There was also the Foreign Policy piece under Giuliani's byline which argued that we could have won in Vietnam. I guffawed loudly when I read that.

Anyone who thinks we could have won in Vietnam wasn't around back then.

Of course, as we all know. Dubya wasn't around back then.

It seems obvious to me that the immediacy of the right's reaction is due to the fact that they were in on the construction of the analogy to begin with. Their commentaries were probably written before the speech, as opposed to reacting to it.

Yeah, we could have won in Vietnam if only we didn't take the idea of using nukes on Vietcong camps off the table.

Or if we would have had the fighting heart of Dick Cheney on the battlefield. Shame he had other priorities.

Or if ace pilot George W. Bush hadn't gone AWOL.

Or if Rush Limbaugh could have got off his ass, but he had that boil.

Really, if we lost Vietnam, isn't it because the leading lights on the right couldn't be bothered to fight?

Tough call. What happened in Vietnam happened. All of this is arguing hypotheticals. Lee's army would have captured Pennsylvania if they hadn't lost the order in Frederick and all that.

And where is the political capital to be gained in arguing, "Hell yes we lost fair and square."

I believe no response is the proper response.

Whether or not we could have "won" in Vietnam is largely irrelevant. Vietnam was not a domino, and does not play a strategic role in the world. Iraq is much worse for obvious reasons. It really does matter that Bush started this war for no (good) reason, and that the US has lost hands down against a bunch of people with a hundredth of the fire power.

Yes, you are the victim of your own improbable fantasies. You can hope for timely, effective responses by Democratic politicians and an impartial media. I'll better spend my time buying lotto tickets.

I'd even welcome a few insightful words from Sens. Hagel, McCain, and Kerry on the subject. Draft-dodger boy get's a free pass to play history revisionist and no gentleman veteran dares call him out on this?

You know you're in trouble when the bull-shi**er starts to believe his own bull-shi* and those who the honorable and truly distinguished amongst us say nothing.

At the next Democratic debate (assuming Obama isn't skipping), is the simple yes-or-no question "Was Vietnam a winnable war?" a good question to ask the candidates or would it end up being a trap which no one can answer in a way that gains more votes?

Yes Kevin you are in fantasy land. Fist the dems are saying that things are turned around in Iraq, and now this not reacting to Bush. Dems seem expert at taking a winning hand and blowing it. It is entirely possible that although the repubs are hugely unpopular, the dems still could lose.

A few years ago, wingnuts used to get irate when anyone compared Iraq and Vietnam. The times have changed.

We could have won in Vietnam if only GW Bush fought there instead of hanging around stateside.

This may seem like a distraction, but it's not. It's yet another serious challenge to reality, and one that should be addressed.

In case nobody has noticed, the right has a well developed faculty for simply making shit up out of whole cloth, then foisting their falsehoods into the national consciousness. The left, unfortunately, rarely responds to knock the falsehoods down instantly. As a result, the falsehood replaces the reality and the right is allowed to drag the country around based on their chosen falsehood.

Two choice examples are "Saddam kicked the inspectors out!" and "Saddam planned 9/11!" Both of these are demonstrably false, both related to events that happened within the living memory of 90+ percent of Americans. And yet, super-majorities of Americans believe both falsehoods. Thus it was easy for Bush and Cheney to stampede the country into invading Iraq.

Now, it's rewriting history to say we could have won VietNam. This, surely, is part of the groundwork prepartory to invading Iran. 'Cause I guarantee the next lines in this play will be "The dirty hippies stopped Nixon from bombing Cambodia, and that led directly to Pol Pot---so we have to bomb Iran to prevent a Muslim Hitler!"

Kevin, who's the audiance...no one cares what Bush says, hell he doesn't know what he's saying

These guess are so discredited that debunking their BS is a layup...BUT, from a political standpoint they (dems) should be pounding on these jokers when they expose themselves. Remember when the right disagreed w/ the vietnam comparison...We know what desperation smells like.

Hey, the left is not a shiftless and lazy as Kevin implies. Check out The Progressive: (August 23,2007)

http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/08/23/3348/

Bush Rewrites History of Vietnam War
by Matthew Rothschild

Who are they trying to convince though? The 30% of wingnuttia that already supports Bush and is willing to swallow whatever new soma the leaders hand out?

Mainstream America associates Vietnam with a deadly fiasco that went on far too long. Do we seriously think they can change that CW with a opeds?

Iraq and Vietnam can't be "won" because they are ELECTIVE wars. Therefore, the world and the US population aren't willing to overlook high levels of civilian losses and US military losses.

They are not comparable to Germany and Japan. We could drop a nuclear bomb on Japan, carpetbomb Dresden and Tokyo. We are trying, ostensibly, to SAVE Iraqis, or something. Cuz everyone knows, the world over, that Iraq wasn't a threat to anyone (not even Israel).

Would people advocate dropping a nuclear bomb on Darfur? Iraq and Vietnam were NOT defensive wars.

I can see why Obama and Clinton don't respond, as there's hardly any benefit to saying, "it couldn't have been won," or, the "Iraq war can't be won," is not a soundbite you wanna be giving the competition.

My sense is that the left thinks it's so obvious that we weren't going to win in Vietnam short of nuking the whole country that this isn't even worth responding to. It's like if someone argued that the economy was bad under Clinton, or that smoking is good for you.

You don't expect the reasonable people to take this stuff seriously, and you'll never convince the wingnuts, so why bother?

And on the left? Nothing at the New Republic.

TNR hasn't been "on the left" for at least a decade.

is it possible the flood of supporting 'histories' from right wing press were rehearsed by and coordinated with the White House? Ah, yeah. This is why liberals will always appear to be an endangered species in America - wingnuts love to hunt!

Maybe we could have won in Vietnam if all those gutless Republican cowards who sat out the war with their marriage and student deferments, cushy National Guard spots, boils on their ass and "other priorities" had actually enlisted and done some of the fighting....

Fuck the 24%-ers.

The New Republic, the Nation, and the Am. Prospect are not leftist magazines. Counterpunch, which this morning published Maliki as Diem? by Ron Jacobs, is though.

Mr. Drum left out the VSP's in his call for a response to the president's lies, but he probably realizes that would be too foolish to expect.

We did win in Vietnam. It's now a stable, prospering country with which we do an increasing trade. By pulling out when we did, we saved tens of thousands of American lives, stopped killing hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese, and suffered no important strategic consequences. If Iraq looks as good in 30 years, we'll be damn lucky.

It is a gutless lie for Bush to say that we need to stay in Iraq to prevent the deaths of innocent Iraqis, for two reasons:

1. An American president's first concern should be with protecting American lives, not foreigners. Leaving our troops in Iraq indefinitely to muck around the mess Bush created there will get more Americans killed with little prospect of gain for American interests. Rightwingers evidently want to play nanny to foreigners, but real Americans put Americans first.

2. Bush's decision to invade Iraq has turned Iraq into a killing field that has killed hundreds of thousands of Iraqis. He has created conditions that have created far more "boat people" than emerged from Vietnam. Two million Iraqis have been driven from their country, and a further two million have been internally displaced. Their lives are damaged just as surely as the Vietnamese boat people in the mid-1970s -- with one difference: Bush's America will not give them refuge. Bush has caused the ruin of Iraqi lives that he now says we must stay to prevent.

the left? Nothing at the New Republic.

Echoing comments above: TNR might be center left on domestic issues, but on anything related to Arabs or Israel, TNR is right of many conservatives.

TNR is NOT LEFT. Their writers should also be shunned in polite company, despite Kevin's many attempts and links to help rehabilitate their brand. Fuck them.

That's chutzpah!

I don't think that means what you think it means. This is just ordinary lying.

What do you mean, we didn't win the Vietnam war? Vietnam is a peaceful country, has good relations with the United States and is a lovely place to go for vacation. What more do you want from winning a war?

Of course, maybe through some other strategy we could have won in the same sense without killing 50,000 American soldiers and 1 million Vietnamese civilians...

Yah, we could have won in Vietnam, but at what cost. 500,000 American troops in country, saturation bombing of North Vietnam with B-52’s, and dousing the country in Agent Orange weren’t enough to accomplish the job. Escalating further, whether non-nuclear or not, would have literally destroyed Vietnam in order to save it. The U.S. wisely backed away from unleashing the kind of destruction that would have been necessary to “win� the war. In retrospect this was the correct decision, notwithstanding Bush’s revisionist history.

It's quite certain that this is all a concerted effort by the wingnuts directed by the WH. Call it Rove's going away present.

However, I would like to add another optimistic option to Drum's two possibilities -- from what I have seen, the MSM seems to be actually shooting this down on their own, and so the left may be sitting on their hands because their assistance is unnecessary.

I see that McCord had the same reaction that I did. McSomethings all think alike, I guess...

This is just MORE RW putrid pablum being spouted by different talking heads. It always disgusts me when they do this type of shit. Mouthing the near exact same BS ol' dumb ass says in his speech. Do they get up in the wee morning hours to have meetings on what they are going to say, how they will say it and when they will say it? Pretty damn spooky if ya ask me, BUT the thing is, MOST Americans will only hear them if the LEFT doesn't OPEN their PIE holes up and not rely on Kerry to do it for them, which by the way NEVER makes it to the msm no matter what the left does.

Verdict: you bet your ass we could have won in Vietnam.

Bush wouldn't bet his.

Well, at least the paper of "record," the NYTimes did shoot down this canard.

But if you're waiting for the Dems to get a quick response team together, I think you're waiting for Godot.

"I'm not a member of any organized political party. I'm a Democrat." Will Rogers' words were never more sadly accurate.

I served in Vietnam in 1966-67. I was there when 500,000 troops were in and around the combat zone. What do you do when you can’t get the job done with a half million troops? Send in another half million?

President Johnson had all the forces he needed to weed out the VC and expel NVA troops. Until the Tet offensive in early 1968, the American people were behind Johnson, too. We threw everything we had into the Vietnam War. The Rambo theory is total BS.

One of the problems then was the weak and corrupt South Vietnam government and its army, also weak and corrupt. Another problem was our embrace of the so-called domino theory. The domino theory ignored over 1,000 years of tensions between the Chinese and the indigenous peoples of Southeast Asia. We assumed, incorrectly, that the Vietnamese would gladly accept Red Chinese domination. It wasn’t until the late 1970s and early 1980s that we realized how wrong we were about the domino theory. Now we are trading partners with Vietnam. Is Bush saying that is not a good outcome?

Today, in Iraq, we have another weak government. Today, in our own country, we have a bunch of theorists—the neoconservatives—who have tried to impose their seriously flawed view of the world onto American foreign policy. In that sense, the Vietnam War and the Iraq War are similar. Therefore, if we learned anything from our experience in Vietnam, we should begin an orderly redeployment so the Iraqis can get on with their lives. If we are smart and work hard at it, we might even have a good relationship with the Iraqis for many years to come.

I don’t know who is advising Bush to use the Vietnam War as a wedge to get his way in Iraq, but the Rambo gambit is not going to fly. It is a loser’s argument.

My guess: Bush is invoking the Vietnam comparison is laying the groundwork for the "long protracted war" meme we'll be hearing over the next two months. In other words, the message is "It's like Vietnam, folks -- and that's a GOOD thing because THIS time we know how to do it right!"

He probably anticipates bad news (e.g., the NIE report which came out today), and he's was trying to pre-spin it.

Unfortunately (for Bush), I think most of America will stop listening at "It's like Vietnam, folks".

He's welcome to see if his Vietnam invocation flies. I suspect it won't outside of his bubble and The Corner.

Winning what in Vietnam? Would winning have changed anything in the U.S.? We would have had more homeless vets on the street in the past 30 years, but I can't see any other difference.

Strategically speaking, Iraq is more important. But in the long run, even if we do "win", the country won't be in such great shape after 30 more years of burning oil. What are we trying to win?

For what it's worth, and I don't know if it's worth much, here's Sen. Kerry's statement on the speech:

“Invoking the tragedy of Vietnam to defend the failed policy in Iraq is as irresponsible as it is ignorant of the realities of both of those wars,� Senator Kerry said. “Half of the soldiers whose names are on the Vietnam Memorial Wall died after the politicians knew our strategy would not work. The lesson is to change the strategy not just to change the rhetoric. We want democracy in Iraq, but Iraqis must want it as much as we do. Our brave soldiers can’t bring democracy to Iraq if Iraq’s leaders are unable or unwilling themselves to make the compromises that democracy requires. No American soldier should be sacrificed because Iraqi politicians refuse to resolve their sectarian and political differences.

“It is unfortunate that President Bush would want to invoke a false comparison of Vietnam to Iraq, but not surprising that he would oversimplify the differences and overlook the tragic similarities. As in Vietnam, we engaged militarily in Iraq based on official deception. As in Vietnam, more American soldiers are being sent to fight and die in a civil war we can’t stop and an insurgency we can’t bomb into submission. If the President wants to heed the lessons of Vietnam, he should change course and change course now.�

Americans learned some very valuable lessons from the Vietnam War. One was that when you know it's time to stop you should stop. Bush can't accept that lesson. He doesn't know the word "stop". When someone says "Stop" he hears "Surrender".

Instead, he's trying to tar the Democrats for their failure in Vietnam. But, what is Bush's excuse for repeating the same stupid mistakes -- he has the benefit of hindsight Johnson didn't have. What is Bush's excuse for pissing away thousands of human lives and billions of dollars?

Veterans should be mad as Hell about Bush wasting the lives of their brother soldiers.

Bush wants everyone to think he hasn't been any worse than Johnson, but he has no excuse for continuing the war in Iraq after having achieved his original goals: get rid of nukes and other WMD and get rid of Saddam. Why didn't he stop? He doesn't know the word "stop" and he doesn't listen to advice, including his father's.

Bush wants the veterans to think Democrats are weak for leaving Iraq. He says we can win if we don't quit, don't surrender. What he means is he can't tell the difference between redeployment and surrender. Any good soldier knows that difference.

Bush is destroying our military by staying in Iraq. It's time to stop supporting Bush.

Since no one else has directed the snark at Kevin, I guess I will...

Why don't *you* respond, rather than bemoan the fact that TNR, the Nation, etc have ignored this? Your post is full of eye-rolling, but is thin on actual substance with regards to the Vietnam analogy. Your post reminds me of all the times that certain senators (like Hagel or Biden) go on talk shows and bitch about the lack of leadership on foreign policy, while simultaneously ignoring their own dereliction of leadership.

I actually like this post, but that finger-pointing about the "left" bugged me. Unless you don't consider yourself on the left, in which case, nevermind. Otherwise, step up and respond to the Vietnam analogy (like Josh Marshall immediately did).

Iraq = Vietnam is only the 1st half of the analogy. They haven't yet unveiled the 2nd half:

Iran = Cambodia and/or Laos and we have to bomb them.

Kevin,
The "Left reacts too slowly"?
No offence, but the President did give this speech yesterday. What were you blogging about?

If no one can cut Smirky McLush off at the knees on this, then what good are they?

idiot savant David Gelernter

Well Kevin, you're half right.

Too easy.

"And wouldn't it be nice if Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama responded immediately with a serious speech taking on the president's fantasies?"

It would be. But I think the Democrats just don't realize there's a propaganda war on, and they better learn how to win or, if they're elected Prez, they'll have a rougher time than William Jefferson Clinton did.

For those who criticize Kevin for criticizing Obama and Clinton for not speaking out, I'd say this. The left blogosphere has been all over this speech (Kevin less than others, but go read them), but not a peep out of our elected officials (except maybe Dodd). It would be nice if they would get together and tell the President he's full of it. Or if at least two or three would -- I know HRC's position is perhaps too nuanced for that.

Mrs. Slanted Tom heard him on the news this morning and said, "That's a fucking lie!" We both reacted immediately. I'm sure many people did, too. But this Bush guy owns the media.

He made that speech just blocks from my house. I was on it almost instantly - but I don't have Kevin's readership.

I was stunned when Bush took the debate in this direction. It can't be good for him, can it? Vietnam, as an earlier commenter stated, is associated with a deadly fiasco most of the country. This administration succeeded by inspiring the base while avoiding frightening the middle; I don't see how this helps them.

Hasn't it been the left that's been comparing the conflict in Iraq to Vietnam, and the right who've pooh poohed it? Will we be getting apologies now that the comparison has been validated by the chief instigator and supporter of the war in Iraq?

--Rick Taylor

Democrats should be pushing the hell out of this. Republicans are the party of war, if it were up to the current leadership we'd still be in Vietnam now, and we'll be in Iraq forever, and we'll probably invade Iran and maybe Syria. Put pressure on the Republican candidates to say where they stand on the President's statements. Do they agree getting out of Vietnam was a mistake, just like Iraq? Force them to either piss off their base or piss off the majority of Americans. Sure it's divisive, but we didn't choose this game, George "a uniter not a divider" did. Since he's playing it, we'd better play it to. Let him have his portion of the country that thinks we should never have left Vietnam, and let's pick up everyone who might be horrified by that idea.

--Rick Taylor

Interesting analysis, Kevin. In my opinion, Iraq has always been a kind of psycho-drama through which Americans have been working through the national grief over losing Vietnam and other social changes. Bush articulates these fantasies now because the only people who still support him on Iraq are those who also swallow the "we could have won in Vietnam if only..." fantasy. It is a sign of desperation. Reality isn't important to these folks.

Most Americans are figuring out that this 25-30% of the population, including GWB, have shit for brains. But these SfB Americans are a substantial minority, are well-funded, stick to their storylines, have bully pulpits from which to speak, seem very, very certain, will aggressively defend their delusions and will never change their minds. They are the salesmen from Hell. It is impossible to refute them. It is impossible to shake them off. The best we can hope to do is classify them as suffering from SfB syndrome and thus exclude them from any further conversations.

Of the two possiblities that you offer, I'd go with the first, that the right is being allowed to"burbling meaninglessly among themselves" because they are becoming less and less relevant. But I also agree that it would be useful if someone in a position to present reality would speak up. The sooner Americans learn to recognize the symptoms of SfB the better.

Actually, the last thing the Left ought to do is respond to this. Not in the knee-jerk way liberals who took a vacation from foreign policy between 1975 and 9/11 will, anyway.

You don't need and should not try to reargue Vietnam while America is mired in Iraq. The White House figures, correctly, that the reflexive expression of deeply held liberal beliefs -- we should have surrendered earlier in Vietnam, the North Vietnamese were primarily nationalists rather than Communists, the Cambodian killing fields were produced by the Nixon administration -- will stir up conservatives. But none of this is even relevant to the situation in Iraq.

Here is the only relevant response to Bush's Vietnam analogy: by the time 1973 rolled around, President Nixon had already withdrawn the American army from Vietnam, leaving behind a viable government in Saigon albeit one under attack from a Soviet-backed external enemy. An American withdrawal from Iraq hasn't even started yet -- we have more troops there now than we ever have -- and the government is Baghdad is not viable and shows no sign of ever becoming so.

An argument about who was right in Vietnam is just what the White House is trying to provoke here. The argument should be about a President who is using any debating point he can to drag the Iraq adventure long enough to dump in on the next President and claim that the debacle was not his fault.

A response from the left? How 'bout this:

Long ago, historians of the Vietnam war noted that the intense debate about the war that gripped America rarely made much reference to the suffering of the Vietnamese people. Only "peaceniks" on the far left paid much attention to the two million or more Vietnamese who died, to the corpses and torched villages and napalmed children that were the living - and dying - reality of the war. In the mainstream, where the "serious" discussion unfolded, the only question that mattered was: What is this war doing to the USA? Is it to our benefit to keep on fighting, or are we better off withdrawing?

For most Americans, Vietnam was merely a backdrop to the great dramatic conflict that gripped the United States. The heroes and villains, and the victims, in the drama were the Americans who supported and opposed the war. The Vietnamese, if they were seen at all, were merely extras with brief walk-on roles. They never got to speak, never got to tell their stories or say what they thought about the war. (This was also the case in most American movies about Vietnam.)

Now we are seeing much the same scenario played out again. Only this time it's Iraq that forms the backdrop to the great American drama, much like those old Wild West shows where a curtain painted to look like a dusty main street formed the backdrop for the big showdown.

...Most people here don't care too much what happened to the people of Vietnam or what is happening to the people of Iraq. A recent poll showed that the average American thinks under 10,000 Iraqi civilians have died in this war - a vast underestimate. More importantly, the number of Iraqi dead scarcely figures into the public debate. As with the Vietnam war, it's all about what is happening to us.

That is why Bush's speechwriters could take the gamble of raising the specter of Vietnam, and why they may very well win. Since the war was turned into a fictional drama, few people know, or care, what really happened in Vietnam. Therefore, it's easy to change the story around. Few can refute Bush's absurd version, in which the forecast "bloodbath" supposedly actually happened, and the U.S. withdrawal triggered the Khmer Rouge outrages in Cambodia.

So it all boils down to who can tell a better story about Vietnam and Iraq. A story isn't better because it's closer to the empirical facts. A story is better because it is yields a bigger emotional payoff: more gripping, more inspiring, more comforting, more flattering to our side, more confirming of what we believe.

On all those counts, the yarn Bush is spinning could easily prove a winner. It says that we were close to winning in Vietnam. But then the antiwar "cut and run" crowd snatched defeat from the jaws of victory. That let loose a bloody tide of chaos that engulfed southeast Asia, humiliated the U.S., and emboldened the terrorists, who now want to make Iraq a home base from which to launch their next attack upon us. But we have a chance to right all those wrongs - to stem the tide of chaos, regain our pride, crush the terrorists, keep our children safe, and show what America is really made of - if only we have the courage to fight for God's truth.

Do the Democrats and antiwar forces have a story to tell that's any better, or even nearly as good? I wonder. It's a tall order. Already it looks like Bush's story about good military news from Iraq is gaining converts rapidly. That's why the Dems are scampering to join the "me too" chorus. But the antiwar side cannot win this showdown by trying to outdo the prowar side in praising the glories of the U.S. military occupiers. That's only playing the game the Republicans have chosen, because they are confident no one can beat them at it.

The alternative is to refuse to take the administration's new bait. The antiwar movement could refuse to use Iraq as a backdrop and Iraqis as extras in a drama about the trials and tribulations of America. Instead, we could insist that the issue is not about how well our soldiers are doing or what is happening here at home. It's about what is happening in Iraq, where ordinary people like us have been dying and suffering in horrifying numbers ever since we occupied their country. We have no magic button that we can push to end the tragedy now. But we can do our best to refocus the debate on the real terror: the terror endured by the Iraqi people who live under military occupation every day.

This country is so friggin' narcissistic that it's not funny anymore...

Gelernter is another of the Jewish Nazi brigade. His fascist crap was unfortunately given credence by his victimhood. Being a victim does not justify fascism.

He made that speech just blocks from my house. I was on it almost instantly - but I don't have Kevin's readership.

Just blocks away, huh? Much closer I'm sure than if you had tried to attend and gotten redirected to the "free speech zone".

The only important thing that happened in Vietnam was My Lai. This was UNCONTROVERTIBLE EVIDENCE of US war crimes. And even today the reichwingnut fascist brigade refuses to admit that US soldiers are soldiers, and do bad things.

Listening to NPR on the drive home last night, I was struck that the response of the VFW audience to Bush's speech was pretty ambivalent. What does it say when even the VFW isn't in full support of your foreign war?

*

Zathras, one of our favorite history re-writers is at it again. The left didn't take a vacation on foreign policy. The right never took foreign policy seriously. A good example? The right supported the destabilization of Cambodia and are the fundamental cause of the killing fields in that nation. That wasn't because of a lack of seriousness by the "knee-jerk" liberals. That was because the knee-jerk warmongers couldn't admit that the policy was flawed.

And get the idiot phrasing from Zathras: "surrendered earlier in Vietnam." Not the more rational "stopped slaughtering Vietnamese without cause," not even a more neutral "left Vietnam," but actively surrendering.

Look moron, if we had left Vietnam before Dick Nixon decided to destabilize Cambodia we would have saved tens of thousands of American lives and almost certainly millions of Cambodian lives. It was the idiocy of remaining in Vietnam long past the point where the American forces were capable of doing good that ensured disaster.

That's exactly where we are now in Iraq. The Iraqi people may not have been happy under Saddam Hussein, but they certainly weren't as miserable as they are now. George Bush has bequeathed to the Iraqi people not democracy but chaos and suffering. Only an idiot refuses to see that.

The childish plaint "things will be bad if we leave" ignores the obvious - things are bad right now. Things aren't getting better right now. There is no evidence, four years into the brutal occupation of Iraq, that the United States military is making things better for the Iraqi people.

Yes, things are going to get worse. But that's the truth if we stay or if we go. Letting deeply unserious people like Zathras determine our course via namecalling and revisionist history will only further damage our nation.

If the President's misuse of the lessons of Vietnam sounds familiar, it should. After all, just last week 2008 Republican White House frontrunner Rudy Giuliani said virtually the same thing.

"America must remember one of the lessons of the Vietnam War. Then, as now, we fought a war with the wrong strategy for several years. And then, as now, we corrected course and began to show real progress. Many historians today believe that by about 1972 we and our South Vietnamese partners had succeeded in defeating the Vietcong insurgency and in setting South Vietnam on a path to political self-sufficiency. But America then withdrew its support, allowing the communist North to conquer the South...The consequences of abandoning Iraq would be worse."

For the details, see:
"Bush, Giuliani Agree on Iraq-Vietnam Parallels."

Just blocks away, huh? Much closer I'm sure than if you had tried to attend and gotten redirected to the "free speech zone".

It gets better...The national headquarters of the VFW casts a shadow into my apartment. For a few days in the spring and fall, that shadow falls across the TeeVee as the newshour shows the pictures of the fallen. Creepy.

At what point could we have won the war or were we close to winning the war?

Here are some relevent American troop levels in Viet Nam:

1964 23300
1965 184300
1966 385300
1967 485600
1968 536100
1969 475200
1970 334600
1971 156800
1972 24200
1973 50

So at what point would we have won it? We started reducing troops in 1969 and by 1971 we had less than a third of the troops in S Viet Nam than we had at our height in 1968.

What happened between 1968 and 1969?? Oh yeah - a Republican, Nixon, took office. That's right - blame it on the liberals.

Whatever your position is on that debate, one unmistakable legacy of Vietnam is that the price of America's withdrawal was paid by millions of innocent citizens whose agonies would add to our vocabulary new terms like "boat people," "re-education camps," and "killing fields."

Ignoring, of course, the tens of thousands of American lives that were lost before we decided to leave, and the tens of thousands more that were saved because we left when we did.

And ignoring of course that the US laid the groundwork for the killing fields, and it was none other than the commie VN that put a stop to it.

Go read Blue Girl's post about the absurdity of Bush invoking Graham Greene. Un-f*cking-believable.

I have to agree with Disputo at 1:19 PM. To some extent, the MSM is on this. I picked up a NY Times at lunch, and while I haven't had time to read it carefully there's a prominent analysis piece that seems to be calling BS.

The second, less happy notion, is that the right is, as usual, merely reacting faster than the left. Liberals will respond, they'll just do it several days or a week too late, thus not only looking lame, but actually extending the lifespan of this trumped up "controversy." All things considered — and I say this with some sadness — the left really needs to react. The president has spoken, after all.

Oh fuck.

And how should the "left" react when GOPers next declare the sun could -- should -- revolve around the earth were the creator not a commie terrorist-sympathizing agitator?

Dear Kevin

IT HARDLY MATTERS HOW THE LEFT "REACTS," RESPONDS OR REPLIES SO LONG AS THE MEDIA PLAYING FIELD TILTS RIGHT.

SEE BLACK AMERICA, IMUS ET AL. IN RE RUTGERS WOMEN'S BASKETBALL for examples of how the left SHOULD react to EACH and EVERY INSTANCE of RIGHTWARD media bias.

In other words, how can "the media" ever be potty-trained when the "left" REVELS IN INCONTINENCE, IMPOTENCE AND INCOMPETENCE evidence persistent bedwetting over how it should-could-might blog, position, frame, poll-test its latest ragdoll response which media shills will inevitably maul with impunity?

On "Talk of the Nation" they have on a military historian who is politely tearing GWB a new one over his citing of Clausewitz.

daveb99, great post. I would only add Vietnam was a Democratic war that took a Republican to extricate us from, and Iraq is a Republican war that will probably take a Democrat to extricate.

On "Talk of the Nation" they have on a military historian who is politely tearing GWB a new one over his citing of Clausewitz.

About f*cking time, eh? Is the tide turning?

But is it too late? Will they be able to sell "the liberals lost this one for us, too" to the rubes?

WRT to "BLACK AMERICA, IMUS ET AL." -- we're not "just" talking about Sharptonizing or outshrilling.

9/11 proved how easily "the media" can be cowed.

Boycotts terrorize. Threats of boycotts agonize.

Advertisers ARE the tail that wags EVERY media dog.

MAKE THEM HEEL else WATCH another unthinkable GOPer elected POTUS.

I still like Sun Tzu’s quote: “Know thy enemy, know thyself; a thousand battles, a thousand victories.�

Bush version: “Know nothing; a thousand battles, a thousand fiascos.�

The White House figures, correctly, that the reflexive expression of deeply held liberal beliefs -- we should have surrendered earlier in Vietnam, the North Vietnamese were primarily nationalists rather than Communists, the Cambodian killing fields were produced by the Nixon administration -- will stir up conservatives.

#1 is a straw man and not a "deeply held liberal belief" -- to the contrary, even Nixon knew we couldn't win in Vietnam and campaigned for re-election on a platform of ending the war -- and #s 2 and three happen to be true. Unless he'sre prepared to enlighen us otherwise, no one really should listen to Zathras.

You sometimes seem like an honest conmmetntator, Zathras -- albeit mostle elsewhere, like on Belgravia Dispatch. Bullshit likethat won't earn you any respect, no matter how annoyed you may be at us nasty liberals being right.

Nobody in their right mind gives a shit if the U.S.A. could have won in Vietnam. Nothing bad came of "losing" in Vietnam, and "winning" would have only come at the cost of more blood & treasure. In the final analysis, Vietnam just wasn't fucking worth winning. Does anybody think Iraq is worth winning? I don't. That's why I don't give a shit if the surge is working or, or what "the facts on the ground" are, or what the military commanders say. It's completely fucking irrelevant. We're never going to be able to un-shit this bed. Saddam is dead and his his government is overthrown, so now it's time to get the fuck out and let the Iraqis take care of themselves.

Oh, and Zathras? I wouldn't be so quick to bring up being on vacation prior to 9/11 if I were you. Do the words "Bin laden Determined to Strike in US" ring a bell? How about "You've covered your ass, now"?

Does anybody think Iraq is worth winning?

We do!

Bushie, the man whose regime has left us with the sickening phrases extraordinary rendition, enhanced interrogation, Abu Ghraib, pre-emptive war, WMD is suddenly oh so concerned about the consequences of his actions and the loss of innocent life. The man who inserted these phrases into the world's consciousness is disturbed by the words boat people and killing fields. Rich. The man who has forever stained the US throughout history with his secret prisons and warrantless wiretaps is afraid to stand up and take responsibility because innocent people would be killed. Really rich.

Well sometimes actions have consequences. What smart people do is stop the actions that caused the disaster and do everything they can to lessen the consequences. Like working with the Iranians and Syrians to plan an exit. But then that would probably be the smart thing to do.

Denial -- "Iraq is not like Vietnam!"

Anger -- "If you say Iraq is like Vietnam, you're helping the enemy!"

Bargaining -- "Okay, Iraq is like Vietnam, but we could have won Vietnam!"

Depression -- "Oh, god, we got into a second Vietnam."

Acceptance -- "Game over, bugging out."

I don't know, I find it mildly encouraging that the right wing has moved to stage 3.

They're welcome to go and try again.

Remus Shepherd: "I don't know, I find it mildly encouraging that the right wing has moved to stage 3"

Denial, anger, bargaining...that's an elegant frame! Nice work.

I think spinning Vietnam as a "win" or "loss" is psychotic. Leaders on both sides were equally moronic. Vietnam limped away from a miscast war of liberation with millions of casualties and a devastated economy and envrionment. That they somehow failed to understand the deal making character of Johnson and the national communist phobia of the U.S. is epic tragedy and needless folly. That America could allow itself to believe fantasy and promote a needless war on ludicrous strategic grounds and in the narrow interests of a few corporations is also tragic. That war resulted in very little that could be spun as positive unless one takes a dim view of humanity and roots for its demise. Iraq? Oil. The stupidity of keeping the interests of corporations, vanity and bigotry above the interests of mankind. Yeah. Just win baby. What a sick, sports-addled sense of national dialogue America affects.

Agreed w/ PTate. Nice work, Remus.

Vietnam did better, and moved closer to what we wanted to see only AFTER we left it. We do much better with soft power than with hard.

Of course, Bush trots this kind of thing out in August, just like the Swift Boat stuff, when most Washington folks are on vacation. Of course, they had serious warning.

This speech is just Bush showing how much the Leon Pinetta's of the world ("We can't impeach Bush now, especially when he's become so unpopular!") have become his bitch.

Granted, if we still had a half million men in Vietnam dieing and killing all over the country, it would be way better than the hell hole it has become, but where would we have got the troops to invade Iraq?

Q: What is the difference between Viet Nam and Iraq?

A: George W. Bush had a plan to get out of Viet Nam.

But seriously, Bush sure has a lot of gall, going to speak in front of the VFW in Kansas City and talking about the "lessons" he learned from Viet Nam. Perhaps he shared with the veterans how he was able to get out of going to Viet Nam by getting into the Texas Air National Guard based on his family connections, despite scoring only 25 out of 100 on the aptitude test? Or maybe he explained to them why he deserted his unit in 1972 when they started requiring mandatory drug tests?

What's next? Dick Cheney talking about his two drunk driving convictions at the next Mothers Against Drunk Drivers (MADD) convention? Sheesh.

I dunno about other sites, but TPM adressed the Vietnam analogy before Bush even delivered the speech and the reliably 2-3 newscycle delayed C&L covered it that afternoon as did Steve Clemens. James Wolcott also addressed it and the left blogsphere in general has been ridiculing Bush's case ever since.

And what about The Washington Monthly? What do they have to say on the topic? I went to washingtonmonthly.com and checked their main page and there were no articles dealing with this latest bit of revisionist history. On the other hand, there was a blog item doing some hand wringing about the fact that neither The Nation nor The American Prospect had written any articles on the topic.

Physician, heal thyself.

Forget Vietnam--what he's saying there is so crazy that it makes no sense. Is he saying we should have left after their Civil War? During it? We should have kept fighting them until '89 when Russia fell? Or, should we still be fighting them today, since Red China still hasn't fallen? He cites atrocities--so, does he want to go BACK to Vietnam and get justice for the families of the American supporters who were tortured and murdered?

Let's put Vietnam aside (because he just sounds like a bad history professor) and just look at what he's saying on Iraq. Because when you look at what Bush is actually saying, instead of re-fighting 35-year old arguments about Cambodia and Vietnam, it becomes immediately obvious that the President of the United States is not only giving a bizarrely inaccurate history lesson, he is making an absolutely absurd argument about the war he's currently running. And frankly, I think the latter is way more important.

Fundamentally, the argument Bush is making is that if we pull our troops out of Iraq and Iraq subsequently falls into a bloodbath or poses a long-term threat to American security, it will be because we removed our troops, not because he mis-led us into a war and then incompetently messed up said war.

Bush wants people believe that if we have problems anywhere in the world after withdrawal it’s because of the withdrawal—not because of the half-decade of sustained failure in Iraq that made withdrawal necessary.

To be clear, this argument means that if Osama bin Laden attacks us again, it’ll happen because liberals are talking about withdrawal from Iraq ("weakening our resolve and sending the wrong message to our enemy"), and not because George Bush, in his own words was "not that concerned" about Osama and let him get away.

This is crazy talk. It’s like Ford blaming the Edsel on car dealers who stopped ordering them from the company when they didn’t sell. Or Coca-Cola blaming New Coke's failure on convenience store owners who quit stocking it. It’s utter lunacy.

The Iraq war was George Bush's idea. He decided we needed to fight it. He ran it. He was the decider.

Now he's upset, because he's got to be "consequences guy." I'm sorry he doesn't like it, but decisions have consequences. And he made the decisions that got us to these bad consequences.

The average American couldn't give a shit what they think at National Review, and the left pundits know it. Problem is, Chuck Norris says we could have won in Vietnam, and his word carries a lot more weight with the American people. How the hell do the learned experts at The Nation and The American Prospect compete with Chuck Norris?

POed Liberal: "The only important thing that happened in Vietnam was My Lai."

Speaking as someone whose own father was killed in the Vietnam War, I would beg your forgiveness for my impertinence in disagreeing profusely with your unnecessarily provocative, yet thoroughly nonsensical statement.

So, suffice to say that you should stop mindlessly frothing at the mouth, and wipe the spittle from your chin, lest you wish to sound no better than those "reichswingnuts" you profess to deplore.

dr. sardonicus: How the hell do the learned experts at The Nation and The American Prospect compete with Chuck Norris?

They can't. That's why Bush won the elections, or at least got close enough that it could be fixed.

Conservative Rod Dreher does respond to Bush at his Beliefnet blog: http://blog.beliefnet.com/crunchycon/2007/08/ivf.html.comments.html

KD: All things considered — and I say this with some sadness — the left really needs to react. The president has spoken, after all. But if that's the case, can't we react a little faster? And wouldn't it be nice if Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama responded immediately with a serious speech taking on the president's fantasies? Or am I just having fantasies of my own?

If you're a winger, what would you rather debate: Vietnam, or Iraq? You think those guys don't know exactly what they're doing, resurrecting the specter of "Hanoi Jane," "spitting on the soldiers," and so on? Any reply here has to be worded pretty correctly -- and even a correct reply will likely be twisted into some monstrous affront to America, complete with handwringing from our deeply concerned punditry about yet another gaff from a Democratic presidential candidate.

By the way, it isn't "laughable" that the U.S. could have won. I won't go too far into this because I'm not interested in debating some of the know-it-alls here, but the Vietnamese themselves, after the war, suggested one avenue: invade Cambodia and leave a force there to choke off the Ho Chi Minh Trail, maintain bombing of the North, and wait it out. They would have given up in a couple of years, as the "insurgency" after Tet was almost entirely dependent on Northern support. But realistically, could a country the size and developmental level of North Vietnam have "won" against a country like the U.S. if it had been important enough for us to win? The problem is we're asking the wrong question: the question isn't "Could we have won?" but, "Could we have won in such a way that a 'win' was worthwhile to us?" It's the same question that needs to be asked about our Iraq occupation, rather than rehashing a 40 year old proven political loser.

Wrong link. Dreher on Vietnam is http://blog.beliefnet.com/crunchycon/2007/08/vietnam-bush-and-iraq.html

Wrong link. Dreher on Vietnam is http://blog.beliefnet.com/crunchycon/2007/08/vietnam-bush-and-iraq.html

There is another possibility.

What if the White House decided on this new justification and talked to the right wing media, pundits, journals, and bloggers. Explained the argument, passed out talking points, asked for cover. Then the right responded quickly.

The left is taking two days to stop laughing, three days to decide whether it is worth answering, and 45 minutes to prepare a response.

I think spinning Vietnam as a "win" or "loss" is psychotic.

Did or did not the North Vietnamese acheive their strategic aims in the war?

Did or did not the United States, South Vietnam, et al., acheive their strategic aims in the war?

Seems to me that characterizing Vietnam as a being won by the former and lost by the latter isn't "spin", regardless of how "moronic" you think the leaders on either or both sides may have been.

But realistically, could a country the size and developmental level of North Vietnam have "won" against a country like the U.S. if it had been important enough for us to win?

Sure, if it had been "important enough" for the US to redeploy all of its combat forces around the world to assure the security of South Vietnam, it probably could have established whatever regime it wanted there.

OTOH, that would have meant abandoning a lot of other priorities, just like Bush's folly in Iraq meant stripping the war against al-Qaeda of crucial resources, and made it likely that instead of winning one necessary war in a reasonable time, we'd drag that one out, at best, while losing a war of choice.

cmdicely wrote:

"Sure, if it had been "important enough" for the US to redeploy all of its combat forces around the world to assure the security of South Vietnam, it probably could have established whatever regime it wanted there.

OTOH, that would have meant abandoning a lot of other priorities, just like Bush's folly in Iraq meant stripping the war against al-Qaeda of crucial resources, and made it likely that instead of winning one necessary war in a reasonable time, we'd drag that one out, at best, while losing a war of choice."
________________________

It wouldn't have taken nearly all of our military resources to continue to defend South Vietnam. Air power and continued support to the South Vietnamese Army would likely have been enough. However, the idea that we could of won is beside the point. The British could have kept their American colonies had they decided it was important enough. They didn't and we didn't, which is why both of us lost. Neither of us had the will to continue the fight, which is how most wars are lost.

However, the idea that Iraq is "stripping the war against Al Qaeda of crucial resources" is arguably wrong. By now, Al Qaeda is as much in Iraq as it is in Afghanistan. Then too, nobody is going to deploy massive numbers of American troops in Aghanistan once we leave Iraq. At least, we better hope we don't.

However, the idea that Iraq is "stripping the war against Al Qaeda of crucial resources" is arguably wrong.

Before the Iraq war even began, GWB illegally misappropriated $700M from the Afganistan theater for use in Iraq. I suppose that that wasn't crucial....

By now, Al Qaeda is as much in Iraq as it is in Afghanistan.

The real AQ (you remember them -- the ones responsible 9/11) is not in Iraq. They are in Afganistan and (mostly) in Pakistan, under the protection of our "allies" in Islamabad.

But if we are going to start flailing about looking for AQ everywhere, we should be most concerned about Indonesia. Once the most non-fundamentalist of Islamic communities, having descended primarily from the Muslim mystic tradition, thanks to the Iraq War, young Indonesian Muslims now rank OBL and Saddam Hussein as the people they most admire.

If there is one book W. should have read and understood before invading Iraq, it’s Graham Greene’s the “Quite American�. Greene wrote it in the fifties so it was set in Vietnam; if he had written it in the eighties it would have been set in Iraq. It is typical of Bush’s cluelessness that he would site a book that is withering in its criticism of his position.

Yes, let's remember Vietnam.

Let's remember that the Gulf of Tonkin attacks never occurred, just as there were no WMD.

Let's remember that during the war, Red Squads in all our major cities listed thousands of people, who were no more leftist than Nelson Rockefeller, as 'comsymps' and 'dangerous agitators' because the wrote a letter to a newspaper or attended a peace vigil.

Let's remember that in 1973 we got the same peace terms Johnson had negotiated in 1968- and that 25,000 of our soldiers died between 1968 and 1973. Let's remember that the Republicans sabotaged those 1968 peace negotiations by persuading the South Vietnamese puppet government that they could get better terms later if they helped elect Nixon by refusing the peace terms.

Let's remember December 1972, when we bombed the hospital in Hanoi, and lost 10% of our strategic bomber force doing so.

Let's remember Nixon's illegal war against Cambodia, where our casualties were listed as 'MIA', to keep the war hidden and to avoid paying surviver benefits to their families.

And, of course, the US support of the Pol Pot government of Cambodia in the 70s. Good times, good times.

But maybe the most important thing to remember is that 500,000 of our brightest young men went to Canada and lived full productive lives, while another 50,000 of our vets were dying from drug addiction, alcoholism, and suicide, and the war resisters who stayed in the US because we thought this country could become a decent world citizen have been proven to have been total idiots.

Maybe you had to be there to really remember. If draft-dodger Bush wants us to remember, I say, bring it on.

No Democrat needs to respond. The President is right to compare the present situation to Vietnam. Its just that when people speak of Vietnam and second thoughts its usually that we were stupid enough to get involved in the first place not that we left. Sound familiar.

cmdicely: a Pyrrhic victory certainly. I doubt North Vietnam's war aims included a million dead and multi-generational poverty. But yeah, they succeeded in doing something at a high cost they could have done at low cost. They had a common enemy with the United States: China.

The U.S. attained its strategic aim of preventing the domino collapse. But that turned out to not be such a real-world strategic aim there either.

It amazes me sometimes how competitive and petty even supposed progressives are on this site.
That dogmatic "attack" philosophy is what gets us in trouble.

And to be clear: having thousands die in a war that is wholly unnecessary is impossible to "win." So yeah, it is psychotic to spin Vietnam in sports terms. What a waste. If you die in a war, or are maimed, I wonder if you hold to this winning and losing business the same way as a chickenhawk?

disputo wrote:

"The real AQ (you remember them -- the ones responsible 9/11) is not in Iraq. They are in Afganistan and (mostly) in Pakistan, under the protection of our "allies" in Islamabad.
_____________________

Well, perhaps so, if what we are chasing is a single bunch of criminals, rather than a movement. By now, it's rather clear we have more to worry about in that regard than just Osama and his boys. And it isn't going to go away if we simply cede Iraq to the bad guys. Much as we'd all like to return to a pre-9-11 stance, that's pretty much shot by now, as well.

Hell, I'm amazed he had the never to say that Iraq is Vietnam. Let's start mailing copies of The March of Folly by Barbara Tuchman to Democrats and see if they can grow a spine.

And it isn't going to go away if we simply cede Iraq to the bad guys.

Can we please knock off the "good guys/bad guys" crap? First of all, I presume we are above age eight, and second, we all know damn good and well that its an "eye of the beholder" situation - and besides that, enemies most always eventually become trading partners.

God idiots like trashhauler are annoying. There was no AQ in Iraq until the moron-in-chief decided to assault the people of Iraq. What Bush's war on Iraq proves is simple: if you invade a large enough country with a small enough force you will generate enough bad will to prevent you from effectively controlling your new client state.

There is no war in Iraq. There is an occupation and a resistance. No soldier dying in Iraq is dying for my freedom or the freedom of any person posting on this board. They are dying for George W. Bush's vanity. They are dying for Republican political gain. They are dying so that George W. Bush can pass his massive fuck up on to the next President.

sorry, BG, but bad guys is more pleasant than most things I could call them. It's a useful discriminator between the folks we want to protect and those we want to kill. And yes, we all know it can change in a minute. I suppose I simply say "enemy," but it means the same thing for the military - the people we want to kill.

Eye of the beholder, be damned. When our forces are at war, I want the "bad guys" dead. Sorry, it's a failing I picked up somewhere along the way. Atavistic and all.

Medical corps here - we save 'em all, if possible, regardless.

The average American couldn't give a shit what they think at National Review, and the left pundits know it. Problem is, Chuck Norris says we could have won in Vietnam, and his word carries a lot more weight with the American people. How the hell do the learned experts at The Nation and The American Prospect compete with Chuck Norris?
Posted by: dr sardonicus on August 23, 2007 at 6:00 PM
------

They never have been in competition with the likes of folk myths such as Chuck Norris. The only way those myths can be shattered is with empirical reality. When it becomes in your face obvious TO THE MIDDLE CLASS that we have LOST *something* by occupying Iraq then the myth will be dispelled. That will ONLY happen when either or both of the following two things kick in: 1) There is a DRAFT, or 2) The LOSS OF JOBS due to an economic crisis brought about by the war. Both things are now becoming increasingly likely. When push comes to shove (I think much sooner than Bush thinks), people will push back in a major way and reject it and demand that we get the fuck out of there. Bush thinks that will happen to the Dems in 2009. I think it will happen to the Pubs in 2008. Republicans have spun and spun and dragged this mess out as long as they can. They have been able to accomplish that so long as the economy and the military (without a draft) can hold up. Those two elements begin to change and they are fucked big time. That's why Rove left. He doesn't have any more rabbits to pull out of his hat and the economy is starting to look viagra-tolerant and unresponsive.

Our forces aren't at war moron. They are an occupation. Who would they be at war with? The Iraqi people? That's pretty stupid, those are the people we are "helping." AQ? They make up only a tiny fraction of the violence in Iraq, so that's out. What you have left is that we are fighting to keep the forces unleashed by George W. Bush's brutal assault on Iraq from finishing the job Bush started.

We are an occupying force. We are keeping our puppet government afloat.

That's not the same as a war.

I myself got over the "good guys/bad guys" thing when one of my husbands former counterparts from the former Soviet Union was seated at our table at a base event. The guy who chuckled and obliged when I apologized for being impertinent then asked anyway if he would "say moose and squirrel" wasn't the bad guy I had painted him as the first three decades of my life.

However, the idea that Iraq is "stripping the war against Al Qaeda of crucial resources" is arguably wrong. By now, Al Qaeda is as much in Iraq as it is in Afghanistan.

Read the first sentence. Then read the second sentence.

Then, when you've figured out the error in logic, try writing them again.

Let's remember that the Republicans sabotaged those 1968 peace negotiations by persuading the South Vietnamese puppet government that they could get better terms later if they helped elect Nixon by refusing the peace terms.

Also known as Kissinger's first act of treachery.

Nice summery, sc.

Also known as Kissinger's first act of treachery.

Now, see, I always figured that occurred about age five.

When I want to put something in it's proper order on the "wrongness" scale, I say "It's as wrong as that time Kissinger won a Peace Prize."

Well, perhaps so, if what we are chasing is a single bunch of criminals, rather than a movement.

From the point of view of radical anti-Western Islamic fundamentalism as a diffuse social movement apart from any single organization, initiating and continuing the Iraq War is about the worst strategic error the US could conceivably have made (and continue to make), since it essentially validates the propaganda of the leading organizations in that movement (like al-Qaeda), while providing continuing sources of new resentment and outright hatred of the West and the US in particular in the Arab and Muslim world.

By now, it's rather clear we have more to worry about in that regard than just Osama and his boys. And it isn't going to go away if we simply cede Iraq to the bad guys.

The people of Iraq are not "the bad guys". As long as the US is attempting to impose its will in Iraq, they aren't in control. The "bad guys" in Iraq are gaining power the longer the US is there.

Much as we'd all like to return to a pre-9-11 stance, that's pretty much shot by now, as well.

How about a pre-stupid stance?

"Medical corps here - we save 'em all, if possible, regardless."
_____________________

Understood, BG, and concur. Anybody wounded and captured must be protected and treated, even at risk to ourselves. It's a rule we live by.

It's just more than slightly ironic to be chastised for using such a mild term for the enemy in a forum where our own leaders are referred to in far nastier terms, but I understand your personal point.

"How about a pre-stupid stance?"
________________________

Sure, that's always preferred. At the least, I pray that we can find the least stupid way forward.

Irony alert: Bush supporter Trashy claims to "pray that we can find the least stupid way forward."

I doubt North Vietnam's war aims included a million dead and multi-generational poverty.

No, those were just the costs they were willing to pay to acheive those war aims, which demonstrates how much more important it was to them than to us.

Which is one reason why I am entirely unconvinced that it would be a good thing for the US to have viewed the war as "important enough" to devote more effort to instead of leaving, whether or not we could have won if we viewed the war as "important enough".

It's just more than slightly ironic to be chastised for using such a mild term for the enemy in a forum where our own leaders are referred to in far nastier terms

The people you call "our own leaders" that are referred to in such terms here are a much greater threat to the Constitution and the liberties enjoyed by Americans than the people you call "the enemy" ever have been or ever will be.

Vigilance against tyranny begins at home.

If you're gonna HAVE the argument, refute the best case. From Max Boot's piece in today's WSJ:

"In 1968, after Gen. Creighton Abrams took over as the senior U.S. military commander in South Vietnam, he began to change the emphasis from the kind of big-unit search-and-destroy tactics that Gen. William Westmoreland had favored, to the sort of population-protection strategy more appropriate for a counterinsurgency. Over the next four years, even as the total number of American combat troops declined, the communists lost ground.

By 1972 most of the south was judged secure and the South Vietnamese armed forces were able to throw back the Easter Offensive with help from lots of American aircraft but few American soldiers. If the U.S. had continued to support Saigon with a small troop presence and substantial supplies, there is every reason to believe that South Vietnam could have survived. It was no less viable than South Korea, another artificial state kept in existence by force of arms over many decades. But after the signing of the 1973 Paris Peace Accords, we all but cut off South Vietnam, even while its enemies across the borders continued to be resupplied by their patrons in Moscow and Beijing."

Bush's argument is that if we had stood by the commitments we made to South Vietnam, it could have kept the North at bay.

There are LOTS of counter-arguments that Iraq is not like Vietnam, e.g., Iran is not Cambodia and Syria is not Laos.

But it is a serious mistake, particularly after the straw on the back Beauchamp story, for progressives to insist that it was RIGHT for us to lose in Vietnam. It disses the troops AND it disses America.

The factual arguments about the Vietnam side of the analogy are in Boot's piece: 1) was the South largely secure by 1972? In 1968, after Gen. Creighton Abrams took over as the senior U.S. military commander in South Vietnam, he began to change the emphasis from the kind of big-unit search-and-destroy tactics that Gen. William Westmoreland had favored, to the sort of population-protection strategy more appropriate for a counterinsurgency. Over the next four years, even as the total number of American combat troops declined, the communists lost ground.

By 1972 most of the south was judged secure and the South Vietnamese armed forces were able to throw back the Easter Offensive with help from lots of American aircraft but few American soldiers. If the U.S. had continued to support Saigon with a small troop presence and substantial supplies, there is every reason to believe that South Vietnam could have survived. It was no less viable than South Korea, another artificial state kept in existence by force of arms over many decades. But after the signing of the 1973 Paris Peace Accords, we all but cut off South Vietnam, even while its enemies across the borders continued to be resupplied by their patrons in Moscow and Beijing."

There are LOTS of counterarguments to show that Iraq is not like Vietnam, e.g., Iran is not Cambodia and Syria is not Laos.

But it is a SERIOUS political mistake for progressives to hoot that it was RIGHT and just that the US lost in Vietnam. That disses the troops, pisses on their sacrifice and ultimately disses America itself. Don't forget the reason the Swiftboating worked on Kerry is that he really did say that Americans in Vietnam acted like Genghis Khan, which pretty much erased all the cache he might have gotten from being an actual vet.

The facts in dispute on the Vietnam side of the analogy are:

1) Was the South largely secured between 1968 and 1972? I don't know any serious historian who says that it was NOT -- if any of you guys know better, quote 'em. Tet '68 destroyed the VC in the South; from then on, they were no longer the indigenously supplied force they had been. Like the NVA, they had to get all their supplies through the Ho Chi Minh Trail. The Phoenix program, Strategic Hamlets -- all the measures I've ever seen said they worked.

2) Could the ARVN have held off the NVA? Compare the Easter Offensive with the final collapse. What was the difference between an ARVN victory and its utter defeat? US supplies and air support.

So far as I can tell, that's it: those are the FACTUAL questions that found what is a seriously misconceived progressive reaction, scoffing at the idea that it is a bad thing when America abandons people who count on us.

'pologies for the doubling, dunno quite how the grafs repeated.

Michael Hirsh, writing in Newsweek, nails it brilliantly:

Why America's Pullout From Vietnam Was a Success
By Michael Hirsh
Newsweek
Thursday 23 August 2007

The war in Vietnam was similar to Bush's invasion and occupation of Iraq in this respect: it was a crime against humanity, an unprovoked war of aggression based on sickening lies.

SecularAnimist, I have missed your comments.

Why shouldn't the hoi polloi believe in what Chuck Norris says? In "Missing in action II", when the helicopter pilot was killed, ChuckeePoo jumped right into the left seat and flew that sucker.

Irony, was that the actor, Misch Haeusserman, who was "killed", was a highly decorated former Dust-Off Warrant Officer from Nam days - He truly believed in his MediVac work. But, he did at least get to say "Clear" in the movie.

Ah, yes, the Americanist sallies forth about how secure South Viet-Nam was from 1968-1972 after the Tet offensive decimated the Viet Cong. The part about the effective demise of the VC is true enough, but as for the South's security, Strategic Hamlet program, well, not so much:

February 23, 1969 - Viet Cong attack 110 targets throughout South Vietnam including Saigon

August 12, 1969 - Viet Cong begin a new offensive attacking 150 targets throughout South Vietnam.

May 6, 1970 - In Saigon over the past week, 450 civilians were killed during Viet Cong terrorist raids throughout the city, the highest weekly death toll to date.

March 30, 1972 - NVA Eastertide attack on Quang Tri begins.

May 1, 1972 - South Vietnamese abandon Quang Tri City to the NVA.

In response to the ongoing NVA Eastertide Offensive, President Nixon announces Operation Linebacker I, the mining of North Vietnam's harbors along with intensified bombing of roads, bridges, and oil facilities. The announcement brings international condemnation of the U.S. and ignites more anti-war protests in America.

May 30, 1972 - NVA attack on Kontum is thwarted by South Vietnamese troops, aided by massive U.S. air strikes.

June 1, 1972 - Hanoi admits Operation Linebacker I is causing severe disruptions

From the Pentagon Papers: A number of contributory reasons can be cited for the failure of the Strategic Hamlet Program....

And as always, good to know you support a program of assassinations.

Gotta love a guy who condemns you for being... er, right.

1) "The part about the effective demise of the VC is true enough..."

Which, oddly enough, is all I ever said about it.

2) "NVA attack on Kontum is thwarted by South Vietnamese troops, aided by massive U.S. air strikes.

June 1, 1972 - Hanoi admits Operation Linebacker I is causing severe disruptions..."

Um, isn't that what the American military is FOR, TJM? To kill people and destroy things? To support our friends and defeat our enemies?

You quoted that like it was somehow a BAD thing that we helped our ally stop our enemy.

The ARVN stopped a massive heavy armor invasion from the North, with minimal American ground support but a MASSIVE -- and successful! -- air attack.

Obviously, what's important to TJM is not what happened in Vietnam, but international condemnation of the U.S. and ... more anti-war protests in America."

Yeah, that's what counts: fuck our allies, and what they achieve without our soldiers -- hey, the FRENCH are staging demonstrations.

The fact is, I don't support assassinations. (Although it is sorta hard to understand why it's an "assassination" when the guy who is killed is an enemy during a war. I'll grant you, effective anti-insurgency tactics are brutal: but I WON'T grant you that they don't work, cuz they can.)

I just pointed out that it helps to get the history right.

Tet'68 really did effectively destroy the VC as an independent force in the South. Abrams really did substantially reduce US forces, AND YET, the ARVN held off a massive armored invasion from the North -- without any American ground support to speak of, but with a huge aerial attack ... but, hey, it pissed off the French, so it must have failed, huh?

There is an intense need on the part of progressives to purge ourselves of a deeply dirty secret: we bailed on the people we claimed to care SO much about in Southeast Asia, the INSTANT their troubles ceased to cost us personally.

As soon as Nixon cut back on US forces in Vietnam, and the draft effectively ceased to be a threat, anti-war protests dwindled and what actually happened in Vietnam ceased to matter much to us.

I know just three more or less folks (Joan Baez, Bruce Cameron, and David Hawk)who were prominent in the anti-Vietnam war movement, who did a damned thing about what happened after we left. (Baez and Cameron fought for the boat people, Hawk was among the first to document the Khmer Rouge genocide.)

The two I know told me directly that when they tried to get 'the Movement' interested in human rights in Vietnam AFTER we left, or to do ANYTHING about Cambodia -- hey, it was the disco era.

Believe it or not, there are folks in the Middle East, sophisticated, intelligent, nice folks -- who know this history.

THEY get the Vietnam analogy, too.

theAmericanist at 10:16 AM

If you're gonna HAVE the argument, refute the best case. From Max Boot's piece…
War hero and neo-con idiot is your best case? Man, you are a pathetic ignoramus.

…Over the next four years, even as the total number of American combat troops declined, the communists lost ground.
Sure, that is why they won, they used Orwellian doublespeak

…...if we had stood by the commitments we made ....it could have kept the North at bay…
Nonsense.

But it is a serious mistake....for progressives to insist that it was RIGHT for us to lose in Vietnam. It disses the troops AND it disses America.
Nonsense. It was inevitable. The sorry thing is that so many lost their lives in vain.

….If the U.S. had continued to support Saigon... there is every reason to believe that South Vietnam could have survived…
No, the Nixon regime realized that there was nothing that could be done to win and there after played the "declare victory" and get out card.

1) Was the South largely secured between 1968 and 1972? I don't know any serious historian who says that it was NOT ….
Check some real history

… scoffing at the idea that it is a bad thing when America abandons people who count on us.
Of course puppet governments count on their illegitimate supporter. That's why they're puppet governments: they don't depend on their citizens for their legitimacy for survival but on support from the occupying power.

theAmericanist at 5:28 PM

...isn't that what the American military is FOR To kill people and destroy things?….
They're function is to defend America, which is not the same as invading and occupying other countries for no good reason.

….but a MASSIVE -- and successful! -- air attack.
In other words, they were incapable of doing the job without American support.

… fuck our allies, and what they achieve without our soldiers -- hey, the FRENCH are staging demonstrations
Puppets are not allies, they are puppets. Puppets do not represent their citizenry, that is why they can only survive when maintained by occupiers and aggressive powers. If you think that only the French were against that war, you're a bigger idiot than Max Boot.

…I don't support assassinations….
Strange, your claims about their success implies otherwise.

…we bailed on the people we claimed to care SO much about in Southeast Asia, the INSTANT their troubles ceased to cost us ....
Revisionism at its finest. We spent billions and tens of thousands of lives on a foolish war. The Vietnamese people are better off now: they are not being slaughtered by the millions any more. Their loss in that war is estimated to have been 3,000,000. Outrageous.

Believe it or not, there are folks in the Middle East, sophisticated, intelligent, nice folks -- who know this history
There are people there smarter than Bush, Cheney and their minions. They know that the people in a country can outlast and outfight invaders and occupiers. If you recognize their intelligence, why do you want to kill them for Bush's lies?

SecularAnimist, good to see you back.

Good one Amerroricanist. After saying I condemn you, which is your typical hyperbole, at least as concerns you, you just glide right past the reason for the recitation of parts of the time line.
Let me be as clear as I was last time but just for you:
the Amerroricanist said: Was the South largely secured between 1968 and 1972? I don't know any serious historian who says that it was NOT -- if any of you guys know better, quote 'em.
See, I take that to show you think the South was secure when in fact Tet redux (1969) showed significant attacks against numerous targets in the South. To most people, that might belie your claim, but we all know you're not most people, being a legend in your own mind and all.

the Amerroricanist said: Strategic Hamlets -- all the measures I've ever seen said they worked to which I replied with a cite from the Pentagon Papers that seemed clear to me, were you in doubt as to what the word failure meant in this context? You know the context where you said all the measures worked...? The one that the US government said was a failure?
Well, of course you do, you just can't admit you were wrong and so you trot out a whole lot of typically fatuous statements to try and cover up your stupidity.
No wonder people generally ignore you, I was wrong to even point out your obvious errors, but I assure you, I've learned my lesson now.

TJM, do you know Bob Komer?

You're right -- I wasn't thinking of the Strategic Hamlets program (early 60s, and a reason for the distrust between Diem and the Americans). I was thinking of what CORDS did roughly from '69 to '72, and simply used the earlier term.

And all the measures I've ever seen DO say that it worked: the VC infrastructure was destroyed (you agreed this was so), the cadre were separated from the population they had 'swum in, like the fish in the sea', they were denied access to big chunks of the country (ask Bob Kerrey how this was done), and so on.

Okay, you got me. I used a 1961 term for a 1971 program.

From hereHistorian Richard A. Hunt characterizes the achievements of CORDS and the pacification program in Vietnam as "ambiguous."

Komer, CIA director William Colby, and Westmoreland's military deputy, General Bruce Palmer, assert that CORDS made great gains between 1969 and 1972. (44) Some historians disagree with this assessment, but clearly the program made some progress in the years following the Tet Offensive.

From Major John Fenzel:But this success, too, was fleeting. As villages and hamlets became free-fire zones and peasant populations were forced to become refugees, the CORDS Program became the de facto instrument which validated our attrition strategy, causing Pacification to effectively become hostage to Attrition.

From here: I arrived in Saigon for a week of orientation around Christmas 1969 and then traveled to Can Tho...

Of the seven villages in Ben Tre District we advisors could safely visit only three or four, and even then safety was relative.

I could go on but what's the point? Clearly, the statement: The Phoenix program, Strategic Hamlets -- all the measures I've ever seen said they worked. means you didn't look very hard to find other assessments.

I said I wouldn't, but I did. No mas.

The genocide in Cambodia was a direct result of US actions there, and it was ended by the Vietnamese.