Advocating defeat without consequences: “ending” the war
What important military defeats has America ever known? If you don’t count the South in the Civil War, we have a single one: Vietnam.
The consequences of that defeat, in a land so far away, were easy for Americans to ignore or whitewash, or to pin on our conduct during the war itself rather than our decision to abandon the South Vietnamese to their fate.
The Left, for example, has always blamed America’s actions during the Vietnam war—and especially the bombing of Cambodia—for the ascendance of the brutal Pol Pot regime and its later killing fields (see this article, especially pages 6-7, for an argument against that controversial theory, as well as an explanation of its journalistic origins). The Left has also consistently minimized the suffering of the people of South Vietnam when the North took over. To the Left, the Northern Vietnamese Communists weren’t so bad, and the Cambodian Communists (who even they have to admit were pretty nasty folk) would never have succeeded but for the actions of the US in fighting them and their North Vietnamese allies.
Not only does the Left whitewash the consequences of the American defeat in Vietnam. I’ll go even further and say that to the Left, the Vietnam pullout was actually a victory—for them. It’s something they had promoted for a long time, and they finally won. What’s more, except for the rare Vietnam revisionist historian, their version of history won; it has come to dominate the texts and the press. And so the Left neither wanted—nor needed—to look at the negative consequences of the defeat for others.
Vietnam has been the template for the Left in most of our subsequent wars. They tried to repeat the experience in Afghanistan, but it didn’t quite work because that country’s American casualties, and the length of time we were in active fighting there, were insufficient to generate enough revulsion on the part of the American public.
But Iraq was going very well for the Left for quite a while, much in the Vietnam mode. It went on for a long time and was more bloody. And, although casualties were nowhere near those sustained in the Vietnam conflict, American sensibilities had become more delicate in the ensuing years, and tolerance for death in wartime was much lower.
In Bush, as in Nixon, the Left was gifted with a president who was vulnerable to personal attack, and both men played into the Left’s hands in various ways (Bush through his tendency to strut and his relative inarticulateness, Nixon through his paranoia and ultimately Watergate). In both wars the press changed from initial (although somewhat wary) enthusiasm for the war to outright condemnation (see this and this for a discussion of Vietnam and the press).
Vietnam was not just the template for the Left’s approach to war, it was the template for defeat without consequences. But there were negative consequences; just not for the Left. Not only did our withdrawal from Vietnam negatively impact the people of South Vietnam and Cambodia, it offered encouragement to those who would challenge the US, by letting them know that the American people lacked the stamina for a long fight. Thereafter, enemies assumed they might have a good chance of wining against the larger and more powerful US through a three-pronged strategy: (a) wear us out while (b) simultaneously allying with the Left in this country to spread propaganda points, and (c) counting on the US press to ultimately join forces with the Left in that endeavor, either through ignorance or design.
The Iraqi insurgents and terrorists expected to win in a manner similar to North Vietnam. It was reasonable of them to assume that they would, and in fact they came perilously close. The Democrats, the Left, and the press played their parts to perfection. The 2006 Congress had become controlled by Democrats, and was eager to be part of the production.
The stumbling blocks turned out to be a few Democrats, most of the remaining Republicans, and especially the stubborn Bush. The former managed to block some of the legislation the majority of Democrats wished to pass, and Bush vetoed the rest. Bush remained committed to the surge, and appointed the brilliant General Petraeus to be in charge of its implementation.
And so there remained enough time left for the surge to succeed beyond the Left’s and the Democrats’ wildest dreams. Paradoxically, however, this meant that once again, those who had either advocated or prematurely accepted defeat never had to face the consequences of what such a defeat might mean. Protected by their enemy Bush and his victory (at least so far; nothing is permanent or written in stone in Iraq), they can now bask in the glow of their devotion to peace at any price, and yet not be saddled with the burden of dealing with defeat there.
Thus, President Obama can speak of “ending” the war in his recent speech to Marines at Camp Lejeune while studiously avoiding all mention of victory, the surge, or including a single word of praise for his predecessor. The closest he comes is to say “you got the job done,” after speaking at length of dangers, loneliness, and burdens, as well as “difficult days ahead.”
I’m not sure what message the Marines heard. But I think the message our enemies have heard—loud and clear—is that President Obama and the Democrats may mouth intimidating words about Afghanistan and Pakistan, but when push comes to shove, they’ll be shoving off.
Neoneocon,
Can you name for me any battle or campaign, under either MACV commander (William Westmoreland or Creighton Abrams) which can be characterized as an American military defeat and a North Vietnamese victory?
In any theatre of operation, from I Corps up in Da Nang-Hue on down to V Corps in the Mekong Delta region?
These distinctions are important, because my study of the history and my anectdotal acquaintance with actual officers and nco’s who had done tours in the Republic of Vietnam compels me to draw this conclusion: that the Vietnam War was not a military defeat for the U.S. It most certainly was a political defeat. The reason why it was a political victory for the North Vietnamese Communists owes to the fact that we had a poor strategy devised by our political leaders. Our commanders operated within the constraints that Presidents Johnson and Nixon laid down to them.
Tactically, within those faulty constraints and strategy, our military performed brilliantly.
When we mis-characterize the history, we often come up with the wrong lessons. I believe this is the case in the ongoing debate about this war. I think the Marxists are fully aware of the truth of it all, and are sheepish about openly talking about the role that their campaign of dezinformatzia and political obstruction played in the political outcome of the war.
The anti-war movement got started exactly at the same time our first major mobilization of units were set in motion in the summer of 1965. The Communists had in place their strategies and had already networks of allied groups inside the U.S. Check out the history of this. As the troops were arriving on the West Coast for embarkation on to troop ships these groups of Marxists and their sympathizers were already obstructing the troop trains. The protests were already heating up at U. Cal at Berkeley.
FredHjr: I’ve written extensively on the fact that America was not defeated militarily in Vietnam, as well as the fact that the ARVN were not doing all that badly, either, when we pulled the financial plug on them. All these posts are filed under the category “Vietnam.”
[And by the way—I sent you a question in an email. Did you receive it?]
There is an interesting comparison of the reaction of Marines to Obama on the one hand and Bush, on the other at . This is less about what they heard than it is about how they sounded and behaved. Still, I suspect they get it alright.
Sorry about the xhtml botch there, the reference term should have read, Blackfive, which is the link destination.
Sorry neo, I just got a bit unnerved by the initial characterization of a “military defeat.” I trust you. I did get your e-mail.
My wife has a now deceased cousin (he died much too early in life) who flew OH6 helos (they were used for recon missions) out of Phu Bai near Hue in 1969 for the Army. On one mission he had to fly the deputy commander for the Army’s artillery in the DMZ area of I Corps on a surveillance of the Laos border region. They were attacked by small arms and rocket fire and the Colonel, whose name was Jennings, was killed instantly and the helo downed. Mike survived and brought the helo down near a bare hilltop and spent two days hiding in the underbrush from NVA sweeps to find him. He was eventually rescued and decorated with the Bronze Star and Purple Heart. They did manage to recover the Colonel’s body.
The protests from the Communists and their useful idiots at home really incensed him when he got home in 1970. His son, BTW, is now an Army captain who has done a tour in Iraq and a tour in Afghanistan.
techcnically the war of 1812 is looked at as our first “defeat”… it was a draw and so a waste…
vietnam was the same, it was a draw, as the other side never could sue for terms and we walked away. (as neo is mentioning)
there was even once a plan for new england to secede from the union… see Massachusetts Governor Caleb Strong
then one may think about the attack and invasion of canada in 1775 was also a failure… first ethan alan tries for montreal, and then montgomery tried to take quebec. (benedict arnold was wounded, and general M was killed). half the american forces were killed or wounded.
you can read more about Gen. William Hull, Gen. Stephen Van Rensselaer, and a host of others.
if ties count as loses, then we also lost korea..
neo, you hit on the main point: Losing in vietnam was a victory for the left here, and so the idea that we lost must be preserved in the face of other evidence.
Foreign affairs are in general treated as mere counters in the American political game by the left (and sometimes by the right as well). They have no reality other than their electoral effect here. That is why the UN, foreign journalists, and foreign elites have so much sway in their minds – they think those are the rest of the world.
American businesspeople, military personnel, and mission groups have a very different – and much broader – picture of who is out there in the world. Far from being broadening, I think Junior Year Abroad should be abolished as misleading. It puts impressionable youngsters in contact with the elites of other countries, which they extrapolate falsely.
there are a lot of things about this war that most on the left are unaware of.
like how directly it was a proxy war between the US and russia, the way korea was a proxy war between the US and both russian and china.
Russian pilots flying Russian fighters fought American pilots over North Korea in 1951. These spectacular aerial dogfights caused no crisis between America and the Soviet Union, because the American pilots were diplomatically referred to as “United Nations pilots” and Russian pilots were euphemistically called “North Korean pilots.” No one was fooled, but no one protested because everyone preferred the pantomime of a proxy war to another world war between the great powers.
i have found lots of historical data giving names and such of russian pilots in most of the conflicts in the last century… and those that we remember they werent part of.
in other words, from the middle east, korea, veitnam and other things… russian soldiers, pilots, and others were there fighting US soldiers.
i cant hear the audio on this, its not in mono and i am deaf in one ear, so on my machine audio is gone (even though its set to mono)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6wprT66Yjxs
english.pravda.ru/main/18/90/363/15388_vietnam.html
Yevgeni Antonov, retired Major-General, was one of the Soviet citizens, who was involved in the USSR’s assistance to Vietnam during the war. In 1969-1970, Antonov chaired the group of Soviet military specialists in the field of the anti-aircraft defense. According to his words, the USSR was sending whole air defense regiments to Vietnam in the beginning of the conflict. As a result, Vietnam virtually became a range ground to test the Soviet weaponry there. The Soviet Union was testing and amending its military hardware in Vietnam to develop technologies of protection against homing missiles, to train attacks of low-altitude targets, etc.
According to Mr. Antonov, one could easily understand after the first raids on Vietnam that the US forces were not prepared for the war. The American aviation was flying at altitudes and speeds that were good for the Soviet troops, US aircraft did not have a tactical structure in group flights, the radio interference of US troops was rather weak.
Soviet Major Proskurin, for instance, was decorated for downing four targets with three missiles: the planes were flying wing to wing. The US military command underestimated the Soviet missile technology. American troops were shocked to find out their own losses in the war. When Americans were bombing Vietnam’s North, they left airbases intact. However, they could wipe Hanoi and Haiphong off the face of the earth. The US public opinion was against the war in Vietnam, though: the American command preferred to avoid massive public actions. When Richard Nixon took the office in 1969, he decided to conduct negotiations with the Vietnamese authorities in Paris. To make them more agreeable, the US troops carried out the Linebacker II operation in 1972. B-52 flying fortresses performed hundreds of sorties showering the ground with bombs, Yevgeni Antonov says. It became a lot easier for the US authorities to talk to their Vietnamese colleagues afterwards indeed.
and i cant resist this one..
Soviet officer who ‘shot down McCain over Vietnam’ speaks out
en.rian.ru/world/20081117/118360632.html
There has never been any official acknowledgement that Soviet soldiers served in Vietnam on the side of the communist North Vietnamese in the 1960s and 1970s. However, Trushyekin, currently in a hospital in Russia’s second city of St. Petersburg, had no qualms about speaking about his time in the jungles of Southeast Asia.
according to reports from Yonhap, the South Korean News Agency, there were many North Koreans military servicemen who fought the Vietnam War on the side of communist North Vietnam, and at least 14 of them were killed and buried in marked graves about 38 miles from Hanoi. Yonghap said 11 of the 14 Koreans were fighting as combat pilots, the other 3 were warplane mechanics. According to inscriptions on tombstones at the grave sites, they were killed by American bombs or were shot down over North Vietnam skies in mid-1967.
A Vietnamese communist local government official confirmed the direct participation of North Korea in the Vietnam War in a telephone interview.
“It’s not a newly-found place. We built the grave a long time ago and every year people from the North Korean embassy in Hanoi come here to pay homage to the martyrs,” he said as reported by Reuters.
As far back as 1967, there were information from North Vietnamese POWs and ralliers (or defectors, or chieu hoi) reported to the South Vietnamese intelligence agencies about North Korean fighter pilots in North Vietnam. The sources said that North Vietnamese were praising the North Koreans as the best jet pilots who often led the intercepting missions and brought down a lot of American warplanes, far better than North Vietnamese fighter pilots.
South Korean sources estimated that more than 800 North Korean Air Force military men were serving in North Vietnam before 1975.
The POWs and defectors also told stories about Soviet jet pilots in dogfights against the Americans over North Vietnam’s skies. The Soviet pilots, as well as the North Koreans, always flew warplanes bearing North Vietnam colors.
Rumors, later confirmed, ran that some Soviet pilots’ jets were shot down by the Americans and they landed safely by parachutes on the ground. The Soviet pilots never wore insignias or marks to tell that they were from the Soviet Union.
They were immediately arrested and were beaten to pulp by the militiamen in the area, most of whom didn’t understand Russian. Some who could tell that the downed pilots were Russians usually beat them more brutally as if they had mistaken them for the Americans.
The question is why the South Koreans and the Vietnamese Communists chose this moment to disclose such an “already-known secret?”
do some research and you can also find that the isrealis shot down a bunch of them in the 70s flying for those other states…
They certainly considered it as such.
The night after the helicopters airlifted refugees from the roof of the American Embassy, on my way back to the lab at Berkeley, I passed a church across the street from the campus. The church was ablaze with light, and inside I saw a jubilant crowd raising their glasses to toast the American defeat, 55,000 dead Americans later.
It pisses me off to this day.
During the campaign, Michelle Obama said that for the first time in her adult life she was proud of her country. Well, I’m 57 years old and for the first time in my adult life I fear for the survival of my country. The Obama administration seems bent on systematically destroying the wealth and economy of this country simply because capitalism is seen as evil. God help us.
Glen Larson,
When you say “God help us” I second that sentiment. But, what I am about to write is not something ill-considered and have pondered this very thought for a few months now. And I’m not one of those “fundamentalist” Christians that people inveigh against. I’m a mainstream, moderate Roman Catholic with a very classical training in philosophy and some theology when I was a Jesuit seminarian many years ago (I’m 54, by the way).
I have wondered about the events and context leading up to this calamitous election and its results. So many things fell into place very nicely for such a disastrous result. I believe God is behind it. Specifically, I think sometimes Providence does play a role in history, and in this case I think God has allowed us to be given over to our perverse judgment and passions.
We were lucky that President George Bush won in 2000. I didn’t vote for him, but we are very lucky that Al Gore lost. Imagine the calamities that would have ensued, and we would already be laboring under the crushing weight of the carbon tax regime on steroids. However, instead of being thankful for our good fortune and for the service of what I consider to be a very good and decent man, for eight years most of the nation trashed this man. Savaged him and everything he tried to do.
We are reaping the whirlwind. We sought his blood and destruction. We slandered him and we savaged our military too. We gave aid and comfort to the enemies of this nation and of all human civilization.
This miasma of stupidity, ignorance, and malice has culminated in the election of a Red Diaper Baby to the Oval Office and the ascendancy of that pack of jackals from his party. In every respect, the next four years are collective punishment on the nation for the decadence and malice we have become. Clearly, not all of us deserve all the bad things that are going to happen. The innocent will suffer with the guilty. But I believe sometimes this chastening may clear the deck and bring most of us to our senses.
Our military is still paying the price for our abandoning the Vietnamese. Evil men everywhere assume that if they can only kill and wound enough of our military we will abandon the battlefield and they will have accomplished their goals. It very nearly worked in Iraq.
I spent eighteen months in Vietnam. I was out in remote areas much of the time and had little opportunity to interact with the Vietnamese people. But I loved the Vietnamese that I did get to know. I cried in April 1975. Those good people certainly deserved better than they got. I am sure that those few friends I did make paid a very high price for that friendship.
We are reaping the whirlwind. We sought his blood and destruction. We slandered him and we savaged our military too. We gave aid and comfort to the enemies of this nation and of all human civilization.
Who is this we, kemo sabe?
Just a few mild points of observation on an otherwise excellent commentary.
While Vietnam is considered a “defeat” in most circles, one should also keep in mind the following:
– The US military was never defeated in any major land battle between US and North Vietnamese forces.
– The US military could achieve air superiority almost at will by the time the war was over.
– The US military combat troops had been withdrawn prior to the final North Vietnamese invasion which ultimately toppled the South Vietnamese government.
– The South Vietnamese military was actually giving a good account of itself initially during the final invasion, until the military aid and air support promised by the US to the South Vietnamese was withheld by a democrat controlled congress.
one thing i am noticing is that its a me me me reflection… the view is turned inwards…
there is also the fact that from that point on, america lost its reputation as being dependable. that from that point on, no one who wanted help from us would know whether cooperation would work, or they would be left holding the bag at the end of a more horrible situation left unfinished.
they could not trust us.
fredhjr,
The innocent will suffer with the guilty. But I believe sometimes this chastening may clear the deck and bring most of us to our senses.
i hope we get our mulligan… and i hope my guesses are so far off that i look real bad and i look like a crack pot. i really do. better to be an eccentric crackpot who got carried away in a free state than prescient in a totalitarian one, even a ‘nice’ one.
but whatever happens I will do what the system lets me do, and succeed. i can be quite pragmatic and fluid about the whole thing.
Gee, I wonder what would happen if someone made a movie about Obama’s assassination, like they did with Bush?
Obama will end the war in Iraq, a war he did not understand or believe in.
For he has his own war, the one he is now waging against Americans who dare to disagree with him. Against Republicans. Against Rush Limbaugh. Against Rick Santelli. Against Jim Cramer. Against the successful, against the business owners, and against the individualists.
The Obama team is after Rush and others because they are still in campaign mode, that is what they know how to do, they are an aggressive cancer upon the world, and they are at war with Americans who dare to have an opinion.
No less than the White House Press Secretary is using the Presidential podium to ATTACK, not just Rush, but Rick Santelli, and now Jim Cramer, a democrat and big time Obama supporter. Thou darest not question the one.
The President’s men hold daily strategy sessions plotting how to silence opposition to Obama, and how to increase the divisiveness that cripples cooperation. The President meets with activist groups and sends out his armies to ‘persuade’ the people that he is infallible.
It is disgusting. And It is despicable.
We traded a president who waged war on those who behead women and children, and fly planes into buildings for one who wages war on his own people. No bombs. But destructive nonetheless.
“- The US military was never defeated in any major land battle between US and North Vietnamese forces…”
The late COL Harry Summers made exactly this point when he met one of his NVA counterparts in some years after the war. The NVA officer responded with, “Yes, but that is irrelevant”. The North Vietnamese integrated their political and military strategies. Ours were always disconnected from each other. Say what you will about the lefties and journalists (same?) “losing” the war for us, and the post-Nixon Congress betraying the South (they did). Regardless of that, the North Vietnamese were able to play and encourage this sedition (for that’s what it was) for their own benefit as part of an overall plan to eventually win the war, at whatever cost. We weren’t willing to pay that price, and it ended up costing us a lot more in the long run because of our lack of credibility in defending an ally.
There’s reason that the United States has always maintained civilian control of its military. (That, in turn, is probably one of the most important reasons we have had such a stable history and such a great society today, but that’s another topic.) One aspect of the wisdom of this policy bears particular mention here:
Military defeat is not always a defeat of national interest, and military victory, in turn, is not always a victory.
Also, besides the defeats mentioned by Artfldgr, I would say that the Civil War was a defeat for both sides; we defeated ourselves.
“I believe God is behind it. Specifically, I think sometimes Providence does play a role in history, and in this case I think God has allowed us to be given over to our perverse judgment and passions.”
I think I get your point, although as worded it’s a contradiction. God cannot be an active participant and an impartial observer at the same time. It’s the second part I think you meant, that God will not interfere with our poor decisions, because we have “forgotten the rock of our foundation”, specifically love of Him ( Isaiah, Ch.17 ).
In the true story book ” We were Soldiers Once and Young” there was a defeat of a US unit of Battalion size. The movie of similiar name only portrays the first major U.S. Battle of La Drang, not the much more disastrous second battle soon after.
The unit got hit while spread out in a long marching column. The companies in the middle were effectively wiped out.
I am no fan of the Lefties and their distortions, but …
PS. If the unit in question was using the Calvary Unit designations like “Troop” and “Squadron”, I apologize. But the unit was “Battalion” sized.
jon baker,
I read that book too – twice. You could define it as a defeat and that would be a fair assessment. But as decimated at that battalion was, the NVA could not wipe them out. Our men fought like lions and inflicted heavy losses on the NVA. You could call it a pyrrhic victory for the Communists.
Just a minor correction. It was named the Ia Drang Valley, not La Drang.
I stand by what I also stated earlier. The savage beating that was administered to Pres. Bush from the get-go, especially before, during, and after the onset of Operation Iraqi Freedom, by the mainstream media stoked by the DNC and its allies set up the debacle of the 2006 and 2008 elections. The well was poisoned. People who only get their impressions from a few minutes on NBC, CNN, ABC, and CBS news and the major newspapers’ headlines (to cover the quick scan readers who don’t read in too much detail) were predisposed to vote for Democrats and their agenda. Now this dynamic was changing late ’07 and into ’08 as The Surge was effecting very positive results on the ground. But it was too late. The damage was already done and the most residual resistance to a re- assessment of the situation in Iraq came from the younger voting groups, who are closest to the education system where the indoctrination and protest against the war was most robust.
I predict the economic recovery will be slow and not strong during the next four years. I also predict foreign policy mistakes, miscalculations, and crises because our enemies have already taken stock of our weakness. This will, in the long run, cost lives and perhaps a ghastly toll in human life. The lack of realistic and clearheaded analysis of what these enemies are like, what their goals are, and what they are prepared to do will invite murder and destruction.
Our strategy in Southeast Asia during the Vietnam was was defined as a “containment” policy. We were playing defense, trying to bar the door to the North Vietnamese while we cleaned out the Viet Cong fifth column in the South. The great fear that gnawed at the minds and guts of the policy makers was the same that played on them later in the Korean War. Recall that we had driven the Communists all the way up past the Yalu River. No one expected the Chinese to commit such massive forces, resources, and an offensive strategy. We were overrun and we conducted a fighting retreat all the way back down the peninsula.
We were afraid of two things if we went full tilt and went to destroy the North Vietnamese by invading their country. First, we were afraid that China would do the same thing again. Second, we feared that the Soviets would go nuclear. We knew that the Soviets and the Chinese were fighting a proxy war and had invested enormous resources into that fight. The stakes were high for all the players.
In war you don’t win by playing defense. Your objective has to be to get to grips with the enemy and defeat his entire force capability. The purpose of war is to make the enemy bend to your will. With the North Vietnamese that meant invading their country and also going into Laos and Cambodia to take out the Ho Chi Minh Trail.
The enemy won the war because he did indeed integrate his military with political strategies. The people most responsible for that victory in 1975 were American citizens aided by the surrogates for the KGB who coordinated the political campaign.
Artfldgr ,
I must partially disagree with your assessment of previous US ‘defeats’.
‘Ties only count as loses’ IF the goal is the acquisition of something one did previously possess, such as new territory or if one loses a significant prior asset.
1812 was not about gaining land or even a ‘truce’, it was about establishing American maritime independence. And then in repelling the British invasion that sought to impose interdiction of US shipping. We accomplished both of those goals. The British lost, period.
The invasion of Canada was a military defeat.
Vietnam was a political defeat for the US that led to the military defeat of our cold-war proxy, South Vietnam.
Korea was a victory. The goal in Korea was the repulsion and defeat of communist aggression, first of N. Korea and then of China. We stopped them cold. They gained nothing. Our proxy cold-war state South Korea retained full autonomy and all prior territory.
You are entirely correct in asserting that both Korea and Vietnam were cold-war proxy battles between primarily, the US and Russia/China.
This was common knowledge during these wars.
“The Obama administration seems bent on systematically destroying the wealth and economy of this country simply because capitalism is seen as evil. God help us.” Glen Larson
“I think God has allowed us to be given over to our perverse judgment and passions…We are reaping [about to reap] the whirlwind. …This miasma of stupidity, ignorance, and malice has culminated in the election of a Red Diaper Baby to the Oval Office and the ascendancy of that pack of jackals from his party. In every respect, the next four years are collective punishment on the nation for the decadence and malice we have become.” FredHjr
I too fear such a fate for our nation. Economically it shall almost certainly be a heavy price we shall pay.
But if Obama is reelected, it will signify a conscious turning away from reason and the willful denial of the American public and, in a way in which the claim of being duped by the MSM cannot support.
That denial shall have then have a terrible price, for it will also give Al Qaeda, et al, the time they need to ‘tap into’ the greatly increased nuclear proliferation that Iran’s now virtually certain, getting of nukes will result in and then, the price will be a catastrophic, truly biblical one.
“Still, if you will not fight for the right when you can easily win without bloodshed; if you will not fight when your victory will be sure and not too costly; you may come to the moment when you will have to fight with all the odds against you and only a precarious chance of survival. [Yet] There may even be a [still] worse case. You may have to fight when there is no hope of victory, because it is better to perish, than live as slaves.” – Winston Churchill, “The Gathering Storm.”
“War is an ugly thing but not the ugliest of things; the decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feelings, which thinks that nothing is worth war, is much worse. A man who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing that is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature. One who has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself.” – John Stuart Mill
Good posts, guys. Thanks.
Too bad for us all that more voters didn’t learn real history, especially as regards the bad half of our two-party system. But we let them capture our schools and colleges and mass media, yes we did. Our elites led the way. I recall with affection (now) George Wallace railling against pointy-headed bureaucrats.
It may be too late to fight back and win. But fight we/I must. I am told by retired military officers that our armed forces would never share in, much less initiate, a coup.
Neo,
You say that Bush and Nixon were vulnerable to personal attack. While no doubt true, any Republican is going to be trashed by the left and their minions in the MSM. Had McCain won, he would have been painted as a dottering old fool by now.
You can also see how the administration is targeting “enemies” by name (Santelli, Limbaugh, Cramer) to intimidate critics. During the Clinton years it was called the politics of personal destruction.
I know that there are all kinds of people. But, one thing that has always puzzled me is Assistant Village Idiot’s point that “Foreign affairs are in general treated as mere counters in the American political game by the left (and sometimes by the right as well). They have no reality other than their electoral effect here.”
How can someone miss the effects their actions have, or, do they simply not care? My guess is the latter. “Game” seems the right term – their political machinations are both a reward and a subset of reality, all encompassed in a little bubble divorced from any nasty consequences. There are plenty of historical examples of people who could not care if their nation lost power as long as they had a larger share of whatever was left over.
The Left did not care about the consequences of the “defeat” of U.S. forces anywhere, anytime. The consequences of this are what they were striving for. They are in a long war against capitalism and our liberal traditions of a democratic Republic. This is not going to change.
We had best face up to this fact. We are either going to be defeated by them or we are going to defeat them.
I’m in favor of defeating the Marxists in this country by any means necessary. Preferably through the elections process. But, failing that the firing squad for these people will do just fine by me. I’ll volunteer to be in the firing squad. Why? Because the damage these fifth columnists have done to our country and our culture is incalculable. It has cost many lives here and abroad. It has resulted in economic misery here and abroad. These people know what they are doing. Anyone who denies this is not plugged in to reality. I used to be in the Marxist movement and so I have a pretty good idea of the kinds of people these are. Most are hangers on and trying to cling to an outlet for their resentments and problems. But some are truly destructive and corrosive.
For that latter group I have no problems with a proscription list. Hunt them down like the dogs they are.
“I used to be in the Marxist movement and so I have a pretty good idea of the kinds of people these are. Most are hangers on and trying to cling to an outlet for their resentments and problems.”
My take on most of them is that, more than anything, they are people who don’t want to take personal responsibility, politically, financially or militarily, in authentically confronting the enemies of America and our important interests; Most importantly, they aren’t honest enough to admit that single fact…
Sure they did. They were and are thrilled by any contretemps suffered by the US.
Hey, hey! Dog lover here! Hunt leftists down like cats or cockroaches they are, but not dogs. They’re sweethearts – much nicer than leftists.
I have written of this before here, but I think it bears repeating – Obama has made a HUGE mistake by assuming that just because he is commander in chief he has the respect of the troops. Nothing could be further from the truth.
Jon Voight was asked why he was now a conservative when obviously a liberal in his early days in Hollywood. I thought his answer was very telling and intellectually honest. He said he felt he had been abandoned by his liberal friends at the end of the Vietnam war. When the US pulled out of the war they simply said “we won” and turned their back on the region (moving on to other free love and better LSD I presume) – and did nothing about protesting the slaughter of 2 million in Cambodia.
Occam’s Beard, I hear you. I’m a dog lover too! It was just an expression. I should have used jackals perhaps, since that desert creature is no friend of man.
I’ve been reading the reviews of Jamie Glazov’s latest book about the symbiotic relationship the Left has with the Muslims. Scum, the lot of ’em!
These people have no idea that we are not far away from a very angry citizenry that would bay for their blood. And get it too. And it may be, if the worst scenario comes to pass (please, God, we’ve been chastened and we will shape up!) – and I hope it does not – and it is necessary, we will know what has to be done.
Cat lover here. (Dogs too.)
How best to characterize the left? How about “plague bacillus”? Even the medieval rats were unwitting carriers, and meant no harm themselves.
Victory and defeat can, strangely enough, not be totally clear. In the case of our two world wars it was 100% clear in that we had an unconditional surrender – there is no way to view that other than “defeat”.
Vietnam is a great case – did we win, draw, or loose.? Militarily we won hands down. Other than a few individual tactical battles we won every engagement. From a strategic point of view we never lost a single one. From a political view – what were our goals? We set up a a South Vietnamese force that with little assistance was able to repel the NVA – which was our original goal so Victory there. However we pretty much stopped there – if a free and independent South Vietnam was our goal we failed as totally as Germany and Japan did in WWII. In one of our worst moments ever that failure was purely 100% political.
I, personally, try and view it in a holistic sense and we failed miserably there. So far it has been our only real defeat – Korea at least won us a free South Korea even though we lost the will to repel the communist from NK.
I will quote someone above : “there is also the fact that from that point on, america lost its reputation as being dependable. that from that point on, no one who wanted help from us would know whether cooperation would work, or they would be left holding the bag at the end of a more horrible situation left unfinished.”
Yep, and that is why I consider Vietnam a failure of the highest grade – I place it above the German defeat in WWI and WWII and Japans in WWII. Indeed there has been few (if any) failures of any other world power in history of this magnitude. We went from a world power that people could look up to to a a nation that only had power and money (and is still the way we are viewed). Those countries in total defeat *never* lost the amount of credit that we did even though we won over 99% of the encounters. Indeed Japans commitment to what they had started won them a great deal of respect from their enemies and still continues to this day.
In fact I do not think the US has won a war since Vietnam. We failed to protect the rebels after Desert Storm and failed miserably there. It was a full and total confirmation to the world that we could not be trusted. After destroying a country and supporting the rebellion we couldn’t even be arsed to stop them from flying helicopters to suppress their own citizenry. In one of the largest military victories known to man we didn’t even have the political will to go one nano-meter further. Time will tell on Iraq II and Afghanistan. I think we have won in Iraq Bush held out long enough I do not think we can loose now – though I think Obama will give it the old college try) yet our impending failure in Afghanistan will erase all of that.
Vietnam War very different from Iraq war. Vietnam War has its one time zone when Russia was the allied for the Vietnamese support them and deliver them with weapons.
In Iraq non of that happens and most importantly the invasion and occupations of Iraq came after 13 years of sanction which weakened Iraq state and brought down as unfuctintinal state that done by Democrats who they handed to Republicans with complete attentions going for war for strategic goals and in ME and East Asia.
Iraq left sanctioned by his neighbours, Iran the only player which officially announced that she helped US to invade Afghanistan and Iraq.
Would you care to repeat that in English?
ahem.
the Fifth Columnists really ARE Commie vermin. And deserve to be hanged for treason.
Anyone interested in reading first-person accounts of the fall of Saigon and its aftermath, try the book Tears Before the Rain. If you didn’t hate the Quisling media and Leftist swine before, you will after. (N.B.: the author married a Vietnamese woman. Also note: the Vietnamese in America vote over 90% REPUBLICAN.)
“…Hunt leftists down like cats or cockroaches they are, but not dogs…”
As the resident “cat guy” here, I must object! Plague bacillus is more accurate, but I view leftists more as slime mold, to be removed by a thorough cleansing with Clorox.
Beverly Says:
March 6th, 2009 at 4:08 am
“If you didn’t hate the Quisling media… before, you will after.”
Though it still goes back to personal honesty, there is an extent to which the media’s bias have colored the issues for many people, particularly the young and the shallow. Some of us who lived during the sixties and through the Vietnam era learned to be more careful, after having felt suckered by the msm and their almost irresistable bias (in retrospect) during Vietnam. Though the issues of Vietnam were, and still are in some ways, complex and still debatable, the final capitulation once combat troops were withdrawn, was perhaps the beginning of the tragic Europeanization of American culture. Some of us who allowed our judgement to be swayed by the media, as well as social pressure, or perhaps more specifically, social persuasion, learned a lot, especially humility. Somehow the Democratic Party didn’t, but then that is the nature of the consistantly intellectually and ethically retarded left-wing. Four decades later, I remember distinctly thinking, as the troops were on the road to Baghdad and when the Democrat’s started their insidious campaign to undermine the war effort, “not this war, not this time”.
why Obama leaving 50,000 troops
apologies for the broken link here is the link
Obama made effective use during his campaign of the idea that Iraq was “the wrong war” (his words, not mine). By default, Afghanistan was the war that Bush neglected and should have won so that 9/11 could be avenged. We are starting to see a buildup of troops in the Afghanistan theater. My prediction: the NATO allies will continue with their luke warm support and the US forces will take a majority of casualties. As our troops attempt to move into areas of Taliban control to mimic the surge strategy that worked in Iraq, there will be a spike of casualties, just as there was in Iraq. Before there is time to see if the new strategy works, Obama will lose his nerve and capitulate to the defeatists in his party and withdraw from Afghanistan after blaming the Afghan government and Bush. The consequences will occur years later because of the relaxation of vigilance practiced against terrorists by Eric Holder and others. We will see another successful major attack by terrorists in the United States. I hope I’m wrong, but I don’t think so.
Geoffry,
America’s First Defeat
http://www.lutins.org/1812.html
wiki.answers.com/Q/Was_the_War_of_1812_an_American_Victory_or_loss
and i did not say a tie was a defeat… i said if YOU consider a tie a defeat then the war of 1812 would be considered one as we did not get what we wanted, we lost a lot of men and material, and so forth… much like korea and vietnam…
1812 was not about gaining land or even a ‘truce’, it was about establishing American maritime independence. And then in repelling the British invasion that sought to impose interdiction of US shipping. We accomplished both of those goals. The British lost, period.
The primary goals of the War of 1812 were conquering Florida, at the time native American territory, and Canada, then British territory. Although the U.S. ostensibly went to war over maritime issues, John Randolph of Virginia noted, “Agrarian cupidity, not maritime rights, urges this war. Ever since the report of the Committee on Foreign Relations came into the House, we have heard but one eternal monotonous tone – Canada! Canada! Canada! Not a syllable about Halifax, which unquestionably should be our great object in a war for maritime security.”
U.S. leaders were confident of easily taking over our neighbor to the north. William Eustis, the U.S. Secretary for War declared: “We can take the Canadas without soldiers, we have only to send officers into the province and the people . . . will rally round our standard.” John C. Calhoun claimed that “In four weeks from the time that a declaration of war is heard on our frontier, the whole of Canada will be in our possession.” James Madison similarly proclaimed that “[t]he acquisition of Canada this year will be a mere matter of marching,” and Henry Clay boasted, “I trust I shall not be deemed presumptuous when I state that I verily believe that the militia of Kentucky are alone competent to place Montreal and Upper Canada at your feet.”
any more and i will get the hall monitors after me.
Korea is not seen as a win… the entrance of the chinese communsits directly meant that if we went after the rest of the state, the chinese would have continued to escalate.
there fore, as america stepped in and stopped the germans from keeping france, the chinese stopped the americans from taking north korea.
how this is a win is beyond me. if anything its a tie of sorts since a stalemate was reached at a certain parallel. and i didnt not say ties were defeats, as explained above, but others may.
and most military and others do see ties as defeats.
In his famous speech before a joint session of Congress, General Douglas MacArthur reminded America that “once war is forced upon us, there is no other alternative than to apply every available means to bring it to a swift end. War’s very object is victory–not prolonged indecision. In war, indeed, there can be no substitute for victory.” – – – It was proven even more profoundly at the “conclusion” of the war, when the UN and U.S. leaders accepted a substitute that conceded to Communist demands on virtually every important point.
in case you dont realize it, the korean war never ended. in other words, the war is still on!!! there was never a truce signed… a ceasefire was signed, this is not the same thign as a truce.
so technically its a stalemate and still going on…
How was the Korean War a defeat? It was a defeat by every criterion worth considering. The UN resolutions used as the basis for launching our military actions in Korea called for bringing about “a united, independent and democratic Korea.” Was Korea united, independent, and democratic when the 1953 cease-fire was signed? Is it so today? At a terrible sacrifice, American fighting men liberated all of Korea and made that goal a possibility. But political decisions turned victory to defeat; our forces were made to give North Korea back to the Communists.
The 1953 cease-fire agreement was not a peace treaty, as it is frequently, erroneously called. It was (and is) a temporary truce; we are still technically at war. North Korea, as a vassal state and a “deniable asset” of both Russia and China, was given a safe sanctuary to build its military forces and prepare for its next attack on the South. As such, North Korea has been given every military advantage. With the cease-fire, the Communists handed us a time bomb – but they held on to the remote detonating device. They can still detonate it at the moment of their choosing.
The Korean War was a stinging defeat in terms of its impact on our military. The morale of the U.S. Armed Forces was devastated by unprecedented, absurd, and immoral rules of engagement that handcuffed and endangered our men, stripped them of hard-won victories, and constantly favored the enemy. Our global prestige plummeted, while that of the Communists soared. What our politicians and press called a victory was recognized around the world as a signal defeat for the mighty U.S. military. It set terrible precedents for subjecting our military to UN controls and psychologically conditioned Americans to accept incursions on our national sovereignty and independence in the name of UN-defined “peace” and “collective security.” It brought the firing of General MacArthur, one of the greatest military leaders and statesmen our country has produced, by President Truman and the pack of subversives guiding him. Congress’ failure to impeach Truman for the unconstitutional and unconscionable policies and orders of his ad ministration relative to Korea added another catastrophic, defeatist blow to America.
Perhaps the most bitter of Korea’s many bitter defeats was the 1953 truce agreement abandoning over 8,000 U.S. POWs and as many as 100,000 South Korean civilian and military prisoners to the Communists. Many of these individuals suffered horrible fates, including serving as guinea pigs in torture experiments using chemical and biological weapons. Thousands were shipped to the Soviet Union and Red China. (See the article on page 15.)
The “stalemate” in Korea not only consolidated Communist control over North Korea, but over China as well, and set the stage for Laos, Cambodia, and Vietnam. Because of our failure to heed MacArthur’s call to victory, and our failure to clean out of government those who had sabotaged our victory, we were destined to a grim repetition in Vietnam, and an even costlier, bloodier defeat. – Jasper, William F. (from korean war remembered / the new american)
the war is technically still on
we did not meet our goals
we did not get our pows back at the signing
and so on.
any more and i will get the hall monitors after me.
This was common knowledge during these wars.
actually it wasnt… it was such amoung the flight crews and such… but not common knowlege, and even today, is not common knowlege.
go talk to a lefty and you cant even get them to believe the starvation of 10 million…
in fact, if you take the time to read most articles in mainstream you will find that nothing having to do with soviet manipulation is ever really included in the story.
they will talk about vietnam, they will bring up the active measure winter soldier lies, they will NOT bring up that we were going toe to toe agaisnt communist forces, sicne they want communism.
it mught remind us what we were fighting against.
there are no movies, no articles, no films in the mainstream that cover the russian history, even as it is with the US.
james bond is a multibillion dollar franchise, and spy flicks like red october sold millinos.
so why not plumb he depts of the cold war items from the archives and such? why not go into the assasinations, the active measures…
after all, they would make more money than doing a warped version of willy wonka, no?
Occam’s Beard said: “The night after the helicopters airlifted refugees from the roof of the American Embassy, on my way back to the lab at Berkeley, I passed a church across the street from the campus. The church was ablaze with light, and inside I saw a jubilant crowd raising their glasses to toast the American defeat, 55,000 dead Americans later.
It pisses me off to this day.”
I would point out that the day after the fall of Saigon was May 1, or May Day. From Wiki: “May Day has traditionally been an occasion for popular and often raucous celebrations, regardless of the locally prevalent political or religious establishment.”
“May Day has been a traditional day of festivities throughout the centuries. With Christianity came agricultural feasts such as Plough Sunday (the first Sunday in January), Rogationtide, Harvest Festival and May Day. It is most associated with towns and villages celebrating springtime fertility and revelry with village fetes and community gatherings. Since May 1st is the Feast of St Philip & St James, they became the patron saints of workers.”
Just sayin’.
May 1st is communist independence day
and womans day is their holiday too
[interesting given teh mag, no?]
I was a young SP4 stationed at Fort Lee, VA when the Communist tank columns rolled south out of North Vietnam in the Spring of 1975. One evening, near the end of it all, I was having dinner at the on-post home of a sergeant friend whose wife was Vietnamese. She was the former widow of an ARVN major who was killed in the war. She met my friend in ’71 when he was stationed at Cam Rahn Bay.
As we were watching the footage coming in from South Vietnam, An (her name) was crying. She was very upset. Her family and many of her friends were still there and she was greatly fearful for them, given that they were pro-U.S. and opponents of the Communists.
It was a very glum time the Army was experiencing. All of us understood what happened and WHY it happened.
FredHjr, I was in college ROTC at the time of South Vietnam’s defeat. One of the ROTC staff had a Vietnamese wife who reacted the way your friend’s wife did. That’s not surprising, since their families who remained behind were in real danger, especially if they had ties to the RVN government. There was also a lot of anger among the staff. Not so much towards President Ford, although he wasn’t exempt, but towards the Congress. They paid lip service to us future officers on “this is how our democracy works”, and so on, but it didn’t take much to find out what they really thought. Just a couple of beers later, and it was “those bastards in Congress”. I went into the Army as a lieutenant in the late 1970s and we were still suffering from the hangover of Vietnam and the unmitigated disaster known as the Carter Administration that followed. Now, as a retired reserve Lt. Col., I get to experience Carter II. What a joy!
waltj,
Sir, I salute you and your service. I’ll bet you were a good officer. The kind us enlisted men respected. I believe that Carter II is going to be a lot worse.
I did some checking into the oaths we took when we entered the service, both enlisted and officer. Nowhere are we pledged to the CIC. We are pledged to the Constitution of the United States and to defend the nation from enemies foreign AND domestic. I also checked into how that oath obligates us FOR THE REST OF OUR LIVES. Not just our service period.
What if The One is doing harm to that Constitution and the nation? Are we obligated to help the people, if they feel they must, remove the miscreants and restore the government? This is a topic that has been both furtively and openly discussed in many forums lately. Me… I would much prefer that we do this through the normal process of voting out the bastids. But, what if something happens that forces something we don’t want to do but yet must do?
Wow Artfldgr,
Quite a lot to respond too. Instead of a point by point rebuttal of where I disagree…I’ll be brief and include some links for you.
Yoy failed to include the factual response to Lyle’s assertions: http://www.lutins.org/1812-R.html
perhaps you overlooked it?
Canada was a defeat, as I stated but Florida was not a goal of the war of 1812 because Florida was a Spanish possession! Spain regained Florida in 1783…
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Florida
Yes, you stated:”if YOU consider a tie a defeat”…I considered that a rhetorical assertion, a plausible assumption given your follow-up in your response, “and most military and others do see ties as defeats.”
In the future, please remember that, “Intellectual honesty is the coin required, to sit at the table of debate.”
Korea was not a defeat. NK invaded, they were repelled and at the ceasefire, South Korea had gained slightly more territory than prior to the conflict.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_War
Military acumen notwithstanding, MacArthur was a self-important jerk with delusions of grandeur. he tried to assume
Truman’s actions being were NOT ‘unconstitutional’ nor ‘unconscionable’ and were based upon the geo-political fact that confronting China in a full blown war, as MacArthur wanted to do, would not be supported by our allies; “due to pressure from UN allies, notably Britain, the British Commonwealth, and France, who were concerned that if the United States became involved in a war with Communist China, American commitments to NATO would, through sheer necessity, go by the board. China then might have little difficulty in persuading the Soviets to move into western Europe, and without U.S. resistance to this aggression, they could take all of Europe at little cost.”
The UN resolutions to which you refer were not the basis for our involvement, the invasion by NK was the basis. The UN resolutions were prior to the invasion and were an attempt to mediate between the DPRK and ROK.
Communist control of China was already established in 1950…no one was going to overthrow Mao.
Notwithstanding NK belligerence, after 56 years, the ceasefire has turned into a ‘peace’.
I’m 60 yrs old and quite aware of the status on the Korean peninsula.
I mention my age because I was ‘in’ Vietnam and the Russian involvement WAS common knowledge. Even among 21 yr old swabbies like myself stationed on an aircraft carrier 60 miles offshore. There WAS mention of it in the papers, I remember reading about it prior to my enlistment in 69.
You have a lot of book knowledge artfldgr, perhaps it’s time you realized that there’s a difference between wisdom and knowledge because ‘knowing’ from a book is frequently incomplete.
Correction:
MacArthur was a self-important jerk with delusions of grandeur. He tried to assume power and authority greater than the President. THAT is WHY he was fired.
FredHjr
you should open your own blog instead taking this space with your rant.
FredHjr, yes, I’m well aware of what my oath states, and last I checked, it didn’t have an expiration date on it. I too would prefer to see things resolved via the ballot box or other peaceful means, especially since I live in a land far, far away from the U.S. these days, and can’t really influence things more directly. I too have thought about “what if” and the threat to the Constitution becomes too great to ignore. Well, I have trusted friends securing my weapons, and I have no real estate or other significant property that I’d be tied to, and no family to be worried about, so I could go pretty much anywhere that I needed to be. I sincerely hope it never comes to this, but it might.
I don’t know how good an officer I was. But I always found that if you wanted to be respected by those who worked for you, you had to respect them first. If a soldier has been doing a particular job for the last 2-20 years, and you know nothing about that job other than what you read last night in a Field Manual, then it might behoove you to listen to that soldier when he describes his duties to you. I figured out early on that while the troops were only marginally dependent upon me for their success, I was totally dependent upon them for mine. If I could lead them to where they needed to be, whether in the field, the motor pool, or in garrison, they’d get the job done. IN a nutshell, I just had to set the standards, to ensure the instructions were clear, check from time to time to make sure people weren’t slacking off, and work with and through my NCOs. There’s nothing hard about this concept. I don’t know why more people don’t do it. Although with all the combat experience U.S. forces have had recently, I bet it’s far more prevalent now than when I was in.
Truth, I think you meant Artfldgr, not FredHjr. But Artfldgr always has a lot to say, and besides, this is Neo’s bandwidth we’re using. If she has a problem with what he or any of us are saying, I’m sure she’ll take whatever steps she finds appropriate.
As noted above, the Viet Nam story as commonly known is a mishmash of leftist propaganda and Hollywood B.S. Similarly, the “mess” in Iraq wasn’t as depicted in the U.S. press or the collective wisdom.
During the “mess” period, I read Iraqi bloggers as well as military personnel weblogs to see the opinions of people I trust. I saw a transitional society with some people (“insurgents”) going for a power grab. Nevertheless, progress continued, and the surge came when most Iraqiis wanted it.
Remember Rumsfeld talking about a minimal U.S. presence when the old regime was defeated? They didn’t want a soldier on every street corner. This was to lend credence to the story the U.S. wasn’t there to stay and wasn’t there to take ownership. This also led to the perception that power was laying in the streets, ready to be picked up.
What were the consequences? Iraqiis seemed to understand it was their mess: polls showed majorities wanted the U.S. to leave…but not for awhile. I believe this also led them to understand the future was their’s to make. The terrorists (sorry…”insurgents”) thought they could muck things up by setting bombs up in marketplaces and mosques, and profit by the chaos…wrong; it increased the demand the U.S. do more policing, with the assistance of the locals. That’s the “surge”; it came about when they were ready for it.
What’s a leftist to do when they develop a narrative that Bush is stupid and bungled the war? That the surge was hopeless? Keep as much of the narrative as possible, to save as much face as they could. So the agreement in the collective wisdom is “Iraq is Viet Nam, and Bush bungled the war, but luckily, the surge kinda worked.” And that’s how it will be written down.
waltj,
No, “Truth” (what an Orwellian use of the word, eh?) meant me, not Artfldgr. He and I have only had a mild disagreement since I joined neo’s blog. You’ll find his beautiful symbiosis of Marxism and Islam endearing. I have seen the future and “Truth” embodies it!