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Rastro
Citizen
Username: Rastro
Post Number: 3683
Registered: 5-2004
| | Posted on Wednesday, August 2, 2006 - 4:09 pm: | 
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I do not think of Iraq as a western European nation. I don't know where you would have gotten that from my post.
Oh wait, maybe it was the part:
Quote:Iraq, like say, Belgium, is in western Europe, and is filled with Europeans with like minds to mine.
I forgot that I wrote that.
If they are fighting amongst themselves, "based on religious sectarian basis," most people would call that a civil war. |
Dr. Winston O'Boogie
Citizen
Username: Casey
Post Number: 2292
Registered: 8-2003
| | Posted on Wednesday, August 2, 2006 - 4:41 pm: |
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Quote:Plus you are expecting that an arab country would act and respond as a western country would in terms of your assessing what is " success" or "failure".
No, I'm expecting that a human country would act and respond as any human country would in terms of what a failure is. 100 persons killed every day, rampant unemployment, lack of proper sewage facilities, potable water, and electricity, and a government incapable of solving any of those issues would count as failure anywhere. |
GOP Man
Citizen
Username: Headsup
Post Number: 433
Registered: 5-2005
| | Posted on Wednesday, August 2, 2006 - 4:50 pm: |
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Quote:The 100,000 & troops give Iran incentive to consider a solution where they do not become a nuclear nation. There would be NO incentive otherwise.
I thought you were one of us, factvsfiction, but I can see you're just like the libs. "Incentive to consider" seems kind of weaselly, if you ask me. It's got two uncertainties in there, "incentive" and "consider." People like GWB and I don't deal in uncertainties. I believe the troops in Iraq have Iran quaking in their boots (or whatever things they wear over there), and that's all that counts. |
Factvsfiction
Citizen
Username: Factvsfiction
Post Number: 1282
Registered: 4-2006
| | Posted on Wednesday, August 2, 2006 - 7:16 pm: |
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Rastro-
Minor civil war and jockeying for more power and control certainly.
Winston-
Agree lots of problems. Some can be laid at the door of the Bremer administration and the Iraqi exiles the Bushies listened to. On the other hand they have no experience in running things after many years of Saddam's dictatorships. They will have to sink or swim. That's life.
GOP MAN-
The incentive is that Bush is not afraid to bomb the #%#& out of their nuke sites, as they well know. You may call him a "chimp", lightweight or whatever but his being single-minded on this works for us. |
anon
Supporter
Username: Anon
Post Number: 2911
Registered: 6-2002
| | Posted on Wednesday, August 2, 2006 - 8:35 pm: |
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"A revolution is not a dinner party, or writing an essay, or painting a picture, or doing embrodery; it cannot be so refined, so leisurely and gentle, so temperate, kind, courteous, restrained and magnanimous. A revolution is an insurection, an act of violence by which one class overthrows another."
Mao Tse-Tung
On the other hand the Industrial Revolution was not totally violent and the Sexual Revolution had some violence, but mainly consentual. |
GOP Man
Citizen
Username: Headsup
Post Number: 434
Registered: 5-2005
| | Posted on Wednesday, August 2, 2006 - 8:55 pm: |
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Factvsfiction,
I'm as big a supporter of GWB and the war as anyone, but you're losing me here. I'm all for invading Iraq and fighting the evildoers, but I think we could have bombed the crap out of Iran without fighting a war in Iraq. Don't get me wrong, I'm with you in admiration of the president, but you're losing me on the rationale. |
Factvsfiction
Citizen
Username: Factvsfiction
Post Number: 1285
Registered: 4-2006
| | Posted on Wednesday, August 2, 2006 - 10:42 pm: |
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GOP Man:
I never told the President to invade Iraq. Or suggested it to the evil genius Karl Rove. But as I have previously stated, I kinda get the picture why we are there, since we are. It's "strategery " as our President would say.
By all means bomb Iran. I am all for it, and all the nuke sites we can target being taken out.
Now get in line or Dick Cheney will be coming to your house for a little duck hunting. |
Spinal Tap
Citizen
Username: Spinaltap11
Post Number: 127
Registered: 5-2006
| | Posted on Thursday, August 3, 2006 - 9:04 am: |
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Montagnard – What about the Montagnards who have been mercilessly persecuted and murdered since we abandoned them? Was it a triumph for them? Or what about the boat people who were actually the lucky ones who didn’t wind up in “re-education” camps or gulags? Triumph? Maybe the millions exterminated in Cambodia in the wake of our abandonment? Very triumphant.
Right into the 1970’s solid majorities of Americans supported victory in Vietnam as evidenced by Nixon’s landslide over “Come Home America” McGovern. The only people who were triumphant, other than totalitarian murderers, were the 5th Columnists in the U.S. who used to fly Viet Cong flags at “peace” rallies and spit on soldiers. Our abandonment of SE Asia to its fate in the 1970s was a national disgrace and humiliation brought to you by the Watergate babies in Congress.
From the Washington Times, November 2005:
"It was 30 years ago when Congress last took the reigns of national war fighting. In August 1974, Richard Nixon had been scandalized and left office. The November 1974 election brought forth the "Watergate babies"; Congress filled with young anti-war Democrats. One of the first actions of the Watergate Congress was to vote to deny an appropriation of $800 million to pay for South Vietnamese military aid, including ammunition and spare parts. Historical records now reveal that five weeks after that vote, the North Vietnamese started planning their final offensive.
The morale of the South Vietnamese was broken by that symbolic congressional act of betrayal. The actual dollar cuts forced South Vietnamese President Nguyen Van Thieu to abandon the Central Highland in March 1975, leading to the collapse of our ally and the onset of genocide and police-state brutalities that killed more Asians than all the thousand days of the war did.
Now the Watergate babies have grown old — and age has not improved them. They plan to finish their careers as they started them — in defeatism, betrayal and national dishonor. Oh, that America might see the last of these fish-eyed sacks of loathsome bile and infamy: unwholesome in their birth; repugnant and stench-forming in their decline."
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tjohn
Supporter
Username: Tjohn
Post Number: 4612
Registered: 12-2001
| | Posted on Thursday, August 3, 2006 - 9:28 am: |
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One could argue that if the French had not recolonized Indochina with our logistical aid in 1945, much of the violence of the next fifty years would not have occurred.
But, our inability to recognize that small communist countries weren't necessarily going to hop on the Soviet missionary-communism bandwagon crippled up.
For domestic political reasons, our policy was that Communists were unconditionally evil and this prevented us from conducting a more nuanced foreign policy that might have allowed us to do business with the likes of Ho Chi Minh and Fidel Castro. |
Dr. Winston O'Boogie
Citizen
Username: Casey
Post Number: 2294
Registered: 8-2003
| | Posted on Thursday, August 3, 2006 - 9:35 am: |
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One could also argue more directly that U.S. incursion into Cambodia destabilized the government and allowed the Khmer Rouge to consolidate and assume power, leading to the genocidal killing that followed. |
Hoops
Citizen
Username: Hoops
Post Number: 1775
Registered: 10-2004
| | Posted on Thursday, August 3, 2006 - 10:04 am: |
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talk about a revisionist history. Spinal Tap and the Washington Times have decided that it was a minority of the country who was against the war in Vietnam.
Now all of a sudden there are 'Watergate babies' who are supposedly incompetant or worse some kind of socialists that we should be angry with? Tripe. With our without those dollars the S. Vietnamese were going to lose that war. Mistakes made by the USA administrations that put us in that imperialistic war in the first played a large part in the disaster that took place there after we withdrew.
Nixon was disgraced because he broke the law and tried to cover it up. He was not scandalized, he was a criminal.
As for the rest of your opinions about US citizens who displayed their displeasure with the war by displaying Vietnamese flags, it was their right and certainly did not harm anyone. I have yet to meet anyone who spit on a Vietnam veteran, so I am not so sure that it was such a widespread phenonemon. |
kathleen
Citizen
Username: Symbolic
Post Number: 628
Registered: 3-2005
| | Posted on Thursday, August 3, 2006 - 10:36 am: |
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Nixon was an anti-Semite, although it was hidden from the public by his cabinet and staff. The revelation of his anti-Semitism on the White House tapes was an enormous factor in the complete erosion of political support for him in the country and in Congress, compelling his resignation.
Oh -- and the Vietnam war was unwinnable, as the French discovered years ahead of us.
They must have some fun writing those Washington Times articles! I never knew anybody else read them. I've often thought they must be written by people who answered an ad for "Be a Published Poet!" and then were taken to a dungeon and given fists full of Oxycontin.
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Strawberry
Supporter
Username: Strawberry
Post Number: 7644
Registered: 10-2001
| | Posted on Thursday, August 3, 2006 - 10:42 am: |
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"Nixon was an anti-Semite."
holy stupidity..
I guess know one told him Kissenger was Jewish.
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llama
Citizen
Username: Llama
Post Number: 814
Registered: 5-2001
| | Posted on Thursday, August 3, 2006 - 10:47 am: |
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It's always amazing to see a 'simpleton' reveal themselves publicly. |
Strawberry
Supporter
Username: Strawberry
Post Number: 7645
Registered: 10-2001
| | Posted on Thursday, August 3, 2006 - 10:50 am: |
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Yes, you do a good job in that regard. |
kathleen
Citizen
Username: Symbolic
Post Number: 629
Registered: 3-2005
| | Posted on Thursday, August 3, 2006 - 10:57 am: |
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Nixon anti-Semitism angers Jewish group (1995)
Anti-Defamation League says order to go after rich Jews is chilling
(12-10) 04:00 PDT UNITED STATES -- WASHINGTON - The Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith says tapes of Richard Nixon singling out wealthy American Jews for IRS probes show the former president had "absorbed the ugly stereotypes of a classic anti-Semite."
The tapes present Nixon, sounding agitated and using expletives, ordering key aides to go after Jewish contributors to Democratic candidates "like a son of a bitch."
"The anti-Semitism revealed by the late President Nixon is chilling," the organization's national director, Abraham Foxman, said after reading the report published Sunday in The Examiner.
"His call for IRS audits of "the big Jewish contributors to the Democrats,' his repeated references to "rich Jews,' his accusations of a "Jewish cabal' and to Jews "that are stealing in every direction' indicate he has absorbed the ugly stereotypes of a classic anti-Semite," Foxman said in a written statement. ...
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/examiner/archive/1996/12/10/NEWS 5827.dtl
From Slate:
Nixon and the Jews
By David Greenberg
Richard Nixon's reputation as a hateful, vindictive anti-Semite was reinforced late last month when the National Archives, which has been releasing the 3,700 hours of Nixon's tape-recorded White House conversations in installments since 1996, dropped another batch.
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Defending Nixon from charges of anti-Semitism has occupied his supporters for a half-century ... Others have used the "some of his best aides were Jewish" rejoinder, pointing to Burns, Chotiner, Garment, Safire, Stein, and of course Henry Kissinger (about whom Nixon privately made anti-Semitic comments).
http://hnn.us/articles/657.html
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GOP Man
Citizen
Username: Headsup
Post Number: 435
Registered: 5-2005
| | Posted on Thursday, August 3, 2006 - 11:04 am: |
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that's all the proof you have? in 3700 hours of tape he uttered a few slurs? Nixon was a great friend to the Jewish people, just like all Republicans. |
Dr. Winston O'Boogie
Citizen
Username: Casey
Post Number: 2295
Registered: 8-2003
| | Posted on Thursday, August 3, 2006 - 12:58 pm: |
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OK, now I get it. "Messy" is apparently diplomatic code for "we're looking at 5-10 years of civil war".
"messy," indeed. |
Spinal Tap
Citizen
Username: Spinaltap11
Post Number: 128
Registered: 5-2006
| | Posted on Thursday, August 3, 2006 - 1:04 pm: |
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Tjohn -
Agreed with reservations. While a more nuanced foreign policy towards the USSR may have allowed us to more effectively exploit the fissures in Communism and bring about its demise more quickly, don’t kid yourself, Ho Chi Minh was and Castro is/was, a diehard Communist, we didn’t make them that way. So I don’t know how much business could have been done. At least in the way we understand business.
Kathleen -
As we all know the Networks, Time, and the New York Times, cornered the market on the truth long ago. As a matter of fact, I think the NYT accomplished this when Walter Durante received his Pulitzer for his gushing reports about Stalin’s USSR when he knew that millions were systemically being starved to death in the Ukraine.
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Dr. Winston O'Boogie
Citizen
Username: Casey
Post Number: 2296
Registered: 8-2003
| | Posted on Thursday, August 3, 2006 - 1:29 pm: |
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apparently the Washington Times doesn't mind a little exaggeration:
Quote:The actual dollar cuts forced South Vietnamese President Nguyen Van Thieu to abandon the Central Highland in March 1975, leading to the collapse of our ally and the onset of genocide and police-state brutalities that killed more Asians than all the thousand days of the war did.
That's not correct. Before 1975, the war killed about 1 million soldiers and anywhere from 2 to 4 million Vietnamese civilians, depending on the estimate. As horrible as the post-war genocide in Cambodia was, the killing during the war was even more horrific. So to blame the anti-war Americans for the horrendous number of deaths in Southeast Asia is just factually not correct. |
themp
Supporter
Username: Themp
Post Number: 3138
Registered: 12-2001
| | Posted on Thursday, August 3, 2006 - 3:38 pm: |
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Back in Washington, US officials who are quietly - and gingerly - making plans for postwar Iraq dismiss comparisons to the imperial MacArthur. The last thing they want to emulate in Iraq is the seven-year occupation of Japan. In fact, some officials at the Pentagon and State Department tell NEWSWEEK they hope to be able to withdraw US troops in as little as 30 to 90 days after President Saddam Hussein's ouster - if Iraq's military can be swiftly purged of his henchmen and turned into a pro-Western security force. That, they admit, is optimistic; more "realistically," says a Pentagon official, the talk is of a maximum five- to six-month occupation. "The plan is to get it done as quickly as possible and get out," says Lt. Col. Michael Humm, a spokesman for the Pentagon's chief planner, Defense Undersecretary Douglas Feith. |
Factvsfiction
Citizen
Username: Factvsfiction
Post Number: 1293
Registered: 4-2006
| | Posted on Thursday, August 3, 2006 - 5:43 pm: |
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kathleen-
Given those whose views you choose to espouse in your posts, you want to raise the issue of Nixon's anti-semitism? Great chutzpah dear.  |
Hoops
Citizen
Username: Hoops
Post Number: 1780
Registered: 10-2004
| | Posted on Thursday, August 3, 2006 - 5:48 pm: |
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dont confuse politics with prejudice |
Factvsfiction
Citizen
Username: Factvsfiction
Post Number: 1295
Registered: 4-2006
| | Posted on Thursday, August 3, 2006 - 5:57 pm: |
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The intellect does not support the pretension.
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anon
Supporter
Username: Anon
Post Number: 2918
Registered: 6-2002
| | Posted on Thursday, August 3, 2006 - 10:30 pm: |
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Some may call this "revisionist" history, but I think the US won the War in Vietnam. The purpose of the War was to prevent the spread of Communism in SE Asia, (remember the domino theory) and in the world. Communism never spread to any other country in that region, and a short 15 years later, the Soviet Union, North Vietnam's patron, collapsed. And now Vietnam is one of our best buddies.
On the same theme when I look at the two cars in my driveway, I'm not sure who won WW11, and when I look at who is running this country I have my doubts as to which side won the American Civil War. |
J. Crohn
Supporter
Username: Jcrohn
Post Number: 2644
Registered: 3-2003
| | Posted on Friday, August 4, 2006 - 12:46 am: |
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"On the same theme when I look at the two cars in my driveway, I'm not sure who won WW11, and when I look at who is running this country I have my doubts as to which side won the American Civil War."
HAHAHAHA!
Anon, have you read Vietnam: The Necessary War, by Michael Lind? Its premise is that the war was unwinnable but had to be fought anyway, for doing otherwise would have injured American credibility more, and permitted Communism to spread further than it did. |
kathleen
Citizen
Username: Symbolic
Post Number: 636
Registered: 3-2005
| | Posted on Sunday, August 6, 2006 - 11:00 pm: |
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Speaking of Michael Lind, in 2002 he wrote an extensive analysis of what he called "the Israeli Lobby," and bemoaned the state of debate about U.S. policy concering the Middle East:
"The US should support Israel's right to exist within internationally-recognised borders and to defend itself against threats. What is needed is a debate between those who want to link US support for Israel to Israeli behaviour, in the light of America's own strategic goals and moral ideals, and those who want there to be no linkage. For the American Israel lobby, Tony Smith observes in his authoritative study, Foreign Attachments: The Power of Ethnic Groups in the Making of American Foreign Policy (Harvard), "to be a 'friend of Israel' or 'pro-Israel' apparently means something quite simple: that Israel alone should decide the terms of its relations with its Arab neighbours and that the US should endorse these terms, whatever they may be."
anc concluded:
"The truth about America's Israel lobby is this: it is not all-powerful, but it is still far too powerful for the good of the US and its alliances in the middle east and elsewhere."
Lind wrote in the same article:
"The reporters of the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal and the television networks are reasonably fair in their coverage of the middle east. The problem is that the Arab-Israeli conflict is presented in the absence of any historical or political context. For example, most Americans do not know that the Palestinian state offered by Barak consisted of several Bantustans, criss-crossed by Israeli roads with military checkpoints. Instead, most Americans have learned only that the Israelis made a generous offer which Arafat inexplicably rejected. To make matters worse, the conventions of reporting the Arab-Israeli conflict in the mainstream press typically portray the Palestinians as aggressors-"In response to Palestinian violence, Israel fired missiles into Gaza." No reporters ever say, "In response to Israel's three-decade occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, Palestinian gunmen fought back against Israeli forces."
Since JCrohn brought up Michael Lind as an authority, I thought others might like to know more of his views. Here's a link to "The Israeli Lobbby":
http://www.newamerica.net/index.cfm?pg=article&DocID=779
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tjohn
Supporter
Username: Tjohn
Post Number: 4632
Registered: 12-2001
| | Posted on Monday, August 7, 2006 - 6:30 am: |
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Well, Vietnam: The Necessary War, sounds like something worth reading. I have heard this argument from time to time but have never seen it articulated in anything but faith-based terms. |
MBJ
Citizen
Username: Mbj
Post Number: 225
Registered: 10-2005
| | Posted on Monday, August 7, 2006 - 11:00 am: |
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Michael Lind's premise was that the war was "winnable" if a different strategy had been pursued in the early 60s, namely, actually attacking into and occupying North Vietnam. Obviously, the risk that entailed was an escalation of the war to include the USSR and/or Red China. At the time, given the very real risks involved, the decision was made NOT to do that. While Lind does not state whether or not that was the correct decision, he does argue that when the decision not to send ground forces into North Vietnam was made, the war became "unwinnable". The US should have withdrawn from Vietnam, rather than attempt to "defend" South Vietnam and fight the type of war that actually took place in 1966-1972.
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pcs81632
Citizen
Username: Pcs81632
Post Number: 101
Registered: 6-2002
| | Posted on Monday, August 7, 2006 - 7:33 pm: |
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The question still is:
Why can't you be in favor of Peace AND Freedom? |
J. Crohn
Supporter
Username: Jcrohn
Post Number: 2666
Registered: 3-2003
| | Posted on Monday, August 7, 2006 - 10:37 pm: |
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"Since JCrohn brought up Michael Lind as an authority, I thought others might like to know more of his views. Here's a link to "The Israeli Lobbby""
Did I bring up Lind as an "authority"?
Funny, I don't recall offering any opinion at all about his thesis concerning the Vietnam war's necessity. I simply pointed out to Anon that a book existed which treated the question he raised. As it happens, I've been reading "Vietnam: the Necessary War" on and off for some time, along with about five other books. Having not finished it, I naturally have no judgment to relate.
As for this remark of Lind's:
To make matters worse, the conventions of reporting the Arab-Israeli conflict in the mainstream press typically portray the Palestinians as aggressors-"In response to Palestinian violence, Israel fired missiles into Gaza." No reporters ever say, "In response to Israel's three-decade occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, Palestinian gunmen fought back against Israeli forces."
Well, perhaps the reason American reporters do not write this is because it is not generally true. When Palestinians suicide-bomb Israeli buses and pizza parlours they are not fighting back against "Israeli forces." Moreover, since no Palestinian "moderate"--i.e., one who would accept a two-state solution--has ever had, or could hope to have, sufficient power to constrain Palestinain radicals who would supersede him and establish a terrorist state on Israel's eastern flank, the notion that Palestinians fight only to end the occupation of territory acquired by Israel in 1967 is nonsensical. The West Bank, Gaza, and east Jerusalem is not what Palestinians martyr themselves for. They martyr themsleves to eradicate Israel.
All that aside, Michael Lind--or Tom Friedman, or Daniel Pipes, or anyone else you care to name--is capable of being correct in some matters and incorrect in others. Unlike you, I do not hold any given analyst or polemicist to be inerrant merely because he espouses a particular doctrinal line. |
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