Just because the pleasure machine would have gone on strike? (Barbella reference for all one to young to have seen it?
Posted on 12/04/2005 12:13:09 AM PST by Hadean
On June 8, 1969, President Richard M. Nixon announced the withdrawal of 25,000 American troops from Vietnam. Within the next few months, he would declare that tens of thousands more were coming home. "He was reluctant to withdraw," says John Mueller, a political scientist at Ohio State University and the author of several books on war and public opinion, "but he kept being pushed by politics."
Nixon recognized that, without U.S. military support, the government of South Vietnam would fall to the communist insurgency, and he believed that such a fall would represent a humiliating and costly defeat for the United States. "But Nixon realized that his approval ratings would slip fast unless he made progress in bringing the boys home," writes Stanley Karnow in "Vietnam: A History." American officials searching for a "breaking point" in Vietnam had found one, but what had broken was not the insurgency. It was U.S. public opinion: Americans no longer believed the war was worth it.
President Bush may not know it yet -- or, then again, he may -- but in Iraq he is about to do a Nixon. Psychologically and politically, the withdrawal phase has already begun. Militarily, the pullback will start within weeks, or at most months, of the Dec. 15 Iraqi parliamentary elections.
How can I be sure? I'm not, and I have no inside information. But the evolving structure of public opinion about Iraq is making the current war effort there unsustainable.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
I don't know how old this reporter is, but this analysis reminds me of some of the analysis I saw during the 2000 election campaign.
Lots of 20 or 30 something journalists imagining that Dims winning presidential elections is the normal state of nature and not knowing a thing about the recent history of US presidential elections an the GOP electoral college advantage.
Similarly I read the same people claiming FL is a toss up state despite having a second term GOP govenor, a GOP Attorney General, the more recently elected Senator being a member of the GOP etc. If 5 out of 6 of your statewide elected officials are from the GOP, your legislature is controlled by the GOP, then it is a red state in my book even if only by a slight consistent majority.
A big "Duh" to the author! 38,000 troops were added just for the elections, and the plan all along has been to pull them out after the elections.
Had Watergate never happened, President Nixon would have been able to respond to the April 1975 NVA invasion of South Vietnam with American Airpower in support of the ARVN, as well as emergency infusions of economic aid to bolster the Thieu government (and, incidentally, he would've served out his full term).
For want of a nail...
Even given all of that (the things that didn't happen when they should've), Nixon still had the Vietnam War won. It was the Democrats in Congress and the liberals in the media who lost it--and well after Nixon left office.
They know we will finish the job in Iraq, but that to make it permanent we must enter Syrian, and probably Lebanon.
Look at a map - we would be on, or have at least a nominal ally on, every border of Iran.
The real objective is to divert ANY discussion or possiblity of what might come after Iraq.
Our campaign, one of the most spectacularly successful in history, as it liberated 25 million people while removing a threat to the world who systematically exterminated hundreds of thousands of its own people, is winding down as planned after meeting almost every individual goal, while directly causing other events of incalculable benefit to the future of the world such as the disarming of Libya's WMD and the renewed cooperation of the Saudis, and this moron is comparing it to VietNam?
We're helping people who want our help learn to defend themselves against evil, and as they step up we can move out. That's always been the plan, it's working, and we're sticking to it. Both history and current events prove that this plan has been prolonged by those on the left who are more concerned with their political stature than the lives of our servicemen and the safety of our citizens, nonetheless, the plan has succeeded, and it is too late for them to stop it.
Because he did the right thing, making us a prouder, stronger country, and because he stuck to his guns, George W Bush will go down in history as one of our country's greatest presidents, and there's not a thing the Rats or the LSM can do about it.
What?! Hell, Nixon ran his campaign on withdrawing from Vietnam.
He was only more than happy to take credit for getting the US out of a mess that the dummies got us into.
Isn't "Rauch" the sound you make when you puke?
the comPost and the National sewerView at their best:
subsidiaries of the al queda propoganda division.
And the freeper dictionary continues to grow.
Libs make me want to rauch!!
"barf alert" = "rauch alert"
Iraq is only one front of the GWOT... Of course the MSM does not get it... neither do the Defeatacrats. "This War" will last for many years possibly decades. If we do not fight it to the end and win then it will be the end of the United States as we enjoy it today.
Hog Wash!
<< This author is more than just delusional, he's writing what he wants to happen and since it's in black and white, imagines that that will make it so. >>
Oh, he's delusional all right.
And demonstrating Classic Liberal Projection Syndrome.
Pretty much the Liberal Psychosis's definitive symptom.
And then there's Classic Liberal Denial Syndrome.
Another symptom of the same underlying mental disorder.
And required to forgetting the abjectly corrupt war-profiteering "Democrat" presidents whose war Vietnam was.
And to forgetting the seditious, subversive and treasonous Kerry/Fonda/Cronkite/Rather et al led mis-and-dis-information brigades that brainwashed a craven ["Democrat"] congress into cutting off funding and South Vietnamese Aid in the middle of the "Democrats'" very own war.
The WOT is NOT Vietnam. No matter how the spinners spin it, this is far more like WWII.
Yet, the editors of TWP go ahead and print this.
The dems have realized that success in Iraq will have huge and lastinbg consequenses for them. They have bet the farm on failure.
I agree they will try to take "shameless political advantage", but only for the troop drawdown, not a "bug out".
I think the "Murtha Offensive" was a TET Offensive type move by the Dems and their MSM allies. But in 2005, the MSM no longer comes close to holding the position of respect it held in 1968, and now we have the internet as a counter-weight to their lies and left-wing propaganda. Their present day Cronkites have been exposed for the biased, left-wing liars they are. And, not to be minimized, we have the TET offensive as an example of what the MSM did and what not to do again. The unexpected forcing of a vote with a 403-3 result was the knockdown counter-punch that ends any realistic possibility of a "bug out". And the Dems, if not the MSM, know it. As long as there is continued growth of the Iraqi military, progress in democratization, and the absence of huge inflow of foreign fighters to Iraq, the 403-3 vote defeats the "bug out" crowd. It was THAT BIG! It is just that most people don't think about it that way because the MSM doesn't want you to think that way. It was an important, "turning point" vote, minimized (even now) by the MSM, who, along with their Dem buddies are ashamed at being caught by the surprise counter-punch.
At this point, the only thing the Dems and their MSM buddies will do is keep talking about pulling troops out, which they know is going to happen anyway. And they will talk about how all the "pressure for a troop drawdown" is getting to Bush, and how his poll numbers going lower. And how Bush will be forced to react. Then, when the drawdowns happen, they will try to take credit for it. They, and their MSM buddies, will shamelessy lie, for political advantage, and say they forced Bush to do it. We all know that is coming, don't we? The MSM media knows it too. But they will not discuss the Dem plan, because they are the propaganda arm of the Dems.
This is historically incorrect and Mueller(sp?) is wrong. The Vietnam war was decisively won in 1973 by American and South Vietnamese troops. Nixon ordered overdue bombings on Hanoi and Cambodian safe havens and forced the North Vietnamese to the table and KEPT them there as they tried the tactics that had worked on Dem policy wonks and "ambassadors" for years. They signed that treaty with all those demands that favored the US and South Vietnam.
The South Vietnamese army fought on and did a good job and would have maintained the sovereignty of South Vietnam if NOT FOR dem pols, anti-war leftists and a complicite media who saw to it that the reps were hamstrung and the South Vietnamese left twisting in the wind without aid and replacement parts for their warfighting equipment as promised.
We didn't "withdraw" from South Vietnam as the left would have you believe- we LEFT, and left a military force that COULD have protected its country and maintained its government if ONLY the dems hads kept our promises. They were far more determined that the Communists should win in Vietnam and they got their wish. They want to do the same to Iraq.
It is on US to make sure that the dems do NOT win this one and it is on US to make sure we hold them accountable to the damage they have done throughOUT their history- from slavery to fighting civil rights to Vietnam to Iraq One to the cut and run they want us to do NOW.
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