U.S. helicopter shot down near Baghdad - 15 American soldiers dead and more than 20 seriously wounded...

http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/62151419-6B9F-4D5A-82FD-6BED2916FA88.htm

Hush now Syrian.
Don't say the 'V' word too loudly, it upsets the Americans;)
Dee Cee

But it took us about four years after Tet to realize we couldn't win in Vietnam and to start withdrawing our trrops. This time it will be a lot faster. Dead Americans will be shipped home at a faster and faster rate over the next six months, and the next U.S. election will become a referendum on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. A Democrat will win the presidency under terms that will make it impossible for us to stay in these two countries.

I look for a withdrawal of American forces in the winter of 2004-2005. Might as well do it right now.

But it took us about four years after Tet to realize we couldn't win in Vietnam and to start withdrawing our trrops.

Nah. McNamara admitted that they knew during the Johnson administration that we couldn't win. It's just that when Nixon came in, he had to bomb Hanoi to the negotiating table so we could withdraw with honor, whatever that is.

Quibble over details if you like, but the trend is obvious.

It is always amusing when the Vietnam-Iraq comparison comes up. I find it difficult to liken the two at all, it's not in anyway like we couldn't strategically win the war with Iraq--we already have with little to no resistance at all. A very very small number of the troops in Iraq died, obviously considerably less then in Vietnam, more than tenfold less.

The only quandry with Iraw is the rebuilding process--which has more to do with economics then war.


unreg

We have not succeeded strategically in Iraq, because none of the ostensible, and none of the likely covert objectives have been achieved.

We (Americans) can't lead the efforts to rebuild a country where we are despised.

You can't accomplish anything with any group of people who resent your presence. Increasingly, the primarily thing Iraqis can agree on is that they resent US-controlled occupation and government.

Quibble over details if you like, but the trend is obvious.


:bugeye: Who's quibbling? McNamara said it. Simple enough to understand.

it's not in anyway like we couldn't strategically win the war with Iraq--we already have with little to no resistance at all

We can't win in Iraq. At least not achieve what we said were our original goals. We can get extremely brutal and level the country, of course, and achieve the strategic win you speak of, of course, but what irony that would beTo win we will have to brutalize a people we claimed to be liberating from brutality.

That McNamara "said it" was not nearly as significant as were the implications when the center of gravity of US opinion turned against that earlier, but similarly unprovoked, unsustainable, and catastrophic occupation of Vietnam.

That McNamara "said it" was not nearly as significant as were the implications when the center of gravity of US opinion turned against that earlier, but similarly unprovoked, unsustainable, and catastrophic occupation of Vietnam.

Which has absolutely nothing to do with the fact that the Johnson administration knew long before "about four years after Tet" that the war was unwinnable. The fact that the administration knew they couldn't win as early as '68 is very fucking significant to those who died there after that date, and their families. The point is not when public opinion was swayed, but when our leadership already realized they were in an unwinnable war.

Then as now, leaders prefer saving face to saving lives, and to genuinely bolstering international security and interests.

There's hope and fear in witnessing the acceleration of history: American public opinion is going to turn much faster this time than it did in the Vietnam era (I expect US occupation forces will escalate late this year, and begin withdrawal in 2004). Unfortunately, under accelerated history the damage to US economy and society will be much greater than was that caused by the US occupation of Vietnam. Ouch.

Originally posted by Unregistered
It is always amusing when the Vietnam-Iraq comparison comes up. I find it difficult to liken the two at all, it's not in anyway like we couldn't strategically win the war with Iraq--we already have with little to no resistance at all. A very very small number of the troops in Iraq died, obviously considerably less then in Vietnam, more than tenfold less.

The only quandry with Iraw is the rebuilding process--which has more to do with economics then war.
unreg

It is also amusing to see how you can erase the circumstances suronding the two countries.

Iraq was already a broken state when you attacked it ( and that is why you DONT DARE to attack N.Korea ), the Iraqi army was a joke after 12 years of sanctions.

The iraqi resistance is NOT supported by giant states as was the case in Vietnam ( Vietnam was supported by the Soviet Union and China )....

You can't compare really Iraq to Vietnam militarily, due to different circumstances that these two countries offer. One a flat, sandy topography, and the other a rough, foliage full, even muddy topography. What u can compare is the political impact of rebellion, which in Vietnam the Americans were trying to suppress in South Vietnam (suppression and South Vietnam go together like milk and honey.) Anyways the American people are not used to actual resistance to their "superior way of life". Many Americans tend not to question the motive but the effect of war. I don't think Americans actually doubt that Saddam had WMD. Rather I think that they are angry that the strategy has failed. That is the fundamental problem with American society, they don’t realize or care about their motives, they only care about themselves. Vietnam, Grenada, Iraq, have shown this tact to be the American way. Sadly this will never change.

I said it before and I say it again:

Sell south iraq to iran, this way The sjiites will be ruled by their own people and the u.s. can establish a peacefull relationship with teheran and make some money in the process and also it will be easier to install some puppet regime for sunnite middle iraq.

I guess only some (not all, but at least the believers in "strong arm politics") israeli influence in Washington might be against a deal like that for it would allow the iranians to move their middle-range missiles more towards israeli borders, however, it's only a matter of time before they have long range missiles, so fro a pragmatic perspective I would take the oppertunity to make some deal with Iran, it would be a good headstart for a middle-east wide peacesolution....

It's a simple fact of life, that there will be always continious struggle and resistance of any ethnicity for controlling their own piece of land, no matter if it's Kurds, sunnite, Israeli, Palestine, Sjiite, Bosnian, Croatian etc. Even if they are ruled by some dictatorship, they prefer their own devil than a foreign devil...

So the only long term lasting peace guarantuee will be to actually give every ethnicity their basic territory , it is as simple as that. However it will not work as long as some groups want more than the basiq territitory that can be accepted at some negoiation table. For instance , Ambitions of some radical Kurds ,to also claim land in South Turkey or Zionist settlers to extend the holy land towards Jordania, or fundamental sunnits to extend the arabia peninsula towards the shores of Tel Avive, will be a continious twisting thorn in the side of any peace attempt. Maybe some of them do not believe in the negotiation table, but rather peace through power and big walls around occupied territories etc, but this is a fallacy, because you can put people down and in the corner, try to disarm them and opress them, but that doesn't kill the fire in their hearts and they WILL find some way to haunt you, if you can have a good nights sleep with that idea, pleaze dream on....

Then as now, leaders prefer saving face to saving lives, and to genuinely bolstering international security and interests.


I agree. Nixon was worried about his '72 reelection, then after that hoping that withdrawing with honor from Vietnam would win the Republicans the '76 election. The administration will continue telling the American people that tragedies such as the shooting down of the Chinook are merely minor problems that no way reflect the bigger picture in Iraq. To admit anything else only opens the door wider for the Democrats in '04. They will continue this approach, as did McNamara and Westmoreland all through the mid-'60s, until another equivalent of the Tet Offensive explodes in their faces and they can't keep a lid on it any longer.

I don't think Americans actually doubt that Saddam had WMD.

We know he had them. What we don't know is if he had them in the months leading up to March 2003.

Meaning he didn't have them. The assertions against his regime were made in those "months" if there doubts then why not let the UN do its job of inspecting? The US made a dramatic err in Iraq, and there is no justification for that. I mean if America was so ensure then why this comment?

"The dictator of Iraq is not disarming. To the contrary; he is deceiving. From intelligence sources we know, for instance, that thousands of Iraqi security personnel are at work hiding documents and materials from the UN inspectors, sanitizing inspection sites and monitoring the inspectors themselves."
-George W. Bush's state of the union address, Jan. 28, 2003



To the contrary indeed Mr. Bush, to the contrary indeed. If he was so SURE, then where are they? No excuse could justify a illegal, and even a causeless war!

Surely it wasn't a causeless war, but it must have been some other cause than WMD, anybody?

Hooray for inaccurate historical parallels!

Stokes is right, Nam was an apple-misstake and Iraq an Orange-misstake, all these ignorant liberals think they can compare apples and oranges with their stupid "told you so" attitude whilst shouting from the irrelevant sidelines, meanwhile real men make real history on the battlefield and historybooks will prove us right. Our chief-editor at Time-Warner will see to that.

Ok, I figured that if there was no deterministic connection between the war and WMD than it must be have been a matter of quantum mechanics: an experiment to see if Schrodingers cat is hiding with osama in Saddams bunker...

Surely you could point them out, I am intrigued. I'll be waiting. :D

Meaning he didn't have them. The assertions against his regime were made in those "months" if there doubts then why not let the UN do its job of inspecting?

Meaning that none have been found to date, which probably means that he got rid of them in some fashion at some time between December '98 and March '03. I had no trouble with inspections continuing longer, although not indefinitely, if Iraq had allowed the inspectors full freedom, and if the inspectors had looked into every nook and cranny, been able to talk to all scientists, and not just going into factories and warehouses. I would have liked to avoid this war.

Do you think that 3 months was enough to search Iraq? Anyways it really dosen't negate the fact that Bush said that he had proof that Iraq had WMD and it was so compelling that it would be un-deniable... do we deny this? How about Cheney's assertion that Iraq was developing nuclear weapons:rolleyes: (yet we question NK ablity) , with Iraq having 98% of her WMD infrastructure destroyed, according to the UN in 1998! I am sorry, but it completely ridiculous that the US went to war with no concrete evidence to support these "threats" I am certain that if there was a threat that was SO compelling so overt, then the French and Russians would have easily gotten on. Is this making any sense to you... because it surely dosen't to me. There was no threat, the inspectors didn't have enough time, and the American imperialistic war was just that...imperialistic. But well shouldn't dwell on the past for too long on this subject, or start a new thread. This thread is about what again...?:confused:

Originally posted by nico
Surely you could point them out, I am intrigued. I'll be waiting. :D Actually, you somewhat did this for me on page 1.

8 months into this and Iraq is already a 10 year standstill in southeast asia. i love logic.

8 months into this and Iraq is already a 10 year standstill in southeast asia. i love logic.

No there is logic in that statement, how? The situation in the ME is much more volatile then in SE Asia. The anti-Americanism in the region is widespread, and the anger is as well. America doesn’t have a real friend in Iraq, at the very least in Vietnam the S.Vietnamese were fighting along the Americans. Here the US is "shock and awing" its way to failure. I am literally never not in a state of "shock and awe" with the US these days. The tech war of today has made the wars go MUCH faster then those of the Vietnam era. Also the media today is much more apt to pick up attacks and death, almost instantaneously. The situation in Iraq is much more volatile then Vietnam ever was, I mean who was really effected by the fall of Saigon? If Baghdad falls, you'll never hear the end of it. Also unlike in Vietnam the US can't fail in Iraq, otherwise, well 9/11's would be rampant.

How about this:

Iraq is not the next Vietnam but the first Iraq.

Why do we have to put each event into a specific historical box? Probably because it makes argument easier. History requires perspective and time permits a degree of consensus. So most Americans accept that Vietnam was a mistake and a waste of human life. Therefore if those who oppose the war make this look more and more like Vietnam they will rally the consensus that it's a bad idea.

Well I'm against the war and always have been, but I would not pretend that this conflict is anything like Vietnam. It is in the sense that the US is involved in a conflict on foreign soil - and to me that's where it ends.

Each historical event has its own dynamic - this war in Iraq is not about a divided state or even ideology (as such). It is not in defense of an existing (if pathetic) government. It is not even a civil war (yet). Why should we blind ourselves (and I would argue that opponents of the war who make the Vietnam analogy are blind) to understanding the particulars of THIS conflict rtaher than wheeling out a previous one?

I now see the worrying signs of the 'Vietnamisation' of opposition. They call for withdrawal - get the troops out! Well in Vietnam that was the solution - the people in that country were much happier as a unified country under communist rule. Good luck to them. There was an able administration waiting to take over and a people happy to lay down arms and call it reunification.

It's not the same in Iraq. If the US left tomorrow they would essentially have spent $90bn creating Lebanon on a much bigger scale, bang in the middle of the world's largest source of oil. Great. They owe it to the Iraqis to pump money into the country and fix what they have broken. They owe it to them to provide security and a framework for self-detemrination - no, not democracy but self-determination. You can't just pick up your ball when the opposition starts scoring and not play anymore.

All those sudden opponents of the war were pretty damned quiet in the build-up and it sickens me. I am now finding myself siding with the pro-war lobby because I think they are the only ones who understand the repsonsibility the fickle US people have to Iraq. It is going to cost a fortune and you should expect to be taxed to pay in cash, and possibly drafted to pay in blood. It's what you asked for - so stick with it.

I hold the US people responsible for this fiasco and demand that they stay the course and finish the job in a way that grants the Iraqi people a future of their own choosing. Don't tell me 80% of America were lied to - they just didn't pay attnetion. They believed what made them happy in the short-term. Now it's not so exciting anymore. But it is the repsonsibility of the US people - not the media, not the politicians but the people. They say they were lied to - we all heard the same lies didn't we? I wasn't convinced, so why should they be?

The US people try to absolve responsibility at all times - their government is not them. Well it is. And maybe when they realise that they will see why terrorists attack the 'innocent' population which puts up the money for weapons and then votes for a man willing to use them. You don't have to pull the trigger to bear responsibility for death.

Well that was a bit of a rant wasn't it?

I believe that the US, having learned the Vietnam lesson, will attempt to replace their own forces with Iraqi or "Coalition" forces.
Of course this is purely a facade. They will be in control and pretending the Iraqi's and 'Coalition forces' are now fighting the "forces of evil" on their own; bleeding on behalf of American interests, as it were.
If they cannot create a viable alternative army, to their own, then they will be in a new Vietnam with dire consequences to the American delusion. Once again.
If they will, then they will sit back reap the oil rewards and pretend that they brought 'Democracy' to the middle-east. They will have parades and Hollywood movies will portray the American glorious victory in ‘Rambo’ terms, making US males feel so macho and females so proud.
Democracy is an Orwellian term meaning open markets, open markets in turn means American dominated markets, since the US, in essence, does not have open markets to foreign interests. They call 'open' or 'free' any environment that they control and benefit from. To be more precise that the US elite benefits from.
The question arises:
Where are the American people?
Well besides the few protesting, the rest are quietly sitting in front of TV screens, munching saturated fats and wondering who so-and-so is fucking this week or if that couple broke up or if the Red Wings have a chance at winning the cup this year.
They will be convinced that they life in freedom that their Media is free, even if liberally biased, and that their nation is a benevolent force of goodness and justice in the world.
They will be going to school thinking they are getting educated, when all they are doing in specializing in an area of knowledge and learning what to think not how to think.
Then one day some ‘evil’ entity will strike back at their obscene indifference and oblivious decadence and they will wonder why everyone hates them so much when they are so ‘good’ and ‘just’.
Their government will tell them it’s because everyone is envious of their ‘freedom’ and ‘democracy’ and that ‘god’ is on their side, so obviously the devil is on theirs.
Then when the shock subsides and they are talked into spilling their own blood for corporate interests and elite privileges, they will fall back into a glutton’s lethargy and an imbecile’s blind contentment.
In between Jay Leno and Survivor they will be brainwashed by 30 minute ‘News’ shows passing out the popular line and in between sit-coms and commercials, dictating what they should want and how they should live, they will perceive the quantity of information for quality and being unable to process so much of it, being untrained in thinking as they are, they will accept the popular one or the one they hear most often from supposed, ‘reliable’ sources.
Their own emptiness they won’t be able to explain and so they will blame themselves, plunging an already fragile psyche into depression.
Their own stupidity they will not be aware of because if they were they wouldn’t be stupid, now would they. It’s a conundrum.
Their undisciplined character, their absence of respect, especially for themselves, and their inability to control their instincts they will blame on others.

Very well put indeed, I have to agree with you in the sense that those pre-war hawks are silenced, and even some have slowly in the shadows moved to the anti-occupation movement. To say though that you are pro-war is a misnomer. What you are is pro-Iraq, you can't be pro-war because you did not support the causis belli of the war. Understand there is a "Vietnamization" of the conflict in Iraq, but that unto itself is a masterful play on rhetoric’s, the American ppl have shown how easily those word games dominate them. The American people are totally responsible for the attack on Iraq. There is no logic in them as you said to be tricked when me and you and others were able (pre-war) understand this was a crock of shit. Vietnam's end was a disastrous one for the US, and I don't expect much different here in Iraq. I think that calling Iraq another Vietnam is largely inaccurate and crude logic. But there are over-arching overtones we can't ignore. For instance DoD expenditures are exploding under this war, and already the US is almost up to what the Vietnam war cost the US in the 60's and 70's around $200+ billion. I wonder about the next US general election... will Dean capitalize on the war issue, or falter like McGovern. I think the nomination should be Clarke, with Dean as V.P.

Good thread, good posts. That's all I have to say: Oh and Al-Vietnam.

(it's actually the Arabic word for Vietnam)

Like Al-Gore