In historical assessments and the American recollection, Vietnam was the unwinnable war. But to many in the armed forces, Vietnam, as a war, actually was on its way to succeeding when the Nixon administration and Congress, bowing to public impatience, pulled the plug: first withdrawing U.S. combat forces and then blocking money and supplies to the South Vietnamese army.
.....I think GW needs to get on the phone to NATO and UN country leaders to get some more allied troops in there to stabilize, where the heck is the Saudis, Egyptians?....sitting on the fence?....?
No actually its better to break the bank by marching alone against a nation that was really no threat to being with.
As it stands now the "insurgents" are blowing the place up faster than we can rebuild it. Very good, this thing of throwing money down a rat hole. And the people there love us too.
McNamara was on the History Channel the other day discussing Viet Nam. He said (I paraprhase) that we should never again engage unilaterally, as we did there with virtually no help from our allies, France, Germany, ***an, and so on.
Very interesting words and that was but a taste of the things he recounted as mistakes...most of which we're currently repeating.
Americans are disgusted with spending our kids and our futures on a country so unrelated to the mission at hand.
Today I also heard it said that "Terror is a tactic, not an enemy." Even our terminolgoy is flawed and biased toward distortion and an overall lack of clarity.
Bush is a poster boy for lousy communications. It is no wonder others would simply watch as we choke to death in our misguidance.
No actually its better to break the bank by marching alone against a nation that was really no threat to being with.
Sorry VC, simply wrong. Preemptive war, not letting them attack us first. We've gone over the threats posed by Saddam's regime.
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As it stands now the "insurgents" are blowing the place up faster than we can rebuild it. Very good, this thing of throwing money down a rat hole. And the people there love us too.
It's not the Iraqi people, & it's good you put quotations around the word insurgents. The sectarians & terrorists are one in the same. The Shi'ites led by Al Sadr are getting their marching orders from Iran, who remains the most egregious state sponsor of islamic terrorism. The Iraqis may not want us to stay, however they don't want the islamic fascists to win & neither should we. Any victory by the islamic fascists now will make the eventual destruction of them even more bloody & costly. It would have been much less costly to take Hitler out in 1938 than it was after we entered the war in 1941.
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McNamara was on the History Channel the other day discussing Viet Nam. He said (I paraprhase) that we should never again engage unilaterally, as we did there with virtually no help from our allies, France, Germany, ***an, and so on.
[:'(]McNamara is a case study in what not to do & how to not do it!!!
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Very interesting words and that was but a taste of the things he recounted as mistakes...most of which we're currently repeating.
Americans are disgusted with spending our kids and our futures on a country so unrelated to the mission at hand.
Today I also heard it said that "Terror is a tactic, not an enemy." Even our terminolgoy is flawed and biased toward distortion and an overall lack of clarity.
Bush is a poster boy for lousy communications. It is no wonder others would simply watch as we choke to death in our misguidance.
I think Pres. Bush said Islamic Fascism & all the usual suspects had their fits over it. To say that Iraq is not related to the War against Islamic fascism is really ludicrous. But we aren't going to chokd ourselves unless the left in this country succeeds into causing us to repeat the same mistakes of self imposed defeat & cutting off support of the country under attack.
Preemptive? Explain why and how. What part did that nation play in 9/11? A "threat" of WMD's? Again, look at Korea? Why not that nation by the same reasoning? If it were truly preemptive, we'd have stayed and done the job during Gulf War I.
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McNamara is a case study in what not to do & how to not do it!!!
And he spent the hour admitting his and this nation's errors...and the parallels with Iraq were obvious and glaring. Quickly ignoring such recent history is a formula to repeat it.
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But we aren't going to chokd ourselves unless the left in this country succeeds into causing us to repeat the same mistakes of self imposed defeat & cutting off support of the country under attack.
A very twisted view of what is happening. We are seated in a mess we created, a mess created by an utter lack of planning in the midst of a nation of religiously fanatic and devoutly corrupt people who are unwilling or incapable of policing themselves. They view our presence as the cause of the attacks on each other. It was a powder keg prior to our entry and will remain so when and if we ever depart that hell hole of a nation. Further, we did more to alienate ourselves from most of the planet in fell swoop than ever before in recent history. It was a monumental blunder. It is time to deal with that fact and plan for a way to stop the bleeding we created.
We have no interest in the commission of our resources and our kids toward their bizarre religion-based propensity for murdering each other. There is and will be nothing in this for us at the end of the day. We will have accomplished nothing other than removing one of the globe's several dozen dictators. In the process, we've quite competently mobilized that which we'd hope to deter.
You and those of your mindset may ignore the end results and continue to rationalize this series of blunders, but you will not and cannot change the facts and the results of what we've done.
The single most ridiculous thing we could do now is to blame anyone or everyone in our country who can see the facts as they stand.
Talk about history repeating itself...
Oh, and do not get confused. I put quotations around the word "insurgents" because just like Viet Nam, we once again find ourselves shooting blindly into the darkness hoping to hit the enemy...an enemy we cannot define or even find. This is not a unilateral endeavor and cannot and should not have been approached as such.
We are losing in Iraq. History will record it as such...if we can ever even define "winning."
Sorry VC, simply wrong. Preemptive war, not letting them attack us first. We've gone over the threats posed by Saddam's regime.
Going on that theory should we preemptively hit Canada next?Never know what they might be planning.
Lets run through the threats posed by Saddams regime to the United States one more time, just for fun.
Was it the WMDs that first the Un and then the US after the invasion never found?
Was it the ties to terrorist organizations that there is absolutely no proof existed.
Was it Iraqs military that took us about 45 minutes to defeat that we should have been worried about?
Seriously what was it we preemptively prevented?Saying there was some great threat from Iraq to the United States doesnt make it true.
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It's not the Iraqi people, & it's good you put quotations around the word insurgents. The sectarians & terrorists are one in the same.
Thats funny, most of the violence over there is from one sectarian group targeting another one, usually resulting in civilians being killed.US casualties are relatively low for as long as weve been in the country while the death toll for Iraqi civilians climbs substantially on a daily basis.The military hasnt been able to put much if any actual numbers on the amount of insurgents from outside the country operating in Iraq.Sounds to me more like a lot of different Iraqi groups fighting to get what power they can then a bunch of outside forces targeting the US with terrorist tactics.Thats why the term civil war keeps popping up so frequently from politicians, generals on the ground, Iraqi officials etc...Your trying to push them all into one group and they dont fit.
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But we aren't going to chokd ourselves unless the left in this country succeeds into causing us to repeat the same mistakes of self imposed defeat & cutting off support of the country under attack.
Isnt it interesting that the right has held power, called all the shots, and turned this into three ring circus for the last four years and as soon as the left gets into power the failure in Iraq is already being scapegoated onto them?They arent even in office yet and you can almost feel the Republicans waiting to make this look like it wasnt thier fault.
Iraq reopens debate on Vietnam
