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

Some times some people.

 
Post a Comment
Read more

It's Not Projection

Take the case of "fascism". When you can see clear as day that the person who is accusing you of fascism is a fascist, they aren't projecting. They're talking about something ELSE. Basically, in the case of fascism, the basic set of fascist government controls are the default assumption of reality for a whole lot of people. The government is supposed to control every part of your life. The government is supposed to make you moral and good and reflect "justice". The government is supposed to do this by picking winners from the good people and losers from the bad people. The government is supposed to control the way people do business, how businesses (and farmers) function and what they produce. And people should be made to cooperate with this control because they are part of society and society is dependent on everyone being in compliance. This is simply the Truth. It's how the world works and how the world is supposed to work. The Socialist Nationalism,
Post a Comment
Read more

What You Know That Isn't So

  The saying goes like this, It's not what you *don't* know that is going to trip you up, it's what you know that isn't so. I believe that the first lady might possibly have been feigning helplessness, just a little bit.  She already had concept art and visuals, so I think she'll be okay.   But someone might truly be so new that they know nothing about science fiction as a genre or how it works in the world.  That person, the truly "new" person, might not realize that the second lady, no matter how assured she seems to be that she's passing on vital Wisdom, is wrong. So lets unwrap her backpack a little (to steal a metaphor). Stories about space pirates are Space Opera, generally.  "Soft" science in science fiction usually refers to sociology or psychology, social "science".  A story about space pirates might be "soft".  But that's picking nits.  The first big boo-boo is this: "not as popular *because* it is women
1 comment
Read more