Naturally, from a justice point of view, I’m as pleased as anyone else that this brutal creature who has killed so many innocent people is gone. However, I’m moved to ask two things:
1) Considering Al Qaeda had no presence in Iraq before we invaded it, aren’t the chances pretty good that all of his victims would still be alive if we hadn’t attacked?
2) Correct me if I’m wrong, but I could swear the Pentagon just got done explaining why outtakes from his recruitment video showed that, militarily, the guy didn’t know his ášš from his elbow. So should we be worried that, if an incompetent yutz was able to give us this much trouble, whoever replaces him might be even worse?
PAD
• 
Craig: “No, it’s not because of our inept government stopping attacks, it’s because such attacks are not even being attempted.”
Please, be nice enough to give the devil his due sometimes. We have stopped a few small cells and arrested some twits who were planning to do really stupid crap. Granted, planning and doing aren’t always the same thing but it is a fact that we have done this.
Slag on Bush all you want. Have a blast. But at least acknowledge that there are guys out there in local and federal law enforcement who just might be doing it right and have their acts together no matter who is sitting in The White House. There have been arrests related to Al Qaeda in the U.S. since 9/11. People have busted their áššëš to make us safe. Don’t slag off on their efforts because you want to slag off on Bush. Makes you look as bad as the other side.
Fred: “If you believe the government that a few attacks have been stopped before they took place, than the number of attempts have actually increased significantly since the U.S. government went to war on terror.”
Not really. Go back and actually look up what happened after the first WTC bombing. We arrested the people who did it, got information from them about others in the U.S. who were planning several follow ups and arrested those people as well. Again, planning isn’t always doing but you reduce the chance of someone doing to 0% when you make them spend the rest of their life in a tiny prison cell.
So, why the Middle East and not Africa? Why not Cuba, China, and the other Communist countries of Asia?
The method by which we, the US, are picking and choosing who should have democracy forced upon them is rather ridiculous and egotistical on our part.
*****
The middle east currently is where the immediate threat arises from. That is obvious. It is that area of the world sending out people to other places to randomly kill people in large numbers. We’ve helped bring, and the people in many areas have helped themselves bring, or bring back, some freedom and some democratic steps in many areas. We can’t do it all ourselves. But this area of the world has to stop.
Africa is undoubtedly a mess for many reasons and there is no easy solutions for that. But one thing at a time.
China should keep us awake at night. I have real fear for china. direct action against china is impossible given their size and military and nuclear weapons. Hopefully, economic reform and cultural exchange is having an impact on China.
Wow. This is exactly how I felt as the U.S. entered the war without providing its people any real proof of their allegations. I watched as those people, due mostly to their own fear and anger, followed like sheep and actually condemned anyone who suggested that there were some very visible facts that contradicted what our government was telling us and that we get more info or more than a shred of proof before going to war.
Using your reasoning above, do my unsuccessful protesting, public statements and discussions with those supporting the war leave me “allowing my government to be hijacked”?
****
To compare us to culture that is beheading people, kidnapping people, severely oppressing women, sending their 12 year olds out with bombs strapped to their chest and celebreating when they die,and the like to me is more ridiculous than any kind of comparison to Hitler or the Nazis could ever be.
My opinion would be totally different anyway, but I am not here to argue the war again per se. In my opinion, given 9/11, any President, Bush, Clinton, etc. would have been derelict in their duty in not taken the action that Bush wound up taking, at least in some form. To bring up WWII, it would be kinda like after Pearl harbor if we hadn’t fought Germany simply because they had not yet attacked us. After 9/11, I don;t believe we could wait until the proof was the attack or aid provided to enemies, especially given the odd history of Iraq and the United States. No proof is absolute, but most believed thier were weapons there (and given the actions and gameplaying of Iraq, I can forgive the ignoring of some contrary evidence), including many Iraqis, and certainly Saddam who had governments pushing to end the sanctions hoped to restart the programs once those sanctions ended. and in the end you have to go with the intelligence that you and others have-even Bobby kennedy later admitted they couldn’t tell from the photos really what the heck was in Cuba-they had to trust the Cias judgment. I regret that it ties our hands with Iran. However, perhaps you can take some solace in that-if we had not gone to Iraq, we would almost certainly be in a war with Iran right now, or at least have bombed the heck out of it. One war started the other averted.
That;s an interesting alternate reality-What if Jimmy Carter had committed overwhelming force in some form during the hostage crisis. What would Iran and the Middle East look like today? No one can really know.
>>>The fact it has any popular support at all as opposed to being a fringe group should be a source of shame for those people. *snip* It is their own governments and the way they allowed their culture to be hijacked.
>>Wow. This is exactly how I felt as the U.S. entered the war without providing its people any real proof of their allegations. I watched as those people, due mostly to their own fear and anger, followed like sheep and actually condemned anyone who suggested that there were some very visible facts that contradicted what our government was telling us and that we get more info or more than a shred of proof before going to war.
>>Using your reasoning above, do my unsuccessful protesting, public statements and discussions with those supporting the war leave me “allowing my government to be hijacked”?
>To compare us to culture that is beheading people, kidnapping people, severely oppressing women, sending their 12 year olds out with bombs strapped to their chest and celebreating when they die,and the like to me is more ridiculous than any kind of comparison to Hitler or the Nazis could ever be.
You spoke to the culture, not the government or its leaders, and the fact that the majority aren’t fighting against it. The comparison doesn’t necessitate that there be no dissimilarities and states on its own whether one agress with it or not.
You spoke to the culture, not the government or its leaders, and the fact that the majority aren’t fighting against it. The comparison doesn’t necessitate that there be no dissimilarities and states on its own whether one agress with it or not.
******
I really don’t know what this means.
PAD wrote
“You have to remember, a sizable portion of Arafat’s constituency consisted of people who consider the only acceptable negotiation to end thusly: All the Israelis leave. The back up position is, all the Israelis die. If they leave because they’re all dead, that’s good too. By his own admission, he was concerned that if he took the deal, he was a dead man. His own people would kill him. I can’t say he did the right thing in terms of his peoples’ future, but in terms of his personal safety, my guess is that he was probably right. For that matter, he might well have figured that he would agree to a deal, come home, announce the deal, be dead inside of a week, and his successor would say, “Deal’s off.”
Arafat was afraid that he will be assassinated if he made a deal on the terms offered to him by the Israeli prime-minister. It does not follow that he feared making any kind of deal. That is a possibility, although there is no denying that he negotiated with Israel and has made made statements recognizing Israel in the past. I also don’t know whether the terms that he would have found worth risking would have been acceptable to even Israelis who support peace. We never found out since he did not make a counter offer, and then the war started. Some Israelis in the peace camp believe that he was willing to make peace on reasonable terms, others do not. But since he ued to talk from both sides of his mouth it is hard to tell.
“It’s easy to say that the majority of Palestinians want peace. But considering a majority of Palestinians–or at least voting Palestinians–put in charge known radicals who have spent decades declaring they want to push Israel into the sea, I’m not convinced.”
The pollster and experts claim that their main motivation for voting Hamas was the ineptitude and corruption of the previous government, and not support of their rejectionof peace. The Palestinian president is trying to put this theory to the test by having a referendum on a paper speaking about a Palestinian state in the 67 borders (but not explicitly about peace with Israel).
In any case, I believe that most Israelis want peace despite voting for right wing governments in the past and present. I also believe most Americans are not evangelical homophobes despite Bush’s victory in the 2004 elections.
“If their own previous leader was afraid to talk peace to them for fear of his life, that says a lot.”
He was not afraid. He talked peace. But he also talked Jihad. It is hard to tell what the Palestinians want because they don’t have the kind of political discourse we are accustomed too in western countries. Instead of placing two clearly opposing views on next to the other they usually strive for national consensus and bury the differences under rhetoric. So was Arfat talking about Jihad to placate Palestinian public opinion but was sincere about peace, or the reverse or both? It is hard to tell.
“Not to be flippant about it, but it is 2006. Time’s up. It it more than past time to take steps toward granting basic freedoms and democracy. I don’t expect change over night-it took us 200 years to get ours more right than not, given we excluded a large part of pur population from the process. but it is time to start. I don’t care if they are more like Americans. I do care that most of the governments there are terrible, horrible giovernments, and the ideology of these terrorist groups is disgusting and insane. The fact it has any popular support at all as opposed to being a fringe group should be a source of shame for those people. There is a reason they have troubles there and it isn’t the “Jews and the Americans.” It is their own governments and the way they allowed their culture to be hijacked.”
True. But our experience is that occupation and bombing them doesn’t change their attitude. What does change their attitude is comfortable living, fear of Israeli reprisal, and when Muslims are killed in suicide bombings.
In any case, the US does not have the right to shock them into the 21st century just because you’re tired of waiting for them. It doesn’t really work anyway.
Atttacking Afganistan was justified since it was the base of operations for Al-Quida. Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11. It was reasonable to fear that if Iraq had WMD, they might have found their way to the enemies of the US. This is usually what I tell people when I try to convince them that the US did not go to war for oil. But, if the WMD was just a ruse for an attempt to create a pro-American democracy, than the war started with a lie, which is bad. If the US sincerely thought there were WMD, than you had bad intelligence, which is not very good either. Furthermore, by attacking on bogus claims you reduced your ability to use force or threaten with its use when it was really necessary.
The analogy to Germany in WWII doesn’t work because Hitler had a direct alliance with Japan, had actually declared war on the US + the British were close allies of the US who the US had good reason to help + Hitler posed a strategic threat since he was conquering peaceful European countries right and left + had the US not intervened than Stalin would have marched from Germany to Western Europe after defeating Hitler.
Israel has suffered suicide bombings in buses and in more than one place at a time. Sometimes they work in two’s, the first one detonates, and the second after the rescue forces arrive, or at least after people start giving CPR.
1The analogy to Germany in WWII doesn’t work
****
ANy analogy has differences, or it would be the same thing. I think it does work. Germany had never attacked us, and we were supplying an enemy of theres. They were not a direct threat to us, nor would they be for some time. We could have simply not supplied the British AND negotiated with them aftert Pearl Harbor, in effect divying up the world or spheres of influence. We didn’t and we were right not to IMO, but we had options, and there declaration of war on us was a result of our own (imo justified) actions. However, we were out to defeat an ideology, not just a single regime that attacked us.
Similarly, we are now out to defeat an ideology, and a system of isamic fascism, both terrorist groups, nation states that support terrorist groups, and nation states that themselves are islamic fascists (for want of a better term). that does not begin or end in afghanistan, any more than it began and ended when the 9/11 hijackers died. Future presidents will be forced to fight other “wars” in the middle east as well, big ones or small ones. For the record, it wasn’t one thing that caused the Iraq War (either WMD or oil (in other words the life blood of society) or terrorim or the history or the violation of un sanctions or the breaking of the ceasefire or heloping out a people tyrannized-it was all of those things. They are all in the congressional resolution for war, and Bush’s speech for war, and were all part of the buildup to war). Reminds me of when Apu became a US citizen on the Simpsons while taking his citizenship exam
Proctor: All right, here’s your last question. What was the cause of the Civil War?
Apu: Actually, there were numerous causes. Aside from the obvious schism between the abolitionists and the anti-abolitionists, there were economic factors, both domestic and inter–
Proctor: Wait, wait… just say slavery.
Apu: Slavery it is, sir.
:
>>You spoke to the culture, not the government or its leaders, and the fact that the majority aren’t fighting against it. The comparison doesn’t necessitate that there be no dissimilarities and states on its own whether one agress with it or not.
******
>I really don’t know what this means.
My point was that a comparison between cultures is reasonable. To say that it is more ridiculous than to compare the U.S. culture to Hitler or Nazis is, well… ridiculous. It is not the leadership that is being compared, but the cultures. Much of your original wording that I responded to (“The fact it has any popular support at all as opposed to being a fringe group should be a source of shame for those people. *snip* It is their own governments and the way they allowed their culture to be hijacked. “) was focused on the people and allowing it to happen or even supporting it. A majority of the U.S. population that spoke out at the time of our entry into Iraq was supportive of it. Seems like an easy comparison of allowing ourselves to be hijacked by a government to me…. possibly even worse since more of us could have spoken out about it or at the very least let those questioning to question without insulting, threatening, ewtc them.
Having posted in defense of those who do their job right….
I now give you the other side. “Security” indeed.
(CNN) — A man using a fake identification card was able to enter the Homeland Security Department headquarters in Washington, he said, even though the United States government considers the type of Mexican-issued card he used invalid.
http://www.cnn.com/2006/US/06/12/dhs.fakeid/index.html
I don’t think world war II was fought by the Americans as a war against an ideology. Although I do not wish to detract from the sincerety of the American people. I think the war was fought for very cold calculated reasons.
The list of reasons brought to justify the war in Iraq does not seem to strengthen the justification but rather to weaken it. It feels rather piled up. It seems as if the US emerged from 9/11 and Afganistan, and just picked a random country to attack that had little to do with the original cause. The fact that the WMD issue, which was the most visible justification (Collin Powell in the UN and so forth) ended up being wrong only makes things seem worse.
[Although I never said that the war ended in Afganistan or after the death of the hijackers. Give me a little credit on these issues.]
The fun thing about Islamic terrorism is that they don’t have nation states and governments you can simply attack. So I doubt Americans will go to wars in the mddle east, especially after Iraq. I doubt the American public would support something unless there is a really good case. And this will be hard considering the nature of Islamic terrorism and Islamism in general.
About Iraq. The truth is that I shouldn’t be the one to talk. Look at the Iraqi blogs (some pro American). their life seems as crazy to me as mine does to you. Compared to them, Israel is like a quiet pacific Island. I just took a peek, and it makes this whole discussion seem a little too theoretical to me.
1[Although I never said that the war ended in Afganistan or after the death of the hijackers. Give me a little credit on these issues.]
****
I will.
their life seems as crazy to me as mine does to you.
*****
No doubt. I can;t even imagine going through it. However, what I am wagering on is that this makes Iraq better in the long run (and hopefully even the middle east in the very, very long run). It’s really impossible to say right now because the war is not over yet. In the middle of a war is always going to be chaos, senseless death, etc. But sometimes, something better emerges afterwards. and I’m hoping it does here too. I think it may. My beef is not with the Iraqi people (at least the ones who are blowing up other Iraqis). I’m optimistic, even while acknowledging what we are trying to do is incredibly hard.
So I doubt Americans will go to wars in the mddle east, especially after Iraq.
******
I was using the term war in terms of bombs, missiles, special forces, etc. I doubt we will have something so large in the near future, but I have no doubt that more bad things will happen, connected to groups in countries unable or unwilling to stop them, and that we will have to take action.
Spiderrob’s comment above, about how easy it is to get into this country legally and illegally, though the legal channels have been tightened up, brings to mind something my American Government teacher said when I was in high school. The problem with stricter laws is that the people that will obey the laws aren’t the ones that we have to worry about. If someone is determined to do something that happens to be illegal, it won’t matter how strict the law is, they’re going to break it.
****Posted by Fred Chamberlain at June 13, 2006 08:13 AM
spiderrob:
>Certainly,we do not face frequent suicide bombers. I’d argue that the fact that we haven’t been attacked since 9/11 is a sign of some things we have done right, no matter how many more supposedly loved us before, and hate us now.
You could say that, but you have little to no factual information that supports that statement. To the best of my knowledge, there have only been 2 other foreign attacks on American soil in the 200+ years that this country has been around, the Attack on Pearl Harbor and the first bombing at the WTC. The first occured over 60 years ago and the second happened about 10 years before it was hit again. That timeline alone indicates that the frequency of attacks is not enough to believe that your statement is factual.
If you believe the government that a few attacks have been stopped before they took place, than the number of attempts have actually increased significantly since the U.S. government went to war on terror.*****
Leaving aside attacks that have happened to U.S. citizens outside of the country (i.e. USS Cole, ect.), the actual frequency of attacks may be greater than you think, pre-911. Years ago I read an opion column about the ‘shoe bomber’ (remember this one? The guy who had some explosives in his tennis shoe, and seated on a plane right above the fuel tanks, and was caught becasue he was clumsy about setting the shoe ‘off’?), and the columnist made an interesting comment/connection to the other airplane disasters (planes blowing up mere minutes/an hour into their flights) that have occurred over the years, explosions that were blamed on faulty mantienence and design flaws. What if those other disasters weren’t accidents like they said, but the result of other ‘shoe bombers’ seated over fuel tanks successfully completing their holy missions to destroy ‘infidels’? In other words, ‘dry runs’ to what we have now, but done in such a manner that the victims never noticed it happening?
A thopught to keep you awake at nights. . . .
Chris
1That timeline alone indicates that the frequency of attacks is not enough to believe that your statement is factual
****
No it doesn’t. Things have obviously changed. It is ludicrous to think that before when you needed real money and backing, probably of nations, to come and reek havok have much to do with today. Much of that history simply doesn’t count. the world is different now. Its like saying the chance of getting a computer bug is small because from 1776-say 1990 almost no one got computer bugs. or in the 1930s saying “Your crazy, the chance of airplane deaths are almost nil. No one died from airplane deaths for over 150 years.” Yeah, the world had changed
As for attacks increasing since the war on terror, of course. Attacks from the British against us increased due toi the Revilutionary War, we had much more Southerners shooting at Northerners in the Civil War than before, more lives were lost post pearl harbor from the Japanese than pre and during pearl harbor. That;s like saying FDR was dumb to go to war, since the Japanese killed far more after the day that will live in infamy than before. A 1000 Pearl Harbors would not have killed that many
Besides, like I said, 9/11 started a whole new ballgame. It was a major attack that undoubtedly now will be followed by more,
****
In other words, ‘dry runs’ to what we have now, but done in such a manner that the victims never noticed it happening?****
There is a theory that is what happened to the plane that exploded in Jamaica Queens after 9/11. A second shoe bomber However, i am not sure that is credible.
Has there been any hostility on the part of American civilians toward American soldiers returning from Iraq, like there was during Vietnam?
Has there been any hostility on the part of American civilians toward American soldiers returning from Iraq, like there was during Vietnam?
*********
No. Except for some very extreme left wing websites, there really have been no reports of anyone being hostile to them. Quite the opposite in fact. ALmost all Americans have been extremely supportive of the soldiers/marines.
“Has there been any hostility on the part of American civilians toward American soldiers returning from Iraq, like there was during Vietnam?”
The lack of animosity towards returning troops is probably due to a better informed public. People seem to be better able to comprehend that the soldiers are the instruments of policy, not it’s makers.
So, three suicides are good PR, and “assymetric warfare”.
Then what, pray tell, do you call 2 250 lb. bombs?
11People seem to be better able to comprehend that the soldiers are the instruments of policy, not it’s makers.
*****
It is interesting though. If you do believe the policy is immoral, that we are slaughtering innocents and that was inevitable, that war was illegal, immoral, etc., then anyone who has volunteered post Iraq War, should be considered as bad as Bush or anyone else. or the soldiers who support the war no matter when they joined, which was most of them, possibly to this day.
Plus, if you are one who always thinks that America uses its foreign policy illegally or immorally, that we haven’t fought a moral war since WWII, that we are indiscriminate in our killings and kill and intimidate innocent civilians, then anyone who volunteered for the military should be considered despicable, especially if they re-up
After all, they are volunteers-they choose to be part of it.
whereas in vietnam, many were volunteers, but many were forced to be there through the draft.
I don’t think people would put up with people who felt that and expressed it today (even in Vietnam it was a vocal minority who loathed the troops-though afterwards most people just wanted to forget about it) but it seems pretty logical depending of course on why you are against the war. So no, I am not saying anti-war means anti-soliders, I am saying based on some reasons people are against the war, if you hold those reasons, then you should be. If you hold different reasons for being against the war, then no, but some reasons, sure. and to be fair, some few people have followed through.
11People seem to be better able to comprehend that the soldiers are the instruments of policy, not it’s makers.
*****
It is interesting though. If you do believe the policy is immoral, that we are slaughtering innocents and that was inevitable, that war was illegal, immoral, etc., then anyone who has volunteered post Iraq War, should be considered as bad as Bush or anyone else. or the soldiers who support the war no matter when they joined, which was most of them, possibly to this day.
Plus, if you are one who always thinks that America uses its foreign policy illegally or immorally, that we haven’t fought a moral war since WWII, that we are indiscriminate in our killings and kill and intimidate innocent civilians, then anyone who volunteered for the military should be considered despicable, especially if they re-up
After all, they are volunteers-they choose to be part of it.
whereas in vietnam, many were volunteers, but many were forced to be there through the draft.
I don’t think people would put up with people who felt that and expressed it today (even in Vietnam it was a vocal minority who loathed the troops-though afterwards most people just wanted to forget about it) but it seems pretty logical depending of course on why you are against the war. So no, I am not saying anti-war means anti-soliders, I am saying based on some reasons people are against the war, if you hold those reasons, then you should be. If you hold different reasons for being against the war, then no, but some reasons, sure. and to be fair, some few people have followed through.
It is interesting though. If you do believe the policy is immoral, that we are slaughtering innocents and that was inevitable, that war was illegal, immoral, etc., then anyone who has volunteered post Iraq War, should be considered as bad as Bush or anyone else. or the soldiers who support the war no matter when they joined, which was most of them, possibly to this day.
I disagree. I think you can honestly disagree about the reasons and justifications for this war or the way in which the PTB have executed it and not think that the other person is despicable. I know that’s becoming an increasingly foreign concept in politics these days where it seems like you can’t even disagree with smaller issues like the minimum wage without thinking the other person is in league with the forces of satan, but such is life under the “uniter”.
There’s no disputing that the people our soldiers are fighting are bad people. There’s also no disputing that innocent people will get hit in the crossfire. Such things are inevitable in war, which is why it is the duty of the citizenry, not the soldiers to hold our elected officials accountable for the orders they give and the conflicts they engage us in.
Vietnam was the direct result of good intentions gone awry combined with politicians we thought they were going to have a quick and clean victory but then refused to change course once they knew it wasn’t going to work out that way. And that sounds very familiar.
I’m not against all wars on principle, but I am still unconvinced that this war at this time was either justified or a wise course of action. That doesn’t mean I have to hate the soldiers. They were given a thankless job to do and deserve our support in getting the job done. Nothing would make me happier than to see a stable and free Iraq that was able to defend itself right now. I just don’t see it happening anytime soon.
I hope I’m wrong, but given the track record how Bush, Ðìçk, and Rummy have run things so far, I’m not optimistic that this will happen anytime soon.
1Vietnam was the direct result of good intentions gone awry combined with politicians we thought they were going to have a quick and clean victory but then refused to change course once they knew it wasn’t going to work out that way. And that sounds very familiar.
*****
I’d like to make the Spider-Rob corrallary to Godwin’s law. Every time Vietnam is brought up in the context of talking about war, that person has to run through a sprinkler system naked at 4 am.
But otherwise, Den, obviously from your post, your not one of the ones I’m talking about. I am saying that some people’s arguments against the war are such that logically they cannot but take issue with those who chose and were not forced to fight for it or to return to fighting it. Your post shows that your views and reasons for being against the war do not mean logically you should be against the troops. I wasn’t pulling an Archie Bunker
I’d like to make the Spider-Rob corrallary to Godwin’s law. Every time Vietnam is brought up in the context of talking about war, that person has to run through a sprinkler system naked at 4 am.
Since I was responding to your use of Vietnam as an analogy, I’m cool with that. 🙂
Anyway, I think the Vietnam comparison is nearly as overused as the WW II/nazi comparison. It’s also inevitable in any war we’ll be fighting for the foreseeable. But I think there are important parallels that need to be discussed. Vietnam was executed by ideologues who didn’t understand the history or the culture and just assumed that the natives would welcome foreign intervention in the name of “freedom” and “democracy”. The result was our soldiers spending the better part of decade getting slogged down into a guerrilla war on one hand while trying to prop up a puppet regime in the other. Change the jungle to the desert and you have a situation that looks a lot like what we have in Iraq. Compound that with centuries of sectarian and tribal violence that we’ve stepped into and you’ve got our situation in Iraq now.
Can the Shi’ites, the Sunnis, and the Kurds eventually learn to share power? Sure, but how likely is it really given the history and the current state of affairs?
The result of our intervention in Vietnam was the exact opposite of what we wanted to achieve: a communist state in southeast Asia. It is still very likely that the ultimate likely that in trying to create a democracy in Iraq, we’ll end up creating another fundamentalist theocracy.
Maybe, but with or without us, Vietnam would have been communist (well, maybe not if Truman had taken Ho Chi Minh up on his request for aid against the French right after WWII).
It is possible Vietnam could have succeeded though, maybe, if it was fought differently. Some argue that if North Vietnam had been hit harder, and if the protests at home hadn’t grown, the North would not have known inevitably the US government would have to stop, do to home grown opposition.
or what if Ike had given into his advisors and used nukes on the North Vietnamese as the French wanted him to in 1954. “My God man, we can’t use those weapons on asians for the second time in ten years” I believe he said.
Then again, had Watergate not happened, some argue the peace agreement would have been able to be enforced by Nixon, with US aid and bombs, not men, and Saigon never would have fallen.
Then some say if JFK had not allowed the corrupt but strong leader of South Vietnam to be killed in 1963, the South could have had a strong government to effectively oppose the north. Instead, weak and ineffective leaders led the south, that couldn’t inspire any support from the people.
or maybe if Nixon had been elected in 1960, he couod have done his Soviet Union/China thing earlier, and it would have more effectively squeezed Vietnam.
or maybe not. maybe it was inevitable.
You can play lots of “what if” games all the time. Like what if we had gone into Iraq following the Powell Doctrine of overwhelming force instead of the Rummy Doctrine of light and fast force? What if we hadn’t depended on the belief Chalabi would just be able to take over after we airlifted him in? What if we had waited until the intelligence on the WMDs was rock solid? What if we hadn’t disbanded the Iraqi army? What if Kerry had managed to take Ohio?
Everyone has their opinions about how such alternate histories would have worked out. And nearly all of them are probably wrong.
“You can play lots of “what if” games all the time.”
Den, you are quite correct as far as your reasoning goes. We can play “what if” with the past all day and all night, and resolve pretty much nothing.
Instead, play “what if” with the present and forseeable future.
1) WHAT IF the the various political groups
hold their collective noses and work together to take away control of the House from the neo-con hawks next November?
2) WHAT IF people start demanding their news providers move beyond sound bites designed to entertain an ADD afflicted gerbil?
3) WHAT IF people saw “issues” such as gay marriage, abortion, and stem cell research for the diversions that they are?
4) WHAT IF people ignored the bread and circuses of “reality TV” and started watching insightful and analytical news reporting instead?
5) WHAT IF everyone stopped allowing themselves to be dragged into the black/white, good/evil, right/wrong, us/them funhouse that is GeorgeWorld?
6) WHAT IF everyone demanded accountability from their elected officials?
Not likely to happen, but it could be very interesting.
Didn’t the Us suport a non-democratic regime in Vietnam?
1Didn’t the Us suport a non-democratic regime in Vietnam?
*****
Non-democratic regimes, there were several I think. I think the thinking was our enemy was communism, and that when you don’t live under an ism, it is easier to push the government over time toward democracy. But the main thrust was stopping communism.
either way, considering what happened when we left, they would have been better off had we succeeded.
“either way, considering what happened when we left, they would have been better off had we succeeded.”
Why? It seems they have a nice quiet Communist dictatorship. It was probably a relief after al the years of war.
I was being glib with the post above. Obviously it is a more complicated issue.
The big problem was that back then the choice was between US backed dictatorships and communist dictatorships. The communists seemed to have been more popular, possibly because the Pro-American dictators were following very aggressive capitalism. I don’t know if any of the US bavked dictatorships were ever pushed by the US toward more democracy. Chile seemed to have moved from pro American dictatorship to democracy but not thanks to the US. Nicaragwa moved toward democracy from the left side. But I don’t really know much about these issues. Vietnam seems to have ended as a quiet communist dicatorship, better than some worse than others. It is hard to imagine how things could have turned differently for them. Or whether the harm caused by the US would have somehow ended in a future good.
I think there is some more hope for Iraq. But even if the war ends, it will probably be by some deal with Sunni factions, and some terrorism may remain. Militias wil probably remain, as well as corruption, some oppression and torture, and Islamism.
1Why? It seems they have a nice quiet Communist dictatorship. It was probably a relief after al the years of war.
*******
The “reeducation” camps and other measures post war would seem to show it was pretty bad for th south vietnamese, who otherwise might have had a chance for a better life, like how South Korea evolved.
Spiderbob, I don’t know if S. Korea is the ruke or the exception. But my problem is more on the matter of principle. All the what if’s and eventuallys are very nice. But the US experimented in the lives of many, often ignoring the will (in Vietnam), the culture, and the safety of the people it was supposedly helping. Even if we ignore the selfish economic motivations of the US (or on behalf of US companies), what I see is the kind of good intentions in which the abstract ideal becomes more important than the actual humans involved. Communism had good intentions too, you know. They also have their what ifs and eventuallys (Nazism is different in that although it was striving to paradise, like everybody else, it clearly had an intention to exclude some races from it). But when the abstract becomes more important than what the will and the lives of the people, than at the end the ideal is compromised too. Especially for the US, whose ideal pretty much starts with the word ‘the people’.
I hope this rouund the Americans will at least let the south americans make their own mistakes.
As usual PAD and other Dems seem to think THEIR point of view is the dominant POV. It isn’t. Gas prices are high but there are no gas lines. People pay the price. Maybe if the gasoline tax (Fed and State) was cut, there would be relief. You can disagree with the Iraq war but when you say soliders are dying at a stunning rate how do you define STUNNING? I notice you didn’t type that soldiers are dying at a RECORD rate because that would be a lie. The last time I checked soldier die in war. When did this change?
PAD and other Dems seem to think that any gay marriage proposal is a conserative agenda. In 2004, gay marriage bans had BI-Partisan support. Bill Clinton signed the Defense of Marriage Act not G.W. Is Clinton a bigot?
Exit polls had Kerry winning in 2004. Bush won with 60 million votes. What do polls mean? This mid-term is all about LOCAL issues.
The stock market is over 11,000. Umemployment is at 4.6 percent. Gold is over 700 dollars an once. Housing starts are at an all-time high. Don’t think none of this will be forgotten in November.
If I were to take PAD seriously, then FDR is the worst president of all-time. He spied on civilians, he interred Japanese American citizens, he tried to stack the supreme court, he approved of using the atomic bomb which killed hundreds of thousands of Japanese. Not to mention the bombing of Berlin and Toyko. No wonder FDR didn’t win Time’s Man of the Century award.
“If I were to take PAD seriously, then FDR is the worst president of all-time. He spied on civilians, he interred Japanese American citizens, he tried to stack the supreme court, he approved of using the atomic bomb which killed hundreds of thousands of Japanese. Not to mention the bombing of Berlin and Toyko. No wonder FDR didn’t win Time’s Man of the Century award.”
A little history lesson for ya. Harry S Truman ordered the use of the a-bomb. FDR had this little health issue called “death”. The order was given after Truman was apprised of the propbable casualtu numbers for Operation Olympic/Cornet, the invasion of the Japan, scheduled for 1946.
The invasion would have had three bad results. 1,initial casualty numbers for the Allied troops over 50,000. 2, the Russians would have gotten a strong foothold in the Western Pacific. 3, the ensuing guerilla war would have lasted up to 10 years. Although I agree with Jerry Garcia that to “choose the lesser of two evils is to still choose evil”, sometimes they are the only choices left.
Secondly, as an aside to all the don’t tax and out-spend consevatives, taxes are a governments revenues. They pay for things like police, health care, oh and the “War on Terror”.
What amazes me and, I believe, other contributors, is that gay marriage, abortion, and other “issues” only come up when somebody needs people to look the other way for a while.
I can’t comment to whether Bill Clinton is a bigot. I can’t comment to whether W is one either. I can comment to the fact that since the Republican party manged to grab control of the whole federal government, I have never seen such a collection of secrecy, cover ups, stubbornness, and corruption.