Islamic deja vu (Dems repeat their Vietnam betrayal in Iraq/Iran)

The Washington Times ^ | May 23, 2007 | Arnaud de Borchgrave

[2ndDivisionVet]

Muslim peoples excel at expelling imperial powers by terror and guerrilla war. So wrote Patrick J. Buchanan six months before Operation Iraqi Freedom. "They drove the Brits out of Palestine and Aden, the French out of Algeria, the Russians out of Afghanistan, the Americans out of Somalia and Beirut, the Israelis out of Lebanon," he reminded us.

Lacking institutional memory, Congress is blissfully unaware the history now being written on Capitol Hill will add yet another chapter -- "they also drove the Americans out of Iraq." And the scenario is eerily reminiscent of how Congress ensured a U.S. defeat in Vietnam when lawmakers, in their infinite wisdom, decided to sever any further military assistance to our Vietnamese allies.

Betrayed by Congress, the South Vietnamese quickly understood there was no point in further resistance. In Hanoi, Gen. Vo Nguyen Giap had to improvise a general offensive in 1975 to take Saigon, which he reckoned (in his memoirs) was an opportunity at least two years away.

Similarly, Gen. Giap, who once said the U.S. could not be defeated militarily, conceded the 1968 Tet Offensive was an unmitigated disaster for Hanoi. And he was astonished to see Walter Cronkite, America's most trusted newsman, had declared Tet a decisive defeat for the U.S. Most of the Saigon-based press corps followed "Uncle Walter's" lead.

Gen. Giap defeated the French empire -- in 1954 at Dienbienphu. But America's defeat was on the home front and in the halls of Congress. Hanoi achieved final victory with a 2,500-year-old blueprint for victory -- Sun Tzu's "The Art of War." The template was undermining home front morale. In Hanoi in September 1972, this reporter met two French communists who bragged about organizing antiwar demonstrations in the United States.

[Yardstick]

Karl Marx said that nations would pass through a socialist stage on their way to communism. Thus Fonda was echoing Marx, who was a communist. Perhaps you’ve heard of him.

In America communists aren’t able to practice communism, because the government doesn’t own the means of production. But this doesn’t mean that the communists here aren’t communists. It just means they’re frustrated communists.

In this way they’re a little like Marx and his friend Frederick Engels, who lived fairly bourgeois lives in 19th century England. Marx worked at a museum if memory serves. He also was supported by Engels, whose family was very wealthy thanks to the businesses they owned. Now you, being so very strict with your categories, would probably deny that Marx and Engels were communists, right? After all, what communist lives off his family’s (or his friend’s family’s) capitalist profits? Right? But this would be silly wouldn’t it, being that Marx and Engels were communism’s founders and all.

You could also turn the tables and look at it from the other side. Were Soviet dissidents like Solzinitzen and Sharansky not really liberal reformers since they probably held jobs at state-owned businesses and participated, at least in the day to day sense, in the Soviet communist system? Were they really communists and not believers in liberty? You would have to say yes.

By your ultra-rigid thinking, Jane Fonda, who prayed for communism and wished to see it realized in the world, wasn’t really a communist, while guys like Sharansky, who hated communism, were the true communists.

Do you see the problem with this?

Getting back to your friend Jane, the fact is that Fonda was a communist during the 60s when she was helping to lead the protest movement. It’s a similar thing today. The intellectual core of the anti-war movement is full of people who are literally communists. Granted those core people are surrounded by a large herd of liberal useful idiots who are not communists. But it’s the core that leads the way and sets the pace, so they’re important and it’s important to recognize who they are.

***...except for them bad, us good.***

Uh oh, moral relatism. So you’re a lib then, correct?

If so, this is pretty much all I need to know in order to understand why you’re so confused about this stuff.

[Yardstick]

relatism = relativism