Don't Quit as We Did in Vietnam

Weekly Standard ^ | 11/11/2003 12:00:00 AM | David Gelernter

[gcruse]

Iraq isn't Vietnam.






It's Israel.

[Democratshavenobrains]

Isn't it funny how the protestors and anti-american whiners now and then could not care LESS about the millions of South Vietnamese they condemned to death and torture? And they say Republicans are heartless?

[swilhelm73]

Well, you generally get a number of evasions from leftists in excusing leftist democide;

1) The numbers are inflated. It doesn't matter who generates the numbers - they are automatically inflated if the indict the leftist tyrant hero of the month. I've had leftists claim Amnesty is biased, for example, in what thye had to say prior to the war.

2) The people killed were really enemies of the state, guilty, former oppressors, etc.

3) It is all America's fault. Khmer Rouge's communist democide? Americas fault for bombing VC insurgents. Stalin's purges? The western democracies made the USSR feel threatened.

It all boils down, though, to the leftist notion that the ends justify the means - or as one famous leftist said "you have to break a few eggs to make an omelet".

[thoughtomator]

And so are we.

[Cicero]

Actually, Vietnamization was working very well much earlier, under Ngo Dinh Diem. But President Kennedy, a Catholic who was ashamed of his faith, felt uncomfortable with the Catholic Diem, and was persuaded that it would be better to turn the country over to the Buddhists. So he ordered the CIA to assassinate Diem. They did, and the war effort deteriorated badly after that. We had to take responsibility from the Vietnamese who had done most of the fighting earlier.

How do I know this? Because it was set out in black and white in the Pentagon Papers, published by the NY Times. Unlike most Times subscribers, I read the whole thing. Somehow the Times implied that the Pentagon Papers made Nixon a villain. Not so. They made JFK a villain. But who can expect honesty from the NY Times?

[gcruse]

Yup.

[Snuffington]

"Vietnam" is going so much faster these days. Have the number of months in Iraq so far matched the years in Vietnam yet?

[BlueElephant]

I was there during Vietnam. I lost friends due to this debacle. Yes, it was a debacle! Ask anyone who was around during that time. I don't want Iraq to turn into a "Vietnam." We have to get this under control and the paradigm of Vietnam is NOT a good example.

[gcruse]

That's what I said. Israel is a much better metaphor.

[ETERNAL WARMING]

Amen. But don't subject our men to a PC war either. If you expect them to go to war, then go to war, not play political games with their lives.

[neverdem]

Signing up on Veteran's Day. Wellcome to Free Republic, Vet. I hope you start posting articles when your comfortable. You sound like you have the attitude I like to hear. Adios

[Intolerant in NJ]

We put them in those rowboats--we antiwar demonstrators, we sophisticated, smart guys. The war was nearly over when I graduated from high school. But high school students were old enough to demonstrate. They were old enough to feel superior to the fools who were running the government. And they were old enough to have known better. They were old enough to have understood what communist regimes had cost the world in suffering, from the prisons of Havana to the death camps of Siberia...finally a bit of introspection and reality from the anti-war crowd.....

[ImpBill]

"We are haunted by the image of Vietnamese who trusted and supported us ...

"It was my fault, mine personally; I was part of the antiwar crowd and I'm sorry. But my apology is too late for the South Vietnamese dead."

Hello David Gelernter! While I agree with us not pulling out until the entire job is done in the Mid East and around the world where 3rd world despots and fanatical terrorists want to see us not just pull out but our total destruction and the collapse of "our way of life", I am not at all impressed by the quotes above.

Where is your apology for the 55,000+ American families of the dead American service men and countless of hundreds of thousands of brave young American fighting men who kept the faith while you protested. Even today in your article Mr. David Gelernter you fail to make apology nor even give any credit to those of us that kept and continue keeping the faith while you sit back in your ivory tower of American freedom and ponder the issue.

Not only am I not impressed I am quite frankly PO'd at Mr. David Gelernter's blasé approach to this subject and callous manner of the most important reason you (David Gelernter) should be apologetic concerning activities concerning the Viet Nam War, which we lost because the majority of the people at home lost the faith and stabbed those of us who didn't directly in the back.

[neverdem]

The author is also or was a professor of Computer Science at Yale.

[neverdem]

I think the author might be one of those proverbial liberals mugged by reality. Just think about how his view of the world was totally inverted by the Unabomber. He's started apologizing. He's making progress.

[BlackVeil]

You make an excellent point about the asassination of Diem. It marked an escalation, and new level of both responsibility and irresponsiblity in the Vietnam war.

I wonder if the Ayatollah Hakim was not also assassinated by the CIA. Or he could have been a victim of the Iranians (because he was a disappointment to them after he returned to Iraq) or of the Baathists (who had always intended to kill him if he returned from exile.) But the location and nature of the blast make it look very like the work of the "Company."