Skip to main content

What isn't funny about Vietnam

Read this.

Mark Steyn is always astute. Consider...


Then as now, the anti-war debate is conducted as if it's only about the place you're fighting in: Vietnam is a quagmire, Iraq is a quagmire, so get out of the quagmire. Wrong. The " Vietnam war" was about Vietnam if you had the misfortune to live in Saigon. But if you lived in Damascus and Moscow and Havana, the Vietnam war was about America: American credibility, American purpose, American will. For our enemies today, it still is.


h/t Neo-Neocon.

Comments

Jonathan said…
Right. It seems to be characteristic of the modern USA to get into a war having underestimated the cost of it, and then pull out because it turns out to be too expensive. Let's hope that future American governments will be able to calculate costs more accurately in advance.

Perhaps the USA could master the situation in Iraq by making an all-out effort. But I doubt that American voters or their elected politicians have the stomach for such an all-out effort.

Inevitably, some people think it's worth paying a high price to win in Iraq, and some don't. Is it or isn't it? I don't see how anyone can calculate an appropriate price tag. Everyone's guessing.
2:02 AM
Synova said…
I think it's the nature of the beast (war) that calculating costs doesn't work.

The reason it doesn't work is that, as they say, the enemy gets a vote. It's why there are a variety of similar sayings such as, no battle plan survives contact with the enemy.

All it's possible to do is guess.

Any benefit from prevailing in Iraq can only be conjecture. The result of failure is conjecture as well.

We *could* look at History but, as Steyn points out, there are a lot of people who think that getting out of Vietnam worked *well*.
8:27 AM
Ymarsakar said…
But I doubt that American voters or their elected politicians have the stomach for such an all-out effort.

If it results in non-passive resistance, then that isn't a problem.

Americans don't like limited wars. Nobody does, unless you are the one fighting a limited foe. Truman had low polls because he refused to decisively conclude Korea. Regardless of the fact of what he could do or had done in the past. Such is the difference between opinion in a republic or a democracy.
10:23 AM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Tyranny.gov vs Tyranny.com

Compulsion is Compulsion, no matter who does it.  This is Brilliant Theft is Theft, no matter who does it. Freedom of Association has no room in it for *private* action   that takes that away Freedom of Association. If I have a business and have voluntary associations such that I choose to serve some people and to not serve others, that might make me a jerk and it might lose me business, it might make me smart and it might gain me business, but it's got to be my choice.  If I would normally serve the current disliked minority in my shop except for the fact that if I'm SEEN to serve them by the wrong people I'll have a private campaign against me as those people do everything possible to ruin me by preventing me from doing business physically or by attacking my customers or suppliers, then I am NOT free to make those choices. Does it really make a difference to losing my CHOICE to voluntarily associate if there's a law that says I may not serve "those people" o...
Post a Comment
Read more

Don't Look Down by Crusie and Mayer

Not really a review, just wanted to say that I enjoyed this book, _Don't Look Down_ by Jennifer Crusie and Bob Mayer. I went to Amazon to get the link and noticed that it's getting trashed in the reviews by people who have been fans of Crusie's romance novels. I can see why they were upset but I hope she continues to collaborate with Mayer because all I can say is "your loss is my gain." I'm also going to be looking for Mayer's books written as Robert Doherty to check them out. _Don't Look Down_ is a silly novel that had me laughing or trying not to let the kids see I was crying... The laughs weren't belly laughs and the tears weren't heart wrenching sobs... It was just fun. And it *was* a romance. With guns. And knives. And Wonder Woman action figures with matching "wonder wear" underwear. And the items the international terrorist was shipping to the Russian mob boss? Pre-colombian jade penises. At least two people get e...
11 comments
Read more

How "Representation" In Fiction Becomes Toxic

  Some things sound so obviously good that they don't need to be examined.  One of those things is the idea of Representation in fiction; movies, television or books.  Entertainment where some people are conspicuously absent would seem to be an obvious problem, right?  A person doesn't have to be "woke" or any sort of feminist to occasionally watch an old television show and realize (for example) that all the scientists and astronauts in an old movie are men. It's as glaring an anachronism these days as watching a show where everyone is chain smoking cigarettes. Entertainment should reflect the diverse nature of real life and society because, in the end, fiction has to be even more real than real life.  If nothing else, it makes that entertainment more interesting to introduce characters with a variety of backgrounds and challenges. And so we're told that diverse fiction is BETTER fiction. The way that this rather obvious truth is often framed, often discussed...
4 comments
Read more