to claim last week that Iraq was becoming another Vietnam." -- Newsmax, 2005

"Referring to comparisons to Vietnam made by some critics, Rumsfeld attacked arguments that any emerging government in Iraq is doomed to collapse under the insurgency." -- CNN, 2005

"I think the two situations are not comparable..." -- Tony Snow, 2006

"...no, I think that, first of all, historical parallels (between Iraq and Vietnam) are I think not very helpful, and I don't think they happen to be right. -- Condoleezza Rice, 2006

And lest we forget...

"I think the analogy is false. I also happen to think that analogy sends the wrong message to our troops, and sends the wrong message to the enemy." -- George W. Bush, 2004

http://journals.democraticunderground.com/top10/305

Looks like the administration has nothing left but the wrong message. No wonder people think the country is on the wrong track.

So, it wasn't a matter of the heart there. It was a matter of bolstering their sentiments by appealing also to their interests, so that they would better applaud a speech that was really pretty dull. That was because it wouldn't be a matter of the speaker rousing the crowd. It was a matter of the crowd applauding to make Bush sound better.

It was a calculated psychological appeal by Bush's handlers. It had a few other advantages as well, but it wasn't going to work with an audience whose hearts weren't with Bush already. None of them would think of it as a quid pro quo, but nearly all of them had heard bad things about the administration's cutting of veteran's benefits over the years. Start by lifting that pall, and Bush, or his staff, could be sure that the crowd was with him throughout the speech.

About myself: we're all psychologically vulnerable in different ways. We could all be manipulated by the ideology we've adopted, because that will automatically shut off some observations.

I observe manipulations like the one above specifically so I can prevent myself from being manipulated.  I might be cynical in a lot of ways, but I'm not cynical about myself and my own responsibilities.

Compelled to argue for Doc now?

I was simply addressing his statement that in order to argue with credibility about the Vietnam war it was better to have fought in it or served during it, etc.

It's an age-old tactic that unless one has first hand information or experience then it's impossible to speak credibly. And it's a crock.

I happen to agree with the quotes you posted and I still think it appropriate for Bush to make the comparisons he did last week. It's not contradictory at all. My reasoning stands as I said to Doctor Gonzo.

-- Modified on 8/27/2007 8:29:11 PM

I really don't understand why your blood is boiling so. All I said was "the Tet offensive WAS a military victory, except not in the minds of Americans, for one reason only"

The Tet offensive WAS a military victory, by ANY measure. Wikpedia (that ultimate faux source) says so as well.

Non militarily it was anything but a victory (which I said also). Psychologically it marked the end of the war. Johnson allowed himself to be castrated and every anti war person in the world (especially the U.S media), and some in the military and executive seized the opportunity to hide Johnson's nut sack so it could never be re-attached.

You've shot off on an unrecognizable tangent to what we were talking about, while actually agreeing with me.

Oh, I guess there is Cambodia left to talk about. As I said, all those Cambodians killed DURING the war would NOT have been killed had the North Vietnamese NOT started using Cambodia as a base of operations (because initially it was off limits to us, they saw it as a safe haven).

That isn't what I said at all.

By any measure? a victory?  The US and SV forces had ceded control of the countryside to the VC.  Moreover, why would Westmoreland request 206,000 more troops if Tet had been a military defeat for the NV and VC?

Your absolution of our government from the terrible outcome in Cambodia shows a perversity you cite easily in liberals. Could we really have gone in there and thought it would be restricted to Vietnam?

We weren't going to win that war without destroying South Vietnam, North Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos, killing 30 million people, and then meeting both Chinese and Soviet forces.  It was a mess that only got dirtier not cleaner.

Look back in my posts rights here in this thread. You will see that I was using the exact same logic tactic I scolded you for using.... That, If ONLY "this" hadn't happened in the first place then "that other secondary bad thing" would never have happened.

It IS true that if the Vietnamese had never gone into Cambodia FIRST, then the U.S. would not have followed.

I could ask, Why are you so quick to absolve North Vietnam of it's culpability?, but then I believe I know the answer.

The VC were Stalinists to their hard core. Nothing good about them, except they could fight like outhouse rats. But they did recruit people who simply wanted the foreigners out.

Faced against that, once we were in Vietnam, we could either win by attrition, getting more brutal than they were, and not take time to separate the potentially innocent from the guilty, or we could fight on the defensive.  Keep South Vietnam as fortress against the communists. If you look at the shape of the damn country, though, it isn't shaped like a fortress.

What happened was we were "defensive" in South Vietnam, and to preserve it we fought a fierce offensive elsewhere, like Cambodia.  

Finally, though, it was unwinnable on the defensive, and it wasn't worth the intensified loss of life that occurred on the offensive.

I'll come back to all of this and more soon, I'm reaching an acute shortage of time, now.

Jack0 has a couple of consistent points, neither of which relate to your particular resentment.

1st is, put your money where your mouth is.  If you believe in this war, or war generally, so much, then why do you stay so far away from it?  Why didn't you serve when you had the chance, why isn't your family involved?

This is related to the issue of why Republicans are also hypocritical about other issues, eg buttfucking.   If you have to choose between lazy degenerate Democrats and lying lazy degenerate Republicans, which do you choose?


2nd are questions that any astute person can answer, but of course serious & honest interest is necessary.  

They include, do you really understand what is going on in a given war?    Do you understand the force structure makes specific assumptions about the conflict, and limits what can be done?  

Do you understand the difficulty of acheiving an objective that hasn't been defined?

Do you understand the importance of intelligence in any operation, and do you realize that in counterinsurgency (as in both RVN, Iraq, and countless others) the vast majority of intelligence comes from the locals, who have many reasons to lie to you, and very few reasons to tell you the truth?

Generally speaking, the answer to most of those questions is obviously that you don't understand, and probably haven't even thought of them.

What it looks like may be happening now is that local commanders may have authority to hire the local militias - ie, you cut them in on the money.   The fact that they have zero allegiance to American goals and values, and can't be trusted if they get a better offer, is a separate issue.


Now these questions merge in one particular point, and that is whether you really want a war that is going to fuck up many people you care about, while costing far more than it acheives?   Ie, do you really understand that the entertainment value of this exercise drops off rapidly when you have a dog in the fight?

in obvious reference to Bush's comment that leaving RVN was a mistake.

You refer to him as Blunder, saying that he has no argument except ad homs.

That is precisely what you are doing, not him.

My critique of Bush is more obvious:  to equate all of our 20th century enemies, as an argument that we should use the same strategy in dealing with them, is incredibly stupid.  It's the sort of argument you'd hear from a person who would say that all history is the same, because that is the logical corollary of the argument - and if it's all the same, then of course its irrelevant.

Hatred and bias?  Do you expect me to believe you are really that stupid, that you don't realize that Bender made no such comment as you allege, but you in fact did?

I don't know what kind of stupidity motivated your comment.  All I need to know is that your analysis is obviously wrong.

It's no wonder you have trouble getting your mind around concepts.   Shit, you don't read paragraphs.

none of these neighbors have any doubts about WTF you're doing, no resentments about the way you do it, and none of them are related to any of the terroristic type assholes.

All you have to do is go in there and talk to them logically.  

Well, if you spoke the fucking language, that would be a way to start.

So why couldn't you see this in 2003?  Dick Cheney knew it back in Gulf 1.

The best way to succeed in any military operation is forget planning.  We don't need no stinkin plans.  Just point everything downrange (PLEASE make sure you know where that is) and blaze away at the cyclic rate until your ammo is expended.  

Then you break down in tears and blame the liberals for doing something.  Or not doing something.  Whatever your fucking excuse is today.

Just remember, NEVER EVER USE YOUR FUCKING HEAD.  In your case, it's only there for a counterweight.

Hannibal couldn't win against the Romans?   He kicked their collective ass every time he caught them.   They ran and hid for years, until they won.

Why couldn't he win the war?

Yeah, we could still be in Vietnam.   Absolutely right we kicked their ass every time we found them.  Why wouldn't they stay beaten?   Why didn't we chase them all over the Asian continent?

Sheesh, I don't know how to explain it to you.  To begin with, military force is not its own logic.  It's always in a context, and for a purpose.  Well, excepting maybe for Republicans with defense contracts.

In WW2, we didn't give a shit if we killed every German, every Jap, but we were only there for one thing, and that was to whack out their military force.

But in Vietnam and Iraq, that's not so.  We're there to save them from themselves.  We've set ourselves a goal that you can't acheive.  That's really brilliant, isn't it?

Analogies are bullshit for people who can't understand the original situation.   Analogies are a fucking training aid for the retarded, not a serious argument.

Well, you're so tough, you should be able to handle a little hatred from an actor - shouldn't you?   Or maybe not.  

Maybe your success depends on everybody subscribing to your particular delusion.   The most likely scenario would be that, 4 years and 20K lives and limbs later, we figure out that if we cut these assholes in on the money, they may lay off us.   Then we just keep the Army there for the next 30 years to renegotiate our contracts every quarter.

So it's the LEFT that's responsible for pointing out that you don't know WTF you're doing?  Yeah, that must be it.

and that is that a tactical victory - however measured - does not in any way guarantee ultimate victory.

Our own Revolution is a classic example of that.  I suppose it was the British liberal media that caused  George's defeat, eh?

Same with the Civil War.   If you were to count bodies or battles, the Soouth should clearly have won.   But somehow they didn't.  How could that be?

I'll tell you why:  you don't get it.   You don't get that it's almost never just about body counts or holding territory.  It's about understanding and acheiving an objective; and in this case, understanding that you can't shove a bayonet in anybody's face and make them want to be like you; and that chances are real good he wants to be more like an ayatollah; and you have a couple of choices - either manage it selectively from a distance, OR keep that bayonet in his face (or just kill them all).   And if you're going to kill them all, you better check to make sure you have the means to do that 1st.

Now, what do yoou think the odds are that we are going to win the hearts and minds of the Iraqis?

Let me rephrase that:  If the PRC invaded to save us from all the evils of American civilization, then 4 years later sorta felt bad about being unable to do anything except kill people, how would you feel about cooperating with them?

You think you'd do anything for those slant-eyed little assholes except put them oout of their misery?  Well, you might be busy sucking them off, because of course you're a Republican; but most normal people don't like strangers who blow into town and destroy everything to save them from themselves, and it usually takes a few hundred years for them to forgive & forget.

they were supposed to be unable to do that.  Johnson had just gotten thru telling us that we had kicked the NVA ass.

Then all of a sudden, they manage to overrun half the country.

Sure we drove them back in their holes.   What was obvious was that our intelligence sucked.

But the point here is, how long do you want to tie up the Army to lose a half dozen people a day?   Sure, you kill 5X that many of them.   Why not get it over with, and just bomb the place back into the Stone Age?

That would have been just fine in WW2, because that was within the rules.   Kill'em all.  

But in RVN and Iraq, we're there to SAVE the dinks, I mean the indigenous personnel.   Sorta hard to do by killing them all, but if that's what you're going to do, why not do it and get it over with?

Don't give us shit about "winning their hearts and minds".   These are people who DO NOT give a shit about American values.  What they care about is that your buddy killed their cousin.  Yes, he was an asshole, but he was THEIR asshole, and they never asked you to come save them.

You will NEVER "win their hearts and minds".  You may buy out some of them, at least until you turn your back or they want more dinero.

And if you wanted to save their hearts and minds, you'd send Walt Fucking Disney, not the Army.

How do you manage to be so abysmally stupid?   Oh, I forgot, you're a Republican.

like that the liberals lost Vietnam, and your ignorant assed opinion makes it true.

IF you had been there, it would be a little harder to be so fucking delusional.

Fred's POV:  

   "Not Today, Sir."

   Awaiting The Rebellion

   October 1, 2006    

   101st at Tuy Hoa, 1966 Photo: Jim Coyne

   When, one wonders, will mutiny begin among the troops in Iraq?

   Recently I talked by email about the war with Jim Coyne, an airborne-infantry friend who served two tours as a gunship door-gunner in Viet Nam and then made a career in journalism. I asked, “Do they [I meant the officer corps, the official military] actually believe the optimistic twaddle this time around? Do they really not know what is happening?”

   Jim’s response: “In my opinion, they really don't know; they may not even want to know on some level. You know as well as I, these are mission-oriented folks; can do folks; failure and its introspective handmaidens are not options to them. And in a tactical mission-oriented world our military doesn't really fail very often; in a strategic military/political world such as the Mideast and Iraq, however, we simply cannot win.

   ”Again, as in Viet Nam, the career officer corps salutes and marches toward the sound of battle. Eventually however (and it won't be long now) it's the grunts who will begin to revolt, first in small ways (as in the 101st in late 1968, "No sir. We are not going up that hill again.) and then, quickly thereafter (As in 1973, "Fuck you, asshole.") By that time the media may get wind of things and spin it exponentially out of control. That’s what I think.”

   So do I,

   We have two sharply differing versions of Iraq. One comes from the professional officers. It holds that the military is making progress and the insurgents losing ground. The Iraqi people love us and want the benefits that we will bring them. The increasing attacks by insurgents are signs of desperation. Things seem bad only because the media emphasize the negative. The officers see light at the end of the tunnel. The body counts are great; the bad guys can’t much longer take the pounding we are giving them. Onward and upward.

   The other view comes from enlisted men (and from a lot of reporters before being edited to say whatever the publisher believes). These assert that the Iraqis hate us and we, them; that the insurgency is growing in strength, that we are not making progress but going backward, that our tactics don’t work and we can’t win.

   The pattern is so common in recent wars as to be routine. The enlisted men know that the US is losing. The officers do not know it, or refuse to know it. This will eventually have consequences.

   When men die pointlessly in a war they know cannot be won and that means nothing to them, when they realize that they are dying for the egos of draft-dodging politicians safe in Washington—they will revolt. It happened before. It will happen again. But when? Next year, I'd guess.

   It is important to understand that officers and enlisted men are very different animals. For example, enlisted men do things (drive the tank, repair the helicopter) whereas officers are chiefly administrators. But the important difference is psychological. Enlisted men are blue-collar guys or technicians. They carry little ideological overburden. They want to fix the tank or finish the field exercise and then go drink beer and get laid.

   Above all, they are realists. If the new radio doesn’t work, or Baghdad turns out to be a tactically irresolvable nightmare, the enlisted guys feel very little urge to pretend otherwise. This is why officers do not like reporters to be alone with the troops. And they seriously don’t.

   The standard response of the officer corps is that the troops cannot see the Big Picture. (Unless of course the enlisteds say what the officers want to hear, in which case their experience on the ground lends irresistible authority). But the Big Picture rests on the Little Picture. If a soldier sees slow disaster where he is, and hears the same thing from guys he meets from everywhere else in the country, his conclusions will not be without weight. Sooner or later, on his third tour with a pregnant wife at home and seven friends killed by bombs, he will say, in the crude but expressive language of soldiers, “Fuck this shit.”

   By contrast, officers can’t conclude anything but the positive. There are several reasons. Career officers, first, are politicians. You don’t get promoted by saying that the higher-ups are otherworldly incompetents. An officer’s loyalty is to his career, and to the officer corps, not to the country or to his troops. If this sounds harsh, note how seldom an active-duty officer will criticize policy, yet when he retires he may suddenly discover that said policy resulted in unnecessary deaths among the troops. Oh? Then why didn’t he say so when it would have saved lives?

   There is a curious moral cowardice among officers. They will fly dangerous missions over Baghdad, but they won’t say that things aren’t going well. They don’t go against their herd.

   Further, and I want to say this carefully, officers often are not quite adults. They can be (and usually are) smart, competent, dedicated, and physically brave, and some are exceedingly hard men. But there is a simple-mindedness about them, an aversion to the handmaidens of introspection, a certain boyishness as in kids playing soldier. A lot of make-believe goes into an officer’s world. Enlisted men, grown up, see things as they are. Officers are issued a world by the command and then live in it.

   Note the heavy emphasis of the military, meaning the officer corps, on ritual and pageantry. It is adult kid-stuff. Three thousand men building a skyscraper just show up, do their jobs, and go home. The military wants its men standing in squares, precisely at attention, thumbs along the seams, with brass perfectly polished. It wants stirring music, snappy salutes, and the haunting tones of taps, “Yes sir, yes sir, three bags full, sir.” This is justified as necessary for discipline. It isn’t. A gunny sergeant has no difficulty maintaining his authority without the hoop-la

   Officers remind me of armed Moonies. There is the same earnestness, the same deliberate optimism-by-policy. Things are going well because doctrine says they are. An officer is as ideologically upbeat as Reader’s Digest, and as unreflective. This is the why they don’t learn, why the US is again flailing about, trying to fight hornets with elephant guns. “Yessir, can do, sir.” Well, sometimes, and sometimes not. It is not arrogance, more like a belief in gravitation.

   And so we hear phrases that embody the eternal precedence of oo-rah! over realism: “There is no substitute for victory,” or “The difficult we do immediately; the impossible takes a little longer,” or “Defeat is not an option.” But sometimes it is an inevitability.

   I think Jim is right. Sooner or later, a unit won’t go up the hill again. Then it will be over.

language to appear sane again, didn't we?