Defeatest Howard Dean Says US Troops Can't Win

[sam h]

The issue is not whether or not we will be victorious in Iraq. The issue is that the problem in Iraq is not fundamentally a military one to begin with, and that all of the administration's idiotic rhetoric about "victory" just obscures the reality that it is really a sociopolitical problem of building a democratic regime with the worst ingredients possible. The insurgency exacerbates this problem, but the problem is much bigger than the insurgency and has no clear solutions.

The Bush administration is either too stupid to understand this or just unwilling to admit it.

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The Bush administration is either too stupid to understand this or just unwilling to admit it.

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Good post. I'll only add that these are not mutually exclusive.

[MtSmalls]

unless your friend is in the DOD or at the top levels of the procurement circle, I doubt he has any issue with my statement.

We are nearly three years into combat operations in Iraq, and the troops still don't have the equipment, namely top flight body armor and heavily armored transport vehicles (Hummers) that they need to survive IED attacks. Halliburton and the CPA have enough cash to go around, hell they LOST $8 billion. But the average grunt, especially if he is part of an NG unit, doesn't have the body armor necessary and is scrounging for scrap metal in his spare time to improvise armor for his truck.

[Cyrus]

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I ... would like to hear exactly how you arrived at the conclusion that that American soldiers have been mistreated by their own logistics officers. I will pass on your answer to one of my best friends, who is a Marine Corps Logistics Officer currently on his second tour in Iraq.

[/ QUOTE ]Focus on the former.

When the grapevine has it that the customers are complaining about product quality, do you wanna be asking the opinion of the customer or the production manager?

[BCPVP]

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1) You said that "Dean is an idiot if he thinks Iraq resembles Vietnam in any meaningful way."

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Yes, and my belief is reaffirmed by the article Cyrus mentioned.

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2) Cyrus pointed out that Melvin Laird disagrees with you.

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That's where I think Cyrus is wrong. I agreed with pretty much the entire article. I don't quite see how Cyrus understood the gist of the article to be anything but supportive of what I said. Here's the article I believe Cyrus is talking about. To me, the gist of it is Iraq is not another Vietnam but could become similar if we do or don't do x, y, and z (some of which are suggested by the anti-war crowd). This doesn't contradict what I said.

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3) Ignoring the whole point of the article, which was to explore in what ways Iraq does and does not meaningfully resemble Vietnam, you lifted one quote from the first page to support the untenable position that the article was simply implying no meaningful resemblance.

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Perhaps I should have said significant instead of meaningful. There may be an event or small piece that is comparable, but Iraq is not Vietnam in the sense that the anti-war crowd makes it out to be.

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4) Cyrus pointed out that obviously no war will be exactly like another and therefore, on some level, it will always be difficult to say X is another Y.

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The comparison sure does come easy to people like Ted Kennedy et al. My point, I guess that there are many meaninful or significant ways that Iraq does not resemble Vietnam and the ones that do, if any, are dwarfed by the larger picture.

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5) You then responded by changing your original point, asserting to have said Iraq is not another Vietnam when you actually said that it bore no meaningufl resemblance.

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I call it clarifying sense andyfox asked what I meant by the statement.

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Then you repeated your misreading of the article. Then you attacked Cyrus personally.

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Are we reading the same article? I read the entire thing and to me, the theme was Iraq is not Vietnam and here are some lessons from Vietnam to make sure Iraq doesn't turn into Vietnam.

[sam h]

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Are we reading the same article? I read the entire thing and to me, the theme was Iraq is not Vietnam and here are some lessons from Vietnam to make sure Iraq doesn't turn into Vietnam.

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The theme to me seems to be that there are a variety of very clear parallels between the two wars and that we can learn from both the mistakes and success stories in Vietnam. I don't see how you could possibly interpret the theme of the article to be the lack of meaningful resemblance between the two wars.

Summarizing the points underneath each header...

1) We should have stayed the course in Vietnam but did not. Facing a similar situation today, we should stay the course.

2) Vietnamization should have been implemented from the beginning, and was a good idea. Iraqification should have been implemented from the beginning, and is a good idea.

3) Both wars got off to bad starts because they were based on faulty intelligence assessments.

4) In both wars, the administrations did poor jobs at "marekting the war" to the public. Bush can learn from the mistakes of Vietnam in this respect.

5) In both wars, one of the most difficult tasks was "building a new society from the ground up." The societies intended were different but some general lessons can be drawn.

Etc.

[BCPVP]

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1) We should have stayed the course in Vietnam but did not. Facing a similar situation today, we should stay the course.

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This seems to support my assertion, no?

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2) Vietnamization should have been implemented from the beginning, and was a good idea. Iraqification should have been implemented from the beginning, and is a good idea.

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True. But in Vietnam, it went from being a Vietnamese war to being an American one and then us leaving. In Iraq it's the opposite. It started as an American war and the plan is to make it an Iraqi one.

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3) Both wars got off to bad starts because they were based on faulty intelligence assessments.

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I can't argue with this one, but the circumstances surrounding the starts are different. One could say that WWII should be comparable because it got started because of faulty intelligence. But many a lib has balked when Iraq is compared to WWII.

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4) In both wars, the administrations did poor jobs at "marekting the war" to the public. Bush can learn from the mistakes of Vietnam in this respect.

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I'll concede this one, but I don't feel it's of major significance. By that I mean, you can't point to that and say "Aha! Iraq is another Vietnam!"

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5) In both wars, one of the most difficult tasks was "building a new society from the ground up." The societies intended were different but some general lessons can be drawn.

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While certainly a difficult task in Iraq, I think the comparison is weak at best for Vietnam.

[Cyrus]

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the plan is ... the circumstances ... one could say ... many a lib ... I don't feel it's of major significance ... the comparison is weak at best.

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Fine. Knock yourself out arguing there's no similarity. I'll go with the Vietnam hawks on this one, if you don't mind.

"Can't argue with a confident man!"

[Cyrus]

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There are a variety of very clear parallels between the two wars and that we can learn from both the mistakes and success stories in Vietnam.

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Precisely.

Here's what to me is the most important statement in Melvin Laird's article -- and let's remind ourselves once more that Melvin Laird is among the strongest anti-communists around. Laird writes that "the United States underestimated the nationalism of the Ho Chi Minh followers".

This is an amazing, extraordinary statement. It brings crashing down the whole edifice about the communist conspiracy, the domino effect, etcetera. Whoa, Melvin, the hawks here will have you fried.

Laird goes on to proclaim that, had the United States understood in time the strong, underlying nationalism among the Ho Chi Minh people, in the North and the South, they could have worked with him! Hey, they could've taken a hint when, on September 5, 1945, Ho Chi Minh spoke at a ceremony heralding an independent Vietnam and in his speech he cited the US Declaration of Independence while a band played "The Star Spangled Banner!"..

The ex-Defense Secretary is also critical of the administration's (and his) omission to grasp the importance of the region's nationalist undercurrents in the conflict, implying the historical hostility between China and Vietnam, the enmity between Cambodia and Vietnam, and so on.

Is there a lesson to be drawn from these remarks, that would help the US in the Iraq mess?

You bet your tush there is. And you don't have to change practically any word from what Laird said about the underlying nationalist dynamic.

[BluffTHIS!]

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The issue is not whether or not we will be victorious in Iraq. The issue is that the problem in Iraq is not fundamentally a military one to begin with, and that all of the administration's idiotic rhetoric about "victory" just obscures the reality that it is really a sociopolitical problem of building a democratic regime with the worst ingredients possible. The insurgency exacerbates this problem, but the problem is much bigger than the insurgency and has no clear solutions.

The Bush administration is either too stupid to understand this or just unwilling to admit it.

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You really don't have a clue yourself do you?

We are facing insurgents using military weapons and tactics yet it isn't a military problem. Sure it's not the conventional military scenario of pitched battles between large combat units, but it is military nonetheless. Unless you are so dim like Cyrus and can't see that low intensity guerilla type warfare is still a subset of warfare.

And if it isn't a conventional military situation, and since the insurgents have shown that they are not willing to allow the democratic process to determine the outcome then what do you have? A police matter? Well if it is then then the SWAT team is needed.

Your attitude is more of the same-o lib inability to see the nuances in military/geo-political situations and apply an appropriate, even if not perfect, strategy. Any military action that lasts more than 3 months obviously must be wrong. Tell that to the insurgents whose objective is to allow us to defeat ourselves by losing our will and withdrawing before the Iraqi government is capable of handling the situation on its own so that they can impose a non-democratic government on their fellow Iraqis.