McCain also warned that "we need a constructive domestic debate" and that those who were opposing the war were being "irresponsible"

Does anyone catch how contradictory that is? How do you have a "debate" when only one side is allowed?

I know, I know. He likely didn't mean it and won't accept the fundamental error of this insane march into Babylon. Still, it would make a nice slogan against him: "McCain: Against Everyone, and With No-One".

Somebody should notify McCain and the "stab-in-the-back" Vietnam revisionists before they do some real damage.

-- JackHughes

The real nutso "stabbed in the back crowd" thinks that McCain had his hand on the knife and twisted it. By "real nutso" I am referring to the POWMIA crowd who think there are still live Vietnam era POWs being held by the communists, Chinese or even Russians. He was instrumental in putting the myth that perpetuated that scam to rest and normalizing relations with Vietnam. They hate him for it. They are the same people who floated the Manchurian Candidate smears during the 2000 primaries.

For the hawks, it's always one response when some catastrophic endeavor finally has its masks pulled off to reveal the arrogant and murderous planner within:

And we woulda done it, too, if it hadn't been for you meddlin' [liberals / Quislings / pacifists / Democrats / human rights observers / malcontents / etc].

This, of course, is not surprising in a culture which looks at the 2.5 to 5 million dead left in the U.S. wars in Indochina and concludes "we were fighting with one hand tied behind our backs", which suggests that maybe if only we'd have let our policy makers kill 10 or 20 or 30 million people then some degree of satisfaction would have been achieved.

The Scooby Doo notation is the post hoc theory which appears after a disastrous policy is left behind, and it chronologically succeeds the much better known Green Lantern Theory of War & Foreign Policy, which references the comic book superhero and policies hawks either want or are in the middle of pursuing:

If only we have enough willpower, [Crazy Goal X] is within our grasp.

The Scooby Doo Theory is often magically retroactive. For example, after having bombed & carpet-bombed Cambodia from 1965 - 1973 killed hundreds of thousands of people directly, disturbed agriculture in an already hunger-filled country, and handed power to the lunatic Khmer Rouge guerrillas, the U.S.' war hawks then loudly blame various people who said or wrote various things after the Khmer Rouge takeover for the very thing they themselves had just enabled.

It helps if you also combine the Shocked, Shocked Corollary in which you pretend to be stunned that having unleashed society-destroying violence, often nasty people takeover in the wake of such destruction, and then you use that fact to retroactively justify the violence you unleashed in the first place.

The ones really sharpening the knives are the republicans, ready as always to stab the American public in the back for insisting on humanity, honor, liberty and justice for everyone - not just the wealthy.

Assuming McCain's intentions are honorable, one is left with the conclusion that he has lost his grip.

From the very beginning, the military always saw the light at the end of the tunnel in Vietnam - "just give us a few more troops/planes/bombs and we'll have this wrapped up in a couple of months". The same pattern has been repeated in Iraq.

When people are shown to be wrong time after time, year after year, their opinions on the subject are worthless.

An occupying foreign power hasn't killed enough of the natives to make them cease resistance and flee since the Romans sacked Judea.

But the natives can kill enough of their foreign occupiers to make them cut their losses and leave.

Somebody should notify McCain and the "stab-in-the-back" Vietnam revisionists before they do some real damage.

Do it well or don't do it at all. And certainly we don't have the political will to do it well. -- shooter242

It is a good thing we don't have the "political will" to force our will on others who never attacked us.

There is no appeasing Vietnam hawks' fantasies of more bombs, more force = VICTORY! Especially considering how we dropped about three times as many bombs on Vietnam as the Allies dropped in ALL of WWII. (Hell, we dropped more bomb tonnage than all of WWII on Cambodia for chrissakes. )

At the same time, it always amazes me when the "stab-in-the-back" accusations break out how rarely anyone remembers the Cold War that engendered and enflamed the Vietnam war, and how countries like China and the Soviet Union were not just vague shadows in the background. Sure, we could have nuked North Vietnam, but only if we wanted to enlarge the conflict by, y'know, a whole lot.

Vietnam was the longest war in U.S. history, and if McCain had his way we'd still be there, and so would he.

Deerk mntion a "3-year old mentality."

Or, a toddler is soiled diaper grunting.

Politico's unleash a bile of compaction.

Do it well or don't do it at all. And certainly we don't have the political will to do it well. While the "backstabbers" will chafe at the characterization, it remains that their efforts have the same effect. Bring home all the troops and pay off the debt.

If the Powell doctrine is to be used and our moral standing in the world is as low as it could possibly get, why wouldn't McCain nuke Iran? If he firmly believes that conviction to utter destruction of the enemy is necessary, as he apparently thought annihilating Viet Nam would ride us of an SE Asian threat of Communism, what's to stop him from precluding that radical Shia Islam shouldn't be stopped as the phantom menace it has been presented as, just like Communism did? He's consistent isn't he? Sometime the most mysterious thing is a fact clearly stated.

"Ahh, but the strawberries that's... that's where I had them. They laughed at me and made jokes but I proved beyond the shadow of a doubt and with... geometric logic... that a duplicate key to the wardroom icebox DID exist, and I'd have produced that key if they hadn't of pulled the Caine out of action."

- Captain Queeg : The Caine Mutiny

Replace "strawberries" with "plan for victory", and you have John McCain in a nutshell.. Or a nutcase.

And aside from being bug-f*ck crazy, isn't it a tad bit elitist to always believe you know more than the American people?