Assuming, of course, he knows there was a French and Indian War. I’m not convinced.
As to the domino-effect expected after the American pullout of Vietnam, I recall reading something in Slate a few years ago that really struck me. Someone (don’t recall who, sorry) actually asked Kissinger what he really expected to happen after the US pullout. His response, “Nothing, but we had to say something didn’t we?”
He may have heard of it, but has no idea when it was.
If only the administration would work half as hard on developing a plan to get out of Iraq as they do on developing rationales for staying in. When there is no military solution, and you burn all your diplomatic bridges by calling people names, the only plan left is to continue to provide fodder for the shooting gallery.
Don’t try to play gotcha with him. Of course he knows about the French and Indian War. And he’s dispatching Condi Rice to try and restore good relations between France and India.
We are no longer the young country we were in 1812 and I daresay that, in the intervening 195 years, America’s sailors have seen enough that nothing much will impress them anymore.
(thinking) Are there ANY American ships left that aren’t owned by the Navy or Coast Guard? Seems everything else on the water has Liberian or Panamanian registry, which gives me no end of confidence when a cruise line tries to get me off dry land.
If we are looking for analogies (always a method of argument subject to manipulation) drawing a parallel with the Spanish-American War might be apt.
It was a war instigated by William Randolph Hurst’s propaganda machine and popular hysteria over the sinking of the Maine, it was prosecuted by a somewhat dim and reactionary president who said that he was pursuing a mission from God to free oppressed people from the cruel burden of Spanish Tyranny, Spain never had a chance and was quickly defeated. The US took over Cuba, Porto Rico and the Philippians. Puppet governments controlled by American business interests were quickly set up in Cuba and Porto Rico and quickly became the corrupt instruments of the American sugar industry.
In the Philippians, however, a preexisting nationalist insurrection continued and was exacerbated by the US occupation. US troops, including state militias, were actively fighting on the ground there from 1898 until 1913, some 15 years of combat. When things quieted down US forces remained to occupy the Subic Bay naval base ( the real prize in the Philippians, like oil in Iraq) and keep order until the Japanese invasion and occupation (1941-1945) and there after until Philippine independence in 1946. We still have people there today.
A better analogy is the French invasion and occupation of Mexico during the American Civil War, but I can’t imagine that our President would advance any argument that allows us to see our gallant leader as Napoleon III, as appealing as that image might be.
I take the coincidence of the post from our correspondent from Cornucopia to point the reader to the splendid essay by Mark Twain, In Defense of General Funston available here: A Defence of General Funston, by Mark Twain.
A better war analogy might be made to the Korean War, as pointed out by a contributor to Talking Points Memo. We went in to prevent the NK from taking the south, accomplished the goal in fairly short order, then stepped into the shit by attempting to take the North and bring democracy. Which led us into years more of war, ending with a futile stalemate.
Geez. I really didn’t think Georgie Porgie would have come close. Guess he isn’t the underachiever some of us think he is.
Well, if you’re going to throw around numbers like that and claim that Bush is responsible for all the deaths in Iraq, maybe you should include the 1M people killed in the Iran/Iraq war, which SH started (although I doubt Iran was completely innocent).
Just give it 10 more years (as some politicians and military have mentioned for how long we will hang around) and we will surpass him.
I really wish that was a joke.
As death squads in Iraq are increasing their influence over the country’s security, it is clear to me we have two possible reasons for the unstopped sectarian killing:
Or 2) The occupying forces have decided to look the other way when death squads appear.
With fellows like Eliot Abrahams and Negroponte in this administration I can not exclude option 2.
Either way, I can not see a good reason to avoid the responsibly the US had in opening this Pandora’s pox
…
I definitely agree with spoke-, SteveG1 and DanBlather’s postings.
When I saw Dubya yesterday on television I could not believe he had the damned arrogance to even reference Vietnam in any way.
as Dan Blather said:
I was going to start a Pit Thread about this, but doing that seems almost pointless now.
Maybe soon, Dubya will restart the draft with the provision there will be no deferments and no easy stateside assignments.
What a sleazeball.
I’m adding those to the USA column as he was your attack dog. Thanks for the reminder. Let’s also add in the 500k or so we killed with sanctions too.
Let’s also not forget the fact that the USA supported the Khymer Rouge.
Thanks for posting that, tagos. I remember being totally flummoxed at the time - when Americans were horrified by Pol Pot’s carnage in Cambodia - about why on earth we were still supporting this butcher. It never made sense to me. Until now.
And we’re seeing it all over again: Presidents, politicians, and pundits endorsing crazy policies, doubling down with other people’s lives, simply because they don’t want to admit they were wrong.
My own country sent SAS trainers to help them too. Shameful. And remember too - while people like me were marching in protest at western support of Saddam and trumpeting his gassing crimes the USA and UK continued to support him.
I remember a documentary in the UK at the time and the outraged denials by the Thatcher Govt that it happened.
Iraq could turn into Vietnam in other ways which could have important domestic implications. Consider the following three thoughts, recycled from the past:
a. The Dolchstoss legend will return – whether it will work is up in the air. The groundwork has been building slowly over the last several years yet is persistent. This isn’t the first time he’s said something like this, but just look at Bush’s recent speech as an example:
One could assemble a large list of such quotes from sundry conservative politicians and thinkers. I can easily see this being a major plank in GOP political rhetoric for a generation, just as the popular Vietnam version of Dolchstoss from the media/liberals/civilian leadership/anti-war protesters/Democrats survives to this very day.
b. We didn’t institute massive war crimes by invading and conquering other nations, you see. We wanted to spread liberty and freedom to the peoples of Vietnam and Iraq, but we fucked up really bad so it didn’t work out. We were well meaning, we were just incompetent and a little out of our league, which explains the massive piles of bodies and empty treasury. You can see this coming out of the mouths of not only anti-war Republicans but prominent Democrats, including the tier one presidential candidates. The Democrats will potentially latch onto this point in order to avoid the potent Dolchstoss cudgel, as well as explaining how so many of them supported the idea in the first place without causing mass cognitive dissonance in the Democratic base.
c. As a subset of the above, we brought great gifts to the nations of Vietnam and Iraq but the local people squandered the potential. We did everything we could, you see, but the Iraqis were just…stubborn, irrational, filled with unexplainable hatred and religious fervor (for Vietnam, insert fanatical communism for Islam). Besides having racist undertones in many cases, it’s just plain absurd, ignoring human nature and realities on the ground. As if we would respond favorably to being occupied with devastated infrastructure, our government and society dissolved. Not to mention Iraq’s own convoluted history.
While the first two points will be used by the politicians and media, I’ve personally seen this fairly often in meat space among former war supporters. You know, just rank and file, normal people. “Well, we took down Saddam and gave them a chance to make a civil, democratic society,” the thinking goes, “but they were more interested in killing each other. Nothing we could do about it, not our problem anymore.”
Has anyone else seen this?
Although good in the short term since it creates a huge amount of people who wish to see a withdrawal, its logic and similarity of point two can lead to a lot of teeth grinding. You can kinda see this in recent statements by various politicians railing against Maliki and earlier on in the occupation, when abuse was heaped upon the Iraqi people. Of course, this is nothing new. Empires have often become exasperated when their targets do not surrender. For example, when Napoleon Bonaparte conquered Egypt and met with mass resistance one Captain Horace Say is quoted as saying, “The people of Egypt were most wretched. How will they not cherish the liberty we are bringing them?"