War-Losing Faction

[xoxoxoBruce]

That's because you haven't had to interact with enough of them yet.

[Urbane Guerrilla]

Having seen what else is out there, here's what I have to say: my entire life shows me America's cause is humanity's cause. You'll come to this view too, Ibram. It might take you 'til you're forty, but it's that way with many. I just had something of a head start, it appears.

Deadbeater, I think your view of the domino theory is incomplete. Here's how I understand it: North Vietnam -- first domino. Laos -- domino. Cambodia -- domino. South Vietnam -- domino.

Thailand managed to be robust enough to resist becoming a domino, because Thailand's government and people stayed in sympathy. But a domino theory is not invalidated because four dominoes fell and not five. All that means is that the disaster wasn't quite as extensive as we might have feared.

I do not entirely understand what motivated South Vietnam to take Pol Pot's boys down -- too crazy for the descendants of the Viet Minh, perhaps? Whether this actually constitutes pushing a domino back up is something that should probably be explored further. It's an interesting notion.

[Flint]

Isn't it remarkable that you would favor the country that you come from? Against all odds, one favors the familiar. Mind-boggling.

[richlevy]

I caught most of the interview of Jim Webb by Chris Wallace this morning (transcript here). I will say it was one of the most brutal interrogations of a politician I have seen in recent years. Considering how many politicians these days, especially high ranking ones like Bush and Clinton, force preconditions on questions, this seemed to be a no holds barred interview.

Wallace asked some tough questions. I think he was acting as a proxy for our own UG. Webb firmly answered back some tough questions, even insisting on addressing what he felt were insinuations built into the questions.

There were a lot of good moments in the interview. Here are a few.

WALLACE: So in the absence of a diplomatic agreement — and we'll get to that in a moment. In the absence of that, is all this talk from Democrats about troop caps and withdrawals irresponsible?
WEBB: I don't think it's irresponsible. I think what has been irresponsible has been the administration coming forward with solutions or so-called solutions that simply go back to the well again and again to the military without addressing the elephant in the bedroom.
And the elephant in the bedroom is dealing with Iran and Syria. And we're getting that across the board. We even get it from the Baker-Hamilton report. We had them in front of us a few days ago, and I asked them about that.
What actually would be the procedure for the United States government to reach a point where there was a diplomatic umbrella so that we could then begin withdrawing our troops?
You're not going to do this simply by sending more troops in again and again, the way that we've been doing, and addressing a situation that even the National Intelligence Estimate has said is probably worse than a civil war.
This isn't even sectarian violence anymore. There are so many components to it that it's chaos. And if you're a military person on the street, there's only so much you can do.

WALLACE: Let me ask you directly my question.
WEBB: Right, I'm getting to your question. But I need to be able to, you know, put my experiences on the table so that people can understand what I'm saying here.
The way that this war has been defined is a 20-year war. In fact, I got mail at the beginning of this war when I was opposing it, before we went in, basically saying you need to sit down and shut up because you're being disloyal to a president.
But when do you start talking? Twenty years from now? And particularly in a situation now where the — all the conditions that are being predicted if we withdraw from Iraq — and basically, by the way, they're saying precipitous withdrawal, and no one is saying that — are the conditions that those of us like myself were predicting would occur if we went in and are on the ground.
Empowering Iran? That's one of the reasons I said we shouldn't go in. Being less able to fight the war against international terror — we were saying that. Focus on international terror, don't focus on this. Loss of American prestige around the world — we had the world with us before we went in. Economic disadvantages — we're going to put, what, $800 billion more into this war if we keep going?

The interview also touched on economics, and whether the Dems are out to punish the rich. Webb brought up the income disparities. IMO, he could also have brought up the fact that that $800 billion war bill is currently unfunded but that the interest paid will probably offset government services.

[Kitsune]

The War-Losing Faction has even managed to penetrate the military.

This is not the first time this has happened, not in this or any war.
I do not believe that they were part of any movement.
Most, IMO, would agree that being a conscientious objector should simply be "I will not kill, I will accept a support role" while honoring your military contract if you disagree with the killing of a specific people.
Your view is very simplistic. There is no "faction", just those who do not agree with the US breaking international law, invading & occupying a non-threating nation, then stealing their natural resources via a puppet government with a law we wrote, ourselves.

[Happy Monkey]

I suspect that Kitsune was making fun of UG there.

[WabUfvot5]

Originally Posted by Urbane Guerrilla

But seriously, folks: we had far too much of this during Vietnam, and in the end it paved the way for Communist victory and a free hand for their oppressions and abuses, did it not? Not exactly a triumph of the human spirit, here; more a victory for stupidity and weakness -- and for totalitarianism.

If we stayed in Vietnam do you think the outcome would have been different?

For the record I really hate the following: freedom of speech, free choice and hamburgers. Most of all hamburgers. Damn America!

[Urbane Guerrilla]

Well, Jebbie, bend over and for your really-hates, I'll inject you your due reward.:p

All we really needed to do was to keep South Vietnam in supplies. Congress was Democratic-controlled at the time, and Nixon, who with benefit of national experience, hindsight and strategic reappraisal in prosecuting the Vietnam War, was employing a more successful strategy, Abrams' style rather than Westmoreland's, disgraced himself all the way out of office with the Watergate scandal. With the President too politically vitiated and distracted to get Congress to measure up to the demands of common decency to an ally, Congress' funds cutoff doomed South Vietnam as an independent political entity -- and more than a few South Vietnamese as living entities, let alone independent ones. Would a Republican-controlled Congress have been that feckless?

This is a grievance. It's also a shame.

National level Republicans do behave in a genuinely anti-communist manner. Their Democratic counterparts -- "have done everything differently."* And they've failed a lot and lost a lot thereby. When it came to coping with the major threat to the United States and the rest of the world of the twentieth century, the Democrats ran the gamut between singularly imperceptive incompetence and general failure, and they spent a solid fifty years staying hosed up. They're still in this habit, and they're still just as incapable.

I'm fed up.

South Vietnam's political fault lines seem really to be nothing more or less than the legacy of French colonialism and post-colonialism: in particular a policy -- seen also in Lebanon, to outcomes not very different -- of parceling out portions of a former colony's political power specifically to this or that faction/religion/definable group. The ruling South Vietnamese elite lacked close ties to the rest of the South Vietnamese population, particularly out in the sticks where the North's forces had freest hand. A political structure made from such rotten timber isn't going to handle pressure from outside at all, let alone anything approaching well. One good shove and crrraaackkkk, crunch!

Really, we went into Vietnam out of a humanitarian impulse. That we didn't succeed meant blood and sorrow, and no redress. That Vietnam has since enjoyed a measure of anti-Communist success, to the point where Communism is now maintained mainly as a sort of state religion to which one must outwardly subscribe at least if one wants to be an official, largely heals the ulceration.

*The words of Sen. John Kerry, a famous Democrat I can't be stupid enough to vote for.

[Aliantha]

It's such a shame you're not in charge of anything UG. I'm sure you would have made sure the US came out of Vietnam victorious! Just like if they let you run things in Iraq everyone would be saying how wonderful it is when another country invades your home and starts shooting at your friends and family.

Yeah, it's a shame you're not president UG. I'd feel a whole lot safer going to sleep at night if you were.

[Griff]

Unfortunately, our foreign policy is run by folks with the same view of history.

Prof. Andrew J. Bacevich of Boston University describes their mindset this way:
This convenient amnesia allowed the ISG to overlook a record of bipartisan bungling and shortsightedness extending over a period of decades. Franklin D. Roosevelt got the ball rolling in 1945, promising protection to the House of Saud in exchange for preferred access to Saudi oil. Dwight D. Eisenhower made his own distinctive contribution, engineering a coup in Tehran and forging a fateful partnership with the Shah. John F. Kennedy chipped in with another CIA-assisted coup, this one bringing the Ba’ath Party to power in Baghdad. Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon affirmed the Iranian connection and added another, establishing a costly “special relationship” with Israel. When revolutionaries tossed the Shah out on his ear, Jimmy Carter upped the ante: under the terms of the Carter Doctrine, the United States vowed henceforth to use any means necessary to secure its interests in the Gulf.

Originally Posted by Jebediah

If we stayed in Vietnam do you think the outcome would have been different?

For the record I really hate the following: freedom of speech, free choice and hamburgers. Most of all hamburgers. Damn America!

Elitism... how fashionable.

[Happy Monkey]

I think you may have stubbed your sarcasm detector.

Hard to tell with text... now that I know, it is very funny. Thanks.

[Flint]

Fuckin' hamburgers.