GREAT READ: Someone Tell Bush We LOST Vietnam!

[RiverStone]

I had my Scooby Doo moment for the day when President Bush, speaking in Vietnam’s capital, Hanoi, said there were lessons to be learned from the divisive Vietnam war:

We tend to want there to be instant success in the world, and the task in Iraq is going to take awhile . . .We’ll succeed unless we quit.

What in God’s name is he talking about? I realize W missed the last few months of his time with the Air National Guard during the Vietnam War, but I had not realized, until now, that he completely ignored what happened in Vietnam.

Mr. President. We fought in Vietnam for more than twelve years. More than two million U.S. soldiers fought there. Almost 57,000 American soldiers died and several hundred thousand were wounded. We trained hundreds of thousands of South Vietnamese troops, we killed almost one million North Vietnamese and Viet Cong, we dropped more explosives on Vietnam then we used during World War II, and we defoliated significant portions of Vietnam’s rain forest.

And what did we achieve in the end? The United States fled the South Vietnamese capital, Saigon, to escape the invading North Vietnamese Army. North Vietnam “freed” the South from Yankee imperialists and set about “reeducating” the South Vietnamese. News flash George. WE LOST!

So, what lesson are we to draw from all of this? Are you arguing that if we had stuck it out in Vietnam and spilled the blood of another 50,000 Americans and one million Vietnamese that things would be better today in Vietnam? Mr. President, that is bullshit.

The lesson of Vietnam for our policy in Iraq is that we should not waste the blood or limb of one more American soldier without a clear vision and plan of what we are trying to achieve. Most of the violence we face today is from indigenous Iraqis who see us as occupiers. The insurgents may not agree among themselves what the future of Iraq should be politically, but they are united in expelling us from the country.

Complete text link:

http://fighting-dems.us/Newsletter/2006/11/30/someone-tell-bush-we-lost-vietnam/


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Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it.

George Santayana

[SidDithers]

1. K&R...

thanks for posting.

Sid

[niyad]

2. unfortunately, he isn't alone in his thinking. one of my miserable, ignorant little trolls actually

posted in another forum that the US won every single battle in 'nam, but because of those miserable peaceniks and that traitorous liberal media, we lost the war. had I actually been able to slap him into the middle of next week, I would have.

[Bigmack]

4. Well.... the US did "win" all....

the set-piece battles.... sort of.

Tet was a disaster for the Vietcong. The US won. Too bad that the North Vietnamese didn't see it that way. Neither did the US public. In that case, losing was winning!

The US won the battle of the Ia Drang Valley. North Vietnamese general Giap concluded that if the US stuck to the strategies employed in Ia Drang, the US would lose.

At the close of the Vietnam War, a Vietnamese General from Hanoi was told by an American Colonel "You never won a single battle against us"; to which the Vietnamese General replied: "That is true, but it is also irrelevant."

The US can flatten Fallujah and kill unlimited "insurgents".... win every battle... but it cannot win the war.

[Warpy]

3. The problem with all those chickenhawks

is that they've spent the last 30+ years dreaming that Vietnam was winnable. That was Rumsfeld's thing, rehshaping the military into the type of force that would be light and fast and effective against guerrilla warfare. They thought the lesson of Vietnam was that we had the wrong type of military fighting the wrong type of war.

While they've been up in the clouds and arguing all sorts of ridiculous theories, they've missed the lesson most of the grunts could have taught them: the only way to have "won" Vietnam is never to have gotten sucked into that war in the first place.

Now their hubris has gotten us bogged down in an even worse occupation, an urban one, and they're still pretending that more money, more bullets, more bombs, and more kids acting as targets will allow them to save face and win some sort of victory.

The only possible way out of this is to investigate all this idiocy, mendacity, and thievery fully and send the men responsible to prison. It is the only way we have to salvage anything of what we once were in this world.

[opihimoimoi]

6. Send the Chickenhawks to Iraq and let them ride in a convoy for 5 monthsor so...let them see the

death and destruction.

Let hear the moans of the dying/injured

Let them feel the blood and guts from their buddies on themselves...

Let them feel the pain, the misery of WAR...

[bananas]

5. Perhaps he was talking to the Vietnamese audience, who actually did win. nt