Posted on 04/27/2007 1:24:55 AM PDT by Cardhu
Ask Eric Shinseki if he failed. He told the armed services committee how many soldiers would be required to subdue Iraq after the initial conquest. He was pushed out as army C/S.
bingo
For the second time in a generation, the United States faces the prospect of defeat at the hands of an insurgency. In April 1975, the U.S. fled the Republic of Vietnam, abandoning our allies to their fate at the hands of North Vietnamese communists.
He has his history wrong. The last US combat troops left Vietnam in March 1973, and the last combat casualty was in January 1973. The Americans who "fled" Vietnam in April 1975 were mostly civilians and diplomats. The North Vietnamese violated the Paris Peace Acords by invading hte South. Congress had cut off funds to the South before that, despite the fact that the South Vietmanese were still fighting for almost two years without us. The WH and Congress did not respond to the North's violation of the peace agrreement. It was not an insurgency at that point.
Time and history will not be kind to Rumsfeld and some of the generals may suffer as well, but I think that on balance this country has a far better military than they deserve and they would do well to point the finger at the politicians long before they try blaming the guys in uniform.
Let the scapgoating begin. If one political party had not invested itself in defeat for domestic political advantage, I wonder how long this "insurgency" would have continued. And this "insurgency" is being fueled by AQ and terrorists. The real question is does this country have the patience and resolve to see this low-grade military conflict through to the end? It took the Brits 12 years to put down the communist insurgency in Malaysia.
Who pushed him out? I thought he retired normally at the end of his four year assignement as Chief of Staff of the United States Army. He served from 1965 to 2003 and as COS of the Army from 1999 to 2003. How much longer do you keep Generals around after 38 years of service? How long do they normally serve as COS of the Army?
Scares the hell out of me!!!! A “Light Bird” who believes his own BULLSHIT and probably always will.
ping
Duh....
American generals answer to the President.
Not sure if you realize but LTC Yingling did not say that...nor did he imply that in that article in the Armed Forces Journal. Allowing Washington Post to define the brilliance of LTC's article is dangerous stuff indeed. Washington Post injected that bit of nonsense into the article making it seem that LTC endorsed it. Shameful .
Did you read his article in the Armed Forces Journal? Had you read it you would understand why it is foolish to quibble on exactly who left Vietnam in 1975. Entire country's go to war not just the military...so the Americans leaving were in fact the last representatives of our efforts. Which did fail.
Thanks for that bit of info. Adds some important perspective.
We must be reading two different articles. I don’t see this as an anti-war screed. It’s a “sh*t or get off the pot” screed. I don’t see any calls for surrender or withdrawal, do you? His philosophy is for overwhelming force and strategic adaptation to asymetric warfare, not light-and-fast Rumsfeld divisions. His beef is with the aparatus that unavoidably injects this inertia into the system. How many years did it take Bush to realize we needed MORE troops, not less?
If the shoe were on the other foot and a junior reporter tore apart the WaPo, the WaPo would be first to point out that this is the opinion of a junior reporter and question their qualifications to make such obervations.
I read the entire article before I posted my comments. I also served a year in Vietnam and another 8 months off of the coast. It is not foolish to quibble on exactly who left Vietnam in 1975.
The US was no longer at war in Vietnam in 1975. We had turned over that responsibity to the South Vietnamese through the Vietnamization process. It was a phased, orderly withdrawal of US forces. We weren't fleeing the country.
We also signed the Paris Peace Accords in 1973, which were also signed by the governments of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (DRV or North Vietnam), the Republic of Vietnam (RVN or South Vietnam), and the United States, as well as the Provisional Revolutionary Government (PRG) that represented indigenous South Vietnamese revolutionaries. One of the provisions was that, the reunification of Vietnam was to be "carried out step by step through peaceful means."
The North Vietnamese invaded the South in March 1975 with 20 divisions. By then, the Soviet-supplied North Vietnamese Army was the fifth largest in the world. South Vietnam's forces collapsed in only 55 days. Of course, Congress had already cut off aid to them and issued a ban on all U.S. military activity in Southeast Asia. So, the South Vietnamese were not defeated by insurgents from within, but by a massive invasion from without. It is not similar to the situation in Iraq--yet.
The evacuation that took place from the roof of our Embassy did not mark the end of our efforts there. That really happened when we signed the Paris Peace Accords, which marked the end of the war for us. We evacuate American civilians and diplomats from Embassies/countries when conditions dictate and have done so many times, whether it is Liberia or Iran.
What Vietnam and Iraq do have in common is a Dem controlled Congress that is trying to end our involvement by cutting off funding and undermining the authority of the Commander in chief. The war is being lost at home in the court of public opinion, not on the battlefield. And if Iran and Syria continue to funnel arms and advisers into Iraq, we will have a similar situation of the North Vietnamese, aided by China and Russia, interjecting themselves into the fray. Then you no longer have an insurgency or a civil war.
And our legacy in Vietnam, i.e., what happened after we left, is nothing to be proud of. If we replicate this outcome in Iraq, the situation will be far worse for us as well as for the Iraqis and the region. The stakes are much higher this time if we lose.
thanks, bfl
Maybe he was miffed at the way the politicians are so eager to throw soldiers under the bus when it may serve their interests.Generals also.Maybe the new breed of thinking may spice things up a little.Generals,I believe are promoted by the politicians.So suck up is a requirement for the stars.But he still should have kept his mouth shut.Pissing off higher ups was never a good promotion move.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070427/ap_on_re_mi_ea/iraq_officer_s_assessment
Army officer criticizes generals on Iraq
What are you advocating - bomb everything back to the stone age? We can do that and win territory, but it gets us no closer to the goal of a democratic Iraq.
I have a lot of respect for General Petraeus. As had been observed, he wrote the book on counter-insurgency. What it sounds like you're demanding is not in accord with his ideas. There is an excellent article by General Petraeus here.
A tiny excerpt: "In the main, however, we sought to carry out operations in a way that minimized the chances of creating more enemies than we captured or killed. The idea was to try to end each day with fewer enemies than we had when it started. Thus we preferred targeted operations rather than sweeps, and as soon as possible after completion of an operation, we explained to the citizens in the affected areas what we'd done and why we did it."
Perhaps indirectly. Some reference was made to being dominated by civilian leadership styles.
Of interest, Rumsfeld had laid claim to a new military but his old approach of bomb, invade and occupy was straight out of WW II successes. But Rumsfeld seems to have misunderstood today's battlefield. Current demographics tell us that the days of boots on the ground is gone. That was demonstrated in the East, both Far and Near. We can control any country today with air and sea power.
Time to wake up and smell the bullsh!t, we aren't about to militarily force democracy on an unwilling population.
“What are you advocating - bomb everything back to the stone age?”
I advocate reading what I wrote!
When the enemy shoots at us we fire back, and it doesn’t matter who they’re hiding behind.
When the enemy uses mosques as ammo dumps, we blow them up.
That is NOT “bombing everything back to the stone age”!!!
There is a VAST gulf between what I’m recommending and your nonsensical interpretation!
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