"We lost the war -- not because we were outfought, but because we were out Psyoped," he wrote. He urged a radically new approach to psychological operations in future wars -- taking aim at not just foreign adversaries but domestic audiences, too. He called his approach "MindWar" -- using network TV and radio to "strengthen our national will to victory."

If propaganda is an extension of war, then what difference does it make whether the VC whupped us by war or by propaganda? Either way, we got our asses handed to us by a bunch of rice farmers.

Even if there was a "will gap," we still had less will than a bunch of rice farmers.

Should we now expect to see the Army issue field manuals on how to be more willful than a bunch of rice farmers? Will this be the Great Leap into the 21st Century that will finally make us safe from everything?

I know what Chapter 1 will be called: Ignorance Is Strength. That chapter is already written.

Of course he won't be back, but I can't resist a parting shot.

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.

(1) Invade a peaceful country

(2) Lose

(3) Bring the troops home! Yay! Victory!

(4) Proceed to next target

Dirigo: I appreciate your response, but you I think you are misunderstanding my comment. I am not trying to exculpate President Nixon from the consequences of his dishonest secret plan to end the Vietnam War, and as I stated, my post was not in defense of President Nixon. My comment was in response to an erroneous statement that casualties had increased when President Nixon tried to disengage from the Vietnam War. As I also stated, Vietnam War casualties remained high during the period from 1969 to 1971, but casualties gradually decreased during this period from the high casualty levels experienced in 1968, and as I also stated, the high casualty levels of the period from 1969 to 1971 were the result of the strategy President Nixon pursued at that time to end the war by winning the war (i.e., the high casualty rates from 1969 to 1971 were not the result of efforts to disengage from the Vietnam War). When President Nixon finally adopted a more pragmatic approach to ending our military involvement in the Vietnam War during the latter part of his first term, casualties decreased even more significantly.

Methinks you are correct and have hit upon an underlying dynamic that affects not just McCain's thinking but that of others as well. Others such as Cheney and Rumsfeld may have this dynamic not just about Vietnam but also about the Soviets and the Cold War. I have always felt these two guys were two left over Cold War warriors/ chickenhawks who have nothing to fight against and thus almost no reason for living.existing. Some religions alwyas fight against the other, which they calll by various names including heathens or Satan.

This dynamic also fits part of the religious right, the evangelical fundie part, who may be laboring under the same dynamic. Their dynamic could stem from their loss of the Civil War and their religious belief that if one just tries harder and prays harder that surely God will grant them their wishes especially as they are righteous Christians, and thus they cannot be denied.

They take Norman Vincent Peale's power of positive thinking and run with it, to an extreme. So if one thinks and wishes and prays for something to occur it will happen. They just never conceive that the other side thinks the same thing and may be willing to go to the limit because it is their lands that are being invaded. They are totally unable to tolerate the thought or reality of losing.

I don't remember the exact phrase 'MindWar' from 1984, but it certainly resonates of NewSpeak. The phrase "strengthen our national will to victory" has a similar chilling quality, though a bit more old-school fascist than the well-developed techniques of Orwell's dystopia.

Of course, the deeper flaw in the Vietnam dolchstosslegende is that the real question isn't whether or not we could have won with amazing military force, but even if we could have, why would we have wanted to? Years later, our 'loss' hasn't affected our fundamental national security one whit, and we're now trading with our erstwhile enemy. Doesn't seem like winning in Vietnam would ahve been worth the bother.

So, yeah, maybe we could have won by bombing them back into the stone age. So? Why should we have?

I understand.

I was just underlining the fact that nearly as many troops died under Nixon as under Johnson, and that Nixon took part in what could be described as the start of the "stab in the back" myth about Vietnam.

My problem is (and I suspect this is your problem too) Nixon ran in 1968 on a secret plan to end the war, which of course meant trying to win it. Unfortunately, by the strategy he used, which included massive bombing of the north, and, eventually, illegal incursions into Cambodia, he merely prolonged it to the point where he resigned for reasons having nothing directly to do with the war.

Gerald Ford eventually pulled the plug after funding dried up.

So, oddly, Bush appears ready and willing to leave office with things as they are in Iraq, and McCain has put forth no plan to end anything there; in fact, he appears ready to prolong it, as far as the eye can see.

I take no comfort from that.

America's addiction to war can be traced all the way back to the Civil War. This war was and still is seen as a moral crusade against slavery but what precipitated the war were the economic consequences posed by the threat of the south seceding. Every war is economic power masquerading as a moral crusade. The American War of Independence was a war about taxes.The Iraq war is a war about oil and oil politics. It has also been called the first colonial war of the 21st century. It's a text book case of a war fought for profit. I don't think the moral damage that slavery did to America has ever really been calculated. For a country so dedicated to liberty it was a schizophrenic state of affairs to have human beings kidnapped and bought and sold like cattle and it seems to me that not only has it influenced the treatment of the American working class (the memory of how enormously profitable a business can be when you don't have to pay wages hangs over the corporate world like the memory of a golden age)but it has made it easier to believe that certain people have no rights. Neither the right to a fair trial nor a presumption of innocence. Indefinite loss of liberty in Guantanamo Bay is just another form of slavery. A great Civil War era lawyer, William Garrison, said of slavery: 'That which is unjust cannot be law'. It took John Yoo and the neo cons to prove him wrong. I've never understood how people like McCain can imagine that the media could have told the truth about the Vietnam war and made it look pretty or noble. Perhaps they just expected them to tell 'patriotic' lies and thereby prove the saying that 'Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel.' The military establishment created a myth about Vietnam: a virtually identical myth to that created by the German High Command after World War I. The German myth was that the noble German military had been betrayed by Jews and the left and that was why they lost the war. These were the very groups targeted by the Nazis. The American military created a myth that during the Vietnam War they had been betrayed by the media and the left. The surveillance laws the Republicans want to push through before they lose office are to target 'liberals' not terrorists. Their ultimate aim is to control and monitor any group that can challenge them politically. The irony is that they continually bleat about freedom and democracy while they believe in neither.