Vietnam's Lesson: Win and Ignore Ted Kennedy

Re: Vietnam's Lesson: Win

good read

 

Re: Vietnam's Lesson: Win

I knew you guys were ignorant. I just didn't know you were this fucking stupid. You're real, live, flesh&blood versions of Kevin Kline's "A Fish Called Wanda" character.

 

Re: Shiite Terror Leader Quotes Ted Kennedy

You might have missed this gem,

 

Re: Vietnam's Lesson: Win

numerous historians refer to tet as a victory. it differing from your views makes someone ignorant?

 

Re: Vietnam's Lesson: Win

I know- they're called Vietnamese communists.

 

Re: Vietnam's Lesson: Win

One of my favorite movie lines, "I think I'll call this fishy lunch. Hello lunch!"

Anyway, this Kennedy dream that Fajulla is Tet is a sad over reach. Vietnam was different because we were playing for a tie. We were waiting for the other side to see our resolve, see how serious we were, then come to the negociating table. We wanted to kill them just enough so that they would negociate. It was always a calibrated war. Calibrated for a tie. Faluja is different because we are playing to win. We don't want them to come to the negociating table. We want to kill them. Once security is turned over to the Iraq government, it will be up to Iraqis to kill these kind of people.

Will the Iraqis get it right the first few times? Probably not and therein lies the rub. This is much more like the turn over of defense to South Vietnam in 72. Do we force them to take responsibility for their security and let the gov't of Iraq get run over? Hmmm...

I think two things have to be clearly said by our president. First, things aren't as bad as the press would like to report. Second, we will have a long future of involvment in Iraq. The victories will come much easier in Iraq but there are plenty of battle in our future.

 

Re: Vietnam's Lesson: Win

Just two days ago on CNN, some military "expert" said that it was not a military victory for the VC. It was a moral victory in two ways, a moral victory in that these VC were visible everywhere and made the news reports causing the likes of Walter Cronkite to make very public "we are going to lose" comments.

Just think of the manner in which the news was distributed back then. I know. I am old enough to remember watching the news at 6:30 every evening and that was about it...for us, the common, unread folks.

It was also a moral loss for the US public. This has been well noted as the turning point in public opinion. So, if by the ends (ie: a US pullout), justified the means (VC didn't gain a "military" victory per se on the battle field), then the VC got what they wanted and set forth the "winning" to come.

 

Re: Vietnam's Lesson: Win

Yea, the new (and improved) Iraqi military...once the shooting starts, they run and hide!

Now, since you like movie quotes, I was really thinking of this movie when reading the part I quoted from your post. Could you seriously help me?

"They shootin! They shootin!" - as the guy runs around looking for a place to hide.

It was either Eddie Murphy or one of those Police Academy movies. Help!

 

Re: Vietnam's Lesson: Win

I agree. The hard part isn't battling the Fajullas or the Sadrs. We could do that for a very long time. The problem is getting Iraqis to do it. Why should they? They have a patronage culture rather than a meritorious culture. Getting top down accountability for security will be very hard. Especially when they know if they quit the US will come in and fix things.

 

Re: Vietnam's Lesson: Win

I think it was the movie DC Cab, maybe?

 

Re: Vietnam's Lesson: Win

Can't help you. Richie's good with movie quotes.

 

Re: Vietnam's Lesson: Win

Which should demonstrate what a pointless concept that is in the Vietnam war. Strategically, it can be claimed the US won every battle. Oddly enough, that did no good.
The concept of a victorious battle simply does not correspond to guerilla wars.

 

Santayana's Lesson: Learn

How is it, that 35-40 years later, people still don't grasp the simple concept of the Vietnam War?

Of COURSE we could have won. We could have occupied the entire nation, or nuked it. What was not possible was propping up the regime of South Vietnam. Tet proved that we could not keep Vietnam from going Commie without a far, far greater expenditure than America was willing to pay. It wasn't worth it.

Which brings us to Iraq. Of COURSE we could "win." We could re-institute the draft, and occupy the place for decades. We could crash our economy trying to make Iraq into Missouri. Or, of course, we could nuke or neutron bomb the place into oblivion.

What we can't do is make Ahmad Chalabi into the democratically elected leader of Iraq. If that's your definition of victory, we can't win.

Oh, and by the way, Walter Cronkite in 1968 was simply reading from the Gospel of the ********ing Obvious. The media didn't lose Vietnam. It was unwinnable. And, I'm sure 35 or 40 years from now, a new generation of conservative shitheels will be ranting about how the "media" and the "liberals" "lost" Iraq.

 

Now if majority of the Iraqis would oppose US occupation, this war was lost.

Winning the battle, losing the war...I hope this is not another Vietnam. We shall see.

 

What is it with Amercian right wingers and pathological denial? Suck it up, guys, we lost the Vietnam War. Punto.

The Bush administration is also screwing up this war, largely because they set up for failure by just charging in with massively unrealistic assumptions, no game plan worthy of the name, and a mindset where inconvenient facts are ignored if they conflict with the Bushies' wishful ideology. At this point, it is possible to still snatch victory from the jaws of defeat but to do that, we'll need to dump the bumbling Bushies and put Kerry into office to get the job done right.

 

What was that story about the american general and the vietnamese colonel meeting many years after Vietnam?

American General -"Not once did you beat us on the battlefield."

Vietnamese guy - "that is true, but also irrelevant"

We can bomb the hell out of Iraq and level it, make it glass, whatever.

Would we then "win"? Would america then would be safer?

 

Re: Vietnam's Lesson: Win

You're confusing the VC with the NVA.

 

Sort of like I confuse MC with NWA...

 

I am just amazed that it took Kerry to introduce this guy to the concept of Vietnam. I thought he would have read about that in history books, even Moorish history books.

 

I think the opposite is true. When a majority of Iraqis want to do it themselves, the war is won. The problem we have now is the vast majority of Iraqis want us to leave but not yet. Not yet because they fear that if they try to do things for themselves, things will get worse.

I am sure most in this thread don't understand the lessons of Vietnam. First and foremost, understand that the NVA and the VC were supported by an outside entity which the US couldn't attack, i.e. the Soviet Union. The NVA and the VC would always exist in some form because there was a base level of support. America was successful in turning over the war effort (eventually) to the South Vietnamese government. It is when congress decided to stop nearly all aid to South Vietnam that the government fell. The VC could not militarily defeat South Vietnam because they could never mass troops and take ground. South Vietnam lost to the NVA, a military organization. The NVA was supported as a military entity by the Soviet Union.

"The insurgency" in Iraq of a few thousand, or maybe just a few hundred, hardcore members is the wrong analogy to Vietnam. The insurgency doesn't matter as they can't take ground. They will be militarily defeated just like the VC was during the Tet offensive. The only way for the US to fail is if it gives up supporting the government of Iraq. It will be a very hard effort to get the troop pull out just right, not for a logistical or military standpoint, but from a political stand point. There will be a number of special interests in the US (democratic and republican) who will want to take money and other support (diplomatic) and go work on their problems. Again, like children in the back seat on a long trip they will be saying, "Are we there yet? Are we there yet?" They hope that the driver gets so irritated with their carping that he gives up on the trip.

This is what Kennedy wants to do. He wants to end support of the effort in Iraq to go work on his problems. It's not Bush that has failed to learn the lessons from Vietnam but Kennedy and his ilk. They want to go work on other problems. They want their deficit to be low, their federal spending on education to be high and if Iraq becomes like Lebanon then they don't care. However, it's too late to turn back. That vote came and went and our informed representatives voted for it. I would agree 100% that the administration did not make a broad case for the war and was not clear about the multi-year effort that it would take to win it. Yet still the Democrats went along. That was a mistake on their part too.

When Kennedy says, "GWB mislead me." Who here really believes that? Here is a man that says he knows so much, went through the experience of Vietnam, even has his very own brother being partly culpable for "bearing any burden" in the defeat of Communism. Now he blames GWB for getting us into Vietnam. Nope. Sorry. Kennedy is just as much to blame and for him to now tell us he wants to end support of the effort in Iraq and go work on our own problems is the height of hypocrisy. For those who think GWB is too politically cynical, cast a critical eye at Kennedy.

 

Bush misled you, too. Unless you knew there weren't WMD in Iraq, but treasonously kept the proof to yourself.

 

Thread title = Ends. Damn the Means.

Alot like the terrorists, isn't it?

OTOH, its interesting to note that the idea of "Means. Damn the Ends." is what GOT you this country and the process of possibility.

Too bad that, in the challenge of our generation - and make no mistake, challenges to our conception of self, and our values in the world have come, and regardless of the "War on Terror" will unquestionably come again - you, McCracked, are prepared to reverse the very concept(s) that got you this Nation, this Experiment, this Possibility.

 

Here I thought that old soup had been thoroughly chewed. Perhaps you forgot to swallow. In any event, there was a briefing by Tenent, Director of the CIA, where he had his agency take responsibility for the F up and said they were trying to get to the bottom of the problem. You might remember that speech as a questioner brought up Village Voice as an authoritative source for intelligence manipulation in the Pentagon. I remember Tenent laughed at the idea.