Bush Unwise to Link Vietnam, Iraq(JIM HOAGLAND)

union tribune ^ | August 24, 2007 | JIM HOAGLAND

[kellynla]

Desperate presidents resort to desperate rhetoric, which calls new attention to their desperation. President Bush joined the club this week by citing U.S. failure in Vietnam to justify staying on in Iraq.

Bush's comparison of the two conflicts rivals Richard Nixon's “I am not a crook” utterance during Watergate and Bill Clinton's “I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Miss Lewinsky,” in producing unintended consequences of a most damaging kind for a sitting president.

It is not just that Bush's speech to the Veterans of Foreign Wars convention on Wednesday drew on a shaky grasp of history, spotlighted once again his own decision to sit out the Vietnam conflict, and played straight into his critics' most emotive arguments against him and the Republican Party.

More important, Bush has called attention to the elephant that will be sitting in the room when his administration makes its politically vital report on Iraq to the nation next month. For Americans, the most important comparison will be this one: as Vietnam did, Iraq has become a failure even on its own terms – whatever those terms are at any given moment.

That is, the administration has constantly shifted its goals in Iraq to avoid accepting failure and blame – only to see the new goals drift beyond reach each time. Liberation of Iraqis became occupation by Americans, democracy became an unattainable centralized “national unity” government, and this year's military surge has become a device for achieving political reconciliation among people who do not want to reconcile.

[hinckley buzzard]

Yes, the fact that the left is furious, slobbering with rage, is irrefutable proof that Bush hit exactly the right note. His history is based on facts, not Walter Cronkite's treasonous grunts and groans, which just rubs salt in the leftwing crackpots' wounds.

[Fee]

Unfortunately, despite oil revenues, Iran and Syria is broke. Burden by maintaining their own forces in case the US (Iran) and Isreal (Syria) attacks, feeding their society, they cannot fund the insurgents at the scale that the Soviet Union and China did for North Vietnam. There is private Sunni money and private Baathist sympathizer money coming in, but again nowheres close to the billions sent by the Soviets/Chinese to the North Vietmanese forces. Each day goes by our US Treasury is pressuring overseas banks to shut down the financial transferrs as each financial trail is identified. The amounts of weapons funneled by Syria into Iraq is small compared to the tons of weapons and ammo that came down the Ho Chi Minh trail in Cambodia. If that was the case, the insurgents would be mounting large scale offensives with heavy weapons, and not relying on IED’s. Syria is providing a haven for the insurgent planners, and serves as an informal staging area for foreign jihadists before they travel into Iraq, but it is not a staging area piled up with ammunition, heavy weapons, barracks, hospitals and etc for an invading insurgent army like the NVA had in Cambodia. Syria and Iran will be taken down over time by economical and financial pressure. The key to their defeat is US sucess in Iraq and Iraq becoming our foward outpost and basing areas for future operations against Iran and Syria, and ultimately Saudi Arabia.

[MNJohnnie]

The Whiny Left is in for another heartbreak over Iraq.

Really bad news for the Do Nothing Leftist whiners on Iraq. Here are just 3 stories from yesterday that demonstrate how completly clueless on Iraq they all are.

Security is the 1st step. Until the security scene is stabilized, you will get no real political and economic progress. People are not going to get involved in the Govt or build up businesses if they have a real chance of seeing their wives and children raped and murdered before they get their own head cut off with a dull saber for their troubles. Now that progress has been made on security, you are all ready seeing progress on the political front. The Economic front will follow.

The Leftist think they see an opening door on Iraq but, because they simply tune out all factual reality to cling to their dogmas on Iraq, they are instead going to run their face in to the door yet again. We are all ready seeing signs that the political process, glacierially slow at any time in any Arab country even without all the structural problems Iraq faces, is coming unstuck.

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1885087/posts

Commander Sees More Stability, Local Governmental Growth in
Iraq

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1885082/posts

Has Maliki Ended The Insurgency? (No, but this is good news)

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1884998/posts

Local Government Shows Progress in Iraq’s Anbar Province

[lilylangtree]

Remember last year that RATS were comparing US involvement in Iraq to US involvement in Vietnam. That comparison rather calmed down and the prez now makes a comparison. This could very well backfire on the prez.

[RobbyS]

What could I possibility add to the case made by DMZFRANK. I demurr on one point only: The general public did NOT have contempt for the military. It was the national elite, the oligarchs who and their running dogs in the academiy and media. The public never gave up on the military. Evidence of this is that they chose a Democrat who had served in the armed services. Only slowly did we realize that there was a good reason why he did not make a career in the service, that he was in fact a pacifist. For that reason and many others, the public tossed this POS out of office in 1980 and chose an unabashed supporter of the military, Ronald Reagan.

[RobbyS]

I think you underestimate the amount of money coming into Iraq from these “private” sources. IAC. it has been sufficient to fund the kind of war that the enemy is waging in Iraq. Many of their recruits in country are “hired hands.” locals who are willing to do “a “job and then sink out of sight. They do it for the money, because of fear, and as long as the action does not cause them trouble, they encourage others to do the same. The “True Believers.” and the gang leaders are the officer corps. The hope to be the future government and so long as the population wants them to be this or thinks they have a good chance of becoming this, the insurgency will keep on going.

[DMZFrank]

Thanks for the kudos!!! You may use my thread in any way that you see fit.