Hitchens: "Vietnam Syndrome, Again"

I find it a very good editorial, but not a great one.

Hitchens is IMHO wrong on Vietnam and Reagan was right. It *was* a noble cause, but it was horribly executed and carried out, so our many opportunities to win were frittered away, and we lost a war we could have easily won had we had a vision and strategy for victory.

"The noble cause, rather, had been the movement of resistance to it: almost the only case in history when an unjust war had been stopped largely by civilian dissent."

I'd say the dissent was not justified, but the idea that wars can be stopped is indeed a useful tonic to excessive militarism.

Hitchens is right that Iraq and Vietnam are totally different. Mankind has had thousands of wars, why do the Democrats reach back to one single war as their only template of 'war' to work from?

"Sooner or later, Sen. John Kerry is going to have to say which he thought was the noble cause: the war or the antiwar movement." Indeed! Kerry cant have it both ways, either on Vietnam or on Iraq. Happy warrior or happy anti-war activist. Which is it?
The Winter Soldier allegations were mostly false, not mostly true, btw, but I dont think Hitchens (nor Kerry) want to revisit that to see where the truth is, because it exposes the anti-war activists as scam artists in the extreme.

There's something creepy about the Democratic decision to hail the heroes of Vietnam, from Kerry to Clark, and to denigrate the extraordinary effort being made to salvage Iraq and to pursue and kill people who really are...the common enemies of humanity.

Kitchens is right.

Heh Heh Heh ....

Maybe if Mr Hitchens ever sobers up he'll cease his cynicism, recover from the liberal psychosis, quit the permanently and pathologically-infantile lunatic left and join us and our Forces for Good.

God knows he has the intelligence for it!

Blessings -- Brian

OK column, but I have serious questions about two of its pieces.

I remember those "Winter Soldier" hearings very well, and as far as I'm aware the charges made against the U.S. Army in Vietnam were substantially true, even if some of them were laid by shady and suspect characters.

to denigrate the extraordinary effort being made to salvage Iraq and to pursue and kill people who really are, unlike the Viet Cong, the common enemies of humanity.

However, if the average in the field was tolerance for rape, torture, mass killing, and a depraved indifference to human life, what becomes of the "band of brothers"?

Well, I certainly do NOT agree with that statement.

Hitchens is despicable for not acknowledging the slaughter in Viet Nam, Cambodia and Laos due to our 'failure of will' in Viet Nam. And he's double-despicable for suggesting that Kerry's lying testimony to Congress describing the U.S. military as slaughtering, raping Huns is remotely true.

But Hitchens is right about the two-faced, lying Democrats trying to paint themselves as patriotic warriors and George Bush as a traitor.

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