Exactly what is one to get over about Viet Nam. I'm old enough to remember what happened between '65 and '75 and I have not "gotten over it" what ever that means. If you are refering to bad military analogies to Iraq of the strategic and tactical situation after Tet used by the left, yes by all means don't use Viet Nam(Christopher Hitchens did a great piece on this). If you mean the conservative sides analogies to the body count left by the communists but so wonderfully forgotten when it comes to Chile, Iran under the Shah or Central America as if the moral battle is determined by the body count I agree also. Is it the tag line phrases of peace with honor, burning the village to save it or my regrettable use of body count that have become hackneyed. You need to define the terms, et al you wished not to be used because neither side is going to stop using them.

I will tell you one thing about the Viet Nam experience that paid off I haven't read nor heard of anyone treating American soldiers they way they were treated during the Viet Nam era. It may be that everyone implicitly understands there are situations that call for the use of hard power after Sept 11, 2001....

"Peace with Honor" is a waaayyyy loaded phrase from the Vietnam era. It brings with it layers of meaning and its use here is a deliberate attempt to equate the war in Vietnam with the situation in Iraq.

There are a lot of issues that can genuinely be discussed about Iraq, past present and future. There might even be useful discussion we could have that compares and contrasts the two wars.

But to headline a piece this way is ... trite. Boring. Tendentious. Annoying. And a lot of other adjectives besides, at least to me.

I don't know, from what I've seen in the movies, Vietnam war fighters were heros. We should talk about them and honor them.

The article I would like to see that invokes the Vietnam experience would be one highlighting the danger of timetables for withdrawal, and Congressional restrictions on ongoing support after withdrawal. In Vietnam by 1973 we had signaled to NV that regardless of what they did we were out of the picture.

What I fear is that we will abandon the Iraqis as we abandoned the Hungarians in 1956, the Vietnamese in 1975, and the Shiites and Kurds in 1991. In Vietnam we got Peace, but there was no Honor.

The Left loves the Vietnam metaphor, and uses it to describe every US Military action, because Vietnam solidified their beliefs:

*US Military power is impotent and useless.
*Guerillas always win
*The Third World is morally superior to the US
*The Media can stop a war by focusing on it's horror.

Of course, the huge disconnect is that neither the NVA or VietCong ever wanted to or tried to attack mainland America, much less pull off a 9/11 attack.

September 11 shows the risk of not acting, even with far away and petty states like Afghanistan. It's why the Left is not serious and is not listened to, which is a pity since there could be substantive and winning criticism of Bush on the grounds that he has no policy to use decisive force to "win and go home."

Of course, the huge disconnect is that neither the NVA or VietCong ever wanted to or tried to attack mainland America, much less pull off a 9/11 attack.

September 11 shows the risk of not acting, even with far away and petty states like Afghanistan. It's why the Left is not serious and is not listened to, which is a pity since there could be substantive and winning criticism of Bush on the grounds that he has no policy to use decisive force to "win and go home."

Robin, I think you might not be sufficiently cynical about the use of Vietnam as a lietmotif. The salient fact about Vietnam was that we lost, or more precisely we gave up and abandoned the Vietnamese: that's what "peace with honor" means, after all. There's still hope that America can be defeated in the same way here.

This constant reference to Vietnam isn't just generational vanity; it's a propaganda tactic with a specific political aim.

(I personally don't think it's a real option, at least not in any but the short term. We never paid a price for our despicable behavior in Vietnam, but then neither the North Vietnamese nor the Chinese were attacking us at home, or talking about destroying the Great Satan. Our current enemies do have such ambitions, and abandoning the Iraqis would send a strong signal that they're attainable. I think if we were so foolish as to do that, and to follow an isolationist policy generally, we would be very, very sorry within ten years and perhaps sooner. But I doubt the people who talk like this are thinking that far ahead. They don't actually want us to lose; they just very much don't want us to win.)

Oh, I'm cynical ... just didn't want to rant in that much detail.

BTW, we did pay a price: in Lebanon, in the Iranian desert, in Mogadishu .....

Robin Burk: ". . . who is thoroughly sick of articles invoking the Vietnam War?
(David Blue waves arm in air) "Me, teacher! Me, me!"

Robin Burk: ""Peace with Honor" is a waaayyyy loaded phrase from the Vietnam era. It brings with it layers of meaning and its use here is a deliberate attempt to equate the war in Vietnam with the situation in Iraq."

Yup.

Talking in code like that also privileges those who are familiar with that history and those meanings. For those too young to have anything to do with Vietnam, this must be really boring. It's like being stuck at the dining table with an endless discussion on events prefaced "in my day" - except that these old bores don't concede that "in their day" was back then, not now.

It seems to me that people do not want to forget but by remaining in the past, they misunderstand the problem and continue to forget to find solutions for the future. It is a tragic condition this attitude.

I like your Blog very much. You have a very good reading range.

Thank you for continuing to make the world safer.

Thanks, Jason. We value our readers and commenters. We hope WoC helps to share information and provide a place for serious discussion (and occasionally for fun as well).

Good to have you with us.

"Peace with Honor" == Saving our honor by not having to admit that we have lost while it is obvious that we did. Like when the Iraqi's get rule by Shiite Mullah's

VietCong == communists, people who didn't planned to take over the world according to the CIA (and themself).

BTW, we did pay a price: in Lebanon, in the Iranian desert, in Mogadishu .....

Fair enough. But a couple of quibbles:

- The link is tenuous enough to be easily missable. When the Marine barracks was blown up, or the embassy was invaded, or the Blackhawk famously went down, was the average American thinking "This is because we bugged out of Vietnam?"

- Our soldiers paid a high price. But we did not pay a price here in our own country. (Of course, the dynamics of the Vietnam war made that unlikely. But the point is that most of those who played some role in getting us out of Vietnam never had to face that sinking feeling in their stomach saying "We screwed up, and an attack on our country is the direct result." That's a lot of what I mean by paying a price. Chamberlain, now, he saw the kind of price I'm talking about.)

Andrew --

No, Saddam did not attack America on 9/11. However, 9/11 showed that merely responding to incidents passively allows potential enemies the initiative to well, KILL thousands or more of your citizens. In a way that can't be prevented.

Ceding the initiative to the NVA was cost-free for the Mainland US; ceding the initiative to dangerous regimes post-9/11 was not.

Saddam had essentially made war inevitable, his circle was filled with terrified yes-men who couldn't tell him his course was insane. He refused to let the Inspectors in, after having kicked them out successfully in 97. He celebrated (officially) 9/11; and publicly hosted Abu Nidal, Abu Abbas (Achille Lauro) and Zarqawi, as well as publicly inviting Al Qaeda to set up shop in Iraq.

9/11 showed "taking someone's word for it" about serious threats to National Security even in remote and poor countries was a loser's game; yet this was EXACTLY what the Left argued against the Iraq War. "Let's take Saddam's unproven word for everything."

Andrew -- the important folks on the Left all opposed the War. Moveon.org, ANSWER, Michael Moore, Chomsky, Cole, Fisk, Kennedy etc all opposed the war, Kennedy predicting an American bloodbath and defeat, others calling it imperialistic. Since MoveOn.org essentially owns the Democratic Party, my point is still valid.

As is the failure of Bush to adopt a strategy that plays to America's strengths. A force for Occupation and security building is not the force we have, which is a war-fighting force built to defeat a conventional army. I agree that we will sadly be in Iraq for a long time to come; the Left could easily have won the Presidential election by pushing a National Security strategy emphasizing:

*America's pre-emption whenever it feels threatened.
*Enough spending to build a force to take on any possible combination of enemies.
*Focusing on simply removing threats, not sticking around doing Nation Building.

Using the force to deter threats. Arguing that if tyrants know they will be removed by US Military force if they help stage attacks against us, they won't dare. The Left went wrong arguing International Law when that's meaningless. Sudan is killing many people in Darfur (though the UN uses weasel words to avoid "genocide" and a call for action). Sudan is also on the UN Human Rights Commission.

Occupation is a loser's game that doesn't play to our strengths. Unfortunately, the Left is stuck in allergic reactions to force post-Vietnam and couldn't make the counter argument or anything like it above, instead clinging to "good fairy" fantasies about Kofi Annan, International Law, and other useless constructs to eliminate threats. Or deny they are threats in the first place.

He refused to let the Inspectors in, after having kicked them out successfully in 97.

I'm sorry, but the preceding post is a farrago of misinformation. This is just the most egregious bit. Remember a guy named Hans Blix? Remember that the inspectors were in Iraq and only left when George W. Bush made it clear that we were going to war no matter what they said or did?

9/11 showed "taking someone's word for it" about serious threats to National Security even in remote and poor countries was a loser's game; yet this was EXACTLY what the Left argued against the Iraq War. "Let's take Saddam's unproven word for everything."

Just the "Left" again, eh? That's rich. And, by the way, remember Saddam's unproven word that he'd disarmed? That he had no WMD? He wasn't lying, was he? We proved him right when we invaded and didn't find WMD. Does the name "David Kay" ring a bell?

Occupation is a loser's game that doesn't play to our strengths. Unfortunately, the Left is stuck in allergic reactions to force post-Vietnam and couldn't make the counter argument or anything like it above, instead clinging to "good fairy" fantasies...

Occupation is a loser's game? What the hell did you, or George W. Bush, think was going to follow the invasion? Rose petals? The "Left" didn't invade Iraq, didn't mismanage the occupation, didn't lie about WMD.

George W. Bush did.

Christ - still rehashing these arguments. The mistake Bush made was playing the fools game in 2002 with the UN to cover Blairs but. We had more than enougn reasons to revoke the cease fire and unilaterally destroy the Saddam regime. We gave Saddam an extra 6 mos of time to smuggle out what ever he wanted, stash cash for insurgency (weapons are seeminly not a problem since the country was a large ammo dump.

The biggest problem with our occupatuion so far was the 4th ID couldn't clean out the Sunni Triangle during the initial invasion. then we took to long to smash Fallujah.

Gosh, don't we all wish we had back all those Army divisions we had back in 1989 before we spent our peace dividend but we don't. The army/marines we have are big enough for occupation because they have to be and in reality seem to be doing ok. Its not wine and rose petals, but either is downtown philadelphia or detroit or DC.

Destroying regimes w/o the commitment to build something better is a waste of time, it delays the inevitable. Saddam should have been destroyed in 91 but stability and realism were the rules.

We are going to be in Iraq for hopefully decades, from which we can effect change in Saudi Arabia, Iran and Syria. Its a long term strategy. Quagmire, the left and paleocons on the right have lost thier freaking minds. Things are proceeding forward in Afghanistan and Iraq. Are they stable jeffersonian democracy no but they are a hell of a lot better then they were before we started.

The civilized world is at war with the uncivilized world.

Many civilians don't have the slightest clue.
Some civilized nations don't have a clue.

Iraq was the first step. More to come whether we plan it/like it or not.

stickler is wrong all the way through. Hans Blix was not a serious inspector; he was little better than a Saddam Hussien lapdog. "We proved (Saddam) right when we invaded and didn't find WMD." Like the left always does, stickler ignores what the US actually found in Iraq - 500 tons of weapons-grade uranium, enough for over 100 warheads (and some of it from Niger, which finishes the job of discrediting Joseph Wilson); chemical weapons labs; chemical weapons; missile testing sites; missiles; documentation showing Iraq working with North Korea on WMD - and also found was that Iraq (these are David Kay's words, BTW) had "built deception and denial" into its entire WMD program. Then there were the convoys of trucks photographed leaving Iraqi WMD areas for Syria before the war. "What did George W. Bush think was going to follow the invasion?" He thought what actually happened - resistance from Iranian and Syrian-backed guerrillas and an Iraqi people working to make a new civilization from the ruins of Saddamite Iraq. In short, Bush knew what he was doing the whole time.

I saw the posting on Drudge today from station KCRA in Sacremento Ca. I truly thought we had all learned about OUR soldiers. I am ashamed at what they say but as an American I will defend their right to say it.

Mr. Rockford: Aren't you embarrassed to cite Abu Abbas whom the Israelis allowed to enter the Gaza Strip under amnesty as a reason to depose Saddam Hussein? By your logic, we should be clamoring for the head of Benjamin Netanyahu! There isn't a shred of evidence that Saddam Hussein intended to attack the United States, or that he participated with Al Qaeda in any way. Even the evidence about Zarqawi is rather sketchy, originating, as I recall, with Chalabist sources whose other statements are now seen as deliberate falsehoods. Saddam's threats to the United States were illusory (remember David Kay?); that's why the new talking points are about making a better Iraq for Iraqis.

Kevin: While we may be in Iraq for decades, you might investigate the consequences for our armed forces. Did you notice the Marines missed their 2004 recruiting goal? Or that the budget deficit projections, bad as the are, don't include the continuation of the war? Things aren't on schedule; we were expecting most of our forces out of Iraq by Xmas 2003. And if you think Sistani is allowing his country to be used as a base for pressure on Iran, you don't understand the dynamic at all. The winners of the Iraqi election will want just enough US troops to keep the insurgents at bay. Serving as the forward base for future adventures is not in the cards.

The belief that the Perfect Leader George Bush is omniscient is rather sad. Like the followers of so many other Perfect Leaders, you will find Reality doesn't cooperate.

AJL:

Chalabi was not the source of information on Zarqawi, the Jordanian GID was in addition the stuff we gathered on our own. Chalabi's big al-Qaeda/Iraq stuff was always Salman Pak, especially after 9/11. That was their selling point, what all the INC spokesmen talked to the media about, etc.

Some people clearly need to turn off Sean Hannity and get out a little bit. Mr. Daly says:

stickler is wrong all the way through. Hans Blix was not a serious inspector; he was little better than a Saddam Hussien lapdog.

Wow. But this -- even if you believe the "lapdog" crap -- doesn't disprove the fact that inspectors were in Iraq, destroying al-Samoud missiles on the eve of the war. Mr. Rockford's statement that Hussein "kicked out the inspectors" is not true. George W. Bush kicked out the inspectors.

And as far as 500 tons of weapons-grade uranium is concerned, I'd love to see the source for that. Was it in David Kay's report? The Duelfer report? Or did Achmed Chalabi share that tidbit with you?

You don't perhaps mean 500 tons of unrefined uranium looted from Tuwaitha nuclear center after the war began , now do you?

500 ton of weapons grade uranium, 10 kilo per warhead, that is 50,000 bombs and not 100. It is also worth billions of dollars on the open, peacefull use, market cause it cost an awful lot of money to enrich uranium so why would somebody enrich that much.
Another problem with this is that making a atom-bomb when you have the weaponsgrade uranium is simple, Niger could do it let alone a reasonable developed country like Iraq.
In short: this story doesn't make any sense and is totally unbelievable

Resistence from Iranian backed guerilla's? Do you mean SCIRI, who will deliver the next Iraqi prime minister

No, stickler, I don't mean that BBC report - after the Andrew Gilligan fiasco, for you to cite BBC is laughable given their non-existent credibility. I mean the 500 tons the US openly moved out of Iraq - you do remember the snit the UN had with the US for doing that, don't you?

As for inspectors destroying Iraqi missiles - they were just being used in Saddam Hussein's country-wide shell game; his whole system was built for deception and denial.

And no, a, the story is believeable. And I don't mean SC IRI, I mean Iranian-backed guerrillas; Iranian backing has been too well known to not believe.

Mr. Daly:

I'm getting a little confused. If you so off-handedly dismiss the BBC, what news organizations are acceptable? NewsMax? Fox? Drudge? Or maybe the whisperings of Chalabi and his friends at the PNAC? That would certainly simplify things.

I mean, really. You're saying that the inspectors were working with Saddam in the runup to war. Right? Is Scott Ritter a Saddam secret agent?

Please put down the crack pipe and rejoin the rest of the world.

Mr. Daly, you are missing the point. The 500 tons to which you refer were not weapons-grade. It was unenriched.

Iraq's uranium supply was declared to the IAEA pre-war.

Mister Daly,

if Saddam had 50,000 atom bombs than there is no way in hell that Bush would have attacked him. That is more bombs than the USSR had and so much that the sensible thing to do is to treat to blow them up in your own backgarden. The fallout will be enough to kill your enemy and the rest of the world

stickler,

information outlets such as this one, the Belmont Club, American Thinker, etc. are more credible than BBC. I am saying the UN inspectors were being used in Saddam's WMD shell-game. Scott Ritter made himself a Saddam mouthpiece, Saddam didn't have to do it himself.

Mr. Lazarus, it was weapons-grade, not unenriched. It had no civilian usage.

a, you continue to ignore the effort Iraq made to HIDE its WMDs.

The simple truth of the matter is Bush was right - Iraq had WMD, was a terrorist base, and we - the US - finally stopped it all.

I hope the left learned to distinguish between the guys who obey orders, and the people who give the orders. Part of that may be because, without a draft, the left are the ones who are cognizant of the fact that it is poor people who are fighting.

Luttwak makes a great case in the most recent Foreign Affairs that the a good model for Iraq was Spain in 1806. The recently oppressed, mostly illiterate peasants rose up and fought their liberators, led on by their Priests.

I quote a couple salient paragraphs here

WMD, none found and the only one he may have had were chemical. Nobody really cares about chemical because while they are nasty they are about as deadly/effective as normal explosives and chemical weapons can be made by any not totally underdeveloped nation (nations like Germany and Britain in 1915)

Saddam's Iraq was a terrorist base for Iranians who killed many Iranian civilians by bomb explosions and the US did stop them, but they pressured Germany to allow those same terrorists to have a rally today in Berlin so i don't think the US goverment really minded that Saddam supported them.

Daly, please read up on weaponsgrade uranium because you comments clearly show you know nothing about it because there is no way that Iraq could have had 500 tons of the stuff. And the stories about Niger and uranium are always funny when you consider that Iraq has its own uranium mine in Ukashat, which is close to the Syria border so i wonder if Syria has also Uranium deposites like Iraq and Iran.

ps. after some searching i found that also Syria has Uranium deposites

a - there is every way Iraq could have 500 tons of weapons-grade uranium - the US took it out of Iraq.

WMD, none found? Eveything we did find shows they had WMD and we put and end to them.

Link 1. The outcome of the talks restricted IAEA to a safeguards mission to attempt to secure 500 tons of natural uranium and 1.8 tons of low-enriched uranium. The low-enriched uranium consists of less than 20% of the fissile isotope uranium-235; it's not the raw stuff of a nuclear bomb, but one fear was that it could have ended up in the hands of a would-be nuclear power like Iran.

Link 2. About 1.8 metric tons of "yellow cake" and 500 tons of unrefined uranium went missing as the Iraqis left Tuwaitha unattended during the war.

[from official Iraq Survey Group report]ISG has not found evidence to show that Iraq sought uranium from abroad after 1991 or renewed indigenous production of such material

[Link 4, from "What is Yellowcake. ANyway at Slate] Yellowcake is a first step toward enriched uranium, but it's a long way from being weapons-grade.

Mr. Lazarus, I'm afraid facts on this site are useless. People believe that demonstrably untrue things are true. They prize faith above reason.

They think, I guess, that Saddam really had a hand in 9/11. That he had WMD. That somehow, all the mushroom-cloud-making stuff was spirited out of the land (perhaps a pre-Rapture?). And that we ought to send our overstretched military on a bunch of new snipe hunts to find it.

This is madness. It will result in fascism, or strategic catastrophe, and probably both. People on this site have suggested that it's Syria's turn to "taste steel," and that Iran must be bombed tomorrow.

How can one reason with this kind of insanity?

Stickler, its simply that your simpleton, defeatist, leftist, and that means always wrong, agenda driven at expense of logic, loaded premis is rejected.

Robin, for a more upbeat take try this

America did not betray South Vietnam; some Americans did. Millions of Americans served in a noble cause to save South Vietnam, including more than 58,000 who made the ultimate sacrifice. How can we Vietnamese ever repay those debts?

Not only that, America gave millions of Vietnamese refugees and immigrants a second life, literally. As I mentioned before, I came here as a penniless refugee, but now have a good job, a nice house, and most important of all, I have complete freedom. I now live a typical middle-class life. A rather ordinary life. Except that it's not ordinary at all. It's a miracle, thanks to America. I, like countless other Vietnamese, hit the jackpot in the lottery of life. Hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese boat people perished in the South China Sea for a chance at the "simple" life that I have.

The referal to "some americans" that supported the Veitmin that murdered their own people by 5% death quota, would find a familiar in our leftist reactionary Sticker here

Who is sumed up here

This newly ever-growing Western left, not only in Europe, but in Latin America and even in the US itself, has a clear goal: the destruction of the country and society that vanquished its dreams fifteen years ago. But it does not have, as in the old days of the Soviet Union, the hard power to accomplish this by itself. Thanks to this, all our leftist friends' bets are now on radical Islam. What can they do to help it? Answer: tie down America's superior strength with a million Liliputian ropes: legal ones, political ones, with propaganda and disinformation etc. Anything and everything will do.

And more from Belmont Club

Well how about that? Kim Jong Il actually lied to Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton. Who would have thought it possible? The problem with nuclear weapons nonproliferation agreements today is that they create the temptation to plan contingencies on the basis of intent rather than capability. North Korea is a case in point. The diplomatic approach toward North Korea depended not on its actual capability but on the perception of its capability. Nothing changed over 24 hours except the North Korean press release claiming the possession of nuclear weapons; yet the announcement, not the reality, made all the difference. The reason the fiction, if fiction it was, lasted so long is that so many desperately wanted to believe that WMDs could be contained, so that the music could keep playing and everyone could return to the old games of saving the whales, dancing in ethnic costumes and clapping their hands.

The alternative is to abandon the "sophisticated" view of a stable international order and understand that we are a planet in crisis; that in some meaningful sense humanity is in a death match with terror.

What we have here, in my opinion, is the perfect storm due to America being foolish enough to elect Pacifist bent democrats, and those such as the 50 DSA Socialist member democrats who are hard core american hating leftists bent on the destruction of the way of life of the people they pretend to represent, and the country they pretend to serve.

Leftism is about hatred of america, the destruction of america, using every pet cause they can use to attack our sources of strength, to sexualize our children, the gay-marrage attack on the family, the ESA attack on our ability to make use of our own resources, Koyoto and other tools whos only intent is to attack america, most often using our own institutions against us.

And now we are forced to deal with the years of neglect, the monsters they either refused to confront or activly aided with such acts as putting Hazel O Leary, an anti-nuclear American Hating Communist in charge of the DOE.

And putting military tech under Ron Brown so that it could be passed to our enemies.

Now we have to deal with the mess, it wont be easy, it will be fraught with danger, and the reactionary dishonest broker left will oppose us at every turn, tieing us down with millions of their liliputian strings to prevent us from defending ourselves.

To me, those that follow the religion of 174 million murders are in no position to advise us for anything, but too few understand the core evil of them, and too many will listen to their poison.

The war against leftist propaganda, the stickers, will be as important as those fought with arms.

And almost as unpleasant, but losing, is not an option.

Daly, 500 tons of weaponsgrade uranium is so much that i would want to see hard proof if you said that China or France had that much cause it would be much more than one would expect

Stickler,

It's also a bit difficult to reason with someone so secure in his smug, arrogant presumed intellectual and moral superiority that he rejects any arguments from those who disagree with him as insanity spouted by simpletons. I thought you lefties were the ones obsessed by nuance. The WMD argument is not as simple as "Bush lied." The sanctions may have worked (there is some evidence WMD could have been moved). But assuming they did, our buddies the French and the Russians stood to make a killing from oil development deals and arms sales if sanctions were lifted. Not to mention the propaganda bonanza we gave Saddam. Remember how you lefties were wailing about the suffering sanctions caused the Iraqi people? How long do you think it would have been before they were lifted? And how long after that until Saddam reconstituted his WMD programs? The support of terrorism argument is not as simple as "Saddam didn't have anything to do with 9/11." What, Al Quaida was the only group of terrorists on earth? He could never conceivably have attacked us indirectly through terrorist groups? Besides, there is some evidence of contacts between Saddam and AQ (see Dan Darlings posts on this blog). They may not have been operational at the time. Who says they could never have been? Would you take that chance? (Oh yeah, I'm an insane simpleton. Sane, reasonable people would trust Saddam.) Reasonable people can disagree on any of these points. I hate to be the bearer of bad news but because a position is yours does not ipso facto make it the only rational position.

Well, Fred, I'm not writing from a position of arrogance. It's more like open astonishment that people with above-average IQs could advocate some of the absolutely fact-free ravings I read on this site. ("Syria's turn to taste steel...")

Repeatedly I see people here saying things that are demonstrably false. When challenged, they spout spittle-flecked invectives and, as you did, use the word "left" a lot.

Re-read Verc's latest screed above. The "Left" is blamed for "losing Vietnam" and inflicting 174 million deaths. Just who this "left" is is never clearly identified. Is it Harry Truman? Is it Pat Buchanan? LBJ? Richard Nixon ("we're all Keynesians now," man who implemented affirmative action)? Brent Scowcroft? Jane Fonda?

Re-read the Vietnam part. Does Verc choose to blame Robert McNamara's catastrophic reliance on body counts and high technology? No. LBJ's control of the bombing from the Oval Office? No. Nixon's widening of the war in secret? No. The power of Vietnamese nationalism? No again. Far easier to blame a straw man.

If you really want to convince skeptics of your position, use facts. Is Iraq on a path to improvement? Prove it: show us some measureable facts that demonstrate same.

Breathtaking rhetoric about invading, conquering, and remaking Iran, Syria, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, etc., etc., etc., requires at least some indication of required sacrifice. When I ask you how to pay for these new adventures, don't get all huffy. And remember that the President has offered exactly nothing in terms of collective sacrifice for the task we've already taken on. No draft, no tax increase, no Victory bonds. Should I, as a citizen, just shut up and salute?

That would be un-American.

stickler wrote:

Re-read Verc's latest screed above. The "Left" is blamed for "losing Vietnam" and inflicting 174 million deaths. Just who this "left" is is never clearly identified. Is it Harry Truman? Is it Pat Buchanan? LBJ? Richard Nixon ("we're all Keynesians now," man who implemented affirmative action)? Brent Scowcroft? Jane Fonda?

Re-read the Vietnam part. Does Verc choose to blame Robert McNamara's catastrophic reliance on body counts and high technology? No. LBJ's control of the bombing from the Oval Office? No. Nixon's widening of the war in secret? No. The power of Vietnamese nationalism? No again. Far easier to blame a straw man.

If by "Verc", you mean Raymond, forget him and his opinions. Every response by him is a rehash of the same rant which he has apparently been making for years. I've found records of this on Usenet and several web forums dating back to at least late 2000. He even did this on one of the "classiccmp" mailing lists, which are supposed to be for discussion of classic computing.

Raymond's position appears to be more akin to religious faith than reasoned argument. All the world's troubles revolve around the machinations of a vast and amorphous Left whose great powers are only matched by its evil motives and plans. The possibility that other factors or intentions are at work is not to be considered; they are merely camouflage for the enemy's main threat.

This sort of thinking is akin to that found on Democratic Underground or spewed from the pulpits of Wahabbi mosques; just replace "Left" with "neocons" or "Jews" as appropriate.

Like most religious dogmatists, Raymond would likely claim that rationality supports him. And I'm sure it does in his own mind, through a carefully constructed framework of arguments built to strengthen each other, while discounting any evidence or argument that could be marshaled against them. But to me this is the mindset of a dogmatist who is sure he already has the truth, not of a rational thinker committed to finding it.

Though I do not consider myself a conservative, I have a better understanding of conservative political views than I did several years ago, and I find myself much more sympathetic to some of them, especially the threat to the West posed by the Islamic world and the belief that only an aggressive use of force will work against it. (In fact, I suspect my view on the Islamic threat is far more extreme than that of many conservatives.)

But I think rational conservatives, including Wretchard at Belmont Club, have no use for the "help" provided by someone like Raymond. He appears to be the sort of person who causes revolutions to eat their children.

Stickler,
Colin Howell is right about Raymond. But a)calling all conservatives, or even all the ones on this site, head cases because Raymond's a head case is exactly the kind of generalizing you complain about in his rants and b)"the right" has no monopoly on barking moonbats, as witness many if not most of the commenters on Kos or Atrios. And arguably, the demonstrations against the Viet Nam war at least contributed to our defeat there by encouraging the enemy and affecting the morale of our troops. In addition, one needn't be a barking moonbat to think the idea rational that the Vietnamese people ended up a lot worse off because we lost that war. Just ask the boat people. I also agree with Colin about both the threat posed by Islamism and the need to confront it with force. I don't believe conquering the Middle East is possible or desirable. But I would be in favor of bombing some government buildings in Syria to show them we're serious about stopping their support for the Iraqi insurgency. I'd also be in favor of bombing Iranian nuclear facilities if all else fails. People in Middle Eastern cultures tend to respect strength even when it is used to brutally oppress them and despise weakness even when it springs from the most noble impulses of liberals like yourself. I'm sure you believe it was just a coincidence that Gaddafi gave up his WMD a couple of weeks after we dug Saddam out of his hidey hole, but irrational simpleton, red state redneck or whatever that I am, I don't believe it was coincidence. Frankly, dude, you need to get over yourself a bit if you want rational debate with people who disagree with you.

Hand waving is not a refutation of anything i said.

Either it is true or not.

If not, where, if so, tuff shit.

I assert I am correct, and the hand wave that does not address anything is empty

Perhaps the only thing i see is that in general, i am correct, and that in general its difficult to refute true generalizations.

But your argument is an emotional one, the typical leftist disconfort with reality

They deny they are doing what they do in front of you, then show anger for calling them on it.

Too bad

Where is the error ? if none, then your protest is emotional, and the words are sophistry.

I'd also be in favor of bombing Iranian nuclear facilities if all else fails.

Let's start at the part after the "if." Recall the track record of this Administration in Iraq, where, you'll remember, the inspectors were still in Baghdad in early 2003. The President promised to go back to the UN for a final vote and have the Security Council "lay their cards on the table." It never happened, and he went to war instead. Why do you trust Bush to prove to a skeptical world -- and an increasingly skeptical American public -- that he's adequately pursued non-war options in Iran? What evidence has Bush so far provided to you that would make you believe anything he said to justify a new war?

Now to the first part of this claim. If we bomb Iran, they will 1) close the straits of Hormuz to oil tankers, and if we're unlucky, to a good chunk of our Navy; and 2) whistle to their thousands of newly-infiltrated agents in the Shia south of Iraq. We will face considerable trouble where so far things are kind of quiet. If we're very unlucky, Ayatollah Sistani calls the Shia into the streets (again, remember last summer?) to protest our attack on Iran. That's if events haven't provoked a massive response without him.

This would be a military, economic, and political catastrophe for the United States. And given the record of air assaults since 1942, I'd just about be willing to bet my house that the USAF will miss something important. (Maybe they'll hit the Chinese embassy again, though. That would be fun.)

Prove me mistaken on this. Or admit that we face some very unpleasant choices in the Middle East, because this President screwed up.

Anonymous saber-rattling in the quiet of a moribund corner of the Internet can be fun. But it might provoke a challenge or two from skeptics. Tough.

stickler: Just who this "left" is is never clearly identified. Is it Harry Truman? Is it Pat Buchanan? LBJ? Richard Nixon?

You're not putting speed in your coffee, are you?

Stickler,

Well, you've stopped the name-calling. That's progress. Re: Iran, I would never deny there are risks, the ones you enumerate and possibly others. I'm just convinced that those risks pale beside the risk of letting those crazy bastards get nukes. And we face difficult choices in the Middle East because it's a breeding ground for fanatical nihilistic savages who are a real threat to our interests, and with nukes (say from the mad mullahs) a potential existential threat at least to major American cities. And it was so long before Bush became president or invaded Iraq. I suppose the Iranian hostage crisis, Beirut '83, the Achille Lauro hijacking, the first WTC bombing, Somalia, Khobar Towers, the African embassy bombings, the Cole bombing, and 9/11 all happened because "this president screwed up." This president is taking care of business that should have been taken care of a quarter century ago. Arguably, had we turned Tehran into a parking lot in 1979, Sept 11 would just be another block on the calendar. Not that Bush hasn't made mistakes, but letting the business go that long is one reason things are so difficult there.

All of these pro-invasion vs. anti-invasion arguments aways boil down to how much credence is given to the threat vs. the costs and casualties of the invasion.

So far, aside from a moonbat here or there, that's what's happening again in this thread. These arguments are getting really old, and the same thing is going to happen with Syria and Iraq.

No conclusions from me, only weariness.

Lurker,

Point taken. Still, I can't deny enjoying a good round of verbal (or written as the case may be) fisticuffs. Will I ever change anyone's mind? Probably not. Despite his arrogance, Stickler is obviously an intelligent person who has thought through his(?) points. Conversely, I doubt he'll ever change my mind. But debate with him and those like him a) I find entertaining and b) is good exercise for the mind. But I can certainly understand how the whole thing could seem pointless.

Fred,
I enjoyed it too... The first fifty times through it. IAJL is now only jumping in to correct facts. Bravo on his stamina; but even he, it would appear, has given up trying to change any minds. Alas.

You are right about stickler though. His snarkiness appears to be decreasing so there's yet promise.

Fred, understand one small but very important detail about Iraq. The US lost that war and every Arab knows it.

a -

You're kidding, right?

Read a lot in the Arab press, do you? I think I'll make a post of links for you to consider.

A.L.

And the south won the civil war too, everyone knows that right ?

Frankly, I find the strength if the Iraq people amazing, could you just imagine, for a moment, the kind of fight we would have if a majority of the Iraq people actually opposed us ?

It was horrific taking Berlin, and pacification as almost as bad, the march of the blue fingered shows us that if they had a more benevolent goverment they actually supported ......

We can thank our low losses partly on our reputation, the people of Iraq know we are not deamons, and do not fear us, for all the right reasons.

The Iraq people are also amazingly patriotic, as a democracy, with a self rule that they beleave in, no invading army could hope to have as easy a time of it as we did.

We have allowed every Iraqi to keep a full auto AK47 and ammunition at home, to defend themselves.

Reading the iraqi blogs, I pick up that its things like these, and that they know we will leave them when they ask us to leave....

The left sneer at all of this, in fact, it seems to be one of the things that bothers them the most, any time we show or act on our basic goodness, it makes them angry.

It chafes them, spoils their mantra that the USA is the source of all evil I suppose.

A.L.
If the US allows the Shiite mullah's (read Iran) to controle Iraq than the US has lost the war. You will never read this in the press because the press will only write what is socially allowable, not what is true. For example you never read in the British press to just kick out Northern ireland while it would be an obvious solution with very few disadvantages for Britain.

Another reason why the press hasn't said so is because the result of the election is officially not known but it is obvious that without major fraud Sistani's list will win decidedly and i just predict that the list will win and that means that the US loses.