I note with a certain amount of arrogant liberal smugness that now the New York Times, flagship of the SCLM and one of the chief drumbeaters for the lead up to the illegal Iraq occupation, has an editorial that among other things calls Der Monkey Fuehrer's recent references to Vietnam "surreal".
If Mr. Bush, whose decision to inject Vietnam into the debate over Iraq was bizarre, took the time to study the real lessons of Vietnam, he would not be so eager to lead America still deeper into the 21st century quagmire he has created in Iraq. Following his path will not rectify the mistakes of Vietnam, it will simply repeat them.And Robert Parry over at Consortium News has a long and thoughtul piece about the Iraq-Vietnam connection entitled Bush's Bogus Vietnam History Kills in which he expands many of the arguments I made a couple of days ago about the false lessons to be learned from the historical revisionism of the Vietnam War:
It is often said that those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. But a much worse fate may await countries whose leaders distort and falsify history. Such countries are doomed to experience even bloodier miscalculations.And finally, it might behoove us to read Max Cleland's 2003 analysis, Mistakes of Vietnam Repeated with Iraq:
Unfortunately, the people who drove the engine to get into the war in Iraq never served in Vietnam. Not the president. Not the vice president. Not the secretary of defense. Not the deputy secretary of defense. Too bad. They could have learned some lessons.Read the whole thing. Even back in 2003, four years ago (longer than the US took to win WWII), Cleland called it.
If only someone in the BFEE had actually listened to him. Instead their end game seems to be to play out the clock and turn the mess over to the next president so they can blame the Dems for "losing" Iraq.
Typical. But how many more of our sons and daughters, our mothers and fathers, even our grandparents, are going to have to die so that can happen?
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I believe it is a measure of the smallness of the man, that he repeatedly says we will be there as long as he's President.
"I was wrong" are hard words for anybody to say, but when You're POTUS, and you're killing lives daily.......
W can't change course, not ever*.
Too many people in power have too many billions at stake for Cheney to let a troop drawdown happen, maybe ever, but certainly not before Maliki or the next sock-puppet delivers those PSAs. "Production sharing agreements for ever'body! '1st thing ya know, ol' Jed's a trillionaire!'"
I fear the Green Zone, and/or the new monster Embassy, will take a massive hit at some point next year. It will be a huge symbolic statement for whichever militia in Iraq pulls it off.
Then W will call for Surge II. Where those troops will come from is anyone's guess, but I expect it'll be more hot air aimed at painting Dems as back-stabbing surrender monkeys.
*unless there's someone standing by to clean up his mess and foot the bill, as always
No one in my family will ever serve in the US Military! Perhaps from my sister's side, as they are all Reich Wing Xtian Fundie's, and believe that Gawd speaks through Herr Bush. But, so far, not a swinging dick or sloppy kunt has joined the military from that genetically diseased group grope.
My kids were born French, and are French today. My son has to either serve in the military, or in a local government service for 1 year as it is obligatory to do so. One thing for sure, he will not be headed for the mid east and death by friendly fire
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