Vietnam and Iraq: The Timing of the End of Our Involvement

By Jeralyn, Section War In Iraq
Posted on Thu Aug 23, 2007 at 12:28:00 PM EST
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As long as President Bush is comparing Iraq to Vietnam, I thought I'd take a look at how we got out of Vietnam. Maybe there are some lessons there for getting us out of Iraq:

June 22, 1971, the United States Senate passed a non-binding resolution urging the withdrawal of all American troops from Vietnam by the end of the year.

December 31, 1971, there were 156,800 American soldiers in Vietnam. In January, 1972, Nixon announced "... the United States would continue to withdraw from Vietnam in coming months, removing another 70,000 troops over the next three months, but stated that 25,000 to 35,000 American troops would remain until the North Vietnamese released all the American prisoners of war."

April and May, 1972: "On 4 April, 1972, Nixon authorized massive bombing of the North Vietnamese troops invading South Vietnam. On 15 April, Hanoi and Haiphong Harbour were bombed by the United States....On 8 May 72, President Nixon ordered the mining of all North Vietnamese ports."

August 23, 1972, the last US ground combat troops left Vietnam

More...

January 9, 1773, a treaty is signed.

The treaty specified that South Vietnam was to be considered one country with two governments, one led by Thieu and one led by the NLF/PALF, until such time as a single government was formed. President Thieu accepted the treaty only under threat of having all American aid to the South Vietnamese government discontinued if he rejected it.

March 27, 1973, the last U.S. soldiers leaves Vietnam

June 19, 1973, Congress passes the Case-Church Amendment which "specifically forbade any further US military activity if Southeast Asia, beginning August 15, 1973." The U.S. stopped bombing Cambodia on August 14, 1973.

November 7, 2003, "Congress passed the War Powers Resolution, which required that the President obtain the support of Congress within 90 days of sending American troops abroad."

Also, since President Bush wants to talk about the human cost of our withdrawal from Vietnam, let's take a look at the human and economic cost of that war (same source, scroll down).

An estimated total of 2,122,244 people were killed during the war in Vietnam. Of these, 58,169 were Americans. Of those Americans, 11,465 were teenagers. An estimated 3,650,946 additional people were wounded, of whom 304,000 were Americans. 153,329 Americans were categorized as 'seriously' wounded. That total includes 10,000 amputees.

An estimated 444,000 North Vietnamese and 220,557 South Vietnamese military personnel and 587,000 civilians were killed.

6,727,084 tons of bombs were dropped. This is about two-and-a-half times the total tonnage dropped on Germany during World War II.

3,750 fixed wing aircraft and 4,865 helicopters were lost.

18 million gallons of poisonous chemicals were poured on Vietnam.

The dollar cost of the United States involvement in the war in Vietnam is estimated at $140 billion.

< McConnell's "Fewer Than 100 Americans" Wiretap Comment | USA Today Reporter Glows Over Rudy >

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Vietnam and Iraq: The Timing of the End of Our Involvement | 47 comments (47 topical)

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Vietnam was a Lie (5.00 / 1) (#1)
by Saul on Thu Aug 23, 2007 at 01:29:44 PM EST

What has to be kept in perspective, and is sometimes forgoten, is that we should have NEVER gone into Vietnam or Iraq. The rationale used by Johnson to go to war was a LIE. There was no Gulf of Tonkin incident it was a MANUFACTURED incident. Johnson used it this fake incident to escalate the war. Look at all the lives that would have been spared on both sides of the Vietnam war if we had never gone. What happened at the end of the war after we left was going to happened even if we never had gone to Vietnam. Yes atrocities were committed after we left but better that those atrocities occurred than 59,000 americans would have died, along with thousands if not million Vietnamese both south and north and not to include the wounded and lamed individuals.
When you compare the two wars Vietnam and Iraq both unnecessary wars, Iraq is worse. The atrocites predicted that are going to happen after we leave Iraq one day are going to happen regardless, so let them happen now and spare any more solidiers lives and probably plenty of Iraq lives also. Maybe this will teach the American government from here on out, don't ever go to war on the wings of lie. Iraq was a total lie from day one. Why should we support, with any more blood and treasure, an adminstration that lied to us from day one. The intelligence used to rationalize the war in Iraq was NOT FLAUD it was literally MANUFCTURED and sold to us. Go to PBS and get the documentary THE DARK SIDE Side. There you will see how Cheney pressured the CIA and the arm twisting that was involved to give Bush the manufactured intelligence to go to war. This is the worst president and the worst adminstration that ever existed. God help us.

: Excuse my typing (none / 0) (#9)
by Saul on Thu Aug 23, 2007 at 03:06:43 PM EST

That should be FLAWED not FLAUD Can't type worth a darn today.

: Although the U.S. military was in Vietnam (none / 0) (#10)
by oculus on Thu Aug 23, 2007 at 03:08:22 PM EST

before LBJ suddenly became President.

I have no idea what Bush had in mind (5.00 / 3) (#2)
by Militarytracy on Thu Aug 23, 2007 at 01:45:23 PM EST

making the comparison of Vietnam to Iraq. Nothing clears out a cocktail party faster than the guy with too many under his belt declaring that we lost Vietnam because we left too soon....My God, is Dubya really this desperate or is he drinking again?

I think... (5.00 / 1) (#5)
by desertswine on Thu Aug 23, 2007 at 02:11:28 PM EST

it's an act of desparation (and I'd guess that he's mostly drugged up rather than boozed up, but I could be wrong about that).


Bush has no idea what he had in mind... (5.00 / 1) (#13)
by Molly Bloom on Thu Aug 23, 2007 at 03:18:45 PM EST

: Truer words were never spoken ;) (none / 0) (#15)
by Militarytracy on Thu Aug 23, 2007 at 03:56:50 PM EST

IMO the goal is to set false (numerical) metrics (none / 0) (#7)
by Ellie on Thu Aug 23, 2007 at 02:32:58 PM EST

In their deluded Chickenhawk mentality it's only "fair" that they "get" to have xx,xxx more troop deaths and xxx,xxx Iraqi casualties before people can fairly declare that the Excellent Adventure in Iraq has been lost.

Oh and the 2 million deaths he cited for pulling out too soon? It's just extra innings to him. (I wish some non-flatliner in the media would ask him why he deserted rather than serve in a war he passionately supported.) His policies on health have already killed that many (easily) not even including Iraq.

He's definitely playing to the embittered Vietnam dead-enders; resuscitating old rage with the bellows of this hooey.


I think Maryb's called this one right on (5.00 / 0) (#14)
by Militarytracy on Thu Aug 23, 2007 at 03:55:44 PM EST

We were watching Karl Rove on the telly on Sunday and he blurted out a Napoleon quote about the constantly changing face of the enemy and we all ended up staring at each other very puzzled. Really, who quotes Napoleon in the modern democracy burdened military world except when soldiers are complaining about food? It's something that is supposed to stir up fights so the real fight isn't fought.


Heh (1.00 / 1) (#21)
by jimakaPPJ on Thu Aug 23, 2007 at 10:34:52 PM EST

Really, who quotes Napoleon in the modern democracy

An educated man??


Really? (5.00 / 2) (#22)
by squeaky on Thu Aug 23, 2007 at 10:38:22 PM EST

You mean someone like this?


I know this will shock you (1.00 / 2) (#25)
by jimakaPPJ on Thu Aug 23, 2007 at 10:52:03 PM EST

but when I think of an educated man your hero doesn't come to mind.


: Yes (5.00 / 4) (#27)
by squeaky on Thu Aug 23, 2007 at 11:00:51 PM EST

It is evident that you are more comfortable with cliff notes.

Sadly, education has never been able (5.00 / 2) (#37)
by Militarytracy on Fri Aug 24, 2007 at 09:07:02 AM EST

to subsidize a lack of common sense.


And what eventually happened to Napolean (none / 0) (#38)
by Molly Bloom on Fri Aug 24, 2007 at 10:40:40 AM EST

and his empire...

Don't think Rove really wants Bush to go there.

I think refocusing on the facts (5.00 / 5) (#3)
by Maryb2004 on Thu Aug 23, 2007 at 01:52:53 PM EST

of Vietnam is the wrong strategy. Bush wants to make it all about Vietnam so that he and his followers can continue to bring out their current message: If only the Democrats wouldn't make us leave, we could win in Iraq. So if we lose in Iraq it will be the Democrats' fault.

Arguing about the past, even when the facts are on our side, is still allowing Bush to control the conversation. I think the only response to Bush is refuse to play his game and stay with our own message - it's time to leave Iraq.

Yes, it is anything to buy them a (5.00 / 3) (#4)
by Militarytracy on Thu Aug 23, 2007 at 02:01:04 PM EST

few more months of stay the course and not own this mess, and no reason why anyone needs to go there. Iraq is Iraq and Iraq is happening now and real people who are alive are dying in Iraq today no matter what Napoleon said about something 200 years ago.


You don't focus on refuting Bush (5.00 / 3) (#16)
by Molly Bloom on Thu Aug 23, 2007 at 04:06:06 PM EST

You focus on the similarities with Vietnam that Bush rejects- Gulf of Tonkin and WMD, Domino theory then- Kristol's reverse Domino theory today and of course, quagmire.

As David Gergen said

'If you learned so much from history, how did you ever get us involved in another quagmire?"'

In short attack, don't defend.

For those who are intersted, Rick Perlstein's take on the Bush' lies are here

: I agree with attack don't defend (5.00 / 2) (#17)
by Maryb2004 on Thu Aug 23, 2007 at 04:15:02 PM EST

I believe you can talk about all of the things that are wrong with Iraq that also happened to be wrong with Vietnam and people can make the obvious comparisons in their mind.
But the minute you mention Vietnam - you are now in a Vietnam conversation, not an Iraq conversation. You are now (and I'm assuming this is a discussion on a news-type show) opening yourself up to an argument about the baseline definition of what happened in Vietnam (and it WILL become an argument) to support your argument that Iraq is a quagmire. Just say Iraq is a quagmire. Let the comparisons make themselves.

Maryb (1.00 / 1) (#23)
by jimakaPPJ on Thu Aug 23, 2007 at 10:39:37 PM EST

Arguing about the past, even when the facts are on our side,

I don't know how to tell you this, and it is likely a wasted effort, but the results of the Vietnam war is not something that the Left wants to talk about.

3,000,000 dead after we left, the region in turmoil and we escaped all of SE Asia going communist only because Nixon managed to bring China into the mix.


It's time to leave Iraq (5.00 / 2) (#28)
by Maryb2004 on Thu Aug 23, 2007 at 11:15:44 PM EST

: Exactly. (none / 0) (#30)
by Edger on Thu Aug 23, 2007 at 11:51:53 PM EST

The reason Bush supporters try to avoid and divert away from that is that they can't face up to and have no answers for the utter debacle Bush has created in Iraq, or responses to Iraqis who want the US out of Iraq.

Historical Revisionism... Why am I not surprised (5.00 / 1) (#39)
by Molly Bloom on Fri Aug 24, 2007 at 10:48:37 AM EST

Historian, Rick Perlstein:

Like most everything conservatives claim to know about Vietnam, it's misleading in the extreme. It makes no sense as analysis on Vietnam. And it makes no sense as a lesson for Iraq.
It is true that tens of thousands of Vietnamese were killed, and hundreds of thousands exiled to re-education camps, by a triumphant Communist government after Saigon fell in 1975. But by the early 1970s as the worst American bombing was raging, hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese were being killed, and millions being exiled from their homes--carnage that came to a dead stop once the war ended. As cruel as the Communist consolidation of power was, ending the war entailed an obvious net saving of lives, and if it were saving lives conservatives actually cared about--instead of scoring ideological points--this should be obvious.

I'll never forget the time I arranged to spend all day debating Freepers. I introduced myself as a proud leftist. Someone posted the famous picture of the pile of skulls from the Khmer Rouge massacre and asked if I was proud of that.
It's nuts. America leaving Vietnam had nothing to do with that--unless you agree with the historians who argue that it did, for opposite reasons: that the conditions for the rise of the lunatic Khmer Rouge was the massive American bombing that left Cambodian society a bloody, nihilistic wasteland. Indeed American ground troops hadn't been in Cambodia in 1971, by statute--so how could our leaving Cambodia have caused it? Indeed, leaving Southeast Asia itself, with the subsequent unification of North and South Vietnam under a Communist government, ended up producing the conditions that stopped the genocide--because Communist Vietnam invaded Cambodia in 1978. That was what ended the genocide.

It wasn't just the left BTW.

Early in 1974, Nixon requested a support package for the South Vietnamese that included $474 million in emergency military aid. The Senate Armed Services Committee balked and approved about half. A liberal coup? Hardly. One of the critics was Senator Barry Goldwater. "We can scratch South Vietnam," he said. "It is imminent that South Vietnam is going to fall into the hands of North Vietnam." The House turned down the president's emergency aid request 177 to 154; the majority included 50 Republicans.

No substitute for victory (1.00 / 0) (#46)
by jimakaPPJ on Sat Aug 25, 2007 at 01:24:23 PM EST

It is true that tens of thousands of Vietnamese were killed, and hundreds of thousands exiled to re-education camps

And then we had the boat people being killed and raped...but who keeps score??

But by the early 1970s as the worst American bombing was raging, hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese were being killed,

He forgets that the war would have been over by late '68 had Uncle Walter not opined that Tet was a victory when it wasn't and the communists started listening to the drum beat of defeat by the Left.

At the time of Tet around 10,000 Americans had been killed. Of the thousands who followed, wouldn't they have been spared?? I think so.

As for Pol Pot, we again come back to "if" we had won and game over in '68, Pol Pot would have never came to power....

The facts are that millions of Americans are still alive who will remember and understand.


: You care more about polticial points (5.00 / 1) (#49)
by Molly Bloom on Sun Aug 26, 2007 at 08:58:20 PM EST

Your response betrays you. Perlstein's got your number. You don't care about saving lives, you just want to score idelogical points. How shallow and desperate.

Tet (none / 0) (#29)
by tnthorpe on Thu Aug 23, 2007 at 11:21:35 PM EST

I'm sure the cowboy in chief would like to compare the so-called surge to the Tet Offensive, which conservative commentators love to say America won militarily but because of the media coverage here led to the war's loss. That's a good strategy to keep the conversation away from what's going on today. Keeping the conversation on Iraq, on Bush's lies, on the Bush Administration's failure to support the troops with the needed materiel, on the need for Democratic leadership on leaving Iraq is much more productive for progressives. When reality catches up to this cynical administration they love nothing more than to change the subject.


tnthorpe - How about some facts?? (none / 0) (#44)
by jimakaPPJ on Sat Aug 25, 2007 at 12:53:56 PM EST

former colonel Bui Tin who served on the general staff of the North Vietnamese Army and received the unconditional surrender of South Vietnam on April 30, 1975 confirmed the American Tet 1968 military victory: "Our loses were staggering and a complete surprise. Giap later told me that Tet had been a military defeat...

And does this spell "surge?"

If Johnson had granted Westmoreland's requests to enter Laos and block the Ho Chi Minh trail, Hanoi could not have won the war.... it was the only way to bring sufficient military power to bear on the fighting in the South.

If they were listening then, do you think our enemies are listening now??

And the left: "Support for the war from our rear was completely secure while the American rear was vulnerable. Every day our leadership would listen to world news over the radio at 9AM to follow the growth of the antiwar movement.
Visits to Hanoi by Jane Fonda and former Attorney General Ramsey
Clark and ministers gave us confidence that we should hold on in the face of battlefield reverses. We were elated when Jane Fonda, wearing a red Vietnamese dress, said at a press conference that she was ashamed of American actions in the war

From the horse's mouth....


: ppj's already made it clear (5.00 / 1) (#47)
by jondee on Sat Aug 25, 2007 at 01:40:54 PM EST

that facts are silly things that get in the way of his John Birch fever dreams. For three years he told everyone here that he had access to Gen Giaps (apparently unpublished) memoirs, and after being conclusivly proven to be clinically delusional, he's now switched the characters in the delusion while leaving the substance intact. He keeps redoubling the effort even though the goal receded forty years ago. And to think, but for rectal cyst here, a game knee there, not to mention "other priorities" and champagne units, he, Sean, Rush, Shrub & Co might have gone and made all the difference.

: You make my point beautifully (5.00 / 1) (#50)
by tnthorpe on Sun Aug 26, 2007 at 09:24:58 PM EST

I guess you need reminding that the TET offensive was mounted by an enemy that had several times been declared essentially defeated.
You trot out the usual banal talking points: questioning the morality of an illegal war aids the enemy, expanding the war would have ended it sooner. YAWN. You forgot about how we need to fight them there so that we don't fight them here. Did you forget the domino theory or is that the coup de grace?
Pick up a copy of Mike Herr's Dispatches for a reality check.
Or look at the photobook Requiem, composed of photos from photographers who died in the conflict. Some good opening material there by people who were there. Pick up a copy of FOG OF WAR. There's really no reason to be uninformed.
From the annals of stale war rhetoric:
Lyndon Johnson, Oct. 1964
We are not about to send American boys nine or ten thousand miles away from home to do what Asian boys ought to be doing for themselves.
Ronald Reagan, 1964
We are at war with the most dangerous enemy that has ever faced mankind in his long climb from the swamp to the stars, and it has been said if we lose that war, and in so doing lose this way of freedom of ours, history will record with the greatest astonishment that those who had the most to lose did the least to prevent its happening.
Lyndon B. Johnson, 1964
This is not a jungle war, but a struggle for freedom on every front of human activity.
Ronald Reagan, interview, Fresno Bee, October 10, 1965.
It's silly talking about how many years we will have to spend in the jungles of Vietnam when we could pave the whole country and put parking stripes on it and still be home for Christmas.
----------------------------------
Jeane Kirkpatrick, 1979
Vietnam presumably taught us that the United States could not serve as the world's policeman; it should also have taught us the dangers of trying to be the world's midwife to democracy when the birth is scheduled to take place under conditions of guerrilla war.
Just what was it we learned there?

Vietnam's response..... (5.00 / 2) (#6)
by kdog on Thu Aug 23, 2007 at 02:14:10 PM EST

The foreign minister says fighting US aggression during the Vietnam war was a just cause...and I'm inclined to agree with him.

When I was in Vietnam in January 2006, (5.00 / 1) (#12)
by oculus on Thu Aug 23, 2007 at 03:11:16 PM EST

the tourist guide sd. much the same thing; Vietnam has been invaded so many times and just wants to get along at present.


"the tourist guide sd. much the same thing (1.00 / 0) (#26)
by jimakaPPJ on Thu Aug 23, 2007 at 10:54:46 PM EST

With a reference like that the issue just has to be settled...

BTW - How old was the tourist guide?

Pardon the sarcasm...


That was sarcasm? About 35, (5.00 / 1) (#31)
by oculus on Fri Aug 24, 2007 at 12:38:46 AM EST

universityh degree, married, with one child.


Some more (1.00 / 1) (#43)
by jimakaPPJ on Sat Aug 25, 2007 at 12:44:29 PM EST

So we have a college educated "tour guide" who most likely was born after the killings and camps spouting the party line.

Now that's a surprise. Yes. Uh Huh

And that's more sarcasm.


So you were there during the killings (5.00 / 0) (#45)
by Militarytracy on Sat Aug 25, 2007 at 01:23:26 PM EST

and the camps? I thought you were Navy and that usually means ship and big ocean not rice paddies?


: Jim wanted to be there (5.00 / 2) (#48)
by jondee on Sat Aug 25, 2007 at 01:44:38 PM EST

but his rectal cysts hadnt healed yet.

I love you (none / 0) (#35)
by Militarytracy on Fri Aug 24, 2007 at 08:22:50 AM EST

I forget. How do you make a "heart" (none / 0) (#40)
by oculus on Fri Aug 24, 2007 at 01:43:26 PM EST

on the internet?


: heart (5.00 / 2) (#41)
by Peaches on Fri Aug 24, 2007 at 02:30:47 PM EST

♥

: The kids do this <3 (none / 0) (#42)
by Militarytracy on Sat Aug 25, 2007 at 11:57:31 AM EST

Worried (5.00 / 1) (#8)
by RickTaylor on Thu Aug 23, 2007 at 02:47:38 PM EST

I am flabbergasted that Bush has taken the debate in this direction. I like to think that it's a loosing proposition for him, that only a minority of Americans believe we should have kept fighting in Vietnam, and far more will be horrified, but I've been wrong so many times about public opinion, I just don't know. For another point of view, look here:

http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/08/23/3352/

--Rick Taylor

: A scary thought... an Obama or Clinton presidency. (5.00 / 1) (#33)
by dutchfox on Fri Aug 24, 2007 at 07:06:48 AM EST

Edger has had a diary up on Talk Left for a while, and cites Chernus take a look: George W. Obama or Hillary R. Bush?

You are being played again.
They are counting on getting your vote by default, because they know that people are afraid that if they DON'T vote Democratic EVEN if the Democrats will not end the occupation they will end up with the rethugs back in power.
Remember all the fearmongering that Bushco did? The Democrats are now using it against you.
BUT, if they are elected next year in spite of that fact that they continue the occupation... WHAT DIFFERENCE is there between them and the rethugs?
What difference? NONE. It won't be any different from electing rethugs.
In other words by electing the Democrats next year out of fear of the rethugs, even if the Democrats won't end the occupation, EFFECTIVELY the country will have re-elected rethugs (called democrats).

As former Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney of Georgia, speaking in Burlington last night, said, "Follow the money," and look at the policies.
The Greens are courting her to run in 2008. From her pre-Vermont event interview --

S[even]Days]: How would you describe the state of the Democratic Party today?
C[ynthia]M[cKinney]: The Democratic Party has left many of its voters behind.
SD: The Republican Party?
CM: The Republican Party has left many of its voters behind.
SD: What is your view on the role of third-party politics?
CM: I'm given the example of the Abolitionist Party that didn't win a single election but was right on the issue of slavery and affected the course of American politics for the better. Not many people at the time would have associated themselves with such a movement; of course that doesn't mean that the abolitionist movement wasn't necessary, and it certainly was right...
SD: Speaking of Bush, is there one word you would use to describe him?
CM: Impeachable.
SD: How do you feel he has handled the Iraq war?
CM: His first mistake was starting it.
SD: What would you have done differently?
CM: I would have changed the name and mission of the Department of State to the Department of Peace and eliminated war as any viable option for U.S. planners. The role and the mission of the Pentagon would change, too, for the promotion of our country as a responsible global partner and the peaceful protection of U.S. interests around the world. I would stop arms transfers and I would respect democratic elections. It is not just the Iraq war that Bush has mishandled. It is the American people and the legacy of our great country that has been mishandled by this presidency.
I used to be an active Democratic Party supporter, but now I'm a Green... the only viable peace party (the Dems are just as warmongering as the Rethugs.)

: Does the Professor have kids? Bills? A car? (none / 0) (#19)
by Ellie on Thu Aug 23, 2007 at 04:49:06 PM EST

People are reminded daily of what this war is costing them. Our lives aren't some abstract that can be X/Y'd into a media effectiveness equation.
I don't have kids but I do have family responsibilities -- towards elders and part guardianship of minors -- and daily the elective, needless war asserts itself into our dealings.
Any time we go over our finances we're stunned at what's being added to the continually increasing weight of burdens already there -- while the Bush-Cheney croney corporate and theofascist looters stuff their pockets -- by the Chickenhawk madmen in the Exec Branch and their feeble minded enablers.

Those Pesky Iraqis (5.00 / 2) (#32)
by dutchfox on Fri Aug 24, 2007 at 06:49:36 AM EST

Robert Fisk -

Always, we have betrayed them. We backed "Flossy" in Yemen. The French backed their local "harkis" in Algeria; then the FLN victory forced them to swallow their own French military medals before dispatching them into mass graves. In Vietnam, the Americans demanded democracy and, one by one - after praising the Vietnamese for voting under fire in so many cities, towns and villages - they destroyed the elected prime ministers because they were not abiding by American orders.
Now we are at work in Iraq. Those pesky Iraqis don't deserve our sacrifice, it seems, because their elected leaders are not doing what we want them to do...
And now, get rid of Maliki. Chap doesn't know how to unify his own people, for God's sake. No interference, of course. It's up to the Iraqis, or at least, it's up to the Iraqis who live under American protection in the green zone. The word in the Middle East - where the "plot" (al-moammarer) has the power of reality - is that Maliki's cosy trips to Tehran and Damascus these past two weeks have been the final straw for the fantasists in Washington. Because Iran and Syria are part of the axis of evil or the cradle of evil or whatever nonsense Bush and his cohorts and the Israelis dream up, take a look at the $30bn in arms heading to Israel in the next decade in the cause of "peace".

Robert Fisk: The Iraqis don't deserve us. So we betray them...
Published: 23 August 2007 in The Independent

: Nice catch, Dutch. (none / 0) (#34)
by Edger on Fri Aug 24, 2007 at 07:26:32 AM EST

That's really what it comes down to, isn't it? Slavery. The neocons think that they "own" the Iraqis:
These creatures - let us use the right word - belong to us and thus we can step on them when we wish.

Blame others narative (none / 0) (#20)
by koshembos on Thu Aug 23, 2007 at 07:23:16 PM EST

By comparing Iraq to Vietnam Bush has signaled the opening of the blame game. Of course, he wants to blame the Democrats for the Iraqi disaster similarly to the still widely practiced, 40 years later, blaming the Democrats for Vietnam.

There several minor one should notice.

First: the Democrats started the war in Vietnam and the Republican tailed it out. Iraq is a solo Republican disaster with no Democratic participation and an almost unanimous condemnation of the rest of the world.

Second: In both cases the majority of Americans were eventually against the war.

Third: the Democrats never paid a heavy toll for the blame for losing the war. the blame play big in the Republican base. The blame became quite enigmatic as time passed and for people of ages 20-40 it looks bizarre.

Fourth: The Republican party operates on blame and hate; this is not going to change. (It doesn't mean that Democrats don't have to improve their counter punching skill.) The hate for Hillary Clinton in the Republican dump is one of the best example for development of hatred for hatred's sake. After all, she wasn't even the VP.

Fifth: Bush is raising the white flag in Iraq. We should say and shout it loudly and force immediate withdrawal.

: kosh (1.00 / 1) (#24)
by jimakaPPJ on Thu Aug 23, 2007 at 10:49:41 PM EST

no Democratic participation and an almost unanimous condemnation of the rest of the world
If you like I can give you about 10 quotes by Demo "leaders" all calling for Saddam's head on a spear.
That won't go away, no matter how hard you try, and no matter how often you claim "Bush lied." Nonsense like that plays great on the blogs, but is meaningless, actually hurtful, out in the real world.
Some Demos understand what the Left and what is left of the Demo leadership does not. Both sides got us in there and if things fall apart after we leave, as they did in Vietnam, you have just selected another 8, maybe 12 years of the Repubs.