- Shamelessly OT - Hillery has been rushed to a hospital after collaspsing just before giving an expected speech.... details are sketchy...her office is not giving out any details.....

It is my biggest fear the Bush will pull another Nixon and give us"Peace with Honor". It was nothing more than an unconditional surrender. If you doubt my statement show me Siagon on a post 1980 map. It made Goldwater so mad that he got some conservative Rep Senators together and they decided that Nixon had betrayed the men who fought for freedom Goldwater took this mesage to Nixon and said if an Impeachment Trial comes to the Senate we will vote you out for betraying our men. I voted for Nixon (many times) But Goldwater was right.

If Hill's at Canisus College, she'll be right next to one hospital and about three blocks from another.

I hope she's okay.

- Now they're saying she is recovering....did not actually go to the hospital and plans to complete the speaking engagement....she was complaining of stomach flu...

Dude, you GOTTA incorporate "screw 'em" into the new name for the fan clus & circle jerk. :)

Don't forget that Vietnam was the democrats' war. It took a Republican to bring the troops home. If the g-ddamn french weren't involved, they would have been home much sooner, too.

- There are definate signs that the Dem moderates are finally reaching the end of their ropes with the "left socialists gone wild" wingnuts.... comments on DU were decididly mixed yesterday.... amusing to watch them eating their own.....

Liberals have been on the wrong side of every U.S. conflict for the past 50 years. Truly it is transparently amazing to see what they are doing. The "hate America first" label is a trite cliche, but hard to see it any other way. They side with communists, fascists, and terrorists without thought or apology. The only criteria for a liberal cause is that it be counter to US goals.

And now we go back to Vietnam. Kevin's post is often not said, because it ain't politically correct, but it is oh so true. Liberals directly caused the collapse of a righteous effort in Vietnam, a war direclty opposing the spread of the communism which warmed their hearts. History has judged communism for what it was, a cold and methodical crushing of the human spirit. Yet liberals are proud of their dual accomplishments there -- the spread of communism and the defeat of the US. The resulting slaughter of millions in the war's aftermath is a small price to pay for their success.

And now they take their aims to Iraq, opposing freedom at all cost, and with such hysteria that the US may actually be successful in the end. While a success would spread freedom to Iraqis and light a torch for the entire middle east, they root for failure and sheepishly ask us not to question their patriotism. And with failure, the liberals would achieve their aims: the defeat of the US, the return of fascism to Iraq, a continuing political ice-age in the middle east. And again, the slaughter of millions in the vaccum that remains would be a small price to pay for their achievement.

Indeed, liberals have a lot of blood on their hands for opposing the best interests of the human race.

And now the US has a historic new calling, an effort for the next decades, which is the spread of freedom throughout the world. This is THE great stand for the Rights of Man, and liberals oppose without thought and without apology. Filled to capacity with such hatred for the US, a love for freedom has no place in the liberal heart.

You HAVE to put a link to the startribune article by Bill Moyers. It's listed in Hugh Hewitt's site. The words hysteria and hysterical come to mind. Jesus (no pun), the boy has obviously lost his mind. I wish there was a way to directly respond to his article.

Amen McCain... *swoon*

It's funny to me that this fellow on Kos's site is fired up enough to compare Bush to LBJ. I thought LBJ was a big hero to the lefties, with his "Great Society," his "War on Poverty," and his civil rights activism.

So if they think Iraq is an illegal war, does that mean the Dems also think Bush's domestic policies are the best things ever for America?

I followed the link, but refrained from posting about how stupid the comments were.

One example:

"maybe a set of elections was produced just in time to provide yet another "threshold moment" for an American public which has predictably started to become disenchanted with the war. Do you really imagine for one minute that the Bush administration wants a self-determined Iraq?"

I don't know what's more fun, seeing the lefties post something this lame and believing it, or seeing them all run around as if they have uncovered some hidden truth.

Still laughing.

I'm honestly interested in this provocative claim:

"Allowing Communist North Vietnam to march right in and subjugate South Vietnam really worked out well for the millions of Vietnamese slaughtered a detail they seem to forget..."

I did not know that millions of Vietnamese were slaughtered by Communist N. Vietnam. I'm aware of estimates that say 2+million Vietnamese died during the Vietnam war, and others that assert the Khmer Rouge slaughtered about 1.7 million Cambodians.

Is it possible, as you indicate, that the North Vietnamese butchered more people than Pol Pot's crew? Where do I turn to find evidence of this?

Oyster, you won't find any evidence of millions slaughtered after reunification of Vietnam. They did put a lot of the SV regime in concentration camps, which were surely horrible, but there's no reason to believe they killed millions. I would ask Kevin though, how much time and how many more American lives would the war have taken if we didn't pull out. You say the war was not lost on the battlefield but in the domestic arena. Wasn't that because of the body count on the battlefield? Or was it those damn socialists again, and their love affair with the Viet Cong?

As for the comparison with Iraq, I agree it really doesn't work, but hey, some people just love to talk about Vietnam. Btw, domestic battle fatigue? Hilarious. The democrats aren't out of touch with the mainstream, it's domestic battle fatigue!

oyster: I read that differently. I assumed Kevin WAS referring to the millions slaughtered in the war. I think (can't speak for him, but this is how I took it) he meant their deaths were all for naught but a final defeat and subjugation of the survivors by their enemy.

the other Oyster

I'm getting confused. I'm not sure which Oyster I am.

It is interesting to see KOS go back to reports in 1967 that seem to indicate sucess in Viet Nam.
1967 was the beginning point of the press attack on our Viet Nam Policy.

This was prior to the 1968 TET offensive. We won that battle decisively. You don’t need to refer to any American press for that analysis. You can read the memoirs of the generals who directed the Viet Cong and North Viet Nam armies.

Only after the American press began its unprecedented assault on our soldiers and undercut support at home for the war did things go sour.

From the standpoint of a soldier who served there I could not understand where the press was getting its information at the time. I now know that it was by picking and choosing only the worst information that could be found and spinning it to make it worse.

The 1967 reports do not stand for the proposition that the left wing thinks it does. Rather (pun?) it stands for the proposition that the boat people and those who died in the Killing Fields did not have to die. Things were on the right track in Viet Nam in 1967.

I think we have learned the lesson of Viet Nam. It is not the lesson that the Left would like to think it is. The very fact we have this kind of outlet to debunk Left wing spin is part of the reason.

I don't think that there are reliable numbers for all who died as a consequence of what happened in Viet Nam after we left and cut off aid.

You forgot a few weeks ago Kerry already met with Syrian leaders, and then came back saying how upset the rest of the mideast is with us.

So, don't worry he is still doing his job trying to undermine the effort to free iraq.

The comparison here is between the naive optimism of that `67 headline and the naive optimism seen in conservative attitudes towrad Iraq. How often have we turned the corner now?

And those who still think the Vietnam war was winnable have forgotten history. Short of genocide there was no way for America to win in that mess.

It's certaainly not a perfect analogy for Iraq, but there were lessons that should have been learned in Vietnam. Maybe if Bush, Rumsfeld, Cheney et al had actually served back then they would have learned those lessons...

"I'm aware of estimates that say 2+million Vietnamese died during the Vietnam war..." - Oyster

It was pretty messy all around Oyster:

http://www.rjsmith.com/kia_tbl.html

"The Hanoi government revealed on April 4 that the true civilian casualties of the Vietnam War were 2,000,000 in the north, and 2,000,000 in the south. Military casualties were 1.1 million killed and 600,000 wounded in 21 years of war. These figures were deliberately falsified during the war by the North Vietnamese Communists to avoid demoralizing the population."

21 years...we've been in Iraq fro two, and we're up to 100,000 dead civilians already...

The Viet Nam war became a quagmire because Johnson and McNamara micromanaged it into one. After we soundly defeated the North Vietnamese during the Tet offensive, their General Giap wrote in his memoirs that he thought the war was over for them. It was the MSM, along with the anti-war movement here in the US that sold a story of defeat and unwinnable war to the populace, just like the MSM and the liberals are trying to do today with Iraq....it won't happen this time because we have a President with balls who knows what it takes and won't be intimidated by the likes of Kennedy, Boxer and Kerry.

PS: You'll never get the straight story on Viet Nam by reading old newspapers, you need to read what the generals on both sides wrote.

Kos got that from the NYT, of this past Saturday, they couldn't even be bother with the research themselves, it has to be spoon feed.

Anyway, try this for Vietnam:

Casualties - US vs NVA/VC

http://www.rjsmith.com/kia_tbl.html

Go to the bottom of the page for a summary of what the North Vietnamese Communists later admitted where their actual casualties.
It is also interesting that exactly 2 million died on both sides of the boarder.

There are many resources available on the net about the Vietnamese diaspora, this is one. A careful reading of this suggests that perhaps as many as 1.2 million people disappeared after 1975.

http://www.danchu.net/TaiLieuDacBietDDDC/0.BoatPeopleHistory.IE.1.htm

I realize it's popular in America to pretend that the loss in Vietnam was the fault of the "leftists" and the media, but in fact it was never a winnable situation. The Vietnamese rebels had fought for more than century against the Chinese, then the French, then the Japanese, the French again...they weren't going to stop fighting just `cause the new occupiers of their country were American...

Liek I said, short of genocide there was no way to win in Vietnam., Anyone who pretends otherwise doesn't understand what was really happening there.

Well now Mr. A Hermit (who I suspect wasn't even alive during the Viet Nam war) I guess because you say it was unwinnable, it must be so. Try listening to people who were there and learn something....AFTER THE TET OFFENSIVE, THE NVA SHOT THEIR LOAD AND WERE ESSENTIALLY DEFEATED....Johnson and McNamara f*cked it up by not allowing us to put the hammer down and finish the war. You have absolutely no idea what you're talking about.

The comparison here is between the naive optimism of that `67 headline and the naive optimism seen in conservative attitudes towrad Iraq

Wrong again - it's a direct comparisson between the means used to get to both situations - and it a shitty one at best. Nice try Mr. Quebec, it's also popular to protest against meaningless bullshit in Quebec because there's nothing the citizens can do but complain about anything at all involving America and/or it's business because they can't afford to do anything else.

I don't even think what is going on in Iraq is that comparable to what went on in Vietnam.

The NV were at least fighting for a specific leader and a specific governmental philosophy.

At best you could describe the insurgents as organized crimimals. They aren't fighting for a leader, or even a philosophy.

The other cracked up thing about the comparison is that instead of an insurgency lead and funded by foreign interests, Vietnam itself was truly divided both physically and politically. There really is little else to compare rather than contrast between the two conflicts, other than John Kerry's role as surrenderer in chief.

Cranky is correct. The Tet Offensive was a huge military failure for the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong. Cronkite and his ilk managed to snatch defeat from the jaws of such victory, though. Nightly broadcasts of what was in essence North Vietnamese propaganda, plus the draft and other Johnson administration blunders, practically destroyed American resolve.

Back then, though, the MSM had a monopoly. They could lie with impunity to push the "legitimacy" of Communism into our living rooms and down our throats. They even managed to plant the "Nixon = Vietnam War = Republican = Evil" meme that dominated so much of pop culture since the late 70's. Never again.

A. Kermit's post is precisely what liberals say about every war. Just go back 3 years, and listen to hand-wringing about Afghanistan, you know ... they are always at war, they are tough & ruthless fighting men, they beat the Rooskies, blah blah blah. Liberals must have a form letter they can fill out for each conflict.

Liberals have never seen a just cause worth fighting. At least in the case of Afghanistan, they were mostly silent, but NOT entirely. You just can't keep an anti-American liberal down for long. Their silly complaints were mostly about how we were doing things completely wrong. I don't think that our liberal friends have earned the right to be taken seriously in foreign affairs. They have a 50 year track record of opposing freedom everywhere. And they want to be taken seriously about Iraq.

Kevin Aylward> So what is the vocal wing of the minority party now advocating in regards to Iraq? In many cases they're advocating abandonment.

This isn't remotely true.

p1. The most vocal factions of Democrats are in favor of a variety of policies that range all over between escalation of the occupation force to immediate and complete military withdrawal.

p2. Nobody with any credibility in the Democratic Party is advocating that Iraq should be "abandoned" even after any proposed withdrawal of forces.

p3. It's misleading to conflate a full and immediate military withdrawal from Iraq as "abandonment," since most advocates for such a policy are pushing for an increase in non-military assistance for Iraq.

p4. The comparison that most critics of the Iraq War are trying to make by highlighting this story from 1967 is that Americans have a documented history of being surprised and heartened at the size of turnout in elections conducted in war zones of their own making, despite the existence of organized and effective terrorist campaigns to disrupt the voting, only to forget all about those wonderful victories less than a year later when the results have been shown to be clearly irrelevant.

s9-
Is there something wrong with being "heartened"? Really now, you have inadvertently exposed the liberal mind for all to see. How dare we raise morale! Read Thucydides, Sun-Tse, or anyone with half a military mind to understand why "heartened" is important in a conflict.

And your lovely range of dissimilar and conflicting proposals for changing course in Iraq illustrates exactly why liberals are rather incompetent analysts of foreign affairs. "Do anything we are not doing no matter what" isn't a sound policy for the rest of us.

The point of the 1967 story surfacing is to lower morale in order to help defeat American efforts. That is what liberals always do, and their anti-American efforts are not limited to Vietnam and Iraq. It is a 50 year record of supporting our enemies.

And your lovely range of dissimilar and conflicting proposals for changing course in Iraq illustrates exactly why liberals are rather incompetent analysts of foreign affairs.

So the fact that different people have different opinions to voice is evidence that liberals cannot analyse foreign affairs? Interesting.

Is there something wrong with being "heartened"

S9 never said there was something wrong with being heartened, he/she said we have a habit of counting our chickens before they're hatched.

The point of the 1967 story surfacing is to lower morale in order to help defeat American efforts.

Morale? Do you think soldiers in Iraq are reading Kos diaries and becoming depressed?

That is what liberals always do, and their anti-American efforts are not limited to Vietnam and Iraq. It is a 50 year record of supporting our enemies.

And here is where you expose yourself for the nut you are McCain. All liberals always are anti-american and support our enemies. What cave do you live in anyway? And if disagreeing with an administrations policies makes one anti-american I'll bet you were pretty anti-american throughout Clinton's presidency.

I have heard it said, and believe, that South Vietnam could have survived except that in addition to pulling out we also refused to sell materiel (weapons, vehicles, munitions, etc) to them thanks to an act of Congress.

Not the first time we did something so stupid, either. When Israel took out the Egyptian Air Force on the ground, they did it in French jets - because the US Congress banned sales of weaponry to Israel.

- Once again the unshrinkable barking moonbats have found themselves on the wrong side of common sense and freedom. Each success in Iraq sends them scurrying around trying to find anything they can to justify their stupidity. This time they've managed to twist and distort all logic to the point where they call murdering thugs "freedom fighters" and yammer endlessly to support the supression of woman and human rights, and even refuse to call the vote in Iraq a major victory for Democracy.....

- They're socialists gone amok....

- BTW....for all you children that weren't even alive when it started and not old enough to comphrehend when it ended, you really should stop believeing the bullshit your poly-sci liberals profs fed you....

- The ironic thing about Vietnam in the big picture is that it accomplished exactly what Kennedy wanted to achieve in the first place....coupled with the quiet deployment of the Trident class of mirved warhead submarines across the globe, it stopped the spread of communism dead in its tracks. Not one inch of soil was gained by any communist block country after that point. So in that sense Vietnam was a total success in spite of all the left asshats efforts....

- and that is why the left can never get over it....But what you see is the difference 35 years later - a much more "aware" electorate... Communism/Socialism will never again be able to manipulate the American public.... Communications is just to swift and accurate now....

Big Bang Hunter> [The Vietnam War™] stopped the spread of communism dead in its tracks.

As if that were true...

What really stopped Communism dead in its tracks: the failure of central economic planning to outperform the price calculation and distribution function of open market economies. If it had not failed in this respect, even the total military defeat and capitulation of Vietnam could not have stopped its eventual spread throughout the world.

And what's more: the American Left "got over" the failure of Communism to deal with the problem of price calculation before most of us here were even born. Even half the honest-to-goodness Communists still rattling around are willing to concede that Marx missed the mark there and Hayek had a point.

There are a lot of Americans who still want to cling to the fantasy that the Vietnam War™ was somehow significant in stopping the advance of Communism, because facing actual reality would be too emotionally stressful for them.

- S9 - read my post again.... I said coupled with.... got it....Of course economics eventually finished Russia off. Thats so tutorial I assume anyone that discusses the topic knows that. Whats interesting isn't that you moved the goal posts and brought all the other factors in to downplay Vietnam. Whats interesting is you cannot refute my central statement that "from that time forward not one inch of communist expansion took place anywhere"....

- BTW....the only stressfull denying I see going on these days is the hapless, hopeless upside down comments form the left such as "The Iraqi election is just the Chimps continued efforts to colonize the middle east for its oil".... Even the moderates have reached the end of their rope with these demented statements and are starting to speak out, and in some cases disavow.... Keep up the good work....

Mantis, say it ain't so.
But alas, it is so. What you don't understand is what Thucydides understood, and what every student of history has since understood, which is the direct correlation between public attitudes and success on the battlefield. It is a basic lesson in military history, and the fact that you don't even know this basic reality speaks volumes. But we know