To those who would withdraw from Iraq.

[woot]

Originally Posted by il Padrino Ute

Agreed. The only real difference is that Vietnam was a liberal's war and Iraq is a neocon's war.

Hopefully now that both parties have been the cause of pointless wars we'll have a little bit more sense about policing other countries. Yea, right.

[il Padrino Ute]

Originally Posted by woot

Hopefully now that both parties have been the cause of pointless wars we'll have a little bit more sense about policing other countries. Yea, right.

The insatiable lust for control by both sides will never allow that.

The older I get, the more isolationist I get. The thought of telling the entire world to piss off sounds better and better each day.

[woot]

Originally Posted by il Padrino Ute

The insatiable lust for control by both sides will never allow that.

The older I get, the more isolationist I get. The thought of telling the entire world to piss off sounds better and better each day.

It's a difficult issue and one that I can't take a strident position on, but I'm inclined to agree. I don't like that we're not doing anything for Darfur, for instance, but we tend to handle police action so poorly, that I no longer have any confidence that the medicine won't be worse than the disease.

[Tex]

Nothing against your good post, UtahDan, but I consider one of the great advantages to someday having the Baby Boomers retire and die off is that I won't have to hear about Vietnam anymore.

[SeattleUte]

Originally Posted by Tex

Nothing against your good post, UtahDan, but I consider one of the great advantages to someday having the Baby Boomers retire and die off is that I won't have to hear about Vietnam anymore.

You probably wish you didn't have to hear about the Nazis or the holocaust anymore either.

Proof that some people's historical perspective begins at birth.

[il Padrino Ute]

Originally Posted by SeattleUte

You probably wish you didn't have to hear about the Nazis or the holocaust anymore either.

Proof that some people's historical perspective begins at birth.

Big difference between what happened during the Holocaust and whining hippies.

[woot]

Originally Posted by SeattleUte

You probably wish you didn't have to hear about the Nazis or the holocaust anymore either.

Proof that some people's historical perspective begins at birth.

I'm not much of a gamer these days, but I reckon I've killed a good hundred thousand virtual nazis in my day. I don't remember ever killing a NVA or vietcong soldier. People want to forget Vietnam because it was such a confusing mess, but people don't ever want to forget WW2 because it's the only example we'll ever have of unadulterated evil being squashed by the power of the US of A.

[UtahDan]

Originally Posted by Tex

Nothing against your good post, UtahDan, but I consider one of the great advantages to someday having the Baby Boomers retire and die off is that I won't have to hear about Vietnam anymore.

Though this thread has headed off into "how could we have done differently in Vietnam" that was not the analogy I was trying to draw. Vietnam and Iraq are the poorest possible analogy and really have nothing to do with one another strategically. The only analogous thing here is that the Wahabists have the same intentions as the Khmer Rogue. This is the point to ponder.

Waters seems to have over looked the same point woot did. This is not an argument for staying forever. It is rather an argument for the proper conditions of withdrawal. I guess no one wants to talk about that. It is the same old naivete that nothing could be worse than the present conditions.

The idea is beginning to crystalize in my mind that the "pull out now crowd" has neither thought about how to do that nor do they care. They just want their position that we never should have gone in the first instance vindicated. It is possible pull out too soon having stayed too long as the British did in India.

[MikeWaters]

Ah yes, "Vietnam and Iraq have nothing to do with each other, except where it supports my arguments."

By the way, who was it who drove the Khmer Rouge from power, incidentally?

Help me to understand your argument.....are you actually saying that Al Qaeda will commit genocide in Iraq if we withdraw too abruptly? Are you saying that there could be a civil war among two sects (throw in the Kurds for good measure) that have been warring for centuries?

What are you saying? You are asking me to draw on the lessons of the Khmer Rouge, and asking me to ignore other lessons of Vietnam.

I guess you could make an argument that if we pull out of Iraq, there will then be genocide in a neighboring country. But I'm going to be interested in seeing you pull off this argument. Please do go ahead and explain.

[UtahDan]

Originally Posted by MikeWaters

What are you saying? You are asking me to draw on the lessons of the Khmer Rouge, and asking me to ignore other lessons of Vietnam.

I think I have stated it very succinctly. Vietnam and Iraq have zero to do with one another in terms of their politics, their histories (including tribal factions, ethnic factions), the impact of religion (including the several diametrically opposed religious factions), the strategic problems presented by their insurgencies or the best ways to build political stability.

The one thing they do have in common is they both have a breathtakingly brutal, highly ideological faction waiting to step into the power vacuum. You seem to want to add for emphasis that they other thing they have in common is that they are foreign policy nightmares for the US. Well obviously.

So your question is, do I want you to look at the parts of the two situations that are analogous and ignore the parts that aren't? That is exactly what I want you to do. Maybe I got through after all.

Again, Mike, this is not an argument for being there forever. It is an argument for making sure that whatever the civil war that results from withdrawal does, one of those results can't be Al Queda controlling anything. My guess is you agree with this.

P.S. I will add that if you think there are other analogous components between Iraq and Vietnam I'm open to being persuaded. Having read a fair amount on that topic I'm pretty satisfied that the analogy, other than as I have stated, is not proper. Again though, maybe you have an insight there I haven't encountered before.