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The Majority Party has no plan?
Actually members of the newly elected majority party have floated numerous ideas regarding the civil war that shrubya created in Iraq.
Here's a position paper circa March 2006 to get you started, pilgram...
http://www.commondreams.org/views06/0403-28.htm
Very amusing.Quote:
Originally Posted by chefmike
CommonSocialistDreams. Great site and a great plan.
A change of direction,meaning reverse,meaning QUITTING .
Same old tired socialists who pulled the rug out from under the South Vietnamese.Now wanting to do the same in the middle east and cede the field to islmo-fascists.
Yeah, I`d say that`s a brilliant plan,worked well before. :P
LMFAO...uh huh...
Keep drinking that neocon kool-aid, pilgram...or otherwise you might actually have to deal with the world as it really is...
The Vietnam Analogy That Doesn't Hold
Nation: Bush Citing Vietnam As A Lesson For Iraq Policy Is Ludicrous
President Bush has said many dumb things in defense of his Iraq policy. Citing the Vietnam War as a model, however, is perhaps his most ludicrous yet.
This past week found the President sitting before a bust of the victorious Ho Chi Minh in Vietnam, seemingly unaware that the United States lost its war with the Communist-led country. Having long and vehemently denied parallels between the invasions of Vietnam and Iraq, he nevertheless admitted now to seeing one.
"Yes," Bush said. "One lesson is that we tend to want there to be instant success in the world, and the task in Iraq is ... just going to take a long period of time to — for the ideology that is hopeful, and that's an ideology of freedom, to overcome an ideology of hate.... We'll succeed, unless we quit."
Bush seems not to have noticed that we succeeded in Vietnam precisely because we did quit the military occupation of that nation, permitting an ideology of freedom to overcome one of hate. Bush's rhetoric is frighteningly reminiscent of Richard Nixon's escalation and expansion of the Vietnam War in an attempt to buy an "honorable" exit with the blood of millions of Southeast Asians and thousands of American soldiers. In the end, a decade of bitter fighting did not prevent an ignominious U.S. departure from Saigon.
Now, however, Vietnam is at peace with its neighbors and poses no security threat to the United States. Many of the "boat people" have returned as investors, and successive American Presidents have made visits to the second fastest-growing economy in Asia. While Vietnam is still run by its Communist Party, eventually post-war leaders on both sides have accepted that peace is practical.
The lesson of Vietnam is not to keep pouring lives and treasure down a dark and poisonous well, but to patiently use a pragmatic mix of diplomacy and trade with even our ideological competitors.
The United States dropped more bombs on tiny Vietnam than it unloaded on all of Europe in World War II, only hardening Vietnamese nationalist resolve. Hundreds of thousands of troops, massive defoliation of the countryside, "free fire zones," South Vietnamese allies, bombing the harbors ... none of it worked. Yet, never admitting that our blundering military presence fueled the native nationalist militancy we supposedly sought to eradicate, three U.S. Presidents — two of them Democrats — lied themselves into believing victory was around some mythical corner.
While difficult for inveterate hawks to admit, the victory for normalcy in Vietnam, celebrated by Bush last week, came about not despite the U.S. withdrawal but because of it.
Iraq and Vietnam are not the same country, yet both have long experience with imperial meddling, and fiercely resist it. Bush has said Iraq "is in many ways, religious in nature, and I don't see the parallels" to Vietnam, but that is just another sign that he probably cut most of his history classes at Yale.
He — and apparently the mass media, as well — seems to have forgotten that the United States tried to stoke a religious war in Vietnam by intervening to install a Roman Catholic exile in power in this primarily Buddhist country. The struggle to overthrow that U.S. puppet dictator, Ngo Dinh Diem, began with Buddhist monks immolating themselves on the streets of Saigon.
To be sure, there followed a decade of constant talk about bringing democracy to the country we had occupied and a never-ending series of elections and new power arrangements that followed the U.S.-engineered murder of Diem, who (like Iraqi exile Ahmad Chalabi) had been deemed by U.S. officials as "the George Washington" of his country. At least Chalabi is still alive to complain, as he did to The New York Times this month, "that the Americans sold us out."
But the final collapse of our puppet regime in Vietnam did not produce the domino effect of other nations surrendering to communism any more than a U.S. withdrawal from Iraq will inevitably lead to the spread of terrorism. This is why the wiser voices in the Bush dynastic circle — Daddy Bush's clean-up crew, led by James Baker — are calling for involving Syria and Iran in the effort to stabilize Iraq. Iran is to host a summit with Iraq and other nations in the area, while on Monday Syria and Iraq resumed long-broken diplomatic relations.
The lesson of the Vietnam debacle is that yesterday's enemy is more likely to become today's trading partner if we remove the specter of U.S. imperialism and leave the fate of Iraq to the Iraqis.
By Robert Scheer
Reprinted with permission from The Nation.
We 'cut and ran,' but look at Vietnam now
Al Neuharth, USA TODAY founder
President Bush stood and spoke in front of a bust of Ho Chi Minh, the notorious North Vietnam Communist dictator. He died midway through the Vietnam War, but his followers forced us to "cut and run" 31 years ago.
Bush said, "Vietnam is an exciting place. It's a place with an enormous future." Later, when asked what lessons Vietnam might have for Iraq, he replied: "We'll succeed (in Iraq) unless we quit." He vowed again that he won't do that.
Despite his firsthand look at a peaceful and prospering Vietnam this past week, Bush still doesn't get it. The "it" is:
Vietnam was the most tragic international blunder in our history. From 1965-75 we lost 58,193 U.S. servicemen and women. And we lost the war.
Iraq is a somewhat similar, albeit smaller, misadventure. In three and a half years we've sacrificed more than 2,800 troops, and the toll keeps mounting.
Hawkish Henry Kissinger, who was secretary of State when we pulled the last of our troops out of Vietnam, said this week that "military victory" no longer is possible in Iraq.
On Oct. 4, 2002, I wrote in this column: "Congress is 'debating,' but President Bush and his hawkish cohorts are demanding a virtual blank check to wage war in Iraq. They'll probably get it. That's a mistake."
Then, most of you approved invading Iraq. Now, polls show 56% of you think that was wrong.
You should make sure members of the new Congress understand that unless they get us out of the mini-Vietnam mess in Iraq that the old Congress helped Bush create, they too will be toast in 2008.
Feedback: Other views on Iraq and Vietnam
"Mr. Neuharth errs on one point: Iraq, not Vietnam, is 'the most tragic international blunder in our history.' The strategic consequences will be worse."
— William E. Odom, retired Army lieutenant general and senior fellow at the Hudson Institute
"Of all the parallels between Iraq and Vietnam, the high cost in American blood and treasure is indeed the most disturbing."
— Robert K. Brigham, history professor, Vassar College, and author of Is Iraq Another Vietnam?
article and footnotes-
http://blogs.usatoday.com/oped/2006/..._and_ran_.html
Well said, chefmike, well said.