← Autodidact Archive · Original Dissent · Angler
Thread ID: 18016 | Posts: 14 | Started: 2005-04-29
2005-04-29 02:38 | User Profile
[url]http://www.usatoday.com/printedition/news/20050428/oplede28.art.htm[/url]
Sometimes, it simply isn't Vietnam
With each year, each conflict and each generation, America moves beyond the war in Southeast Asia ââ¬â only to be pulled back again by the usual suspects. As we approach the 30th anniversary of the fall of Saigon, it's more than clear that Iraq is not another Vietnam.
By Jonah Goldberg
This Saturday marks the 30th anniversary of the fall of Saigon and the end of the Vietnam War. For a child born today, that war is as ancient as World War II was for someone born in 1975. But for some, Vietnam is still current events, not history.
The cliché is that generals like to fight the last war. The phrase is usually invoked to suggest (often inaccurately) that military types are behind the times. But in America, even if generals were fighting the last war, that would still put them several wars ahead of much of the mainstream media, academia and Hollywood.
The gravitational pull of Vietnam analogies is so powerful in some quarters that it can bend not only light but logic. At The New York Times, especially, there seems to be a hair trigger for such comparisons. It's as if their computers have macros designed to bypass the laborious and go straight to the lugubrious; so that R.W. ââ¬ÅJohnnyââ¬Â Apple & Co. needn't even type words such as ââ¬Åquagmireââ¬Â or phrases such as ââ¬Åechoes of Vietnamââ¬Â when deadlines loom.
For example, on Day 24 of the war in Afghanistan, Apple wrote, ââ¬ÅLike an unwelcome specter from an unhappy past, the ominous word ââ¬Ëquagmire' has begun to haunt conversations among government officials and students of foreign policy, both here and abroad. Could Afghanistan become another Vietnam?ââ¬Â Apple pondered. ââ¬ÅEchoes of Vietnam are unavoidable.ââ¬Â For some, the echoes stopped suddenly when the Taliban fell a few days later.
But for many others, the beat goes on. Since the beginning of the second Iraq war, comparisons, insinuations, allusions to Vietnam have been a near-daily occurrence. Literally thousands upon thousands of articles and editorials make the analogy as though it were actually a novel insight. You get the sense that Earth could be invaded by Klingons and some editorialist would hear ââ¬Åechoes of Vietnamââ¬Â amid their disruptor blasts.
One is tempted to simply chalk this up to the geezerification of liberal baby boomers who can't shake their nostalgia for the glory days of speaking truth to power. But many of today's younger generation have been Vietnamized as well. This isn't as odd as it might sound. World War I seemed like ancient history before the ink on the armistice was dry. World War II, meanwhile, continues to dominate our imaginations, on the right and left, six decades after it ended. As any historian will tell you, public understanding of WWII has become far more literary than literal. So it is with Vietnam.
There's an enduring myth that Vietnam was a singular evil undone by America's idealistic youth, holding hands and singing songs in one voice for peace. This reflects the ego of baby-boomer liberals more than the facts. Not only did large numbers of young people support the war, but in the annals of unpopular wars, it wasn't that special. In 1968, Sol Tax of the University of Chicago cataloged anti-war activity from the Revolutionary War until the beginning of peace negotiations and found that Vietnam ranked as either the fourth or seventh least-popular war in American history.
Regardless, Vietnam is part of our cultural DNA now, and it will probably never be fully erased anymore than the Civil War or WWII will be. Right or wrong, silly or legitimate, that's the reality. And that's fine. If people want to argue about the Tet Offensive forever, so be it. But it is history.
But it's not particularly useful history. Ask military experts about the similarities between Vietnam and Iraq (or Afghanistan), and their eyes roll. Vietnam was a state-to-state war and had vastly more support from its Communist benefactors than Iraqi ââ¬Åinsurgentsââ¬Â could ever receive from Syria and Iran. Indeed, in Vietnam, the insurgency phase of the war was largely over by 1965.
In Iraq, meanwhile, it's nothing but insurgency now. But, unlike the Viet Cong, Iraq's insurgency is ideologically diverse. Some are terrorists seeking to impose a pan-Arab theocracy, some are looking to restore the secular bacchanalia of fear they enjoyed under Saddam Hussein, and others are just gangsters. Vietnam was a jungle war that started against the French in the 1950s. Iraq was a desert war that permanently toppled Saddam's regime in a month. The technologies in play are incomparable. The terrain, the political will and ideologies behind the efforts, the cultures ââ¬â almost every single point of comparison doesn't add up ââ¬â save the common bravery of America's military. Perhaps most important: Casualty rates are vastly different.
Now, none of this is to say that the Iraq war was right (though I believe it was). The point is that a war can be completely different from Vietnam in almost every major respect and still be wrong ââ¬â and hard. We've come to think that any military blunder or challenge must be akin to Vietnam (in much the same way some people think that if a law is bad, it must be unconstitutional). The war on terror and the Cold War are profoundly different enterprises, so it should only follow that the conflicts they generate would be different, too.
Of course, there are some similarities between Iraq and Vietnam ââ¬â including the press' attitude toward both. But such similarities are inherent to all wars and national struggles in a republic such as ours. The Spanish-American War, for instance, would probably be a far more fruitful point of comparison for critics of the Bush administration, but that would require they read up on it first.
2005-04-29 03:16 | User Profile
I suspect Jews hated the Vietnam war because it might well have been the single gentile-inspired military conflict of the times, sandwiched between WWII and the Gulf Wars. They of course protested it with vigor, and success. They made opposition to it fashionable. In that war, we opposed communism --- a Jew-made religion. The "we" here being Anglo-Saxons, for the most part. It advanced no Jewish interest that I can think of, unlike WWII and the Gulf Wars. Ergo, Vietnam was a "bad" war, and WWII was a "good" war. And Jumpin' Jonah's working from that basic script.
2005-04-29 04:20 | User Profile
Hugh,
You nailed it right on the yarmaluke with your "Bad War/Good War" explanation.
:thumbsup:
2005-04-29 11:30 | User Profile
[QUOTE=Hugh Lincoln]I suspect Jews hated the Vietnam war because it might well have been the single gentile-inspired military conflict of the times, sandwiched between WWII and the Gulf Wars. They of course protested it with vigor, and success. They made opposition to it fashionable. In that war, we opposed communism --- a Jew-made religion. The "we" here being Anglo-Saxons, for the most part. It advanced no Jewish interest that I can think of, unlike WWII and the Gulf Wars. Ergo, Vietnam was a "bad" war, and WWII was a "good" war. And Jumpin' Jonah's working from that basic script.[/QUOTE]
No, it wasn't "Jews" who opposed the Vietnam war, although many did, to their credit.
It was true Americans. The Jews took advantage afterward, after the psychokillers responsible for the deaths of all who died in that illegal, immoral, archcriminal project was put over on this country and tghe world by essentially the same ones, using the same process they are using to kill this time. Both went about the same, as far as American honor. integrity and worthiness went. That would be --- to hell. And now they want to try to survive by "blaming the Jews"? haw haw haw haw hasw haw haw haw haw haw haw haw haw haw haw haw haw haw haw haw haw haw haw haw nhaw hawh haw haw haw haw et. etc. ad infinitum.
The Vietnam war was started, specifically, by Roman Catholioc interests using John Kennedy. You can read all about it here:
[url]http://www.reformation.org/vietnam.html[/url]
The Religious Beginnings of an Unholy War
The Shocking Story of the Catholic "Church's" Role in Starting the Vietnam War
By Avro Manhattan
Avro Manhattan (1914-1990)
More About the Author:
Avro Manhattan was the world's foremost authority on Roman Catholicism in politics. A resident of London, during WW II he operated a radio station called "Radio Freedom" broadcasting to occupied Europe. He was the author of over 20 books including the best-seller The Vatican in World Politics, twice Book-of-the-Month and going through 57 editions. He was a Great Briton who risked his life daily to expose some of the darkest secrets of the Papacy. His books were #1 on the Forbidden Index for the past 50 years!!
This book is more timely than ever. The Vatican-Washington Axis of the 50's is back again ââ¬âand it's more sinister than ever. Rome still wants to use the U.S.military to make Russia Roman Catholic and bring about the fulfillment of Fatima.
With an immense collection of facts, photos, names and dates, Manhattan proves that the Vietnam War began as a religious conflict. He shows how America was manipulated into supporting Catholic oppression in Vietnam supposedly to fight communism.
Manhattan explains:
How religious pamphlets and radio broadcasts convinced one million Catholics to leave North Vietnam and live under Catholic rule in the South, overwhelming the Buddhists.
How brutal persecution of Vietnamese Buddhists led to rioting and suicides by fire in the streets.
Why the reports of what was really happening, written by American military and civil advisers, failed to reach the U.S. President.
Why the project backfired, and as U.S. soldiers continued to die, the Vatican made a secret deal with Ho Chi Minh
2005-04-29 12:53 | User Profile
You guys don't get it, those people make money from any war no matter who starts it as they are doing now in the wars of liberation that the US is introducing around the world.
Now the US wants to flex their muscles in Central and South American by putting down Chavez in Venezuela, after all Chaves is now the enemy of the US for being friend of Castro and by selling "their" oil to others that are not the US.
The US is going to declare war on Venezuela by proxy by arming the countries around Venezuela.
The US knows that if they declare open war on Venezuela not only will they be fighting the armed forces of the same but also those of Cuba and other Central and South American countries.
2005-04-29 13:01 | User Profile
Ponce, are you a commie?
2005-04-29 13:35 | User Profile
The extent the Jews go to in order to justify the War on Iraq are pretty breathtaking. Goldberg's no exception.
Bardamu, I don't think Ponce de Leon is an outright commie, although I think he does have a soft spot for Fidel Castro.
2005-04-29 16:06 | User Profile
TexasAnarch, while your eye-catching tinfoil Stetson must be quite the conversation piece Iââ¬â¢m afraid the health risks inherent in placing a heat insulating material so proximate to the cranium are all too evident in your posts.
2005-04-29 16:43 | User Profile
[QUOTE=xmetalhead]The extent the Jews go to in order to justify the War on Iraq are pretty breathtaking. Goldberg's no exception.
Bardamu, I don't think Ponce de Leon is an outright commie, although I think he does have a soft spot for Fidel Castro.[/QUOTE]
Admiration for someone dosen't mean a soft spot the same way that I admire the Jews and yet I wished them no good.
I admire Castro because he is the only dictator that has told the US to go to hell and really meant it, China, Russia, N. Korea and others always told the US to get fu*k and yet always came running to them for a hand out or to make a deal.
My mother (American) was in a Cuban prison for 2.5 years for "couter revolucionarys activities", I don't know if she was guilty or not but as a dictator I don't blame Castro, I do blame the US for allowing this to happen and what hurts the most is that at the time I was in the US Army.
The Jews would have blown Cuba away in order to get one of theirs out and as a matter of fact when they made the Antebee raid in order to get their hostages out I was on "vacation" in Rhodesia back in 76.
By the way, can some one give me the definition of a "communist"? but remember that the Jews were the founders of the communist party.
2005-04-29 16:44 | User Profile
I've noted that too. Most Jews love WW II and hated Viet Nam. They really love the European Theater of Operations. As far as the Pacific Theater goes that was just a minor skimish that should only be noted for Pearl Harbour, Hiroshima, and the interment of Americans of Japanese descent.
This column is one of Goldberg's better efforts. Nonetheless, he's wrong on this point. [QUOTE]But in America, even if generals were fighting the last war, that would still put them several wars ahead of much of the mainstream media, academia and Hollywood.[/QUOTE] While I believe this to be true I would point out to Goldberg that his statement should include the Neocons as well when it comes to being behind. "Cakewalk", anyone? [QUOTE]In 1968, Sol Tax of the University of Chicago cataloged anti-war activity from the Revolutionary War until the beginning of peace negotiations and found that Vietnam ranked as either the fourth or seventh least-popular war in American history.[/QUOTE] I suspect that when this mess runs its course that this will be listed in the top five.
2005-04-29 17:20 | User Profile
Ponce is no commie; he just has a unique perspective.
2005-04-30 01:26 | User Profile
Truth never moves on.
going back to Wombat9
2005-04-30 01:37 | User Profile
[QUOTE=Ponce] My mother (American) was in a Cuban prison for 2.5 years for "couter revolucionarys activities", I don't know if she was guilty or not but as a dictator I don't blame Castro, I do blame the US for allowing this to happen and what hurts the most is that at the time I was in the US Army.
[/QUOTE]
Odd that. Castro put your mother in prison yet you blame USA because we didn't start a war to get her out?
2005-04-30 04:02 | User Profile
No Barnabu, I am looking at it from the point of view of the Jews who never let anyone fu*k around by taking their people hostage, one of the reasons why I admire them.
If the US really wanted to free an American from a foreing prison there are many way that they can do it in order to make it so but they didn't do anything and it took the power of Donovan, the guy who negociated the freedom of the Cubans who invaded Cuba at the Bay of Pigs with the aid of the US, in order to get my mother and another American woman out.
To me is the same as if you were holding a kid of mine hostage, you can be assured that I would tried all I could to get him or her away from you.