[Vision2020] Re: The consequences of losing the Iraq war

[Tom Hansen]

I agree with you more than words can say, Joan.

 

In fact I am waiting for Bush to take another quote from Tricky Dick Nixon:
Withdrawal with Honor.  After President Johnson had realized that he had
been lied to by General Westmoreland concerning US successes in Vietnam, he
(Johnson) withdrew from the 1968 election feeling responsible to the
American people for the lies told him by his subordinates.  In response to
the peoples' fervor over our continued failings in Vietnam, Nixon campaigned
on "Withdrawal with Honor".  The war continued until August 1975.

 

I have an old shirt that I wore at another rally years and years ago:
"Southeast Asia War Games, Second Place"  The names and the faces have
changed.  But it is still the same game, just another venue.

 

And the beat goes on.

 

Tom Hansen

Moscow, Idaho

 

"Patriotism is not a short and frenzied outburst of emotion but the tranquil
and steady dedication of a lifetime." 

 

--Adlai E. Stevenson, Jr.

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From: vision2020-bounces at moscow.com [mailto:vision2020-bounces at moscow.com]
On Behalf Of Joan Opyr
Sent: Wednesday, January 19, 2005 8:46 PM
To: Vision2020 Moscow
Subject: [Vision2020] Re: The consequences of losing the Iraq war

 

Here's a news flash for you, Coop: we are losing the Iraq war.  We don't
have enough troops to secure the country.  We don't have enough
international military support and/or financing to train Iraqi police and
security forces to replace US soldiers in country; we don't have enough to
rebuild the nation's infrastructure and economy; we don't have enough to
ensure that the upcoming elections are free, fair, and recognized as
legitimate by even a slender majority of Iraqis.  We are now reaping the sad
consequences of the Bush Administration's inadequate, pie-in-the-sky,
ideologically rigid and unrealistic pre-war planning.  Iraq is no longer a
disaster in the making; Iraq is a disaster

 

Recently, I've been re-reading a variety of histories of the Vietnam War.
They've been disheartening but instructive.  From 1964 to 1972,
militarily-speaking, we threw everything we had short of a nuclear bomb at a
small peasant country in Southeast Asia.  We dropped more than 7 million
tons of ordnance on Vietnam -- nearly one five-hundred pound bomb for every
person living in the country.  We installed the "democratic" Diem regime,
which grew increasingly unpopular with every bomb we dropped and every
"military advisor" we sent, and when his hold on power became untenable, we
sat back and allowed his generals (trained and installed by us) to stage a
coup.  They drove Diem and his brother out to the back country and shot
them.  Not surprisingly, the generals who succeeded Diem proved to be even
less popular, so we sent more military advisors.  And still we were losing
the war.

 

In 1964, President Johnson used the CIA-fabricated Gulf of Tonkin incident
as an excuse to launch full-scale war on Vietnam.  The Tonkin Resolution,
which gave Johnson carte blanche to do as he pleased in retaliation for the
"attack," passed unanimously in the House and with only two dissenting votes
in the Senate.  Johnson sent 200,000 US soldiers to Vietnam in 1965 and
another 200,000 in 1966.  At the height of the war in 1968, there were
500,000 US troops in country.  We dropped almost twice as many bombs on
Vietnam as we had dropped during World War II on Europe and Asia combined.
And, guess what?  We were still losing.  Support for Ho Chi Minh and the
Viet Cong continued to grow throughout the countryside.  We undermined our
own hearts and minds campaigns by being heartless and mindless.  We razed
entire villages to the ground, established "free-fire zones" where everyone
and anyone could be and was shot on sight, and our government, without
deviation, lied to us wholesale about the conduct of the war, our chances of
victory, and our support within the country.  By the end of 1968, more than
40,000 US soldiers were dead and a quarter of a million were wounded.  And
where were we in terms of winning Vietnam?  Nowhere.

 

When Nixon came into office, he began withdrawing US troops.  By 1972, we
were back down to 150,000.  The bombing, however, continued.  In fact, it
intensified.  Nixon launched an indefensible invasion of Cambodia; he
carpet-bombed that country and Laos; and we were losing, losing, losing.

 

What's the lesson here?  What's the thing we haven't learned?  I don't know,
but here's a wild guess: you can't impose democracy at the point of a gun.
The invading army of a far-away nation cannot win a long-term guerilla war
against a determined local resistance -- not if that invading army wants to
impose democracy rather than just flatten the place.  Some of you might
argue, of course, that we should just flatten Iraq: I believe the popular
expression is "bomb them back to the stone age."  We might "win" that way,
but then we'd lose all that lovely oil.  And perhaps the oil of all of
Iraq's lovely neighbors.  And the costs -- not just human but, more
important for the Bush Administration, financial -- would be untenable.

 

It's easy to argue that we can't afford to lose Iraq.  It's also easy to see
that we can't afford to keep it.  That's our conundrum, isn't it?  We've
broken it, but we can't afford to buy it, and so we're not allowed to leave
the store.  Here's my tragic prediction, ready to be printed out and
time-capsuled for your reading pleasure in the year 2034: Iraq will be run
by an oppressive Shiite militia.  We'll do business with them because we
need their oil; they'll do business with us because they need our money.
There will be no democracy in Baghdad, but there will be a new memorial wall
in Washington, DC, and on it will be the names of thousands of US soldiers,
missed by their families, mourned by their children, and forgotten by their
government.

 

Joan Opyr/Auntie Establishment     

Auntie Establishment
Serving Idaho's liberal elite since 1993


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