Brit/Mara...advice to Kerry featured,big speech on Iraq planned...Kristol says new message is Iraq is worse than Vietnam...could be somewhat effective...Even Juan says it can't be have to get out...bringing up Halliburton, cost, Bin Ladin.
Brit says that Kerry still has a hurdle to climb because people don't believe Kerry--especially on Iraq.
I wonder about the message of saying Iraq is like Vietnam, and I'll get you out.
Doesn't this just support the message of what the Swiftvets and the Republicans have been saying all along about Kerry.
When the going gets tough, Kerry turns anti-war, and won't this just bring up his old anti-war betrayals after Vietnam?
I can't imagine that they'd find it effective to go with a message like this.
It would play well to the Deaniacs, and some of the Dem base, but beyond that, seems too reminiscent of his Vietnam anti-war talk to me.
"Brit/Mara...advice to Kerry featured,big speech on Iraq planned...Kristol says new message is Iraq is worse than Vietnam...could be somewhat effective"
http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=13121
How North Vietnam Won The War
By Grunt.com
Grunt.com | April 26, 2004
What did the North Vietnamese leadership think of the American antiwar movement? What was the purpose of the Tet Offensive? How could the U.S. have been more successful in fighting the Vietnam War? Bui Tin, a former colonel in the North Vietnamese army, answers these questions in the following excerpts from an interview conducted by Stephen Young, a Minnesota attorney and human-rights activist [in The Wall Street Journal, 3 August 1995]. Bui Tin, who served on the general staff of North Vietnam's army, received the unconditional surrender of South Vietnam on April 30, 1975. He later became editor of the People's Daily, the official newspaper of Vietnam. He now lives in Paris, where he immigrated after becoming disillusioned with the fruits of Vietnamese communism.
Question: How did Hanoi intend to defeat the Americans?
Answer: By fighting a long war which would break their will to help South Vietnam. Ho Chi Minh said,
"We don't need to win military victories, we only need to hit them until they give up and get out."
Q: Was the American antiwar movement important to Hanoi's victory?
A: It was essential to our strategy. Support of the war from our rear was completely secure while the American rear was vulnerable. Every day our leadership would listen to world news over the radio at 9 a.m. to follow the growth of the American antiwar movement. Visits to Hanoi by people like Jane Fonda, and former Attorney General Ramsey Clark and ministers gave us confidence that we should hold on in the face of battlefield reverses. We were elated when Jane Fonda, wearing a red Vietnamese dress, said at a press conference that she was ashamed of American actions in the war and that she would struggle along with us.
Q: Did the Politburo pay attention to these visits?
A: Keenly.
Q: Why?
A: Those people represented the conscience of America. The conscience of America was part of its war-making capability, and we were turning that power in our favor. America lost because of its democracy; through dissent and protest it lost the ability to mobilize a will to win.