The Truth Hurts (Viet Nam-Sudetenland Redux)

Investor's Business Daily ^ | 1 September 2006 | Staff

[shrinkermd]

Speaking before the American Legion convention this week, the secretary of defense aptly dared to compare the voices of today’s critics of the war on terror and our policies toward Iran and North Korea with the sentiment that took root in the 1930s. To wit: “If only the growing threats that had begun to emerge in Europe and Asia could be appeased,” a repeat of World War I could be avoided. He also observed that our “mainstream” media (and their Democratic allies, we might add) ignore the successes of Iraqi democracy, focusing instead on body counts and car bombs, on what we need to do to leave and not what we need to do to win. sir.

[shrinkermd]

The past, may indeed, be prologue. I really liked this:

"... Starting at dawn on Saturday, March, 7, 1936, Hitler ordered three battalions of the German army to cross the Rhine bridges into an area of Germany demilitarized by the Treaty of Versailles ending World War I. The British and French did nothing.

Later Hitler would admit: “The 48 hours after the march into the Rhineland were the most nerveracking in my life. If the French had marched into the Rhineland, we would have had to withdraw with our tails between our legs, for the military resources at our disposal would have been wholly inadequate for even a moderate resistance.”

We face a similar choice today. We can stand and resist or we can cower and appease. As John Stuart Mill once observed: “War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things. The decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is worth war is worse.”

If only we had talked with Saddam Hussein. If only we had let sanctions work. If only we talk to Hezbollah, to Iran, to Syria, to Kim Jong Il. Iran and North Korea need just a few more incentives.

Let’s hope that someday we won’t be looking at the rubble of a U.S. city, saying, “If only we had listened to Donald Rumsfeld....”

[shrinkermd]

In respect to Viet Nam:

"...One lesson of Vietnam is the role U.S. media played in snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. Unable to win a single engagement on the battlefield against U.S. forces, the North Vietnamese strategy was essentially to bombard the American people with graphic images of war and violence and break our will..."

[HawaiianGecko]

The left is fond of comparing Iraq to Vietnam. A war where the U.S. didn't lose a single battle. A war that included the Tet offensive that the left and uncle Walter proclaimed as proof of U.S. foolishness, even though General Giap himself says that it was the most resounding failure of his career.

You'd think that the left would at the least allow for a comparison of a war on terror that has already involved half of the planet to be compared to a 'World War.'

[Mike Darancette]

In WWI and WWII the United States came to the Aid of an embattled Europe. Who would come to the Aid of the United states.

[MinstrelBoy]

In other words: we never lost a battle, we just up and quit.