Iraq and Vietnam: stark similarities (Ithaca is the City of Evil alert)

Ithaca Journal ^ | Originally published Monday, August 18, 2003 | By FRED A. WILCOX

[Behind Liberal Lines]

Now that we know there are no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, and that the Bush administration fabricated a number of excuses for attacking and subsequently occupying that country, it might be interested to recall the Vietnam debacle.

How did we wind up fighting a full-scale war in Vietnam? Because our elected representatives, with only two dissenting votes, passed the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution in 1964 giving Lyndon Baines Johnson extended powers to fight a war without a formal declaration from Congress.

[Behind Liberal Lines]

Wilcox is an an anti-war activist and an associate professor of writing at Ithaca College. He lives in the City of Ithaca.

Silly me. When I read the article title, I assumed it would be about the REAL similarity between Iraq and Vietnam: treasonous, pampered academics (students during Vietnam, professors during Iraq) working to undermine the troops' morale and attack American interests.

Ithaca is the City of Evil.

[Behind Liberal Lines]

City of Evil bump

[.cnI redruM]

Yep, in both conflicts, The Democratic Party faught gallantly to defeat and undercut The US Army at every turn!

Eugene McCarthy = Howard Dean!

[b4its2late]

Now that we know there are no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq,

I won't be too broken up when his first assumption gets shot to hell......

[Seydlitz]

So much ignorance, so little time...

The parallels between the two places are few and far between. Worse still, Prof. Wilcox does not even bother to hide his ignorance of the subject, preferring to stick to the banal platitudes that pass for conventional wisdom on the Left.

If there is any analogous (sp?) conflict in America's past, the guerilla war in the Phillipines is the best candidate. Oh, except we won that one...

BTW, I love your screen name. Ithaca is a beautiful town (gorges, no?). However, it is not someplace I'd want to be. When I was applying to grad school last year, I left Cornell off of the list after considering its brutal climate, political and otherwise. A few years in Ann Arbor convinced me of the perils of such a town.

[b4its2late]

Your Search Results
Search Again

Found 1 result:

Name:	Wilcox, Fred
Dept:	Writing
Title:	Associate Professor
Building:	Williams Hall Ithaca, NY 14850
Phone:	(607) 274-3571
Email:	fwilcox@ithaca.edu

Search Again
First name		Last name
All partial matches     Only complete matches

[Graybeard58]

Comparisons of the Iraqi conflict to Vietnam may be difficult to make --


A bit of an under statement

[onedoug]

Completely ignores the differences between the cowardly LBJ and the Lone Ranger in W.

[RobbyS]

First of all, it was the details of the attack in the Tonkin that were wrong. There was an attack. Of course Johnson chose to take the attacks as a casus bellum, which he did not necessarily have to. The major difference is the unwillingness of Johnson to invade North Vietnam, which was free to poor in men and supplies into the rebellion in the South. And the reason he was not so willing was that behind Ho Chi Minh stood the Russians, who were free to re-supply the communist effort.The main reason for failure, however, was Johnson's inability to change course after the public relations disaster of the Tet offensive. He had consitently lied about the course of operations and the Tet offensive showed thathe had been far too optimistic. Even though his own meddling was to blame, he should have hung the sack on Westmoreland and brought in a new general with a different approach. Instead he practically abdicated. We needed a Lincoln or an FDR as president. Instead we got Johnson.

[onehipdad]

We could find Saddam alive with nuke detonators in one hand and a vial of Sarin in the other and jerk-offs like this would say Dick Cheney had one of his Haliburton lackeys plant them on him....

Where does this idiot get his information from? Oliver Stone? Barbra Streisand? It certainly isn't from any families of troops that I've talked to, or read letters from.

He must be suffering from AIDS: Acquired Ignorance & Delusion Syndrome...

[hapy]

sniff sniff sniff... what is that smell... sniff sniff

fee fi fo fum I smell the ass of a liberal scum...

dont be so sure there are no weapons of mass distruction. and if there are none.. I flippen dont care!

See you at the polls you losing bunch of atheist... educated but still losers

[Steve_Seattle]

"Every day, day after day, two or three American soldiers die in ambushes . . . "

Wrong. We have lost 57 in ambushes since May 1, a period of about 148 days, which averages to about one death every two-and-a-half days. So far our combat deaths in Iraq are about 200, compared to what - about 50,000? - in Vietnam. And the Vietnam war went on for more than ten years, whereas this war (including the post-war recovery with its attendant dangers and tasks) is not yet in its sixth month, with the major fighting concluded in less than two months.

[Ragtime Cowgirl]

8 Jack Kelly: Iraq is no Vietnam
    Pittsburgh Post-Gazette ^ | 8/03/03 | Jack Kelly

8 Iraq isn't Vietnam
     Washington Times ^ | 8/25/03 | Austin Bay

8 The Vietnam Playbook--Living in 1968, still. [Jed Babbin nails 'em - same old anti-military, anti-American, DEM MO]
    National Review ^ | 7-23-03 | Jed Babbin

How Iraq IS like Vietnam:

The left-press as enemy of freedom, the military and America:

Excerpts from

Stolen Valor: How The Vietnam Generation Was Robbed Of its Heroes And its History by B.G. Burkett & Glenna Whitley :

* Part I - Rambo and the Bogus War Heroes 
* Part II - Welcome Home, Babykiller 
* Part III - Will the Real Vietnam Vet Stand Up? 
* Part VI - The VVA - The Vietnam Victims of America

 What Legacy from the Radical Internationalism of 1968?  - they're at it now.

We have the internet, access to primary news sources, our honorable troops doing important work after 9-11. We know the press is misleading the world, hurting our war efforts. Facts are stubborn things.

We are spreading the news and keeping score.

8 Unapologetically Pro-Coalition News Links and Articles

[b4its2late]

They make it up and if they think it long enough, the information becomes real to them.....

[Behind Liberal Lines]

It's just a question of making it up, it's a question of reading things with an eye so favorable to their position that it loses touch with reality.

For example, I have a friend who repeatedly claims that it is now documented that Bush lied about WMDs. When you ask him for the documentation, he sends the same articles that any one else would read from AP, Fox, CBS, etc., and conclude, at worst, there was a failure of intelligence. However, he literally reads them as "The CIA went to Dubya and personally told him the Niger Uranium story was false but Dubya kept it in the speech."

When you try to point out that there is nothing like that IN the article he says "yes there is, right there" and then regurgitates the article again.

It's like he hallucinates text that isnt there.

[onehipdad]

BTW, I did fwd my message (revised to 2nd person) on to the fuzzybrained perfesser..

[jigsaw]

Now that we know there are no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq...

You lost me right there, Freddie Boy. Are you really a writing professor?!

Just how the hell do "we know there are no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq?"

I used to teach 8th grade English overseas. Had one of my students written this, I would have nailed him.

And if my kid was offered a full scholarship to Ithaca College, I wouldn't let him waste his time there!

Fred, my lawn tractor is smarter than you.

[pfflier]

The only start similarity is that militarily, we are kicking ass, and the press is telling us that we are losing.

[okie01]

"Instead he practically abdicated. We needed a Lincoln or an FDR as president. Instead we got Johnson."

Dereliction of Duty: Johnson, McNamara, The Joint Chiefs of Staff and The Lies That Led To Viet Nam by H.R. McMaster.

A read well worth the time. If you've got a strong stomach...