After more than 50,000 dead Americans and millions of dead Vietnamese he thinks we could have won

[NNN0LHI]

http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2008/04/01/mccain/index.html

McCain's Vietnam obsession

The former POW's Senate career has been marked by his outspoken determination never to repeat Vietnam mistakes. So why does he support the Iraq war?

By Mark Benjamin

April 1, 2008 | WASHINGTON -- In a major national security speech delivered last week, John McCain invoked his experience in Vietnam to explain his support for a significant U.S. troop presence in Iraq for as long as it takes to prevent a wider catastrophe in the region. "I hold my position because I hate war, and I know very well and very personally how grievous its wages are," the former POW said in an address to the Los Angeles World Affairs Council. "But I know, too, that we must pay those wages to avoid paying even higher ones later."

But the truth is that it's always about Vietnam for John McCain. He has invoked avoiding the mistakes of Vietnam with a sort of religious fervor in every important debate about dispatching U.S. troops since he first entered Congress in 1983. As he put it in an Aug. 18, 1999, speech to the Veterans of Foreign Wars, he studies "every prospective conflict for the shadow of Vietnam." In fact, a look at his record shows that he subjects every major foreign-policy decision to a Vietnam-derived test similar to the famed Powell doctrine, a test summed up by the McCain quote, "We're in it, now we must win it."

So entrenched are those lessons that McCain sounds, at times, like he wishes they could be applied retroactively. "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," McCain said at a speech on Iraq at the Council on Foreign Relations on Nov. 5, 2003. And for that reason, it might be advisable to take him at his word when he says he'll stay in Iraq for 100 years. Whether Vietnam is the prism through which he judges national security decisions, or the rationale he uses to explain whatever position he decides to take -- and even if the lessons he says he's learned from Vietnam often seem contradictory -- he has applied his Vietnam test to Iraq and come up with the decision to stay.

[malaise]

1. John McWayne

See with that loony!

[panader0]

4. I love it! That's the nickname for me.

Rec'd. Thanks Don for a great post. I' always looking for weaknesses in McWayne (lol). It's not hard to find one.

[malaise]

6. All yours

Hubby thinks McSameasBush watched too many John Wayne movies.:rofl:

[elehhhhna]

2. don't forget he FIVE planes he wrecked. He cost us ALOTTA money.

[Jackpine Radical]

3. One of the most prominent signs of brain damage

is inability to learn from new experience. Can anyone cite clear evidence of McQueeg having learned anything since 1967?

[indepat]

5. So McShame thinks if we had stayed the course and killed several million more

Vietnamese, we would have won: but what would we have won? How many tens of millions must be killed to satisfy those with a blood-lust. A scary and dangerous man indeed, one who exhibits none of the multitudinous hard lessons learned from past wars. Yet, my fellow Americans just might elect him president. :scared:

[1620rock]

7. Jeebus, if elected will he re-start the Vietnam war?

[NNN0LHI]

8. And by the US leaving what did the Vietnamese people really gain?

Only the right not to live under US military occupation. That is asking for too much.

Don

[seemslikeadream]

9. Hey John remember the Hmong?

we haven't lived up to the promises we made to them.