Posted on 02/06/2008 6:38:07 AM PST by shrinkermd
Amen to that.
On the front page of the WSJ this morning is a story about the increasing popularity of rat meat in Vietnam. Geez, I wonder if there is a relationship between communism and a low quality of life?
Interesting article!
You have summarized this very well. It is very frustrating to me that more people do not understand this.
Yes, the US ‘Peace Movement’ has very corrupt roots, as well as motives, tactics and desired outcomes.
You are right when you say that ...they are not for peace, they are against the US standing up for peace and freedom and human rights, etc.
You are right when you say they are silent on the many atrocities that take place in plain view of the world. And they scream the loudest when the US tries to do something about it.
Why are women not wildly in favor of the US taking on the Islamic fanatics?
Women of the world have the most to lose if the Islamic fundamentalists gain control.
Some of the worst head in the sand people are the supporters of the Clintons. They turned their back on Israel in every way they could.
Clinton even sent Carville to help Barak defeat Netanyahu so Barak could give Arafat 95% of what he wanted...all in the name of peace. Good thing Arafat was too stupid to accept it, holding out for 100% and showing that he really never wanted peace.
Clinton declared 1.7 million acres of Utah a National Monument, thereby locking away the worlds largest deposit of clean coal, valued at $1.2 trillion (with a T) and the fact that the owner of the 2nd largest deposit of this coal was a major contributor to the Clintons, James Riady didnt bother anyone. Not even the US media.
Clinton’s lies and the telling of lies over and over fit into the same pattern.
I agree with your premise that the modern day peace movement is not about peace.
You said it well at the end of your reply:
They are “......not for peace, they are for war, they are for the overthrow of my country and into communism and anarchy, and they are a violent bunch who base their foundation on lies and the telling of lies and the repeating of lies.”
If one wishes to adopt the outlook of the contemporary critics of the Iraq enterprise, than World War II could have been characterized as an endless quagmire that we could never win. Relatively few people are aware that the strategic bombing campaign in 1943 nearly ground to a halt when the deep penetration raids into Germany were called off after the staggering heavy bomber losses of the Schweinfurt and Regensberg missions. (So brilliantly characterized in the great World War II movie “12 o’clock High”) There were no loud public howls about the fact that the self defending bomber formation concept was flawed and had revealed itself to be so by the Army Air Force not having a long-range fighter escort ready at the time. We are so used to the Air Force sustaining almost no casualties in current day operations that we often forget that the 8th Air Force based in England suffered more dead (26,000) than the entire Marine Corps did in World War II (less than 20,000) There were no loudly public howls of quagmire, quagmire we can’t win this.
How about the night naval battle off Savo Island, Guadalcanal in August of 1942 in which the United States Navy, defeated by a Japanese navy far better versed in night fighting tactics, sailed away and left 16,000 Marines stranded on Guadalcanal and Tulagi with no immediate hope of resupply? There weren’t any howls of quagmire, quagmire we can’t win.
How about the slaughter off the Eastern Seaboard of the United States in 1942 in which the U-boats of the German Kreigsmarine during Operation Drumbeat sunk 500 allied merchant and navy ships in a six-month period in the greatest naval disaster in United States history? There was an almost incomprehensible failure to develop an efficient convoy escort system despite the lessons of World War I. Again no howls of quagmire, quagmire we can’t win, let’s make the Secretary of War and Chief of Naval Operations resign.
How about the Kasserine pass in Tunisia in February of 1943? The tough panzergrenadiers of Rommel’s Afrika Corps soundly defeated and routed green American troops, sending them into pell mell retreat. Again no howls of quagmire, quagmire these Germans are just too battle hardened and ruthless to beat.
Relatively little is known of the bloody check inflicted on units of the 1st, 4th, 28th, and 9th infantry divisions by the Germans during the battle of Huertegen Forest during Sep- Nov of 1944 as a prelude to the Battle of the Bulge. The men of these units were attrited horribly in one the most soul destroying campaigns in American history, comparable to the Wilderness and Cold Harbor campaigns of the Civil War. Ernest Hemingway called it “Passchendale with tree bursts.” Or the Battle of the Bulge’s disastrous opening on the Schnee Eifel in Belgium where intelligence failures allowed a totally surprised American Army to lose to captivity two whole infantry regiments of the 106th infantry division in the opening rounds of the battle? Again no howls of quagmire, quagmire we just can’t win.
Or how about the defeat inflicted on the allies during Operation Market Garden (a Bridge Too Far) in 1944 when everyone knew that the Germans were already beaten? Or the horrendous losses off Okinawa? Or the failure to ensure sufficient numbers of tracked landing craft at Tarawa due to a misinterpretation of the meteorological conditions affecting the tides around Betio atoll? Nearly 1,000 Marines died in a 76 hour battle for an atoll smaller than Manhattan’s Central Park, many because they had to wade hundreds of yards to shore from Betio’s lagoon after their landing craft hung up on the reef. Or the largely unnecessary Pelielu campaign in which 1,800 were killed and 8,500 wounded? Or the bloody repulse at Italy’s Rapido River in January of 1944, or the grinding stalemate at Anzio or the entire checkmated Italian campaign, hopelessly bogged down in the Liri Valley before Monte Cassino? Even though the Rapido River attack generated enormous controversy, culminating in a congressional inquiry, it did not commence until the war was over. Or, due to logistical failures, the inability to maintain the pressure on a retreating German Army, which had been shattered in Normandy, which allowed it to refit and regroup behind the Westwall, lengthening the war and costing thousands of lives. Again no howls of quagmire, quagmire we can’t win. Or the inexplicable failure to close the trap on some 40,000 cornered Axis troops in Sicily, who escaped across the straits of Messina, to further bedevil the Allies in Italy?
Ill-considered, incorrect strategic and tactical decisions by Allied leadership cost tens of thousands of Allied troops their lives, their health and the failure to achieve objectives. We often forget that World War II was no unrelieved string of victories until the final triumph. We often suffered defeat on the battlefield, sometimes catastrophic ones, but we prevailed because we knew that we had to, since the alternative to victory was just too bitter to contemplate. In 1944, after the Tarawa bloodbath was over, there was an enormous controversy over whether or not to show the gruesome color film shot by combat cameramen of dead Marines floating in the lagoon of Betio, their bloated, rapidly decomposing corpses turning black in the hot equatorial sun and piled in ragged heaps on the beach. It was feared that the hideous sights would damage home front morale too much. The decision was made by President Roosevelt to release the film and trust that this would impress upon the public the gravity of the maelstrom that their sons were being flung into. The decision was correct. War bond sales skyrocketed after the release of the film, and war production soared as the American people realized that their support for the war effort would help to return their men with victory in hand that much sooner. While our forces in Iraq embody the same sort of heroism and devotion to duty as their predecessors, I wonder if the present day home front is made up of the same stern stuff as its antecedent. I certainly hope so and time will tell.
America’s fighting forces of World War II responded to the above described setbacks with a mix of determination, grim courage, innovation, and a uniquely American quality that historian Victor Davis Hanson terms as “Civic Militarism.” This can be characterized as a combination of virtues possessed by soldiers of those societies that inculcate their armies with the sense that their military contributions are derived from a sense of participatory citizenship.
Nothing even remotely resembling any of these historical disasters of World War II has occurred in Iraq, but these infantile naysayers who try to pose the situation has an absolute defeat are either hopelessly naïve or determined to demoralize our soldiers and willfully undermine this effort. Despite the setbacks that have occurred in Iraq, there is nothing here that cannot be remedied to this country’s favor.
Our magnificent soldiers, sailors and airmen still have more tough work to do which will undoubtedly be done with the same mix of courage, humanitarianism, innovation, and competence that has characterized our effort in Iraq to date, Abu Ghraib notwithstanding. But when you compare this effort to that other great effort of World War II that we are presently commemorating, this one looks to be comparatively well in hand. Our side is winning, with the help of much of the Iraqui people. All this was accomplished at almost no cost in strictly military terms, and yes, I am aware that the brutal calculus of war is soulless and necessarily heedless of the irreplaceability of precious individual human beings. But we must also realize that wars in the national interest, as I believe this one to be, require that we be prepared to accept this as a condition of our national security.
Again, I wish to express my undying gratitude to a generation of Americans who showed us how to prevail in a REAL quagmire. And to the Americans who are now getting it done and overcoming the quags in the mire despite those who say they can’t or shouldn’t. As the ever brilliant Mark Steyn said best in his 30 May Sun-Times column:
“But that’s the difference between then and now: the loss of proportion. They had victims galore back in 1863, but they weren’t a victim culture. They had a lot of crummy decisions and bureaucratic screwups worth re-examining, but they weren’t a nation that prioritized retroactive pseudo-legalistic self-flagellating vaudeville over all else. They had hellish setbacks but they didn’t lose sight of the forest in order to obsess week after week on one tiny twig of one weedy little tree. “
“There is something not just ridiculous but unbecoming about a hyperpower 300 million strong whose elites — from the deranged former vice president down — want the outcome of a war, and the fate of a nation, to hinge on one freaky jailhouse; elites who are willing to pay any price, bear any burden, as long as it’s pain-free, squeaky clean and over in a week. The sheer silliness dishonors the memory of all those we’re supposed to be remembering this Memorial Day.”
“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 much worse. The person who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself. - John Stuart Mill” ~ (1868)
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NEVER FORGET
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CLARITY =
The Lies of TET
http://www.ArmchairGeneral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=60610
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NEVER FORGET
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Marine Bump
The media Lied blattently about Tet and the war. They are following the same play book now. Thanks to FR and others on the internet and to talk radio they aren’t having as easy time of it.
Tonk would be all over this thread. I do so miss him.
Thanks very much for the ping and your oustanding posts, Race. Thanks for the post/thread, shrinkermd. Educational. Thanks to all contributors. Thanks to all like-minded lurkers reading this thread.
BUMP-TO-THE-TRUTH!
Amen and AMEN again to your posts in this thread.
The most damaging impact of the war in Vietnam — beyond even the blood spilled and beloved brothers lost — is the normalization of treachery and treason in the U.S...
This has resulted in the icons of that very treachery achieving high positions in Government at every level, civil service, education, law enforcement and even the clergy - and being held in adoring status by the sheeple...
The saddest commentary of this outrage - is that those same traitorous folks can walk the streets with their noses in the air — instead of slinking around under cover of darkness..
We’ve become so civilized, that the barbarians will take over without a fight...
Any thread entitled “The Lies Of Tet” needs a photo of Walter Kronkite.
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