<object width="425" height="350"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/jvAqM7MwfB8"></param><param name="wmode" value="transparent"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/jvAqM7MwfB8" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" wmode="transparent" width="425" height="350"></embed></object> and Sheikh Abdul Sattar agrees: [rquoter]Nine months ago, the brigade moved from Tal Afar in northern Iraq to Ramadi, home to two-thirds of the population of Iraq’s largest province, Anbar. The city was an insurgent stronghold that, MacFarland said, al-Qaida had decided to make the “capital of al-Qaidastan.” But his brigade, with no small measure of assistance from local sheiks — in particular Sheikh Abdul Sattar — turned the tide in the city in nine months. The stalemate there, which was widely reported after the leak of a classified Marine intelligence report in September, is broken, MacFarland said. By reaching out to local sheiks for advice, driving out al-Qaida-linked terrorists and staying in the city to keep it safe afterward, the brigade got the population — almost exclusively Sunni Arabs — to join U.S. forces in battling the insurgency, MacFarland said. Now, “If you talk to these sheiks, they’ll tell you that they’re in no hurry to see the Americans leave al-Anbar,” he said. “One thing Sheikh Sattar keeps saying is he wants al-Anbar to be like Germany and Japan and South Korea were after their respective wars, with a long-term American presence helping ... put them back together,” MacFarland said. “The negative example he cites is Vietnam. He says, yeah, so, Vietnam beat the Americans, and what did it get them? You know, 30 years later, they’re still living in poverty.”[/rquoter] of course, chuck schumer wants to turn iraq into vietnam: [rquoter]WASHINGTON - After Republicans blocked a Senate debate for a second time, Democrats said Saturday they'll drop efforts to pass a non-binding resolution opposing President Bush's troop buildup in Iraq and instead will offer a flurry of anti-war legislation "just like in the days of Vietnam." The tough talk came a day after the House of Representatives passed its own anti-Iraq resolution and as the GOP used a procedural vote to stop the Senate from taking a position on the 21,500 troop increase. Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., said Democrats would be "relentless." "There will be resolution after resolution, amendment after amendment . . . just like in the days of Vietnam," Schumer said. "The pressure will mount, the president will find he has no strategy, he will have to change his strategy and the vast majority of our troops will be taken out of harm's way and come home."[/rquoter]
No worries Otto I got you covered. No offense to the Sheik but I'm guessing he hasn't been to Vietnam lately.
Are you suggesting that Vietnam has recovered as well as S. Korea, Japan, Germany, Italy, Austria, etc.? Look at the countries that fought until the US left (Vietnam, N. Korea) vs. the countries that surrendered and worked with America to peacefully rebuild (Italy, Germany, and Japan for instance) and it should be plain to anyone that the Marshall plan route is much better for the country than fighting a guerilla war until the US cuts bait.
Actually no most of those examples prove that it's better to be a homogenous, industrialized country prior to starting a war because it makes it easier to rebuild later.
Thank you oh mighty basso. It goes without saying that all your Vietnam comparisons are by definition wise while mine are unworthy of your greatness. In 1961, JFK sent soldiers to South Vietnam to prevent the expansion of communism. Ten years later? We were still fighting the same war. We had thrown tons, and tons of men and material into the war, and things weren't going well but we were assured that to give up would result in the advancement of the COMINTERN plot to take over the world so we kept right on banging our head against the wall. Fast forward to 1975. The US had spent tons of money and thrown tons of young men into the meat grinder in Vietnam, but we had reached a breaking point. We wouldn't continue any further even if it indicated the impending takeover of the world by the COMINTERN. Ten years later? The impending wave of red doom which we were supposedly preventing in Vietnam never happened. In fact when we pulled out of Vietnam the country was tearing itself apart. We were doing more damage to ourselves than the enemy. We were moving to our ultimate victory while the Soviet Union was reliving our ‘bang your head against the wall’ experience in Afghanistan. In fact, the Vietnamese didn’t particularly care for the Soviet communists, and the only reason they gained a foothold in North Vietnam was because the North Vietnamese needed someone who would act as a counter to the USA. If we had not pulled out of Vietnam and kept on fighting right up to 1985, would we been able to redirect our resources to more productive ways to beet the Soviet Union, or would we have kept telling ourselves that we were prevnting the spread of communism, while the Kremlin laughed as we spent all of our country on the grindstone that was Vietnam? Pulling out of Vietnam was the best decision of that ‘police action’. We redirected our resources to strengthening ourselves, rather than shoving capitalism and democracy down the throats of a bunch of people who didn’t want it and wouldn’t accept it being force fed to them. Iraq just sucks up everything we pour into it and asks for more. It is not helping the war on terrorism, but rather helping the terrorists by diverting our attention and sucking away our strength. Please, tell me whether you think, in 1975, that we should have not given up in Vietnam and kept trying?
Big deadeye dick hasn't gotten anything right in four years. Just more of the same bull**** that was rejected by the electorate in November. next
the easy thing would be to say that in order for the comparison to be valid, we'd need another 10 years of war and 52k more america soldiers killed, but i'll assume your point is iraq in 2007 is in th esame place that vietnam was in 1975. even if true in a narrow sense, and i'm not conceding that point, there are obvious differences. in george bush we have a president who is committed to winning, something we did not have throughout the vietnam war, much less in 1975. we have vastly superior armed forces who are capable of doing the job. in 1975 army morale was at its post 1945 nadir. what is particularly striking now is the extent to which opposition politicians want to turn iraq into vietnam, almost as if they view the american experience in vietnam, and our ignominious retreat, as some sort of victory. it wasn't- as i've said elsewhere, the good guys lost in vietnam, both countries, and cambodia, paid a horrible price for that defeat. we don't have to do it again, and why anyone would want to is difficult to imagine. if the left had any honor, they would be pushing this country to honor its commitment to the iraqi people, and to the america soldiers who died there, by winning the war as quickly as possible so the troops can come home- victorious.
Of course because the U.S. lost in Vietnam they got out of having a brutal oppressive, dictator as their leader, and have since been doing quiet well. Not only was Dick wrong, so was the sheik.
To clarify: The point we are at is 1965. We can keep going for as long as you want. The current course of action will never result in defeat, but at the same time, never 'victory'. Victory is not, in the full range of outcomes, impossible but we were not willing to commit to full scale mobilization to win Vietnam and we will not do it here. Because of the insurgency, lack of widespread popular support, weak unpopular government, and issues where materials flood from Iran as they did from North Vietnam we will not win in Iraq without a major increase in commitment. These factors are either not affected by technology or only marginally affected by technology, so even if we give our soldiers phasers, we will not be able to attack these problems better than we did in Vietnam. We can continue at the current levels without any chance of winning or loosing. We can mobilize, or we can withdraw. The United States public will not accept mobilization. We therefore (again) stand as they did in 1965. Knowing that we can prolong the conflict (never actually winning or loosing) or we can avoid 1966-1975 by performing a tactical retreat on the Iraq front. If you knew in 1965 what was going to happen over the next ten years, would you have stuck it out in Vietnam? Would you have thrown all those lives away with the knowledge that the government couldn't stand without you and that war fatigue would eventually overcome the American public? Despite all of the doom and gloom about what would happen if we lost in Vietnam, extricating ourselves from that mess was the best thing we could have done, even if we did it far too late. If we had not pulled back and redirected energies on more fruitful fronts, we would not have defeated the Soviets in the Cold War. But people in power had a vested interest in not being the one to loose in Vietnam, hence the charade of Vietnamization. Nixon pulled out of Vietnam under the ‘Vietnamization’ screen, knowing full well that it was, in fact, a retreat on that front. (By the way, if you don't think 'tricky Dick' was commited in Vietnam until the very end, I don't think you are looking closely) In the same way, withdrawing from Iraq and redirecting resources elsewhere is required to achieve any victory in the War on Terror, despite all the doom and gloom predictions. One final point is to bring up The Battle of Stalingrad as a fine example of why not allowing retreat when retreat is called for is the worst move possible. Hitler was commited to winning. Von Manstein was repeatedly denied request to retreat from Stalingrad and as a result, large portions of the Whermacht were simply wasted. I'm not arguing that that will happen here, just that it is imprudent to consider retreat when the situations call for it. Retreat on one front is far from accepting defeat in the war.
Two very flawed points in that paragraph. The first about Bush is absolutely silly. I'd argue that the presidents during Vietnam were MORE committed than Bush considering they openly escalated that conflict, dramatically increased troop levels, instituted a draft, etc.. Since Republicans generally define support as supporting the war, our presence, the troop surge etc.., the massive amount of troops, funding, and operational freedom of Vietnam era forces all mean that the administrations of Vietnam were more committed. I mean even Nixon, who promised to get us out, put us into Cambodia which according to many would indicate a level of commitment to stamping out the Viet Cong. Second, the superior armed forces argument is silly. If there's one thing we should've learned from Vietnam its that a superior military doesn't mean anything. Guerrilla warfare is generally a great equalizer for smaller forces. Using your logic, we technically were winning in Vietnam since we were killing many more Viet Cong than they were killing our soldiers. However, that conflict just ate up American resources and money, something the Iraq War is doing today. At some point, the war became to costly in terms of lives lost, money spent, and the fact that we weren't making any push at breaking the back of the Viet Cong. (something that should sound eerily similar to what we say about the insurgency in Iraq today) Going back even further, our own American Revolution is similar too. We weren't actually winning that at any point. The British were still superior and had the better army/technology. The Americans made it too expensive to maintain an extended campaign (along with some help from the French). I am stunned that you insist that we should have stayed and kept fighting in Vietnam. I won't waste anymore time re-hashing those old arguments. If you aren't convinced yet, then no one will ever convince you that we had to withdraw from Vietnam.
Yep, these countries you mention can easily be compared as they are all essentially the same... except for the dates, culture, economics, history, politics, and worldwide post-war conditions. Oh, and by the way, the Marshall Plan wasn't exactly undertaken on behalf of the defeated countries, but a European-wide response to the threat posed by the Soviets. Japan did not have a Marshall Plan and the infusion of cash from the Korean War was actually a big spur to their post-war redevelopment.
What you are failing to recognize is the price they would have paid had your "good guys" won. They would have been like on of the poorer Latin American countries of the 80's with a strong armed dictator, who was corrupt, a cheat, oppressive, restrictive of freedom, and only serving the very few. That is what we were fighting to preserve in Vietnam. Because we lost that was thrown out the window. True those that opposed the communists weren't granted amnesty, they were dealt with harshly, and brutally. But the rest of the nation was far better off, because we left that nation. It can be argued that had we left even earlier the animosity and resentment between enemies might have been lessened and reconcilliation between the parties would have been easier and less brutal. Your comments about the left's honor rings hollow. You are the last person on the board from whom honor can be taken seriously. You call people who disagree and want a different course of action as siding with the enemy, even though you are the one who has the same goal as Al-Qaeda does in regards to IRaq. You are the one who calls people who believe in practicing democracy to its fullest, traitors, fello travelers etc. Your lack of understanding in regards to honor makes your comments on it meaningless.
Those countries aren't comparable to Vietnam because pre-war they were industrial powers already, accept for Korea which was a colony of Japan. Vietnam was never an industrial power and had been a third world country. South Vietnam was also a very corrupt country and if the US won its not clear whether they wouldn't have ended like the Philipines under Marcos. Also South Korea's economy itself had a lot of problems too while under military rule, supported by the US. SK didn't really start taking off until governments that were more democratic stepped in that often didn't agree that much with the US. Vietnam now is an Asian Tiger with one of the fastest growing GDP. The comparison of WWII countries like Germany and Japan to Vietnam is a mistaken comparison just based on whehter the US won or lost. US postwar domination doesn't always mean a good thing, ie Phillipines. FYI. If Germany and Japan had won they likely would be far more powerful now. Considering that both countries were among the most powerful and advanced industrialized countries going into WWII if they had succeeded and Germany held onto Europe and large swathes of Russia, Japan East Asia, they very well would be superpowers as they could tie in their industry with the vast resources available to them. While successful now they are second rate powers behind who are almost strategic client states to the US.
Others have already responded to your post very well but I have to respond to your continuous, and problematic, assertion that US defeat in SE Asia was terrible for Cambodia. The US military intervention in SE Asia was terrible for Cambodia and if the US hadn't helped to overthrow the Monarchy and then bombed Cambodia its not sure the Khmer Rouge could've come to power. Further the Khmer Rouge were defeated by the Vietnamese and they, not us, are credited with ending Pol Pot's reign of terror. I will agree things were bad for the Vietnamese and Cambodians following US withdrawl but they were also bad while the US was there too.
