Letters to the Editor
-
What If You Run Out Of Troops?
I don't want to discuss Vietnam any more, with John McCain or anyone else. I was there, did my year and blah blah. I've been refusing to have a "syndrome" ever since. To paraphrase Johnny Paycheck: "Take your Stab In The Back and shove it"!!!
As for the current military situation on the new, big battlefield over there (I am no strategist either), reports indicate DefSec Gates is trying to figure out how to get five or seven thousand more troops into Afghanistan.
But some analysts say the ONLY way Afghanistan can be reinforced is by drawing down directly from Iraq, because all other troops in the United States are unavailable due to rotation policies or for lack of readiness, and other critical foreign chokepoints, like Korea, are already thin in terms of ready forces.
If this is true, then air power - bombing the bejesus out of whoever must be pushed back - is the only available tactic. Sounds like more air strikes are occurring these days in Iraq anyway. Seems hard to get real time reports from Afghanistan too, so who knows what tonnage may be falling by the day there right now.
But hey, speaking of narratives, as in booming lullabies, we may need to take a page from the Reagan era: de-mothball the battleships Wisconsin and New Jersey again so we can shell the bastards from twenty or thirty miles off this or that coast. McCain would love to be dropped from a helicopter basket right on to the deck of a dreadnought!
Anyone for a draft? Hands up please!
-
@ The Small Town Hick
Well put. What you are talking about of course is The Golden Rule. It really amazes me how many people I know preach it, yet support this war. How can one explain this? First, there is American Exceptionalism. We are somehow different, more virtuous, good; that's the attitude, anyway. Thus, we will succeed where historically all else have failed, if only those damn hippies would stop stabbing us in the back. Second, if you demonize and dehumanize the "enemy" ("islamofascists", "jihadists", "terrorists", "ragheads", etc.) then they become "different" and what applies to us, virtuous beings that we are, couldn't possibly apply to them.
Both of these attitudes blind our senses and render us vulnerable to the logical fallacy you point out and worse.
Again, your example was spot on.
-
Borch Bayh
For preznit.
-
Another reason why McCain advocates air power...
...is because he was a pilot in the Vietnam war, one of the pilots who bombed North Vietnamese targets.
McCain is dangerous with a capital D, not to mention just plain stupid. Like Bush, who gave Osama bin Laden everything a terrorist could wish for, McCain will give the insurgents in Iraq and Afghanistan exactly what they want: increased, manic efforts to eradicate them that will result in increased civilian casualties, increased damage to population centers. As a result, the insurgents will win the war of ideas when they are no longer seen as the enemies of peace but as defenders against an awesome bully (as in David and Goliath).
It's exactly how the Russians lost in Afghanistan. If we should be studying any war for clues on how to proceed, it should be that one, not Vietnam.
Moreover, the US understanding of who exactly the "terrorists," our enemies are in this war is, just as in Vietnam, sorely deficient and remarkably obtuse. Our enemy is Al-Qaida, a deadly but diffuse and loosely connected organization of sworn emenies of the US. However, we are fighting them in a place where they are able to bulk up their slim numbers by recruiting in population centers that are sympathetic to their cause. What makes them sympathetic to Al-Qaida's cuase? We do, with precisely the kinds of Vietnam War strategies that McCain advocates.
It's a vicious circle!
-
Honoring McCain's Service
Everytime I have this argument about McCain, someone always says this, either as a prelude to "...but..." or more often, to nod to his allegedly superior wisdom in all things military and foreign policy.
Here is what I say, taking leave of my usual prescription for balance, conciliation, and so forth.
Fuck John McCain's service.
He sat out the war in the Hanoi Hilton. Yeah, it wasn't in a spa in Canada, but even there he would have been better informed than he was about Vietnam from 67-73 (and for however long afterwards). He needs to STFU and stop putting himself out as the expert-by-proximity.
He's the exact opposite of an Example I would want to hold up as noble warrior chieftain, even if such a thing were desirable.
Embracing the 'stab in the back' narrative is no different than embracing the 'agents of intolerance' --- it's just courting a bunch of people on the periphery who will serve as a political blocking force to the others he can't or won't reach. And as usual, choosing the most digusting, retrograde and destructive elements for the kiss.
McCain's entire existence has been about grooming himself for membership (already provisional by birth) in the ruling class. There's nothing wrong with leveraging your service for social mobility, or even out of some kind of noblesse oblige, but the intentionality runs in the opposite direction here.
-
Love the bumperstickers, gang
Keep 'em coming!
-
No draft here. Throw a oak log in a pot-belly stove? Do that. It's more cozy if it's breezy and rainy.
@ 9:24 Ben Sen. ... "outdated belief".... And the outdated notion of a diabolical untamed beast from Sheol. Yes. Sun Tzu.
Never underestimate evil.
The dark bile, or whatever.
All the more McCain's jaws,
need to be stopped. Ghastly.
Oh, Fox have teeth? Dastardly.
These are real dark lost-ghost.
The lust for blood is monstrous,
dark menaces are bottomless hades pits.
-
The Update: Therein lies the only tale worth telling
That there could even be any confusion as to whose casualties that number (52,000) referred, American or Vietnamese, reveals the abject horror of war, American-style. More than anything else, it is what the current war (Iraq) has in common with Vietnam, namely, a complete and willful ignorance of the only "metric" that matters when one is purportedly coming to the aid of another country.
It is possible to literally name the US servicemen and women who die (indeed, that is the basis for your Vietnam war memorial), but the margin of error when it comes to the civilian populations of the countries you are "freeing" from the tyranny of communism and 'evil' dictatorships tends to be about plus/minus a half a million anonymous deaths (and I'm being generous here).
At least people like McCain and Hillary "Obliterate Iran" Clinton are more honest about how little America cares about the lives of others when pursuing its own interests. What is hypocritical is pretending to be squeamish whenever someone like a McCain speaks unflinchingly about what has been, is being, and will continue to be, done in your name.