March 22, 2006

A comparison between Iraq and Vietnam the left won't like.

Jim Simpson recalls certain undeniable realities about our noble military effort in Vietnam years ago and sees parallels with Iraq today:

For in some key aspects, OIF has become another Vietnam.

As with Vietnam, we are winning the war on the ground. But, as with Vietnam, the national Democrat Party works relentlessly to sabotage the war effort. As with Vietnam, the national news media lies, obfuscates and misinforms. As with Vietnam, failure may be the consequence.
Check out Frank Snepp's excellent book, Decent Interval, for the story on how Congress snatched defeat from the jaws of victory in Vietnam.

"Vietnam redux." Jim Simpson, Truth & Consequences, 3/20/06.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

We are loosing in Iraq, just like we did in Vietnam. Killing over 3 million Vietnamese does not mean we were winning. Killing nearly 53,000 young men in Vietnam is not "winning" Get your facts straight.

Col. B. Bunny said...

Dear Anonymous,

Actually, the military situation is well in hand. U.S. casualties are down to about one a day. (Feel free to make your case that even one death in Iraq is too much. That would establish your creds as a military analysts overnight.)

Read the mayor's letter for a native Iraq opinion about how well our troops do. And what they do.

Note also that something like 16 of the 18 provinces of Iraq are essentially quiet, according to a U.S. military officer in Iraq. Only Baghdad and a few other limited locales are responsible for the carnage the MSM love to focus on.

Alas, I cannot lay my hand on his comments, though I doubt any facts reported by the troops would persuade you of anything.

The presence of dust in Iraq, maybe.

I'll update this comment if I can find the actual quote of that officer.

Iraq now primarily now poses a problem of policing. There is no large-scale, organized opposition and not even a squad of al Qaida frutcakes can stick their heads above ground for longer than 20 minutes at a time. (Ok. Slight exaggeration.) All they can do is fight a mine and booby trap war, not to mention cut the throat of the occasional naive Western "peace" activitist. They still have a sting, but more of them go down each time they employ it than of us. (You are an "us" aren't you?)

If you read Snepp's book you'll learn that the North Vietnamese were extremely wary of the destructive capabilities of U.S. forces. Gen. Giap's final foray was approved by the Politburo with considerable anxiety about whether Pres. Nixon would unleash the bombers in retaliation. His was to be only a tentative foray across the border and he was to withdraw in the event of an American reaction. Count it as part of the terrible price we paid as a nation for our little spasm about Watergate that Nixon was hamstrung politically and did not order the strikes that would have sent Giap back home.

I'm sure you know about how Congress voted to cut of military aid to S. Vietnam. One more gift from the treasonous left of the time. It's trying to get traction 30 years down the road but those hippy freaks aren't making as much headway as before. Gosh. I WISH I could be more respectful of them.

Three cheers for the blogosphere.

Given this sad national experience with subversion at home and a precipitous and unnecessary abandonment of our S. Vietnamese allies, wouldn't you want to be especially careful that you don't support a similar miscalculation?

Just asking.

Heavy casualties are the purpose of military operations. The mistake in Vietnam was that Johnson and Nixon did not unleash the full power of the military to create more of them and instead imposed arbitrary and one-sided bombing halts.

Was losing 400,000 troops in WWII not "winning" in your view?

With thinking people like you solidly behind the war effort we'll have this wrapped up in no time. If you're frustrated, I know it's only because the truth doesn't come out in the MSM and the all out attack on Iran hasn't taken place yet. I'm with you on that one, Anonymous.

It's spelled "losing," by the way.

Jim Simpson said...

You can always tell when a leftist is talking 1. because his arguments make no sense, they are just gratuitous insults and 2. he doesn't have the guts to identify himself.

Anonymous, you tongue chewing, gutless twit! By your logic, our victory in WW II was a titanic failure because we lost about 1/2 million men and the Germans, Japs and Russians lost countless millions.

So I don't even have to go into the facts of the situation in Vietnam, like how we had wiped out the VC infrastructure throughout the South, how we had reclaimed the vast majority of RVN from the communists, or how the ARVN army was doing a standup job of defeating the communists as long as they had our promised air support.

It was your gutless, treasonous, two-faced Democrat heroes in Congress who forced our military to stand down, and forced our country to betray its South Vietnamese ally after giving its word to provide needed air support, that led to the communist victory in South Vietnam and the subsequent mass murder of millions of Vietnamese, a genocide that continues to this very day in the relentless persecution of the Montagnards.

So don't talk about our 53,000 deaths as being a measure of failure! Recognize that it was your Leftist lovers who betrayed both South Vietnam and our country, and rendered pointless the valiant blood sacrifices of our fighting forces.

Tell a Vietnam Veteran that 53,000 US Servicemen's deaths are a measure of their failure in Vietnam, and report back to me what he says. That is, if you live to talk about it, you putz!

Jim Simpson