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Free online version of
Kerry's "The New Soldier"
You can read it online right now.
Posted on 10/02/2004 5:09:03 PM PDT by lancer
JOHN KERRY is famously hard to pin down; you can reach out to grasp his opinion only to find that it has flitted away like a bashful butterfly, or a goldfish you are trying to catch with your bare hands. But nowadays his pronouncements and campaign ads are easy to read. They suggest that Iraq is like Vietnam; that our top priority is accordingly not to win but to get out. John Kerry evidently believes, a propos Vietnam, that we should have run away sooner. Many Americans disagree. Many Americans believe that we should have stood by our friends until a free and stable South Vietnam had taken root.
What is the "lesson of Vietnam"? It's a hard question, in a way; virtually all Americans agree that Vietnam was a tragedy and a national humiliation--and, at least during the years when William Westmoreland was in command, a badly fought war. Kerry seems to believe that these propositions lead to only one possible conclusion. By shouting "Vietnam!" he thinks he can induce desperation and make Americans turn in horror to the Democrats begging for relief, begging to be pulled out of this awful quagmire. His mistake is something like Abu Musab al Zarqawi's. I don't say Kerry is like Zarqawi, of course not. But Zarqawi believes that by committing barbarities on videotape, he has made Americans tremble with fear; in fact we are trembling with rage. (And someday this mistake will be vividly brought home to him.) Kerry believes that by saying "we are facing another Vietnam," he can frighten people; and some Americans will indeed be frightened. Far more will say: If this be Vietnam, make the most of it. Let's do it right this time.
President Bush should announce: You want to talk Vietnam? Fine, let's talk. Kerry believes that Iraq is turning into a Vietnam-like "quagmire"; the assertion is false, and it's important that voters know why it is false. But there is a more important, deeper-lying disagreement under the surface. Bush obviously stands with the large contingent of Americans who are determined that, if we ever did face another Vietnam, never again would we pull out in a headlong rush and leave our allies sinking in the mud, clutching at our helicopter skids as we fly away, with the wreck of the new and better nation we had tried to build collapsing around their heads. Never again will we treat America's trustworthiness and honor, and the hopes of our friends, and the blood-sacrifices of our soldiers, like bad debts to be written off with a shudder.
We fought in South Vietnam to protect that country from a torrent of Communist evil threatening to roll down from the North. I suppose not many Americans remember the details. But surely a fair number do remember how Congress concluded that Vietnam was a quagmire, a mistake, the wrong war at the wrong time. Whereupon it refused to vote any more money for the war, not one more cent; whereupon we pulled out in a gathering panic, and South Vietnam fell to the invading tanks of the North. Then the picture goes blank. Totalitarian regimes don't like network cameramen advertising the little clean-up that invariably accompanies the establishment of a brand new absolute dictatorship. But many Americans surely recall that, after we ran away, something awful happened. The evil rolled down in a flood. Huge numbers put to sea in rickety rowboats. Cambodia fell to the Khmer Rouge and its bosses, a group of French-trained Communist intellectuals who created a virtually indescribable hell-on-earth. Millions died.
The truth about Communist South Vietnam leaked out gradually. Hundreds of thousands were executed; many more were thrown into "reeducation" camps--estimates range from a few hundred thousand to over a million inmates. "What Vietnam has given us," wrote Tom Wicker of the New York Times after the Communist victory, is "a vast tide of human misery in Southeast Asia." Two sentences convey more about the regime's character than a page of statistics. In Why We Were in Vietnam, Norman Podhoretz quotes Doan Van Toai, a political prisoner jailed by the Communists after we left and they triumphed. "I was thrown into a three-foot-by-six-foot cell with my left hand chained to my right foot and my right hand chained to my left foot. My food was rice mixed with sand." There in two sentences is the reason we were right to fight and wrong to run. Americans have good cause to reject John Kerry's suggestion that, if Iraq is like Vietnam, getting out is our number one priority. If it is truly like Vietnam, all the more reason to fight relentlessly and to think of victory, only victory, until the enemy has been beaten to bits. Americans want to erase the worst national humiliation we have ever suffered, not recreate it.
But Iraq is not like Vietnam. We control most of the country. A strong and able Iraqi government fights alongside us. The enemy has no phony romantic aura bearing it up, wafting it along; Jane Fonda has failed to materialize in Falluja. (At least, as this magazine goes to press.) But there is something to the Vietnam analogy. Thanks to Vietnam we now understand how a credulous press corps can turn a massive enemy defeat into a first-class victory. At the end of January 1968, the North Vietnamese and the (indigenous-to-the-South) Vietcong launched attacks throughout the South, known as the Tet offensive. They failed disastrously. The attackers suffered more than 40,000 casualties; the Vietcong were virtually wiped out. "Intended to destroy South Vietnamese officialdom and spark a popular uprising," writes Derek Leebaert, "Tet ironically had more of an effect in turning South Vietnam's people against the North." But the press reported Tet as a smashing Communist victory.
The Tet offensive could happen all over again in Iraq any day now. Merely defeating the enemy won't be enough. A widespread attack might be thrown back, might fail to provoke the Sunni or Shiite uprising it was supposed to--and might nonetheless be reported (just by accident, you understand) as a devastating American defeat. It's not enough for America to win battles; the world must know that we have won. This time we will be on our guard--I hope. It is reassuring to reflect that, since Vietnam, the mainstream, prestige press has gradually managed to destroy its believability inch by inch. A spectacular reversal of fortunes: Nowadays when the press fires belligerent, obnoxious questions at dignified military spokesmen, people root for the military spokesmen! The credit for this transformation must be shared equally between the military and the reporters.
Obviously no one wants a quagmire. No one wants to sacrifice American lives to prove a point. Our duty in Iraq is to win fast, make sure the country is safe, and get out. We have a huge preponderance of power, and therefore we win by fighting; the enemy wins by waiting. We need to engage the enemy and win.
Every combat death we sustain is a tragedy. All Americans mourn every one. Nonetheless: A long fight wins a different sort of victory than a short fight, a victory that costs more and is ultimately worth more. "What you have achieved," Wittgenstein wrote, "cannot mean more to others than it does to you. Whatever it has cost you, that's what they will pay." Iraq has cost us plenty, but the payment hasn't been made in vain. We have already gone far towards silencing the post-Vietnam slander that says America is physically tough but mentally and spiritually weak. We have gone far towards recouping a certain kind of credibility we lost in Vietnam--and American credibility is a precious substance; it can save lives by the million. If we had the credibility (or magic power) to tell the regime of North Korea, Iran, or the Sudan: Clean up your act or be crushed by American power, get to it, hop!--millions would rejoice. And Americans know it.
And so if Kerry should succeed in convincing this nation that Iraq today resembles Vietnam circa 1968, he will discover that America today bears scant resemblance to itself circa 1968. Kerry may have learned nothing from Vietnam, but America has learned plenty.
© Copyright 2004, News Corporation, Weekly Standard, All Rights Reserved.
Kazinsky, aka the Unibomber
The left has resolved to use tbis 'lesson of Vietnam' happy crap to attempt to argumentatively preempt ANY and ALL US military action anywhere on the globe and will continue to do so unless the fallacies of its arguments are methodically and firmly The ONLY lesson that could POSSIBLY be drawn from Vietnam is - DON'T GO TO WAR IN VIETNAM -anything else is sophistry
Way back when, I protested the war. (Never the warriors, mind you. My brother is a retired Army officer who enlisted as dog chow. 1969-1993). Vietnam was a political war. I do not believe President Bush will ever allow Iraq to descend into the same kind of group madness that Vietnam inflicted on every elected and appointed government official back then. He knows what is at stake. There are no valid contrasts or comparisons between Vietnam and Iraq, in my book.
Obviously, some words were dropped, but we get the message.
bump to read, but one comment...
I continue to be irked and surprised at how Kerry keeps bringing up Vietnam. In the debate Thursday, I don't believe he said "Vietnam", but he referred to coming back from the war, and he said that he knew it was the right thing to speak out against that war. (FReepers, tell me if I'm wrong... but that's my recollection.) THIS REALLY is p#$$#g me off. He assumes that everyone in this country believes that going to Vietnam was wrong, and that he was justified in his protest thereafter. He continues to want to have it both ways - as a war hero, a protestor. No, more than that! As war hero, protestor, AND commander in chief!
He can't leave it alone. He really wears his Vietnam image as his big credential to the Oval Office. It's offensive that he thinks the rest of us should stand and salute him, much less vote for him.
-- Joe
Can someone please tell me why publications continue to pre-date their material? A major news event could happen on Oct. 4, 2004 and we wouldn't read about it until the October 18 issue.
The September 16, 2001 issues of news magazines said nothing about Sept. 11 because the magazines had really come out on Sept. 9. It doesn't make any sense to me.
Whenever I go back to check dates, I have to remember that when magazines say "last Thursday," they really mean "two Thursdays ago" from the date on their publication.
Lets face it......only loosers don't mind being loosers, Kerry is a first rate looser
But this article misses one crucial point: Why should the United States be the worlds clean-up squad? Why should we spend our lives and treasures so some benighted, half-civilized backwater of a "friend" can somehow become a jeffersonian democracy. This is a part of the world that cannot be democratized. Arab Muslims have no concept of self-governance or civil society. They worship the Strong Man, the Patriarch who rewards his friends and punishes his enemies. Call him Emir, General, Sheikh, whatever, this is the sort of ruler who inevitably rises to the top (like scum on a stagnant pond) on such societies. I certainly would not want my children to risk their lives in such a pointless endeavor.
General Westmoreland took command in Vietnam in June 1964 replacing Gen. Paul Harkins. Before one accepts that one U.S. general is to blame one should consider HR McMaster's book "Dereliction of Duty: Lyndon Johnson, Robert McNamara, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the Lies That Led to Vietnam."
This covers the time from JFK's assassination to LBJ's election as president.
One should also know that North Vietnamese Communist General Giap has praised the American press as his "most valuable guerrilla."
The attackers suffered more than 40,000 casualties; the Vietcong were virtually wiped out. "Intended to destroy South Vietnamese officialdom and spark a popular uprising," writes Derek Leebaert, "Tet ironically had more of an effect in turning South Vietnam's people against the North." But the press reported Tet as a smashing Communist victory.
See what I mean.
America today bears scant resemblance to itself circa 1968.
All adults in those days had connections to the "greatest generation" and W.W.II. Americans at home were caught flat-footed. Always before Americans could trust the press on matters of war.
What I have come to realize is that the last time the left supported America in war was indeed W.W.II after Hitler attacked their Uncle Joe's workers' paradise.
All our wars after W.W.II until now were against Communism. The left wanted Communism to win. Now the left wants, NOT defeat for us, but our humiliation. They and their foreign comrades want an end to our sovereignty and they want our military strength for themselves. IMO.
What John Kerry doesn't realize, is that this is ww3, and it's been going on for some time now.
You can't "get out". Kerry thinks that his 4 months of cowardness in 'Nam, make him able to fight a war, like he did in 'Nam. This is a different kind of war, cowards can't run away and wish it to go away.
BTTT
This is not "WW3". The Cold War may have been WW3 in slo-mo, but not this. The islamofundies want control of the middle east. Fine, who cares. The framers never intended us to be so concerned about the Old World. It is nothing but a source of grief for the United States, and there are 600,000 dead soldiers (combined losses in WWI, WWII, Korea and Vietnam) who bear witness to this. Our concern is the WESTERN Hemisphere (that is what the Monroe Doctine is about). Let the savages make their own dirt for themselves; let's worry about "buttoning up" here for our own security and the security of our neighbors. Remember, empires always fall, sooner or later.
Excellent piece by Gerlertner!
For the record, contrary to what Chronkite and the rest of the liberal MSM reported, we never lost a battle during the Viet Nam war including the Tet Offensive of 1968.
And by 1971, the communists in Viet Nam were prepared to surrender if not for the propaganda spread in America by Kerry, Fonda and their ilk.
Never Forget!
Kerry lied while good men died!
Swiftees for Truth
http://www.swiftvets.com
Semper Fi,
Kelly
If you think outside of that box, you will see that we are doing this for us, not for them. They will benefit, obviously, but we will benefit much more if the plan works: Iraq as a beacon for the rest of the Arab "backwater" may put an end to the situation you describe. A long shot with high stakes, but one worth taking I think.
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