No, “Truth” (what an Orwellian use of the word, eh?) meant me, not Artfldgr. He and I have only had a mild disagreement since I joined neo’s blog. You’ll find his beautiful symbiosis of Marxism and Islam endearing. I have seen the future and “Truth” embodies it!

Remember Rumsfeld talking about a minimal U.S. presence when the old regime was defeated? They didn’t want a soldier on every street corner. This was to lend credence to the story the U.S. wasn’t there to stay and wasn’t there to take ownership. This also led to the perception that power was laying in the streets, ready to be picked up.
What were the consequences? Iraqiis seemed to understand it was their mess: polls showed majorities wanted the U.S. to leave…but not for awhile. I believe this also led them to understand the future was their’s to make. The terrorists (sorry…”insurgents”) thought they could muck things up by setting bombs up in marketplaces and mosques, and profit by the chaos…wrong; it increased the demand the U.S. do more policing, with the assistance of the locals. That’s the “surge”; it came about when they were ready for it.
What’s a leftist to do when they develop a narrative that Bush is stupid and bungled the war? That the surge was hopeless? Keep as much of the narrative as possible, to save as much face as they could. So the agreement in the collective wisdom is “Iraq is Viet Nam, and Bush bungled the war, but luckily, the surge kinda worked.” And that’s how it will be written down.

I don’t know how good an officer I was. But I always found that if you wanted to be respected by those who worked for you, you had to respect them first. If a soldier has been doing a particular job for the last 2-20 years, and you know nothing about that job other than what you read last night in a Field Manual, then it might behoove you to listen to that soldier when he describes his duties to you. I figured out early on that while the troops were only marginally dependent upon me for their success, I was totally dependent upon them for mine. If I could lead them to where they needed to be, whether in the field, the motor pool, or in garrison, they’d get the job done. IN a nutshell, I just had to set the standards, to ensure the instructions were clear, check from time to time to make sure people weren’t slacking off, and work with and through my NCOs. There’s nothing hard about this concept. I don’t know why more people don’t do it. Although with all the combat experience U.S. forces have had recently, I bet it’s far more prevalent now than when I was in.

Truth, I think you meant Artfldgr, not FredHjr. But Artfldgr always has a lot to say, and besides, this is Neo’s bandwidth we’re using. If she has a problem with what he or any of us are saying, I’m sure she’ll take whatever steps she finds appropriate.

MacArthur was a self-important jerk with delusions of grandeur. He tried to assume power and authority greater than the President. THAT is WHY he was fired.

Quite a lot to respond too. Instead of a point by point rebuttal of where I disagree…I’ll be brief and include some links for you.

Yoy failed to include the factual response to Lyle’s assertions: http://www.lutins.org/1812-R.html
perhaps you overlooked it?

Canada was a defeat, as I stated but Florida was not a goal of the war of 1812 because Florida was a Spanish possession! Spain regained Florida in 1783…
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Florida

Yes, you stated:”if YOU consider a tie a defeat”…I considered that a rhetorical assertion, a plausible assumption given your follow-up in your response, “and most military and others do see ties as defeats.”

In the future, please remember that, “Intellectual honesty is the coin required, to sit at the table of debate.”

Korea was not a defeat. NK invaded, they were repelled and at the ceasefire, South Korea had gained slightly more territory than prior to the conflict.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_War

Military acumen notwithstanding, MacArthur was a self-important jerk with delusions of grandeur. he tried to assume

Truman’s actions being were NOT ‘unconstitutional’ nor ‘unconscionable’ and were based upon the geo-political fact that confronting China in a full blown war, as MacArthur wanted to do, would not be supported by our allies; “due to pressure from UN allies, notably Britain, the British Commonwealth, and France, who were concerned that if the United States became involved in a war with Communist China, American commitments to NATO would, through sheer necessity, go by the board. China then might have little difficulty in persuading the Soviets to move into western Europe, and without U.S. resistance to this aggression, they could take all of Europe at little cost.”

The UN resolutions to which you refer were not the basis for our involvement, the invasion by NK was the basis. The UN resolutions were prior to the invasion and were an attempt to mediate between the DPRK and ROK.

Communist control of China was already established in 1950…no one was going to overthrow Mao.

Notwithstanding NK belligerence, after 56 years, the ceasefire has turned into a ‘peace’.

I’m 60 yrs old and quite aware of the status on the Korean peninsula.

I mention my age because I was ‘in’ Vietnam and the Russian involvement WAS common knowledge. Even among 21 yr old swabbies like myself stationed on an aircraft carrier 60 miles offshore. There WAS mention of it in the papers, I remember reading about it prior to my enlistment in 69.

You have a lot of book knowledge artfldgr, perhaps it’s time you realized that there’s a difference between wisdom and knowledge because ‘knowing’ from a book is frequently incomplete.

Sir, I salute you and your service. I’ll bet you were a good officer. The kind us enlisted men respected. I believe that Carter II is going to be a lot worse.

I did some checking into the oaths we took when we entered the service, both enlisted and officer. Nowhere are we pledged to the CIC. We are pledged to the Constitution of the United States and to defend the nation from enemies foreign AND domestic. I also checked into how that oath obligates us FOR THE REST OF OUR LIVES. Not just our service period.

What if The One is doing harm to that Constitution and the nation? Are we obligated to help the people, if they feel they must, remove the miscreants and restore the government? This is a topic that has been both furtively and openly discussed in many forums lately. Me… I would much prefer that we do this through the normal process of voting out the bastids. But, what if something happens that forces something we don’t want to do but yet must do?

As we were watching the footage coming in from South Vietnam, An (her name) was crying. She was very upset. Her family and many of her friends were still there and she was greatly fearful for them, given that they were pro-U.S. and opponents of the Communists.

It was a very glum time the Army was experiencing. All of us understood what happened and WHY it happened.