Jim,
I am quoting you here only as a starting point to some comments I would like to make regarding the Viet Nam and Iraq analogy, because your perspective at this moment is far from being unique in the USA, that the war in Iraq will be lost by the lack of support back home.
I did read this interview of this North Vietnamese colonel (sorry, not a “general who headed the North Vietnamese army” as you write), but he does not bring anything new to the table: the Tet Offensive may not have been a military victory in terms of Viet Cong and PAVN casualties, but it was a brilliant strategic victory for North Viet Nam. One must remember that war is but one the four tools of carrying foreign affairs, which include also diplomacy, economics, and politics (which also includes psychology). Still, even following this “defeat,” the war under Nixon, took another FIVE years to end with the capitulation of the US. Jim is absolutely correct is saying that public opinion in the US contributed to the war’s ending, and for the good reason given by the colonel,
Why? Although the colonel is here down playing the huge sacrifices made by his people, north and south of the 38th parallel, it became obvious, little by little, to the American public, that the war was a wrong war, based on lies, including the Golf of Tonkin incident lie, which gave Johnson the carte blanche he wanted. Similarly, through his lies regarding Saddam’s WMD, Bush got the almost absolute approval of the US Congress.
However, the US could not have won the Viet Nam war short of literarily whipping out the whole country, using nuclear bombs, which is what Nixon wanted to do. As it were, between 1965 and 1973, B-52 bombers and other aircrafts dropped more bombs in Viet Nam than were used by all sides combined during the entire Second World War and the Korean War: 8 million tons!. And the colonel said that much,
Their rear was totally secure because the Vietnamese were fighting to liberate their country. And that was the difference, the whole difference. No insurgency against a foreign occupier has ever been vanquished, and Iraq will not be the first exception. It is inevitable that the Iraq insurgency will prevail, with or without the some 65% of the American people who are now against the war. Your efforts, Jim, are not only in vain, they will only prolonged and magnified many-folds the death and destruction, reproducing the hecatomb of Viet Nam, Laos, and Cambodia of 30 years ago. In Cambodia, beside the approximate ½ million Cambodian killed during the US “secret war,” it also led to the ascent of Pol Pot (Whom the US supported for a while against the North Vietnamese) and about TWO million more Cambodian murdered. A prolongation of the Iraqi war will lead to the same blood bath in the Middle East (Iran, Syria, Egypt, Jordan, etc). So, why prolong the misery?
And talking about Laos not being bombed, I would like to strongly disagree with the good colonel who obviously has lost his bearings on that one. Laos has the unenviable distinction of having been one of the most heavily bombed countries in the history of warfare. More than 2 million tons of ordnance was dropped on the Lao countryside. The U.S. military, trying to stop the flow of the North Vietnamese and their supplies from reaching South Vietnam, zeroed in on Laos, where parts of the Ho Chi Minh Trail snaked through. From 1964 until 1973, the bombing occurred 24/7.
An estimate one half a million tons of unexploded ordnance remains spread out over 4/5 of the Laos countryside, including 30 percent of the 90 million cluster bombs dropped from U.S. warplanes which failed to explode. As a result, 30 years after the end of the conflict, every other day, a Lao dies, mostly a child. But that is not reported in the Western media, much less in the US media.
But I am digressing and I’ll stop (for the moment) right here.
I am quoting you here only as a starting point to some comments I would like to make regarding the Viet Nam and Iraq analogy, because your perspective at this moment is far from being unique in the USA, that the war in Iraq will be lost by the lack of support back home.
I did read this interview of this North Vietnamese colonel (sorry, not a “general who headed the North Vietnamese army” as you write), but he does not bring anything new to the table: the Tet Offensive may not have been a military victory in terms of Viet Cong and PAVN casualties, but it was a brilliant strategic victory for North Viet Nam. One must remember that war is but one the four tools of carrying foreign affairs, which include also diplomacy, economics, and politics (which also includes psychology). Still, even following this “defeat,” the war under Nixon, took another FIVE years to end with the capitulation of the US. Jim is absolutely correct is saying that public opinion in the US contributed to the war’s ending, and for the good reason given by the colonel,
Why? Although the colonel is here down playing the huge sacrifices made by his people, north and south of the 38th parallel, it became obvious, little by little, to the American public, that the war was a wrong war, based on lies, including the Golf of Tonkin incident lie, which gave Johnson the carte blanche he wanted. Similarly, through his lies regarding Saddam’s WMD, Bush got the almost absolute approval of the US Congress.
However, the US could not have won the Viet Nam war short of literarily whipping out the whole country, using nuclear bombs, which is what Nixon wanted to do. As it were, between 1965 and 1973, B-52 bombers and other aircrafts dropped more bombs in Viet Nam than were used by all sides combined during the entire Second World War and the Korean War: 8 million tons!. And the colonel said that much,
Their rear was totally secure because the Vietnamese were fighting to liberate their country. And that was the difference, the whole difference. No insurgency against a foreign occupier has ever been vanquished, and Iraq will not be the first exception. It is inevitable that the Iraq insurgency will prevail, with or without the some 65% of the American people who are now against the war. Your efforts, Jim, are not only in vain, they will only prolonged and magnified many-folds the death and destruction, reproducing the hecatomb of Viet Nam, Laos, and Cambodia of 30 years ago. In Cambodia, beside the approximate ½ million Cambodian killed during the US “secret war,” it also led to the ascent of Pol Pot (Whom the US supported for a while against the North Vietnamese) and about TWO million more Cambodian murdered. A prolongation of the Iraqi war will lead to the same blood bath in the Middle East (Iran, Syria, Egypt, Jordan, etc). So, why prolong the misery?
And talking about Laos not being bombed, I would like to strongly disagree with the good colonel who obviously has lost his bearings on that one. Laos has the unenviable distinction of having been one of the most heavily bombed countries in the history of warfare. More than 2 million tons of ordnance was dropped on the Lao countryside. The U.S. military, trying to stop the flow of the North Vietnamese and their supplies from reaching South Vietnam, zeroed in on Laos, where parts of the Ho Chi Minh Trail snaked through. From 1964 until 1973, the bombing occurred 24/7.
An estimate one half a million tons of unexploded ordnance remains spread out over 4/5 of the Laos countryside, including 30 percent of the 90 million cluster bombs dropped from U.S. warplanes which failed to explode. As a result, 30 years after the end of the conflict, every other day, a Lao dies, mostly a child. But that is not reported in the Western media, much less in the US media.
But I am digressing and I’ll stop (for the moment) right here.
