The Marmot’s Hole

14 Comments

1. MigukNamja
   Posted August 25, 2007 at 11:17 pm | Permalink

   Dude, lay off the Kool-Aid. The analogies drawn in this article are embarrassingly thin, yet doused with enough facts to make them seem plausible.

   Iraq is not Vietnam:

   1) Iraq was artificially created by the British and held together only with an iron first. Vietnam …not.

   2) Communism (North Vietnamese-style) was and is viable and powerful form of government. Terrorism is not.

   Don’t swallow the fiction because it’s laced with just enough truth to make it go down easier.

2. dda
   Posted August 26, 2007 at 12:35 am | Permalink

   I am not so sure about the viable part. The only reason the Viêtnamese economy hasn’t crumbled is the influx of foreign investments. Communism has nothing to do with it, it’s au contraire capitalism taking over, slowly [everything is slow in that country].

3. The_William_G
   Posted August 26, 2007 at 1:01 am | Permalink

   I liken it more to Northern Ireland than Vietnam. Civilians are going to be dying there over religion for a LONG time to come when they’re not too busy killing the foreign occupiers.

4. sanshinseon
   Posted August 26, 2007 at 3:47 pm | Permalink

   The Vietnam section of Bush’s history-analogy speech was hilariously funny, it’s as if his speech-writer pranked him to make him look bad (worse)… it seems like GWB has no idea at all what happened in the Vietnam War — hey, maybe he shouldn’t have dodged it, he mighta learned something usefully cautionary.

   Remaining hold-out war-supporting Neo-Con fools ought to read what an Authentic Conservative — and one with an actual idea of what he’s talking about (former Commanding General of the US Army’s First Infantry Division) has to say about this:
   http://thinkprogress.org/2007/.....ervatives/

   And he’s just one of a long string of Authentic Conservatives who have come out on this side.

5. trachys
   Posted August 27, 2007 at 2:50 am | Permalink

   http://adereview.com/blog/?p=13

   .. even more Real than Batiste.

   Robert: The WSJ! The CFR! Why am I reminded of The Muppets?

   Why do we always come here
   I guess we’ll never know
   It’s like a kind of torture
   To have to watch this show!

   I respect your skills, but political and historical acumen, you lack. Stick with Korean culture, with the translating and the photographs.

6. Robert Koehler
   Posted August 27, 2007 at 3:46 am | Permalink

   The WSJ! The CFR! Why am I reminded of The Muppets?

   Yeah, well, it’s not “Another Day in the Empire,” I guess.

   I respect your skills, but political and historical acumen, you lack.

   OK, whatever, trachys.

7. Sonagi
   Posted August 27, 2007 at 4:42 am | Permalink

   Jeez, Robert, by introducing that WSJ story with a one-sentence summary and a link, you have clearly demonstrated a “lack of political and historical acumen.”

8. wjk
   Posted August 27, 2007 at 4:44 am | Permalink

   I have wsj subscription.

   Dude makes essentially the same points as Bush, but much more eloquently and more convincingly.

   After all, isn’t Vietnam today an emerging economic power that is cultivating friendly ties with the U.S.?

   True, but that’s 30 years after the fact. In the short-term, the costs of defeat were indeed heavy. More than a million people perished in the killing fields of Cambodia, while in Vietnam, those who worked with American forces were consigned, as Mr. Bush noted, to prison camps “where tens of thousands perished.” Many more fled as “boat people,” he continued, “many of them going to their graves in the South China Sea.”

   That assessment actually understates the terrible repercussions from the American defeat, whose ripples spread around the world. In the late 1970s, America’s enemies seized power in countries from Mozambique to Iran to Nicaragua. American hostages were seized aboard the SS Mayaguez (off Cambodia) and in Tehran. The Red Army invaded Afghanistan. It is impossible to prove the connection with the Vietnam War, but there is little doubt that the enfeeblement of a superpower encouraged our enemies to undertake acts of aggression that they might otherwise have shied away from. Indeed, as Mr. Bush noted, jihadists still gain hope from what Ayman al Zawahiri accurately describes as “the aftermath of the collapse of the American power in Vietnam and how they ran and left their agents.”

   In the early 1960s, American officials were frustrated with Ngo Dinh Diem, and in 1963 the Kennedy administration sanctioned a coup against him, in the hope of installing more effective leadership in Saigon. The result was the opposite: a succession of weak leaders who spent most of their time plotting to stay in power. In retrospect it’s obvious that, for all his faults, we should have stuck with Diem.

   Today we should stick with Mr. Maliki, imperfect as he is. The only hope for long-term political progress is to limit the power of the militias — the real powers — which must start by curbing the violence which gives them much of their raison d’être. That is what the forces under Gen. David Petraeus’s command are now doing. We’ll need considerably more progress on the security front before we can expect any substantial political progress at the national level. In the meantime, we shouldn’t hold Mr. Maliki to unrealistic expectations as we did with Diem.

   By 1972 most of the south was judged secure and the South Vietnamese armed forces were able to throw back the Easter Offensive with help from lots of American aircraft but few American soldiers. If the U.S. had continued to support Saigon with a small troop presence and substantial supplies, there is every reason to believe that South Vietnam could have survived. It was no less viable than South Korea, another artificial state kept in existence by force of arms over many decades. But after the signing of the 1973 Paris Peace Accords, we all but cut off South Vietnam, even while its enemies across the borders continued to be resupplied by their patrons in Moscow and Beijing.

   Pity, only the those who can afford it can read the Wall Street Journal.

9. wjk
   Posted August 27, 2007 at 4:45 am | Permalink

   that portion about Diem is block quoted WSJ material…but oh well.

10. Richardson
    Posted August 27, 2007 at 11:07 am | Permalink

    The full article;

    http://opinionjournal.com/edit.....=110010516

    Yeah, I guess Max Boot is a real dumbass, nothing like congress forcing the end (i.e. creating another Vietnam), etc. . . oh wait.

    You have to try to miss it, like the Korea comparison.

    Guten nacht.

11. Wedge
    Posted August 27, 2007 at 8:50 pm | Permalink

    #10: It’s called snatching defeat from the jaws of victory, and some of the same (Chris Dodd, anyone?) are all too happy to reprise their role in defeat.

12. wjk
    Posted August 27, 2007 at 9:52 pm | Permalink

    How do you scare Americans aged 10 to 90?

    Say Vietnam.

    It’s a pathethic magic word.

    Applies only to self hating Americans.

13. snow
    Posted August 28, 2007 at 1:52 am | Permalink

    For a fascinating take on the Vietnam and other wars, I recommend an article by Robert Kaplan:

    The US didn’t lose the Vietnam War, the Democratic congress cut off funding to the South, which doomed and betrayed an ally. Cut and run will again doom and betray those that Bush claimed to be fighting for-your average Iraqi.

    Ironic how those who want the US to cut and run, essentially leading to a humanitarian disaster, are often the same ones who screamed the loudest about how how the Iraq War was/is a humanitarian disaster.

14. snow
    Posted August 28, 2007 at 1:55 am | Permalink

    Sorry, don’t know how to get the link to work here (I tried the usual method, but being computer illiterate, it didn’t seem to work). It’s at http://www.theatlantic.com and is currently featured on the website.