"Strange Allies:Afghanistan: Echoes Of Vietnam "

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Last week we looked at Korea, this week Vietnam as precedents of the sort of trouble America gets into when it leaders fight wars - not for America - but for the UN and for UN Article 52 regional arrangements like NATO and SEATO. The US is now pursuing this avenue in Afghanistan. This is a dread mistake - even a sellout of American security and sovereignty. Such wars are, by design, never traditional, and thus, never won.

In 1985, actor Sylvester Stallone, starring for the second time as disillusioned Vietnam Vet and decorated fictional war hero John Rambo, gave us a film that was famously implausible for its action hero stunts, yet fabulously popular, and more importantly, bitingly astute concerning our loss in Vietnam.

His words were few, but his query, "Are we allowed to win this time?" received five stars from cheering veterans in the aisles of movie theaters who were just as anxious as Rambo to get another shot at victory, this time without both hands tied behind their back.

After viewing the film, one veteran told me with emotion, "For the first time I feel like I can hold my head high!"

As grossly animated a character as Rambo was, he did what the United States soldier could have done all along - if permitted - and that was send communist Vietnam into the trash heap of history - where it belonged. But as in Korea, so it was in Vietnam, a war fought in the name of Internationalism would by design fail.

Some, who certainly knew better, inventively came up with other reasons for our defeat. Former State Department head, and Council of Foreign Relations member, Henry Kissinger, argued that we lost because of our military's unfamiliarity with guerilla warfare, and by virtue of the divisive nature of our democratic government, which provided no staying power, and thus no match for a patient communist enemy. (1)

Others, such as the Joint Chiefs of Staff, in July of 1965, identified America's lack of a "will to win" as the problem. (2)

While historian Paul Johnson pinpointed "a unique succession of misjudgments, all made with the best intentions," as the indisputable cause. (3)

These are all inventive indeed, especially the latter of the three. Whitewashing what happened in Vietnam as a succession of "misjudgments" wreaks of the kind of naiveté that has typified the response to "mistakes" in U.S. foreign policy dating back to a series of similar "misjudgments" with Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Castro and later Ortega, Khomeini, Mandella, Hussein, Aristide, Milosovich, and now, Osama bin Laden.

Amazingly, almost all of these henchmen were characterized kindly at one time or other to the American people as "Uncle Joes," "agrarian reformers," the "George Washington" of their nation, or, as in the case of Osama bin Laden, "necessary allies." And so we supported them with money and technology, pulled the plug on their pro-western opponents, even though piles of evidence indicated that none of the above deserved an ounce of trust, or a penny of support.

But when engaged in the holy grail quest of the new world order, creating and aiding the enemies you later pretend to oppose appears to be an accepted rule of the game.

It was our "fervent anti-colonialist" Office of Strategic Services, predecessor of the CIA, which sponsored Communist leader Ho Chi Minh in his putsch known as the "August Revolution' which ousted the pro-French emperor of Vietnam. (4)

A "misjudgment." And then when Ho Chi Minh began to do to Vietnam what we surely expect communists to do, he suddenly became our "enemy."

The "surprise" emergence of Ho Chi Minh as the slave-master of Indochina was just what the doctor ordered. His presence justified the creation of yet another United Nations regional military alliance, this time one which spread internationalism's wings not into willing Europe but into stubborn, nonaligned Asia.

The result? In 1954, with the zealous support of Democratic President Harry Truman, the Southeast Asian Treaty Organization (SEATO) was formed as a sister organization to NATO. (5)

Once the seed had been planted, it was only a matter of time until SEATO sprang to life. In 1961, President John F. Kennedy (6) , without congressional consent sent troops to Vietnam "because the United States and our allies [were] committed by the SEATO treaty . . . to meet the common danger of aggression in Southeast Asia." (7)

And lest there be any confusion, this war ultimately, so said State Department Bulletin 8062, went forward with the support and under the authority of the "UN Security Council," - for as the Bulletin further explained: "The Southeast Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO) is . . . a collective defense arrangement under Article 51 of the UN Charter." (8)

That should have been a clue that, as in Korea, US soldiers were in for trouble in Vietnam.

Enter the "Rules of Engagement." Co-authored by fellow internationalists and Council of Foreign Relations members Secretary of State Dean Rusk and Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, these rules insured that we could not win and that the communists could not lose. Understandably, the rules were kept secret for 20 years. As we review the rules, you'll see why.

It took a subpoena, and a lot of arm twisting, from Senator Barry Goldwater (R-AZ.) to finally have these "rules of engagement" hauled out of the State Department's vaults, declassified and published in the Congressional Record for all the world to see, a decade after the war was over.

U.S. pilots were forbidden to bomb Soviet-made SAM missile sites under construction but could risk their lives firing at those same sites after they were fully operational. Pilots and ground forces were commanded not to destroy communist aircraft on the ground, but wait until they were armed and dangerous in the air. Truck depots 200 yards away from main roads were off limits for American fire power, only trucks driving on the road could be blown up. Pilots flying over supply ships laden with war materials on their way to North Vietnam's Haiphong Harbor were ordered to look the other way, even though the weapons on board would soon be used to kill American boys.

Throughout the war, returning troops told of being ordered not to shoot until shot at, not to attack the enemy's "safe" areas [another UN styled war oddity], and not to hold terrain that had been won at considerable cost in lives and labor. (9)

And there was the incredible on again off again policy of ammunition "quotas," which halted attacks and reversed victories when an elusive daily quota had been met, while paradoxically, on other days, the policy was abandoned for the equally ridiculous order to fire vast quantities of ammunition at "undefined targets."

Quite a series of "misjudgments!" The Commander-in-Chief, Lyndon B. Johnson, wasn't content, though, he insisted on one more big "mistake": With one stroke of the pen, he single handedly reversed U.S. Trade Policy, authorizing the wartime sale of U.S. "non-military" hardware to the East European communist block nations - which "surprise, surprise," converted the same into military hardware, which they then shipped to North Vietnam, (10) where these made-in-the-U.S.A. weapons killed American boys. What goes around comes around.

No wonder then that Congressman, H.R. Gross (R-IA.), summed up these "mistakes" as "a betrayal to international politics and intrigue." (11) For thus it was. This was the second U.S. war officially fought in the name of the International Order (Korea being the first), both supposedly to check communism, both by design preserving communism, and both assuring another loss for liberty. Had we fought the war alone, under traditional terms, North Vietnam and the Chinese Communists who fought along side of them wouldn't have stood a chance.

"The war against Vietnam [could have been] irrevocably won in six weeks," was the collective opinion of a prestigious panel of former and current (current at the time) Joint Chief of Staffs and Generals interviewed in the March 1968 issue of Science & Mechanics.

But it wasn't. The reason? "[We are choosing to fight the] war in a weak-sister manner that is unprecedented throughout the history of military science," they said.

And so a war which could have been won quickly, dragged on and on - for that is what was meant to be - until we finally withdrew.

After the war, the "misjudgments" continued. Our "freedom loving," CFR run State Department "recommended" their now familiar UN "pro-democracy/pro-unification/peace" strategy - the creation of a coalition government between South and North Vietnam - the same, nonsensical betrayal tactic the Bush CFR dominated State Department and the UN are proposing for Afghanistan today.

Democracy, unification and peace resulted in Vietnam, all right, Communist style. The thugs moved in as soon as we pulled out, to butcher, torture, rape, imprison and re-educate those who were abandoned by the American Establishment. A great idea! But, that's what happens when you join hands with communists, thugs, and terrorists in order to make the world "safe" for democracy. And that's what happens when Presidents of the United States pack their administrations with the Internationalist dogs who reside in Manhattan's Pratt House.

In the end, like Korea, Vietnam fell into the hands of the communists, 58,000 Americans died or were missing in action, 300,000 were wounded, 1.2 million Vietnamese perished, the rest were enslaved, and dominoes was the order of the day in Indochina

Audaciously, the internationalists who gave us the debacle of Vietnam never acknowledged their part in this fiasco, instead:

They used our "loss" in Vietnam as cause to condemn nationalism and anti-communism.

They used our "loss" in Vietnam as cause to insult our soldiers who fought bravely, and who, in fact, thoroughly routed the enemy on days when "permission was granted."

They used our "loss" in Vietnam as cause to declare that there are some wars that present a "new kind of enemy" an enemy who though poor, backwards, and in "our eyes" evil, can't be beaten by the good people of the most powerful nation on earth, so long as the locals - locals like the Taliban - prefer tyranny, socialism, security, even a free and equal share of nothing but the whip, the chain, and the plague.

They used our "loss" in Vietnam, therefore, to re-enforce the treacherous CFR and Communist sponsored notion that "spontaneous" and determined worldwide movements of the poor and working classes, unforeseen leaps in technology, i.e. nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons of mass destruction, and "new" methods of warfare (commies fighting in jungles and Afghanis hiding in CIA built caves) have ushered in an era of "unwinnable" wars - an insurmountable obstacle which can only be solved by the international outlawry of war.

And so they used their own debacle, ironically, to include more internationalist solutions, including an ongoing movement to gradually disarm the West, have them turn over their weapons (including personal handguns) and their armies - in stages - to the UN - until sovereignty and the right to self defense is an afterthought - even while Russia and China, under the same obligations, cheat behind the scenes, progressively strengthening their arms.

No wonder then, that Russia and China, who never abide by such disarmament treaties, and international norms, won't let go of the idea that the only way to fight this "War on Terrorism" is under the United Nations. They would love the United States to fight another, and another, and another Vietnam.

We support Ron Paul's H.R. 1146 - the American Sovereignty Restoration Act of 2001 - and Congressman Paul's persistent calls to get NATO and the UN out of this war and out of this country. You ought to too! Contact your Congressmen and ask them to be co-sponsors. Contact your Senators, and President and ask them for their support. The only path to victory for the United States is that our wars be fought by our people on our terms in defense of our liberties and our sovereignty.

Yet to come in our series "Strange Allies:" Our failure, as per UN law, to finish the job in Iraq, more on NATO's leftist ideological agenda, and a look into the feigned weakness of terrorist sponsor Russia.

1. Kissinger, Henry: "American Foreign Policy," W.W. Norton & Company Inc. New York 1974, p. 102. Return

3. Johnson, Paul: "A History of the American People," Harper Collins Publishers, New York 1997, p. 877. Return

7. McManus, John F: "Changing Commands: The Betrayal of America's Liberty," John Birch Society, Wisconsin, 1995, p. 117. Return

11.Ibid., p. 120; Also as quoted in the article, "While Brave Men Die," by Wallis W. Wood. Return

It's important...especially to the soldier putting his life on the line.

Are we REALLY going to WIN this war???

Are we going to find a Patton...or a Sherman..and go into this war with the sure and absolute knowledge that in order to win this war we must commit EVERYTHING??

That in order to win...we must tear up...blow up...and rip apart ALL of those nations who support terrorism???

Or will we stop short, sort of like we did in 'Desert Storm', and let the 'bad guy' live??

redrock

thanks for the bump - in spite of a few factual errors, eg Pres Harry Truman in 1954, etc., this is mostly factually correct, and I can personally vouch for a lot of it.

They tied my hands, pathetically, and I didn't know better, until my friends died, as a result. I, and many others, figured out ways to 'untie' our hands, and we started winning, but then they made us pull out.

The policy of 'graduated response', was terrible, and unproductive. Not being allowed to hit targets until they were capable of defending themselves, placing AAA guns on the tops of school buildings and SAM sites in school yards and hospital yards, etc. Not hitting Migs on the ground - they were real, and purposely stupid, insane policies.

The USA had best soon recognize that this war is a war of survival. The goal of OBL is an Islamic world and that perforce means the USA is either exterminated or conquered. Unless or until we take this goal of our opponent seriously the American corpses will continue to pile up. the fact that now anthrax cases are appearing outside the post office, government and media should be a key warning sign to us but so far it is not.

Stay well - Stay safe - Stay armed - Yorktown

Excellent.

IMO, we will not fight to the finish. I believe the Persian Gulf War was a lighter version of Nam in that we left the 'bad guy' there to continue his reign of horror....and there was a good bit of grumbling.

Then, when NATO had to hit Serbia, I believe there was enough of inside grumbling that they had to take out Slobo (odd that of the countries under discussion, Serbians had been good to our pilots in WWII and is considered a Christain nation).

BTW, do you know if Henry "I've got the only correct answer to everything" Kissinger ever stuck his butt on the line--were any of these yokers ever in a position to know whether our military has the will to fight and win?

And one more question....Regarding Articles 51 and 52, are these from the Un Charter or what? I ask because someone on Pal Talk tried to give me the song and dance routine that the UN doesn't have an 'army'....I had made a comment with a note about NATO being their army in quotations. I don't believe the UN has an actual army; but they hide behind NATO, SEATO, etc.

God, you must be really pissed at me. I've thought and thought about this, Jim, and still can't figure out what you're trying to tell me.....the only thing I can come up with is that you're a mind reader and know what I've been wanting to write to you....

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