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Old 12-26-2005, 03:23 AM
andyfox andyfox is offline
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Join Date: Sep 2002
Posts: 4,677
Default Re: Who Said This About Vietnam?

Rumsfeld said this about Iraq on his recent visit: that giving up would mean allowing the terrorists to impose "their dark vision on the rest of the world."

"Let there be no doubt: if the United States were to withdraw from Iraq today the terrorists emboldened by their victory would attack us elsewhere in the region and at home in the United States."

"We will win this war. It's a test of wills, and let there be no doubt that is what it is," he said. He told the troops that "generations before you have persevered and prevailed, and they too were engaged in a test of wills."

Bluff This makes a good point: historical analogies can be iill-advised and inapt. I myself have pointed this out in previous threads.

Admitting that, the words of the current administration eerily parrot those of others I have heard in my lifetime who were going abroad in search of monsters to destroy. Peter666 has pointed out that Pol Pot was a monster; indeed he was.

But great evils were inflicted on the people of Vietnam by the United States. We were not a monster, but we acted monstrously because we failed to see local conditions and to understand local history in the context of what we saw as a worldwide battle against evil. This is not to say that that evil did not exist. It is to say that to see everything in terms of that battle only is to see only part of the picture and to miss the rest of the picture can lead to disaster, both for the United States and for the people it is trying to help.

The administration claims things are simple: a battle of good vs. evil. If you're not with us, you're against us. Two pictures I saw recently, Munich and Syriana try to show that a manichean world view of only black and white results in violence and nothing much else. It is very hard to export our values to others if we compromise them ourselves.
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