'Stupid is as stupid does' in Vietnam and Afghanistan

American Thinker ^ | 18 Aug, 2021 | R.W. Trewyn

[MtnClimber]

The scenarios leading to the outcomes in Vietnam and Afghanistan are different, but the cabbage-level I.Q. causes are the same.

Yes, Forrest Gump's "stupid is as stupid does" sums it up. So does "someone with the I.Q. of a cabbage could have predicted the outcome" that I used recently to describe the mentality it takes to defund the police. The consequences for South Vietnam and Indochina are known but have been ignored; they didn't fit the preferred political narrative. However, those results decades ago are important to gauge the human costs on Afghanistan's horizon.

In Afghanistan, the crimes against humanity could hit a new high, AKA low. Sharia law won't be kind to the vanquished, and women will suffer unimaginably. Taliban "justice" is ugly at best, horrific more often.

The scenarios leading to the outcomes in Vietnam and Afghanistan are different, but the cabbage-level I.Q. causes are the same. One reason the resulting horrors of the former are not well remembered is that the media conveniently glossed over them back then. They cast America and American warfighters as the problem.

Being proud of my combat service in Vietnam, I take the communist victory and outcomes personally, for myself and my 58,000-plus brothers and eight sisters who died. The Vietnam War wasn't lost on the battlefield; it was lost in Washington.

The last combat troops left Vietnam March 29, 1973. It wasn't until March 1975 that North Vietnam mounted the final offensive against South Vietnam. That makes it very different from Afghanistan. However, the end came quickly — April 1975 — which is why the analogies are being drawn today.

[MtnClimber]

C’mon man, the Taliban...they are not bad folks!

[HartleyMBaldwin]

And they promised they’d be nice.

[Vendome]