Has anyone ever asked McCain whether pulling out of Vietnam was a bad move?...

[Youphemism]

And also, whether we "lost" that war and Nixon's "Peace with Honor" mantra was false?

I'm just curious. It isn't a question the Obama camp would want to ask, because it would draw fire from those who would suggest he wants to lose. But it's a valid media question, given that McCain seems to be so intent on defining *any* departure from Iraq as "losing."

[KansDem]

1. Was there a Vietnam "surge?"

And, if so, did it work?

[Youphemism]

2. There were many, but they properly called them "escalations." /nt

[PA Democrat]

3. Looks like he thought Vietnam was "winnable"

but that America lost the will to do what was "necessary" to win. :puke: :puke:

From Salon.com:


Indeed, what is most striking about McCain's attitude toward Vietnam is his insistence that we could have won -- that we should have won -- with more bombs and more casualties. In 1998, he spoke on the 30th anniversary of the Tet Offensive. "Like a lot of Vietnam veterans, I believed and still believe that the war was winnable," he said. "I do not believe that it was winnable at an acceptable cost in the short or probably even the long term using the strategy of attrition which we employed there to such tragic results. I do believe that had we taken the war to the North and made full, consistent use of air power in the North, we ultimately would have prevailed." Five years later, he said much the same thing to the Council on Foreign Relations. "We lost in Vietnam because we lost the will to fight, because we did not understand the nature of the war we were fighting, and because we limited the tools at our disposal."

Very few military historians agree with McCain's bitter analysis, which suggests that a ground invasion and an even more destructive bombing campaign, with an unimaginable cost in human life, would have achieved an American victory. But perhaps because he is obsessed by the humiliation of defeat -- which fell directly on his father, Adm. John S. McCain Jr., who served as the commander in chief of Pacific forces during the Vietnam conflict -- the former prisoner of war seemingly can formulate neither a rational assessment of that war's enormous costs nor of its flawed premises and purposes.


http://www.salon.com/opinion/conason/2008/07/04/mcain_vietnam/

[WinkyDink]

4. Yeah, it's too bad VietNam is now a major vacation spot for Americans!

[Thothmes]

8. Thanks to President Johnson

[El Supremo]

5. He spent 5 years in prison. How the hell would he know?

[Youphemism]

6. Thanks for the answer! Interesting...

I missed the other follow-up questions, whether that war overall was worth the sacrifice, and whether that effort he described to "win" it would have been worth the sacrifice. Does he think it was a good idea to get involved in the first place and, given that we got involved, would it have been worthwhile to take the measures he described?

I think his position is not a popular one, and it bears directly on the issues now... Not that the two wars are the same, but that they both involve the necessity to balance a fear of "losing" with a perspective on what the national interests are.

[zbdent]

7. they should ask him if talking with the North Vietnamese was a mistake

(which led to him, and many other POWs, being released ...)

[arewenotdemo]

9. Sounds like he shares the same idiotic views about the war

that Bush actually expressed while he was over there visiting.

[stray cat]

10. He believes we would have won if we would have gone all out....