SwiftVets.com

[DenisC]

http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/004/713dawas.asp?pg=1

Another Vietnam?
From the October 11, 2004 issue: What is the "lesson of Vietnam"?
by David Gelernter, for the Editors
10/11/2004, Volume 010, Issue 05

JOHN KERRY is famously hard to pin down; you can reach out to grasp his opinion only to find that it has flitted away like a bashful butterfly, or a goldfish you are trying to catch with your bare hands. But nowadays his pronouncements and campaign ads are easy to read. They suggest that Iraq is like Vietnam; that our top priority is accordingly not to win but to get out. John Kerry evidently believes, a propos Vietnam, that we should have run away sooner. Many Americans disagree. Many Americans believe that we should have stood by our friends until a free and stable South Vietnam had taken root.

What is the "lesson of Vietnam"? It's a hard question, in a way; virtually all Americans agree that Vietnam was a tragedy and a national humiliation--and, at least during the years when William Westmoreland was in command, a badly fought war. Kerry seems to believe that these propositions lead to only one possible conclusion. By shouting "Vietnam!" he thinks he can induce desperation and make Americans turn in horror to the Democrats begging for relief, begging to be pulled out of this awful quagmire. His mistake is something like Abu Musab al Zarqawi's. I don't say Kerry is like Zarqawi, of course not. But Zarqawi believes that by committing barbarities on videotape, he has made Americans tremble with fear; in fact we are trembling with rage. (And someday this mistake will be vividly brought home to him.) Kerry believes that by saying "we are facing another Vietnam," he can frighten people; and some Americans will indeed be frightened. Far more will say: If this be Vietnam, make the most of it. Let's do it right this time.

President Bush should announce: You want to talk Vietnam? Fine, let's talk. Kerry believes that Iraq is turning into a Vietnam-like "quagmire"; the assertion is false, and it's important that voters know why it is false. But there is a more important, deeper-lying disagreement under the surface. Bush obviously stands with the large contingent of Americans who are determined that, if we ever did face another Vietnam, never again would we pull out in a headlong rush and leave our allies sinking in the mud, clutching at our helicopter skids as we fly away, with the wreck of the new and better nation we had tried to build collapsing around their heads. Never again will we treat America's trustworthiness and honor, and the hopes of our friends, and the blood-sacrifices of our soldiers, like bad debts to be written off with a shudder.

We fought in South Vietnam to protect that country from a torrent of Communist evil threatening to roll down from the North. I suppose not many Americans remember the details. But surely a fair number do remember how Congress concluded that Vietnam was a quagmire, a mistake, the wrong war at the wrong time. Whereupon it refused to vote any more money for the war, not one more cent; whereupon we pulled out in a gathering panic, and South Vietnam fell to the invading tanks of the North. Then the picture goes blank. Totalitarian regimes don't like network cameramen advertising the little clean-up that invariably accompanies the establishment of a brand new absolute dictatorship. But many Americans surely recall that, after we ran away, something awful happened. The evil rolled down in a flood. Huge numbers put to sea in rickety rowboats. Cambodia fell to the Khmer Rouge and its bosses, a group of French-trained Communist intellectuals who created a virtually indescribable hell-on-earth. Millions died.


The truth about Communist South Vietnam leaked out gradually. Hundreds of thousands were executed; many more were thrown into "reeducation" camps--estimates range from a few hundred thousand to over a million inmates. "What Vietnam has given us," wrote Tom Wicker of the New York Times after the Communist victory, is "a vast tide of human misery in Southeast Asia." Two sentences convey more about the regime's character than a page of statistics. In Why We Were in Vietnam, Norman Podhoretz quotes Doan Van Toai, a political prisoner jailed by the Communists after we left and they triumphed. "I was thrown into a three-foot-by-six-foot cell with my left hand chained to my right foot and my right hand chained to my left foot. My food was rice mixed with sand." There in two sentences is the reason we were right to fight and wrong to run. Americans have good cause to reject John Kerry's suggestion that, if Iraq is like Vietnam, getting out is our number one priority. If it is truly like Vietnam, all the more reason to fight relentlessly and to think of victory, only victory, until the enemy has been beaten to bits. Americans want to erase the worst national humiliation we have ever suffered, not recreate it.

But Iraq is not like Vietnam. We control most of the country. A strong and able Iraqi government fights alongside us. The enemy has no phony romantic aura bearing it up, wafting it along; Jane Fonda has failed to materialize in Falluja. (At least, as this magazine goes to press.) But there is something to the Vietnam analogy. Thanks to Vietnam we now understand how a credulous press corps can turn a massive enemy defeat into a first-class victory. At the end of January 1968, the North Vietnamese and the (indigenous-to-the-South) Vietcong launched attacks throughout the South, known as the Tet offensive. They failed disastrously. The attackers suffered more than 40,000 casualties; the Vietcong were virtually wiped out. "Intended to destroy South Vietnamese officialdom and spark a popular uprising," writes Derek Leebaert, "Tet ironically had more of an effect in turning South Vietnam's people against the North." But the press reported Tet as a smashing Communist victory.

The Tet offensive could happen all over again in Iraq any day now. Merely defeating the enemy won't be enough. A widespread attack might be thrown back, might fail to provoke the Sunni or Shiite uprising it was supposed to--and might nonetheless be reported (just by accident, you understand) as a devastating American defeat. It's not enough for America to win battles; the world must know that we have won. This time we will be on our guard--I hope. It is reassuring to reflect that, since Vietnam, the mainstream, prestige press has gradually managed to destroy its believability inch by inch. A spectacular reversal of fortunes: Nowadays when the press fires belligerent, obnoxious questions at dignified military spokesmen, people root for the military spokesmen! The credit for this transformation must be shared equally between the military and the reporters.

Obviously no one wants a quagmire. No one wants to sacrifice American lives to prove a point. Our duty in Iraq is to win fast, make sure the country is safe, and get out. We have a huge preponderance of power, and therefore we win by fighting; the enemy wins by waiting. We need to engage the enemy and win.

Every combat death we sustain is a tragedy. All Americans mourn every one. Nonetheless: A long fight wins a different sort of victory than a short fight, a victory that costs more and is ultimately worth more. "What you have achieved," Wittgenstein wrote, "cannot mean more to others than it does to you. Whatever it has cost you, that's what they will pay." Iraq has cost us plenty, but the payment hasn't been made in vain. We have already gone far towards silencing the post-Vietnam slander that says America is physically tough but mentally and spiritually weak. We have gone far towards recouping a certain kind of credibility we lost in Vietnam--and American credibility is a precious substance; it can save lives by the million. If we had the credibility (or magic power) to tell the regime of North Korea, Iran, or the Sudan: Clean up your act or be crushed by American power, get to it, hop!--millions would rejoice. And Americans know it.

And so if Kerry should succeed in convincing this nation that Iraq today resembles Vietnam circa 1968, he will discover that America today bears scant resemblance to itself circa 1968. Kerry may have learned nothing from Vietnam, but America has learned plenty.

--David Gelernter, for the Editors

© Copyright 2004, News Corporation, Weekly Standard, All Rights Reserved.
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David Gelernter says it a lot better than I did last month.

PostPosted: Sat Sep 18, 2004 12:28 am Post subject: And for those who were not there…

To expand on my memories on what really caused us to “Quit VIETNAM.” I say QUIT, because that was the truth. There were many reasons, but I will give those who do not know, the order in which they happened.

1. Robert McNamara, the Secretary of Defense under Pres. Johnson (Dem) put incredible and stupid restrictions on those fighting the war. (Dem Pres. JFK sent the first troops there)

2. The Generals went along with the restrictions without resigning. (It would only have taken a few resignations to get the attention of the American people. Once resigned, they could have spoken out against McNamara.)

3. The casualties began to rise because of the stupid restrictions. We NEVER LOST ONE BATTLE, but abandoned the ground we won, over and over and over.

4. The DRAFT put many troops who did not want to serve (not all) into the war. These reluctant warriors caused a lot of problems, in Vietnam and after they returned. (John Kerry joined the Naval Reserves only because he lost his Deferment)

5. Then the Mainstream Media, who did not want to be there, started reporting all sorts of BS about the war. C-BS’s Walter Cronkite was one of the worst. These cowards clearly did not understand the big picture.

5. Kerry and his friend Jane Fonda started VVAW.

6. Kerry and Fonda put together a pack of lairs, who made up all kinds of BS about a Vietnam I did not know about, even after 27 months in-country. It turned out nearly all of these people never served in Vietnam.

7. And worst of all, we had some very Treasonous Congressmen and Senators who pretended the Republicans started the war. NIXON'S WAR is all we heard, all day, every day.

You can add a few things I left out, but the above is basically what happened. We lost 58,178 Brave Souls for the hope of Freedom in a far away land. The rest is History, except for one thing. 250+ Swiftees had the guts to set the record straight and I am very proud to have served near them.
_________________
DenisC
173rd Airborne, RVN '65-67'

[Tom Poole]

[dukeblue]

What gets me is his bilateral stance on N Korea? Clearly, this is not a international or multilateral summit based solution. Nor is it the current solution.

Why? And does it have any coincidence to his past?

This is the John Kerry that had bilateral negotiations with a communist country in the past (N Vietnam). We know the results of that are the yielding of S Vietnam, the death of hundreds of tousands and the coverup of many pow-mia americans.

Now, John wants to have bilateral negotiations with another communist regime?

Personally, if I were ally S Korea, I'd be crapping my pants at what a Kerry Presidency would do to my country!