>>>Huh, I thought we won the war of 1812
America’s goal in 1812 was to seize Canada, and it failed in that mission. But you are right, “defeat” is too strong a world for the War of 1812. That war was a draw, similar to the Korean War of the 1950s.
This actually strengthens my point. Cheney played a major role in the only military defeat that America has ever suffered in her history. Americans who were alive in that time, can never forget the TV images of helicopters being pushed from transport ships into the sea, to make space for people who were fleeing from the Vietcong. America has never fully recovered from the humiliation of Vietnam, and Cheney owes our Vietnam Vets an apology for ending a war that America was winning.
Wasn't the war of 1812 America's "Second war of Independence" that as a result of the impressment of American sailors by Great Britain?
Actually, it was the North Vietnamese Army. The Vietcong had largely been defeated as a military force during the Tet offensive of 1968. We had kicked the crap out of the NVA too, but were undermined by politicians in Washington who had decided they wanted to wimp out of what it took to finish them off.
The liberal Democrats rode the public opinion wave and led the way in defeat in Vietnam.
Of course, it started with a no-win fear of nuclear war strategy used by LBJ and his Democrat gang.
They used pin prick bombing or bombed the Ho Chi Minh trail instead of Haiphong harbor, where the supply line for the Communists started.
This war was doomed to drag on just like the W Bush-Cheney war in Afghanistan today.
That left the opening for Cronkite and others to change public opinion about it.
The “peace with honor” that Nixon and Kissinger waved before us in 1972 was a joke in the end. It got our prisoners out but the Communists broke the deal and conquered the South with Gerald Ford watching on and the Congressional Democrats unwilling to lift a finger.