Are you suggesting as well that free-fire zones, defoliation projects, and massive air campaigns should have been sustained in the interests of avoiding a “bloodbath”?

I’m always interested to hear what people like you believe the US should have done after knocking the region into a cocked hat for so many years.

My argument there with the author also concerns Vietnam and historical revisionism. Both by the victors as well as the defeated, those such as us so to speak.

You people abandoned millions to their death and even more to concentration camps in Vietnam. Yet you would dare to speak filth about your American opponents bombing the crap out of people that executed men, women, and children out of hand?

I’m always interested in the ability of people to make themselves into tools, because as much as I hate weapons in the service of evil, I know that they don’t got enough will nor brains to come up with their own plans of destruction and racial eradication. I wouldn’t be against using d and Company as tools in our fight, if we could manage them.

Yet, there is something to be said for not using the blade that carved out the hearts of many innocents. Perhaps it is best to use our own weapons and tools, rather than the tools of the enemy, when all is said and done.

We can only use what we have, after all. Iraq will need everything they can acquire to prevent being disappeared down the memory hole.

Actually, if you were “always interested” in what “people like [me] believe” about Vietnam and the US role there, you probably would just go to the right sidebar of my blog, click on the category “Vietnam,” and start reading. There you would find, archived, fifteen posts I’ve composed (some of them very long) on Vietnam, only a fraction of the total of my output so far on the subject.

But to take another moment to respond to your query, and to refresh your knowledge of history, let me point out that at the time the pullout occurred in Vietnam the US had had no active fighting forces there for years. All we did at that point—and what many people such as myself now complain about—was cut off funding to the ARVN and make all the sacrifices of both the US and the South Vietnamese there for naught.

Take a look at this, if you’re interested in even more information, from one who was there.

But my guess is that you’re not really all that interested.

They’ve been upgraded: it’s now the community-based reality.

http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=ZTI2N2RhOTRjMTQxZGY2NWE0NmYzOWJjOWE4ZDhhMjg=

It was written after the death of David Halberstam. It might give one reason to rethink the supposed lessons of Viet Nam I suspect.

Cronkite’s not the only journalist who affected the history of Viet Nam it seems.

The consensus approves of the change!

Regardless, the right’s claim that the US “abandoned” South Vietnam is a simplistic dodge. By the terms of the Paris Peace treaty, the reunification of Vietnam — as originally called for by the 1954 Geneva Convention — was a foregone conclusion. The only way for the US to assure the existence of South Vietnam would have been to return American combat forces. Everyone understood this — the North Vietnamese especially.

So when you claim that you’re merely upset that the US ended funding for ARVN, you either don’t understand the history of the post-US withdrawal, or you’re not openly stating that you believe the US should have sent its forces back to fight a war it had already taken two decades to lose.

Reid stated:

President Bush’s attempt to compare the war in Iraq to past military conflicts in East Asia ignores the fundamental difference between the two. Our nation was misled by the Bush administration in an effort to gain support for the invasion of Iraq under false pretenses, leading to one of the worst foreign policy blunders in our history.

I suppose Mr. Reid conveniently forgot Johnson’s 1964 campaign promise that if elected, he would not send our boys to die in a war in S.E. Asia. How conveeeenient.

Neo, I disagree with you about the Gulf of Tonkin incident being resolved in Johnson’s favor, but that can be discussed another time. The fact remains that by far, the greatest foreign policy blunder that the US has made in the 20th century was the precipitous withdrawl of US forces and funding from Vietnam and the abandonment of Indochina to communist forces. This was a blunder that the left along with the democrats and their enablers in the media were responsible for and which resulted in the loss of millions of lives.

The US and South Vietnam were winning and had they not been betrayed by the American media would have prevailed. Even N.Vietnam’s commander, General Giap admitted in his memoirs that the news media reporting of the war and the anti-war demonstrations in America after Tet surprised him. The communists then decided that instead of negotiating what he called a conditional surrender, they would now go the limit because America’s resolve was weakening and the possibility of complete victory was within Hanoi’s grasp.

Fast forward to today…

It is the democrats who have a large stake in our Iraq venture failing having squarely called it lost and they are once again attempting to mislead the public.

Many of the democrats who now decry our involvement and claim they were fooled into voting for the invasion. They do so in the face of facts that prove otherwise. They had access to sufficient information to make a responsible decision at the time and they can’t lie their way out of it. Many are on the record saying that they were convinced Iraq possessed WMD and was a threat, even before Bush was elected.

Unfortunately the left, the MSM and many democrats rely on the knowledge as articulated by Mark Twain that, “a lie will be half way around the world before the truth can get its pants on.”

a nation that [over the course of those two decades] was never capable of defending itself

So…South Vietname was kinda like

Belgium
Czechoslovakia
Denmark
France
Greece
Netherlands
Norway
Poland
Yugoslavia

Abyssinia
Ethiopia
Libya

Burma
China
Malaya

As for your posts on the war, the only one I really needed to see was this one, in which you spend most of your time breathlessly singing the praises of a book originally published three decades ago. Braestrup’s book is fine enough, but if you’re going to congratulate yourself for reading The Big Story and challenging the conventional wisdom on the Tet Offensive (circa 1977), there’s probably not much point in telling you that other works — written by folks with a bit more standing than an HNN intern — have been published in the past three decades that tell a more complicated story than the cartoonish one you seem to favor.

I’m not sure what your reference to a HNN (History News Network, I assume) intern means. Neither Braestrup nor the author of the other linked piece had this particular status.

Braestrup was the head of the Saigon bureau of the Washington Post from 1968 to 1973, among other sterling credentials (and, to top it all off, he was a liberal).

The author of the piece I linked to at History Net (”The Bitter End”) was Colonel Harry G. Summers, Jr. He had served several earlier tours of duty in Vietnam, and became chief of the negotiations division of the U.S. delegation of the Four-Party Joint Military Team (FPJMT) in 1974, a position he held when the events he describes in the article occurred.

Well, now we know why very few of today’s students are well informed about the history of Vietnam. Thanks to “historians” like “d” and Ward Churchill, we have the most poorly-educated students of “history” the world has ever seen. What’s the matter, d, miss out on your chance to be an “HNN intern”?

For such an ‘expert’ on the matter, d only alludes to but does not list any of the, “other works — written by folks with a bit more standing than an HNN intern.” Instead he backhandedly insults Neo by calling the reference from a past post her ‘cartoonish’ view, not to mention the obvious attempt to belittle Braestrup by referring to him as an HNN intern.

So how do you plan to belittle someone like Giap, since what he has to say doesn’t conform to your hackneyed narrative?

If insults and vague allusions are all you’ve got d, I suggest you turn out the light and go home. What a sanctimonious little twit.

As for the “extreme antiquity” of Braestrup’s book — your phrase, not mine — thirty years is indeed quite a long time in terms of historical scholarship, especially if we’re looking at the American war in Vietnam.

And as for Stumbley’s comment, it’s always good to see a thread descend into pointless hyperbole . . .

So, what d is saying is this case, more than any other, is one which needs to be looked back upon and reflected from a different point of view, and revised.

News flash, moron, even your thought bosses have moved on from the dumbassedness you’re spewing here.

You’re nothing but a mindless regurgitator of tired old, already discredited and disproven, black propaganda produced by the enemy we were fighting.

As an adherent to the enemy, you fall into that particularly degenerate, disgusting, filthy and universally despised subset of dysfunctional known as a betrayer.

Congratulations. You’ve made membership to one of the very few subgroups that is loathed and hated by every culture, every society to have ever existed.

No culture has long tolerated those who adhere to the cause, method, means or message of the enemy during a time of war.

The days of permissiveness in our society are drawing ever closer to being closed as well. The betrayals are becoming too obvious, too loud and too consistent to be excused for much longer.

That is, unless you’re just another nasty jihadi flying a false flag.

The radical left, which you give every indication of belonging to, is so deeply in bed with the jihadi already that there is zero rational reason to not lump all of you into the same method of engagment.

- And that’s what these people consider an argument. Even as an attempt at a sneer, it’s weak.

Vietnam itself was complicated, of course (as, for that matter, is anything in history), but those noting the complications are generally those challenging the conventional wisdom that the US had simply lost the war. What complicated matters particularly was that Vietnam had evolved from a colonial war to an ideological one, with the former aspect used, quite effectively, as a weapon in the latter. But the real cartoon here is the simple-minded lefty depiction of the US as just another slavering imperial power — a cartoon behind which the left still thinks it can hide its real ideological intentions, as you can see at every dwindling “protest” march.

At least most of the professors I studied under managed to radiate a certain cultured, civilized, urbane vibe that you, from the tone of your posts, lack.

As for Giap’s remarks — which I rarely see referenced except by conservatives who insist that “we couldda won! we was winnin’!” — I don’t really know what to tell you. If you’re the sort of person willing to take a retired NVA general’s memoirs as the final word on the Tet Offensive, perhaps you’d be interested in what Giap’s observations on other wars.

Unfortunately for such as “d”, most folks know better.
I will not attempt to correct “d”, since I’m certain he knows better. I will attempt to correct his impression that he is fooling anybody. I know, I know, waste of time. But I persevere.

About 90% of South Viet Nam was and about 95% of the population of South Viet Nam lived in other than free fire zones. Those were referred to as no-fire or restricted-fire zones. The concept of non-free-fire zones was a puzzle to my father, who’d fought in Europe as an Infantry officer. When I returned from Ft. Benning, trying to explain the concept, his reaction was, “Which traitor made up those rules?” McNamara, of course.
The number of US and ARVN troops killed because of restrictions on fire support has never, to my knowledge, been addressed, but anecdotes about one case here, another case there, heard from veterans directly or in memoirs, and extended to the entire conflict would put the number pretty high.
I once asked, in an artillery class, how soon we could expect rounds on the ground after a call for fire. Three minutes. In a Rules of Engagement class, some other candidate asked how long to get clearance. An hour, a day, maybe never.

So, “d”, you see people know better.

Enjoy

thirty years is indeed quite a long time in terms of historical scholarship

Lots of cogent debunking upthread of d’s nonsense, but I couldn’t let this gem pass without comment.

In terms of historical scholarship, 30 years is a blink of the eye. Arguably something that happened 30 years ago is scarcely history yet, but just oldish news.

I decided to give you the benefit of the doubt; I like to think of myself as open-minded. Therefore, I can only blame myself for the minute of my life wasted reading that swill of Giap’s.
Perhaps, as an historian, you should have a better appreciation for the difference between your enemy admitting you were beating them, and your enemy continuing to disagree with your ideology.

Perhaps also the difference between observation and speculation. In particular, the speculation of those who think that the descent in communism is a victory for freedom.

Of course, it is a good for somebody who actually there to try and set down what actually happened near the time it happened. William of Tyre’s history of the crusades is still considered valuable, though he wrote it centuries ago.

History is, after all, what somebody decided to record. If it’s not recorded, it’s lost.

I notice, by the way, “d” shies away from the subjects of re-education camps, and the boat people.

Well, if you were them, wouldn’t you suppress it too?

And I don’t see why Giap’s comments on the war should be dismissed. An enemy can sometimes give one good insights into what really happened, once the actual fighting’s over.

As for Giap and Iraq, I’m not going to pay any attention at all to what he says while the war is still going on. Afterwards, maybe—-when he’s probably going to be more honest; but, for now, I think he’s just snowing the US again.

As for Giap’s remarks … If you’re the sort of person willing to take a retired NVA general’s memoirs as the final word on the Tet Offensive, perhaps you’d be interested in what Giap’s observations on other wars.

I knew that was exactly what he would reply. People like you are nothing if not simple and predictable.
A retired NVA general? Try the supreme commander of all north Vietnamese and viet cong forces both against the French and the US.
Ofcourse since what he, arguably the most authoritative voice on the matter, has to say doesn’t conform to your narrative, he will be sneeringly marginalized.

How predictable, how tiresome.

John Kerry is part of the vanity-based community.

http://www.scrappleface.com/?p=2650

Parody of course, but not by a whole lot lol.

And yes, good historical studies often have a long shelf life (though The Big Story is less a history than a close media critique). My point, which you folks are certainly welcome to distort, is merely that Neocon’s repeated citations of that book — in this post and elsewhere — suggest that she’s never heard of George Herring, Andrew Krepinevich, Marilyn Young, or George Donelson Moss. Nothing wrong with that, of course, but someone looking to disclose The Truth about the US and Vietnam would do well to read more widely.

Actually, I’ve taken a quick look though Neo’s articles on Vietnam: she talks about a lot of things: Ellsberg, Walter Cronkite, etc. She doesn’t just base everything on “The Big Story”. I think it would be a good idea if you actually read what she’s written.

And someone looking to educate others about reading more widely would do well to drop the snark and condescending sarcasm.

By the way, we still haven’t heard you say much about the Boat People, or the re-education camps.

Here’s the choice: a short bloodbath when we leave now, or a long, drawn-out bloodbath over several years if we stay.

And by the way, d is right, and the rest of you are so wrong you can’t even see right where you are.

Let the flaming commence!!

Giap knew as I do, that tools such as d are often very useful in warfare, should you be unable to unleash nuclear fire or devastating conventional attacks.

Alright tough guy,

When you decide that you’re ready to try to kill every other American who doesn’t agree with you, go ahead and take your best shot. I’d advise you to shop for your own casket first.

The Left is superior to such conventional and direct methods of attack, because the Left is able to utilize tools and proxies to do their killing for them.

They didn’t kill any that died in Iraq. They just goaded them into signing up by calling them chickenhawks. Cleaner this way.

Yeah, we did so poorly and so horribly bad a job in Vietnam that, by the enemy’s own admission, the war was all but won by us on 2 different occasions.

The only thing that kept the NVG from full capitulation was the 350000 Soviet troops and advisers stationed in North Vietnam and the Soviet KGB’s constant insistance that the American communist party would soon wear down resistance to defeat.

We know this from documentation of the periods in question from both the NVG and Soviets.

Only those committed to the continuation of the communist propaganda messages would use the terms and accusations as you used them.

Only a communist appologist would even try to minimize the hell and true horror that SEAsia became once our own betrayers won the day at home and the Vietnamese were fully cut off.

Only a moron would be able to believe that a nation could have been built up to sustainable level enough to face the might of an industrial logistics capacity as was provided by the USSR to North Vietnam in the short amount of time available. And please, dont be so ridiculous as to pretend you believe that just because some US elements were in the area at such early dates that anything substantial was possible starting so soon in the problem

We did much better at adjusting to the Vietnam problem than we did to the Korean. We managed to hold South Korea safe for long enough for them to have become fully economically self sustaining.

The only reason that Vietnam turned out differently is that, this time, the communists were ready on our homefront to work the same sort of erosion and defeatist dissension as you and your fellow travelers are doing today.

In Osama bin Laden’s own words: “It is my hope that the American people will rise up and defeat their own government for me, like they did for the communists in Vietnam.”

You work Osama’s will. That makes you enemy by every possible definition of the term.

This isn’t about difference of opinion. This is about those who’ve given themselves over to agitating and propagandizing on behalf of the enemy for our own defeat.

And yes, I will take my best shot, as I was trained to do, and as I am bound by oath of enlistment, once the issue can no longer be avoided and the call is given.

There is no justification for adhering to the cause of the enemy during a time of war. It is a universal taboo and listed specifically as a crime meriting death or banishment in our Constitution.

Because John Kerry was a media darling at the time, and could say anything he liked. Was he ever taken to task for the alleged atrocities he claimed he’d taken part in, along with other American soldiers?

Unfortunately, there wasn’t an Internet around at that time, to expose him.

Most very wrong. The result of a cut and run will be just as disasterous for Iraq and the arab/mid east as it had been for Vietnam/South East Asia.

That is what we are saying.

What the defeatists were saying is that Iraq is the same “quagmire” that Vietnam had been. The idea of Vietnam as a quagmire was also an invention of those given over to defeatism and enemy sympathy.

There are some similarities. Both have insurgent/counter insurgent operations. Both in much the same general state of economic dysfunction and in need of comprehensive infrastructure development/repair, etc etc.

But none of these issues are much different that what was the case in South Korea and to varied degrees, Germany, Italy and Japan as well.

The major difference starting with Vietnam, and the major factor uniting them together, is the degree to which those advocating for the enemy are active on our homefront, in schools, in media and in politics.

The serious difference between Vietnam and Iraq situations is that there are a significant percentage of citizens fully aware of what damage and harm the agitators and enemy sympathizers were able to inflict in their efforts to erode the will of the nation to fight against the communists in Vietnam.

There is zero chance that such citizens will sit on their hands and let it happen again.

It is a very dangerous game that the left is playing. Tolerance for their acts and actions grows thinner by the day as their motivations become clearer and less easily excused away.

“You people abandoned millions to their death”

Only true if ‘d’ and a couple other commenters here actually made the withdrawal policy–and that’s buying the argument that the policy makers are guilty. This accuses the dissenters on this thread of being complicit in the deaths of millions, an amazing charge that ranks ‘d’ up there with the worst humans in all of history.

“their own plans of destruction and racial eradication”

Just in case it’s not clear that ‘d’ is a genocidist.

Doug L’s link leads us to an article on a treasonous reporter, who did his damnedest to make America lose.

“had they not been betrayed by the American media would have prevailed. … Fast forward to today … It is the democrats who have a large stake in our Iraq venture failing”

Just to make sure we know that the treasonous continue to operate in the present.

“you fall into that particularly degenerate, disgusting, filthy and universally despised subset of dysfunctional known as a betrayer.”

“most of the professors I studied under managed to radiate a certain cultured, civilized, urbane vibe that you, … lack.”

Yes, he’s the barbaric one. And we all know how we should treat barbarians. (And wasn’t someone upthread complaining about the academy? Get your narrative straight!)

“those given over to betrayal, like “d” here”

And what do “we” do to traitors? Eliminate them:

“No culture has long tolerated those who adhere to the cause, method, means or message of the enemy during a time of war.”

“there is zero rational reason to not lump all of you into the same method of engagment.”

“The only weapons that work on folks like D are steel blades”

“There is no justification for adhering to the cause of the enemy during a time of war. It is a universal taboo and listed specifically as a crime meriting death or banishment in our Constitution.”

Because ‘d’ is arguing that neo-neo-con has incoherent policy prescriptions for the past, he should be eliminated now.

In closing:

“In Osama bin Laden’s own words: ‘It is my hope that the American people will rise up and defeat their own government for me, like they did for the communists in Vietnam.’

You work Osama’s will. That makes you enemy by every possible definition of the term.”

You buy Osama’s telling of American history? He’s the authority? (I’m not sure about the defeat of the American government that he’s citing. Oh wait, that traitorous press and Nixon’s resignation, right?)

Please explain:

“Tolerance for [the Left’s ] acts and actions grows thinner by the day as their motivations become clearer and less easily excused away.”

The motivations of “the Left” are not becoming clearer and clearer for me. Could you please explain what you mean?

I can offer a guess as to why its not clear to you.

The left is activily engaged, and has been since soon after the war started, in sowing defeatism, dissension, marching in support of and along side with representatives of our enemy, purposely working to misinform the general public about every aspect of this war in an effort to further erode the will of the citizenry to keep up the fight against our enemy.

This is not about difference of opinion. There is much and many things that everyone disagrees on, about or over. But standing firm during a time of war is not, nor has it ever been, optional.

This drive to force our own military into pulling out of Iraq in defeat is an act of betrayal.

Decades ago I remember an undergraduate who asked me to recommend a good book on the French Revolution and when I suggested one of the old classics–I believe it was Thomas Carlyle’s “The French Revolution,” he refused to look at it because it was not new. Rather some piece of “new” badly written, badly researched crap with a glossy cover than an old, well written and well argued old book any day.

All anyone did was dispute a particular analysis of the vietnam war. No radical leftist has come anywhere near here, let alone spouted anything remotely close to promoting mass murder of rightwing Americans.

YOU are the only one talking about how you are to start to start killing your countrymen. YOU are the one hating America - at least all the parts who hold ideas that dont meet your approval. THE ONLY traitor around here is YOU.

I’m saying to you what I’ve said to dozens of other “tough guys” who have made thinly veiled threats about a coming mass extermination of anyone to the left of Sean Hannity:

“Bring it.”

You’re gonna find out that there are a lot of strong, intelligent, capable people who are more lethal than you think and who are NOT on board with your plan for an American gulag.

Your answer doesn’t explain the Left’s motivation, just what you perceive as the Left’s actions. Why do they want defeat, as you claim they do? What’s in it for them to betray the country?

“This is not about difference of opinion.”
Doesn’t a democratic system run on majority opinion?

Snowonpine,

Ugh. Carlyle’s prose–at length, there are gems–is enough to turn a person off history forever.

Carlyle didn’t have access to a number of sources that subsequent historians did, not to mention that he was often more credulous of his sources than a more recent historian would be. Which brings us to the larger point: more recent histories have access to a whole lot of data–especially government documents and memoirs of survivors–that accounts written in the 1970s did not. Of course, this doesn’t automatically make a more recent history better, as ‘d’ points out upstream…

Did I write that, or are you simply inventing arguments and ascribing motives that haven’t been presented and don’t actually exist?

It’s quite simple. If you want to read a good book about the French Revolution, or the Vietnam War, or the special variety of delusional thinking from which Grimmy apparently suffers, there are lots of options. However, if you — like the host of this blog, who seems to do a bang-up job of attracting thoughtful, articulate commenters — want to write hairshirt essays about how wrong you were to oppose the Vietnam War, and how everything you thought you knew about the war is incorrect, you would do well to show some familiarity with the literature on the subject.

There are only two sides of a war to pick from for a citizen of a nation at war. Either your own or the enemy.

Those who have allowed themselves to fall into the pit trap that this is a war that could have, or even should have been avoided have done so only through the acceptance of the infospin and propaganda of those who have chosen to support victory for the enemy.

This is as uncomplicated as any issue can ever be.

Now, in this particular thread of comments, I will openly and freely admit that I may well have jumped wrong on what d was saying. And if so, I do owe him an apology. I qued off his listing of the usual actions listed as crimes by Americans by those who shout from the crowds of ANSWER marchers. One of the problems with communicating like this is the inability to see expression, hear intonation and relate body stances. Misinterpretations are common, unfortunately. Especially when the topic is one that holds heat and hurt.

Now, as to your recent question. Motivation? Couldn’t tell you. I can guess but doubt any real single motivation could be listed that fits enough of that gaggle of mishmashed ideologies to have any real validity.

There is the drive toward cultural obliteration and replacement that has been the cap stone of all communist inspired movements since communism got codified and officially -ismed. There is also a deep undercurrent of adherence to generalized anti-Americanism that can be heard in the words and speeches of the more active and radical.
Some on the professional political side are simple exploiters with no real beliefs of their own. Simply seeking path of least resistance to personal power.

But if I had to guess, I would guess that most have no clue why they do what they do. They see it as their inherited obligation to oppose the success of the US. Much of their personal mythology was built around the justifications and rationalizations of the acts and actions committed by Americans against American success in the war against communism in asia.

My delusional variety comes from having had the job as a USMC intel analyst in studing the area of South East Asia with particular emphasis on how the area was decaying during the early to mid ’80s.

Every enlisted man in my unit above the rank of Sgt was a combat veteran of Vietnam. Our commanding officer was a “mustang” former enlisted commissioned during the Vietnam war for his actions during the siege of Hue.

Many many late nights were spent in discussions on that one single topic of Vietnam.

Not all of us depend on the writings of other academics for the foundation of our opinions.

Lithium, Grimmy: look into it.

Calls for withdraw if it’s a war started or heavily supported by those who oppose them for power and seen as a way of discrediting the opposition.

This is “George Bushes War” after all. Defeat the war, defeat the man. Defeat the man, defeat his party.

Like I said, I was guessing, since I am not of them or among them I have no real access to what particular mechanism drives them.

Thanks for calling this closed. There is never any value in discussion on such issues with those who are so opposed as we both are to each other’s world view.

A book called “The True Believer” by Eric Hoffer discusses the mentality of the promoters and close followers of this sort of thing.

I found this quote from it in a review on Amazon:

“”The readiness for self-sacrifice is contingent on an imperviousness to the realities of life. He who is free to draw conclusions from his individual experience and observation is not usually hospitable to the idea of martyrdom… All active mass movements strive, therefore, to interpose a fact-proof screen between the faithful and the realities of the world. They do this by claiming that the ultimate and absolute truth is already embodied in their doctrine and that there is no truth or certitude outside it. The facts on which the true believer bases his conclusions must not be derived from his experience or observation but from holy writ.”

http://www.amazon.com/True-Believer-Thoughts-Nature-Movements/dp/0060916125

In the Viet Nam days the holy writ was written by Chomsky (and others I would expect.) This poison does not die a sudden death, it gets diluted over time and then perhaps revived in a perverse form to fit the times. Trutherism seems to be its heir. It’s too tedious to read enough of it to discover how closely allied they are.

Conspiracy theories are popular on account of a need to have a simple model of the world. Few have time to see the world through more than a single simple model. If the model is one of a militaristic and therefore evil American Empire, then the motive is as simple as being against evil.

They get to be nobles of a dark age, rather than mere citizens of an enlightened one. When everyone has equal opportunity, the only way to make oneself seem greater than one’s talents will allow is to strike out at one’s brethren, destroying their lives and society. Better to be king of a ruin, than just another ordinary person in the world’s greatest civilization.

Of course, sarcasm is one of the great temptations in this sort of debate. No need for the dull work of putting together logical arguments based on facts. Just unleash the almighty sneer!

Our hostess here maintains a tone that is consistently rational and courteous (one of the reasons why I read her regularly.) If “d” and his ilk cannot engage at that level, I hope they leave and don’t come back.

Thats is exactly problem man.

You hear someone says something that kind of resembles something said by some chump from ANSWER and you jump to the conclusion that he must be some stereotype “Leftie” clone with no individuality whose every opinion comes from “Official Handbook of America-Hating Leftist beliefs”.

You talk of “Leftists” like they are some monolithic block of mindless automatons rather than REAL HUMAN BEINGS whose thoughts and opinions are primarily shaped by their own personal experiences and NOT simply adopted because they are the “official” positions of their “team”. Do YOU get your opinions by looking them up in the “Official Book of Rightwing Opinions on Everything”? I didn’t think so.

You are not a stereotype and neither is anyone else.

There are only two sides of a war to pick from for a citizen of a nation at war. Either your own or the enemy.

The administration spent 3 years denying an insurgency even existed. It was OBVIOUS by late’03 - early’04 that we faced an insurgency and NOT the “last throes” of dead enders but the WH spent 3 years asserting that it was, that it would all soon peter out on its own, and there was no need for US to re-assess our approach to the occupation. We all know SunTzu’s remark about “Know they enemy and know thyself” and the consequences of not doing so - How can you fight an enemy when you won’t even acknowledge his existence?

I believe that in their blind refusal FOR YEARS to re-evaluate their approach in the face of reality, the administration and their supporters did more to help the enemy, and hurt us, than all the anti-war marchers in the country combined. The administration and their supporters, objectively if unintentionally, aided the enemy and undermined our chance at victory.

You want to see the world in black & white? Fine, but at least consider that YOU may be confused about which is which.

??? (Calling the “case” closed? Me?)

I’m going to go out on a limb here and suggest that maybe a person on one side of an argument doesn’t actually feel comfortable when the persons on the other side are calling for their execution because they hold a different point of view.

They [the Left, er…traitors] get to be nobles of a dark age, rather than mere citizens of an enlightened one. When everyone has equal opportunity, the only way to make oneself seem greater than one’s talents will allow is to strike out at one’s brethren, destroying their lives and society. Better to be king of a ruin, than just another ordinary person in the world’s greatest civilization.

This is the sort of comment that really deserves nothing better than mockery and sarcasm.

love,

d’s ilk