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Vietnam historians give Bush reason to stay in Iraq (Bush, takes losing off the table)
times online ^ | 8/24/2007 | Sarah Baxter

Posted on 08/25/2007 5:29:33 PM PDT by tobyhill

WHEN President George W Bush invoked the memory of Vietnam to justify staying in Iraq, he was drawing on a new wave of revisionist history which maintains that America did not lose the war, but the will to win.

“Three decades later there is a legitimate debate about how we got into the Vietnam war and how we left,” Bush said in a speech to army veterans last week. White House insiders admitted it was a risky topic which had previously been left to the antiwar movement. Americans generally prefer to forget Indochina and remember who won the cold war.

Yet as the prospect of victory in Iraq has receded, the lessons of Vietnam have provoked intense discussion among historians and in current affairs magazines such as the neo-conservative Weekly Standard.

Bush has been quietly paying attention and had been thinking for months about the right moment to bring Vietnam into the debate, according to a White House official.

In Triumph Forsaken, published last year, the historian Mark Moyar claimed that South Vietnam could have survived had the Americans not acquiesced in the overthrow of President Ngo Dinh Diem in 1963, plunging the country into an “extended period of instability and weakness”.

(Excerpt) Read more at timesonline.co.uk ...


TOPICS: News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: baxtercrapola; iraq; sarahbaxter; vietnam; vietnamwar

1 posted on 08/25/2007 5:29:34 PM PDT by tobyhill
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To: HonestConservative; Fudd Fan; sono; rodguy911

ping


2 posted on 08/25/2007 5:34:27 PM PDT by AliVeritas (Today's stolen graphics courtesy of: http://arewelumberjacks.blogspot.com/)
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To: tobyhill
talk about history challenged:

“In the offensive of 1975, the North Vietnamese are moving around huge conventional forces that would have been pulverised by our air power.” By then, however, Hanoi was well aware that America was turning against the war and doubted that the US military would be able to act decisively.

Combat forces let Vietnam in 1973. In 1974, RATS cut off funding VietNam and only allowed the max of 4000 troops left as a security force.
3 posted on 08/25/2007 5:55:14 PM PDT by stylin19a (Go Bears !)
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To: tobyhill

if bush’s policies translate into republican victories in 2008,

fine.

but most likely there will be a democrap president in 2009.


4 posted on 08/25/2007 5:56:44 PM PDT by ken21
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To: tobyhill

a new wave of revisionist history which maintains that America did not lose the war...

This “new wave” began in the 1980’s with military strategist Harry Summers. http://www.arlingtoncemetery.net/hgsummers.htm

His “On Strategy” was key to the development of the Army as it is today, starting from the “hollow”, defeated Army of the Carter years”

This is only “new” if you are a liberal and history began in 2001 when George Bush became president.


5 posted on 08/25/2007 6:16:59 PM PDT by sgtyork ("The Press is impotent when it abandons itself to falsehood." Thomas Jefferson 1807)
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To: tobyhill
Yet as the prospect of victory in Iraq has receded

Only in the minds of defeatists and traitors. We are winning this war and by next year the world would have realized that Al Qaeda and the proxy terrorists of Iran and Syria were utterly defeated in Iraq, and that America has won.

God bless our brave troops and President Bush.

6 posted on 08/25/2007 6:27:30 PM PDT by jveritas (God bless our brave troops and President Bush)
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To: ken21
but most likely there will be a democrap president in 2009.

Ken...."we don't need them negative vibes...."


7 posted on 08/25/2007 6:32:45 PM PDT by capt. norm (Be thankful we're not getting all the government we're paying for.)
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To: tobyhill
a new wave of revisionist history which maintains that America did not lose the war, but the will to win.

Note to reporterette...that is exactly how it happened.

8 posted on 08/25/2007 6:41:41 PM PDT by LiteKeeper (Beware the secularization of America; the Islamization of Eurabia)
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To: tobyhill
(Bush, takes losing off the table)

You added that ungrammatical piece of the title.

It is NOT part of the real title of the article.

I'd never have known had you learned when to use a comma.

9 posted on 08/25/2007 6:46:23 PM PDT by humblegunner (Me wise magic)
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To: tobyhill

bfl


10 posted on 08/25/2007 6:48:57 PM PDT by shield (A wise man's heart is at his RIGHT hand;but a fool's heart at his LEFT. Ecc 10:2)
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To: ken21

It’s possible to have the absolute right goal but the wrong strategy to achieve it.


11 posted on 08/25/2007 6:56:27 PM PDT by mgstarr ("Some of us drink because we're not poets." Arthur (1981))
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To: capt. norm

hooray for our side!

/s


12 posted on 08/25/2007 7:03:42 PM PDT by ken21
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To: tobyhill

The Prez is a big reader. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if he’s read some of these new “revisionist” takes on Vietnam.


13 posted on 08/25/2007 7:07:03 PM PDT by Yardstick
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To: tobyhill
he was drawing on a new wave of revisionist history which maintains that America did not lose the war, but the will to win.

It's only considered 'revisionist' by those who wrote about the war just after it was over. They'd continually lied about the overwhelming strength of the North Vietnamese, and covered up any successes we were having, and by doing so, convinced Americans to pressure the government to get out of it.

14 posted on 08/25/2007 7:54:23 PM PDT by SuziQ
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To: SuziQ

People need to read Gen Giap’s memoirs on the war. The NVA commander hinted in his writings that some in the north was considering a Korean style armistice because of the horrendous losses the North Vietmanese were suffering at the hands of the US. This sentiment surfaced after two major North Vietmanese conventional offensives which the South Vietmanese did most of the fighting were able to slow down and allowed US airpower to destroy the Communist columns on the ground. The NVA was forced to fall back into Cambodia with heavy material and manpower losses. After ten plus years of fighting the French and Americans, the North could not destroy the South Vietmanese army (the weakest foe the NVA ever faced) supported with only US air support, war weariness was setting in amongst the Communists. Many Americans are not aware that the losses to the population of North Vietnam was approaching World War I proportions. A whole generation of young men were lost in the years of war. Unfortunately the Dem Congress did what the NVA could not do, defund the South Vietmanese army of ammo. In the third offensive in 1973 the South collapsed and the US had to pull out under fire. The rest is history. If the US stubbornly hung and kept ammo/air support for the South. Today we may have an armistice in Vietnam like Korea.


15 posted on 08/25/2007 9:30:54 PM PDT by Fee (An American empire can only be built by leaders with the stomach of Romans.)
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To: tobyhill
I recently talked with a woman from Vietnam.

I asked her what she thought of the Vietnam-America conflict.

Her answer was surprising. She said, "Why did you leave us? Why did you abandon us to thirty years of Communism?

Something to think about.

Countries that "lose" to America fare far better than those who "win." Look at Japan and Germany.

16 posted on 08/25/2007 9:36:26 PM PDT by wai-ming
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To: humblegunner

typos happen to even the best of us.


17 posted on 08/26/2007 7:59:26 AM PDT by tobyhill (The media lies so much the truth is the exception)
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To: tobyhill
Just like Vietnam, we have the anti war crowd stealing the American peoples resolve.

Over 58,000 fell in Vietnam in about ten years. Over 3,500 fell in Iraq in about four years. Our Troops have done an outstanding job and I am damn proud of them all. Our Troops have not lost, but the traitors on the left want you to think that they have. Our Troops did not lose the war in Nam, the people did when they let the anti war crowd steal their resolve. Stand your ground folks. Support your Troops by supporting the successful end to their mission.

Our Troops fight to win. If you support our Troops, then you support Victory and not defeat.

18 posted on 08/26/2007 9:31:12 AM PDT by do the dhue (Don't let Jihad Jane do what Hanoi Jane did!!!! SEP 15, 07 Gathering of EAGLES DC)
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