Thousands pack D.C. to protest Iraq war

[darkbeaver]

No they didn't.

America didn't leave because of protests. America left because they lost.

Nixon won both elections. He hammered the anti-war candidate McGovern in 1972, and won by the largest margin by popular vote in US history.

Middle America doesn't like protests. They don't work. Protestors don't get this.

The American revolution started as protest, you're right it dosn't work.:laughing7::laughing7::laughing7::laughing7::laughing7::wave::wave:

 

[darkbeaver]

Be very careful - what you wish for

http://www.nwanews.com/adg/Editorial/180263/

How to lose a war

Bradley R. Gitz
Posted on Sunday, January 28, 2007





Perhaps the most immoral decision ever made by any agent of our federal government was Congress’ decision to pull the rug out from under the government of South Vietnam.

The decision to abandon Saigon was actually taken in three steps. The first came in June 1973 when Congress passed the Case-Church Amendment prohibiting further U. S. military involvement in Southeast Asia. As Henry Kissinger has bitterly noted, that act decisively undercut the ability of the Nixon administration to enforce the provisions of the Paris Peace Accords that had been signed just a few months earlier. The second step was Congress’ decision to cut its aid appropriations for South Vietnam by nearly half for fiscal 1974-75. That cut thoroughly demoralized the South Vietnamese government and military and, as archival records from North Vietnam later revealed, led Hanoi to begin preparing its final offensive. The ugly story finally came to a close just a few months later, when the newly installed “Watergate” Congress refused desperate requests from the Ford administration for emergency American aid with which to resist Hanoi’s Sovietsupplied invasion. A modest application of available air power would have turned the tide, but Congress instead abandoned a long-time ally to its totalitarian fate and thereby made a mockery of the deaths of more than 50, 000 American soldiers. So much has been written in error regarding Vietnam that we forget that the war had been essentially won by the beginning of 1973. A combination of the failure of Hanoi’s 1972 Easter offensive, the emerging détente between the United States and the Soviet Union, and the trouncing of the anti-war candidacy of George McGovern in November 1972 had dashed North Vietnam’s hopes for taking South Vietnam.
The final inducement to seek peace came with Richard Nixon’s Christmas bombing of the north, a step which the late historian Douglas Pike always maintained would have won the war as far back as 1965 had it been employed.
The security situation in the countryside of South Vietnam had improved dramatically by the early 1970 s, with the Viet Cong having been effectively swept from the villages and rice paddies due to the losses suffered during the Tet offensive and the subsequent effectiveness of Creighton Abrams’ “clear and hold” tactics.
The Paris Peace Accords of January 1973 gave the United States and South Vietnam virtually everything we had sought in five years of frustrating negotiations. Promised a generous level of American aid and swift American retaliation in response to communist violations of the peace accords, South Vietnam appeared to have been saved.
Becoming embroiled in Southeast Asia might have been a mistake in the first place; becoming involved to the extent we did almost certainly was. But Vietnam was never the unwinnable war that antiwar orthodoxy claimed. Despite all of the errors dating back to the Truman administration and the sacrifices that exceeded the value of the interests originally at issue, we had essentially achieved our objectives, at least until Congress began to throw that victory away step by step. What captured Saigon in the spring of 1975 was not a guerrilla offensive by a nonexistent Viet Cong, but a full-fledged conventional invasion from the north directed and armed by the Soviet Union. The reason South Vietnam was unable to resist that offensive was because our Congress had weakened its military capabilities, left it politically isolated and refused to allow us to help when help was most needed. It is with this horrible lesson of pusillanimity and dishonor that one must view current Democratic Party proposals to cut off funding for the war in Iraq. Remarkably, senators like Patrick Leahy are now actually advocating going further than Democrats did back then, proposing a cutoff of funds not just to an allied government following a peace settlement but to American troops still fighting the enemy in the field. Even more remarkable have been the comments from Leahy and some of his colleagues holding up the cutoff of funding to South Vietnam as a model for how the war in Iraq should be ended. One wonders if he and the others in the surrender-now clique have heard of the boat people, the killing fields of Cambodia or any of the other horrors that befell Southeast Asia after we left the region.

The lesson in all of this is that it is remarkably easy to end wars, be they in Vietnam or Iraq. All you have to do is decide to lose. Just like the Democrats.

Free-lance columnist Bradley R. Gitz teaches politics at Lyon College at Batesville.

:laughing7::laughing7::laughing7::laughing7::laughing7::laughing7::laughing7:

 

[darkbeaver]

If that's the case then the horrible lesson is not learning the last horrible lesson. If you know the Democrats must be blamed for losing why put yourself in that position to begin with? Is that the goal, start a war, lose and blame the Democrats? What other result could there be, stay the course another 4 or 5 years and see if the resistance gets into its last throes by then? Does the right expect there to be never ending public support for failed policies? That is called insanity. Surely the right doesn't expect that the people will be satisfied to see the same failed policies implemented over and over without speaking up.

AW come on give it a chance.:laughing7::laughing7::laughing7::laughing7::laughing7::laughing7::laughing7: You're being defeatist, the Muslim hordes will be emboldened.:laughing7::laughing7::laughing7::laughing7::laughing7::laughing7::wave::wave:

 

[gopher]

``` The left has to come up with some alternatives that recognize the problems in a policy of RUN AWAY NOW! ```

You forgot that right wingers such as the John Birch Society have said the same thing.

As Bush and the right wingers are still in command of the criminal war, it is they who must stop seeking war profits and to come up with a better idea.

 

[gopher]

```Perhaps the most immoral decision ever made by any agent of our federal government was Congress’ decision to pull the rug out from under the government of South Vietnam. ```

That is one of the most stupid articles I have ever read. The real stupidity in Vietnam was the CIA's decision to assassinate democratically elected President Diem which led to the chaos there. History shows that democratic forces were still the majority in South Vietnam when that happened and they could well have won if they had been allowed to stay in power. Conspiracy theorists have said that it was Kennedy's objection to Diem's death that led to his assassination.

As for the idea that only Democrats want the USA to withdraw from Iraq, the 70 % of the population that opposes Bush's war come from all political parties.

 

[Colpy]

``` The left has to come up with some alternatives that recognize the problems in a policy of RUN AWAY NOW! ```

You forgot that right wingers such as the John Birch Society have said the same thing.

As Bush and the right wingers are still in command of the criminal war, it is they who must stop seeking war profits and to come up with a better idea.

Okay, let me re-phrase.........The anti-war crowd has to come up with some alternatives that recognize the problems in a policy of RUN AWAY NOW!

 

[selfactivated]

Okay, let me re-phrase.........The anti-war crowd has to come up with some alternatives that recognize the problems in a policy of RUN AWAY NOW!

Im sitting here watching a PBS show on the 1960's Amazing stuff. Johnson got us in it, Nixon took 7 years to get us out.........Sound familiar people?

 

[Kreskin]

What was wrong with leaving Vietnam?

 

[selfactivated]

What was wrong with leaving Vietnam?

LOL absolutely nothin *UH*(get it? song? oh nevermind)

My point was one jerk gets us in and it takes years and lives to get us out.

 

[Kreskin]

LOL absolutely nothin *UH*(get it? song? oh nevermind)

My point was one jerk gets us in and it takes years and lives to get us out.

Self I wasn't questioning your comment. Mine was just a general comment. I always hear complaints about leaving Vietnam early but I'm not sure what they are. Were there some brownie points waiting if an additional two years were put it? Were we expecting the Vietnamese to throw a spontaneous tickertape parade at some point?

 

[selfactivated]

Self I wasn't questioning your comment. Mine was just a general comment. I always hear complaints about leaving Vietnam early but I'm not sure what they are. Were there some brownie points waiting if an additional two years were put it? Were we expecting the Vietnamese to throw a spontaneous tickertape parade at some point?

According to the show I just watched Nixon had his hands in to many pots. Kinda like ol Bush.

 

[gopher]

Okay, let me re-phrase.........The anti-war crowd has to come up with some alternatives that recognize the problems in a policy of RUN AWAY NOW!

The anti-war crowd is smart enough to know that staying there is FAR worse. This is why the majority of the USA population, like the majority of Iraqis, say get the hell out NOW!

 

[MikeyDB]

What was wrong with leaving Vietnam?

MATS doesn't serve champagne....at least that was my experience...

 

[tracy]

What is MATS?

 

[Curiosity]

The protests held nation-wide this past weekend were not attended by one politician. I am confused. I thought they were basing their partisan political thrusts on leaving Iraq to the new invaders - Iran.

What was wrong with leaving VietNam? Better ask the dead. Cut and run seems a poor answer.

From the Swift Boat Vets book - page 18

3.5 million people estimated to have died in communist purges at end of Vietnam war;

Also include 2.5 million in the killing fields of Cambodia;

Laos has had whole people's eliminated ;

1.4 million refugees who made it to the US ;

Plus 10s of thousands of boat people perished in the seas trying to escape.

 

[Curiosity]

What is MATS?

In this instance I think it means: Military Air Transport Service - the flights carrying home those who were ordered cut and run as we call it - to leave Saigon

 

[tracy]

In this instance I think it means: Military Air Transport Service - the flights carrying home those who were ordered cut and run as we call it - to leave Saigon

Thanks. I'm not up on military language

 

[gopher]

Im sitting here watching a PBS show on the 1960's Amazing stuff. Johnson got us in it, Nixon took 7 years to get us out.........Sound familiar people?

Correction - Eisenhower got us into Vietnam in 1954.

 

[selfactivated]

Correction - Eisenhower got us into Vietnam in 1954.

My notes said Johnson but Im prolly wrong

 

[Colpy]

My notes said Johnson but Im prolly wrong

The Americans supported the return of the French to SE Asia shortly after the end of WWII, thus double-crossing Ho Chi Minh, who the Americans supported against the Japanese during WWII. The Americans were very concerned that the communists would gain support in France, and were willing to do almost anything to keep the French population friendly........including supporting France in this idiotic case of military adventurism.

The French were given weapons and air support. After their decisive defeat at Dien Bien Phu in 1954, the Americans supported a UN presence and a move towards nation-wide elections to be held in 1958.
It became increasingly obvious Ho Chi Minh would win those elections, and he had earned (in the eyes of the USA) the fatal label "communist", and so the elections never happened, and the temporary divide between North and South became permanent. US advisors trained the ARVN (Army of the Republic of Viet Nam). Kennedy increased aid, and sent "advisors" into combat situations. Johnson sent in the first regular troops in 1965. By Tet in 1968 there were 569,000 US troops in Viet Nam.