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Title: Hillary, Trump, and War with Russia: The Goddamdest Stupid Idea I Have Ever Heard, and I Have Lived in Washington
Source:
Fred On Everything
URL Source: http://fredoneverything.org/hillary ... nd-i-have-lived-in-washington/
Published: Aug 11, 2016
Author: Fred Reed
Post Date: 2016-08-11 21:32:09 by Stoner
Keywords: None
Views: 3931
Comments: 60
Don’t look for a walk-over. The T14 Armata, Russia’s latest tank. You don’t want to fight this monster if you can think of a better idea, such as not fighting it. Russia once made large numbers of second-rate tanks. That worm has turned. This thing is way advanced and outguns the American M1A2, having a 125mm smoothbore firing APFSDS long-rods to the Abrams 120mm. (As Hillary would know, that’s Armor-piercing, fin-stabilized, discarding-sabot. You did know, didn’t you, Hill?) This isn’t the place for a disquisition on armor, but the above beast is an ver advanced design with unmanned turret and, well, a T34 it isn’t. (I was once an aficionado of tanks. If interested, here and here.) A good reason to vote for Trump, a very good reason whatever his other intentions, is that he does not want a war with Russia. Hillary and her elite ventriloquists threaten just that. Note the anti-Russian hysteria coming from her and her remoras. Such a war would be yet another example of the utter control of America by rich insiders. No normal American has anything at all to gain by such a war. And no normal American has the slightest influence over whether such a war takes place, except by voting for Trump. The military has become entirely the plaything of unaccountable elites. A martial principle of great wisdom says that military stupidity comes in three grades: Ordinarily stupid; really, really, really stupid; and fighting Russia. Think Charles XII at Poltava, Napoleon after Borodino, Adolf and Kursk. Letting dilettantes, grifters, con men, pasty Neocons, bottle-blonde ruins, and corporations decide on war is insane. We have pseudo-masculine dwarves playing with things they do not understand. So far as I am aware, none of these fern-bar Clausewitzes has worn boots, been in a war, seen a war, or faces any chance of being in a war started by themselves. They brought us Iraq, Afghanistan, and Isis, and can’t win wars against goatherds with AKs. They are going to fight…Russia? A point that the tofu ferocities of New York might bear in mind is that wars seldom turn out as expected, usually with godawful results. We do not know what would happen in a war with Russia. Permit me a tedious catalog to make this point. It is very worth making. When Washington pushed the South into the Civil War, it expected a conflict that might be over in twenty-four hours, not four years with as least 650,000 dead. When Germany began WWI, it expected a swift lunge into Paris, not four years of hideously bloody static war followed by unconditional surrender. When the Japanese Army pushed for attacking Pearl, it did not foresee GIs marching in Tokyo and a couple of cities glowing at night. When Hitler invaded Poland, utter defeat and occupation of Germany was not among his war aims. When the US invaded Vietnam, it did not expect to be outfought and outsmarted by a bush-world country. When Russia invaded Afghanistan it did not expect…nor when America invaded Afghanistan, nor when it attacked Iraq, nor…. Is there a pattern here? The standard American approach to war is to underestimate the enemy, overestimate American capacities, and misunderstand the kind of war it enters. This is particularly true when the war is a manhood ritual for masculine inadequates–think Kristol, Podhoretz, Sanders, the whole Neocon milk bar, and that mendacious wreck, Hillary, who has the military grasp of a Shetland pony. If you don’t think weak egos and perpetual adolescence have a part in deciding policy, read up on Kaiser Wilhelm. Now, if Washington accidentally or otherwise provoked a war with Russia in, say, the Baltics or the Ukraine, and actually used its own forces, where might this lead, given the Pentagon’s customary delusional optimism? A very serious possibility is a humiliating American defeat. The US has not faced a real enemy in a long time. In that time the armed forces have been feminized and social-justice warriorified, with countless officials having been appointed by Obama for reasons of race and sex. Training has been watered down to benefit girl soldiers, physical standards lowered, and the ranks of general officers filled with perfumed political princes. Russia is right there at the Baltic borders: location, location, location. Somebody said, “Amateurs think strategy, professionals think logistics.” Uh-huh. The Russians are not pansies and they are not primitive. What would Washington do, what would New York make Washington do, having been handed its ass in a very public defeat? Huge egos would be in play, the credibility of the whole American empire. Could little Hillary Dillary Pumpkin Pie force NATO into a general war with Russia, or would the Neocons try to go it alone–with other people’s lives? (Russia also has borders with Eastern Europe, which connects to Western Europe. Do you suppose the Europeans would think of this?) Would Washington undertake, or try to undertake, the national mobilization that would be necessary to fight Russia in its backyard? Naval war? Nukes in desperation? And, since Russia is not going to invade anybody unprovoked, Washington would have to attack. See above, the three forms of military stupidity. The same danger exists incidentally with regard to a war with China in the South China Sea. The American Navy hasn’t fought a war in seventy years. It doesn’t know how well its armament works. The Chinese, who are not fools, have invested in weaponry specifically designed to defeat carrier battle groups. A carrier in smoking ruins would force Washington to start a wider war to save face, with unpredictable results. Can you name one American, other than the elites, who has anything to gain from war with China? What has any normal American, as distinct from the elites and various lobbies, gained from any of our wars post Nine-Eleven? Hillary and her Neocon pack have backed all of them. It is easy to regard countries as suprahuman beings that think and take decisions and do things. Practically speaking, countries consist of a small number of people, usually men, who make decisions for reasons often selfish, pathologically aggressive, pecuniary, delusional, misinformed, or actually psychopathic in the psychiatric sense. For example, the invasion of Iraq, a disaster, was pushed by the petroleum lobbies to get the oil, the arms lobbies to get contracts, the Jewish lobbies to get bombs dropped on Israel’s enemies, the imperialists for empire, and the congenitally combative because that is how they think. Do you see anything in the foregoing that would matter to a normal American? These do not add up to a well-conceived policy. Considerations no better drive the desire to fight Russia or to force it to back down. I note, pointlessly, that probably none of America’s recent martial catastrophes would have occurred if we still had constitutional government. How many congressmen do you think would vote for a declaration of war if they had to tell their voters that they had just launched, for no reason of importance to Americans, an attack on the homeland of a nuclear power? There are lots of reasons not to vote for Clinton and the suppurating corruption she represents. Not letting her owners play with matches rates high among them.
Found this while on another site. Never heard of this guy before. Interesting take on war with Russia. I doubt Shitlerly would understand this.
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#1. To: Stoner (#0)
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During Viet Nam, the real enemy was at home in the Kennedy and Johnson administrations. Our military was sent there to lose.
oh too Make love If you ... don't use exclamation points --- you should't be typeing ! Commas - semicolons - question marks are for girlie boys !
Exactly ! Si vis pacem, para bellum Those who beat their swords into plowshares will plow for those who don't Rebellion to tyrants is obedience to God. if you look around, we have gone so far down the the rat hole, the almighty is going to have to apologize to Sodom and Gomorrah, if we don't have a judgement come down on us. President Obama is the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people. --Clint Eastwood "I am concerned for the security of our great nation; not so much because of any threat from without, but because of the insidious forces working from within." -- General Douglas MacArthur
Exactly ! It annoys me to this day when people talk about how we lost Vietnam. The US left in in 73 WITH A VICTORY -- a real victory. Then, 2 years later, the Democrats here gave the commies the political victory they so craved. Obama has played at being a president while enjoying the perks … golf, insanely expensive vacations at tax-payer expense. He has ignored the responsibilities of the job; no plans, no budgets, no alternatives … just finger pointing; making him a complete failure as a president
Yeah, everyone of them assholes supreme! Our men did very good, but they were betrayed by fellow Americans as RLK pointed out. And besides Big Ears Johnson, lets not forget Hanoi Jane. I am still surprised some Nam Vet has not caught up with her & gutted the bitch like a fish. As far as I am concerned, she should burn in Hell. Si vis pacem, para bellum Those who beat their swords into plowshares will plow for those who don't Rebellion to tyrants is obedience to God. if you look around, we have gone so far down the the rat hole, the almighty is going to have to apologize to Sodom and Gomorrah, if we don't have a judgement come down on us. President Obama is the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people. --Clint Eastwood "I am concerned for the security of our great nation; not so much because of any threat from without, but because of the insidious forces working from within." -- General Douglas MacArthur
I was not a tanker, but the T14 Armata, Russia’s latest tank, sounds like a wicked piece of Armor. I wouldn't want to tangle with it.
Si vis pacem, para bellum Those who beat their swords into plowshares will plow for those who don't Rebellion to tyrants is obedience to God. if you look around, we have gone so far down the the rat hole, the almighty is going to have to apologize to Sodom and Gomorrah, if we don't have a judgement come down on us. President Obama is the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people. --Clint Eastwood "I am concerned for the security of our great nation; not so much because of any threat from without, but because of the insidious forces working from within." -- General Douglas MacArthur
Good find; ---- Fred’s Biography, As He Tells It Would you trust this man with your daughter? If so, call. Would you trust this man with your daughter? If so, call. Fred, a keyboard mercenary with a disorganized past, has worked on staff for Army Times, The Washingtonian, Soldier of Fortune, Federal Computer Week, and The Washington Times. He has been published in Playboy, Soldier of Fortune, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, Harper’s, National Review, Signal, Air&Space, and suchlike. He has worked as a police writer, technology editor, military specialist, and authority on mercenary soldiers. He is by all accounts as looney as a tune. I was born in 1945 in Crumpler, West Virginia, a coal camp near Bluefield. My father was a mathematician then serving in the Pacific aboard the destroyer USS Franks, which he described as a wallowing and bovine antique with absolutely no women aboard, but the best the Navy had at the time. Bio--Crumpler2 How it was in the mines, maybe 1950, when I was there. Bio-Crumpler My paternal grandfather was dean and professor of mathematics at Hampden-Sydney College, a small and (then, and perhaps now) quite good liberal arts school in southwest Virginia. My maternal grandfather was a doctor in Crumpler. (When someone got sick on the other side of the mountain, the miners would put my grandfather in a coal car and take him under the mountain. He had a fairly robust conception of a house call.) In general my family for many generations were among the most literate, the most productive, and the dullest people in the South. Presbyterians. After the war I lived as a navy brat here and there–San Diego, Mississippi, the Virginia suburbs of Washington, Alabama, what have you, and briefly in Farmville, Virginia, while my father went on active duty for the Korean War as an artillery spotter. I was an absorptive and voracious reader, a terrible student, and had by age eleven an eye for elevation and windage with a BB gun that would have awed a missile engineer. I was also was a bit of a mad scientist. For example, I think I was ten when I discovered the formula for thermite in the Britannica at Athens College in Athens, Alabama, stole the ingredients from the college chemistry laboratory, and ignited a mound of perfectly adequate thermite in the prize frying pan of the mother of my friend Perry, whose father was the college president. The resulting six-inch hole in the frying pan was hard to explain. I went to high school in King George County, Virginia, while living on Dahlgren Naval Weapons Laboratory (my father was always a weapons-development sort of mathematician, although civilian by this time), where I was the kid other kids weren’t supposed to play with. My time was spent canoeing, shooting, drinking unwise but memorable amounts of beer with the local country boys, attempting to be a French rake with only indifferent success, and driving in a manner that, if you are a country boy, I don’t have to describe, and if you aren’t, you wouldn’t believe anyway. I remember trying to explain to my father why his station wagon was upside down at three in the morning after flipping it at seventy on a hairpin turn that would have intimidated an Alpine goat. As usual I was a woeful student–if my friend Butch and I hadn’t found the mimeograph stencil for the senior Government exam in the school’s Dempster Dumpster, I wouldn’t have graduated–but was a National Merit Finalist, and in the 99th percentile on the SATs. After two years at Hampden-Sydney, where I worked on a split major in chemistry and biology with an eye to oceanography, I decided I was bored. After spending the summer thumbing across the continent and down into Mexico, hopping freight trains up and down the eastern seaboard, and generally confusing myself with Jack Kerouac, I enlisted in the Marines, in the belief that it would be more interesting than stirring unpleasant glops in laboratories and pulling apart innocent frogs. It certainly was. On returning from Vietnam with a lot of stories, as well as a Purple Heart and more shrapnel in my eyes than I really wanted, I graduated from Hampden-Sydney with lousy grades and a bachelor-of-science degree with a major in history and a minor in computers. Really. My GREs were in the 99th percentile. Fred ain’t got the sense God give a crab apple. Any fool can see that. The years from 1970 to 1973 I spent in largely disreputable pursuits, a variety that has always come naturally to me. I wandered around Europe, Asia, and Mexico, and acquired the usual stock of implausible but true stories about odd back alleys and odder people. When the 1973 war broke out in the Mid-East, I decided I ought to do something respectable, thought that journalism was, and told the editor of my home-town paper, “Hi! I want to be a war correspondent.” This was a sufficiently damn-fool thing to do that he let me go, probably to see what would happen. Writing, it turned out, was the only thing I was good for. My clips from Israel were good enough that when I argued to the editors of Army Times that they needed my services to cover the war in Vietnam, they too let me do it. I spent the last year of the war between Phnom Penh and Saigon, leaving each with the evacuation. Those were heady days in which I lived in slums that would have horrified a New York alley cat, but they appealed to the Steinbeck in me, of which there is a lot. After the fall of Saigon I returned to Asia, resumed residence for six months in my old haunts in Taipei, and studied Chinese while waiting for the next war, which didn’t come. Returning overland, I took up a career of magazine free-lancing, a colorful route to starvation, with stints on various staffs interspersed. For a year I worked in Boulder, Colorado, on the staff of Soldier of Fortune magazine, half zoo and half asylum, with the intention of writing a book about it. Publishing houses said, yes, Fred, this is great stuff, but you are obviously making it up. I wasn’t. Playboy eventually published it, making me extremely persona non grata at Soldier of Fortune. Having gotten married somewhere along the way for reasons that escape me at the moment, though my wife was an extraordinary woman whodeserved better, I am now the happily divorced father of the World’s Finest Daughters. Until recently I worked as, among other things, a law-enforcement columnist for the Washington Times. It allowed me to take trips to big cities and to ride around in police cars with the siren going woowoowoo and kick in doors of drug dealers. Recently I changed the column from law enforcement to technology, and now live in Mexico near Guadalajara, having found burros preferable to bureaucrats. My hobbies are wind surfing, scuba, listening to blues, swing-dancing in dirt bars, associating with colorful maniacs, weight-lifting, and people of the other sex. (Update: I married Violeta, my Spanish teacher, and, as so often happens with men, married up.) My principal accomplishment in life, aside from my children, is the discovery that it is possible to jitterbug to the Brandenburgs.
Then, 2 years later, the Democrats here gave the commies the political victory they so craved. We lost the war. A Republican was President when the North overran the South. We fought it stupidly, took bad casualties, were unable to set up a government capable of defending itself. We lost. That's what defeat looks like: your enemy gets all of his objectives, you lose everything you fought for and all of your sacrifice was in vain. That is defeat. It doesn't matter that we "won all the battles". The Russians won all the battles in Afghanistan too. Didn't matter. They lost the war. So did we. And we're losing the war in Afghanistan right now too, just like we lost Vietnam, and just like the Russians lost Afghanistan before us, for exactly the same reasons. We overestimated our abilities, we overcommitted, we bit off more than we could choose, and we lost. And in the process we killed 55,000 of our own countrymen, crippled another quarter million Americans for life, and imposed a trillion dollar debt on ourselves - for nothing.
We left Vietnam with the caveat that if NV showed aggression, we'd resume bombing the shit out of them again. Ford begged Congress to provide funding to stop the invasion of the North, and they refused. Remember the Case-Church amendment? It was passed by a veto proof majority. It prohibited the US from taking any military action to stop NV. The fucking Democrats WANTED the communists to prevail. Obama has played at being a president while enjoying the perks … golf, insanely expensive vacations at tax-payer expense. He has ignored the responsibilities of the job; no plans, no budgets, no alternatives … just finger pointing; making him a complete failure as a president
LOL, I remember those 101's from back when I was a teenager. I think I even smoked a few packs of them. Don't remember who made them, "Chesterfield" I think.
Si vis pacem, para bellum Those who beat their swords into plowshares will plow for those who don't Rebellion to tyrants is obedience to God. if you look around, we have gone so far down the the rat hole, the almighty is going to have to apologize to Sodom and Gomorrah, if we don't have a judgement come down on us. President Obama is the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people. --Clint Eastwood "I am concerned for the security of our great nation; not so much because of any threat from without, but because of the insidious forces working from within." -- General Douglas MacArthur
Well, the new Russian tank does sound pretty wicked. Don't think I would want to tangle with it, unless I was in an A-10
Si vis pacem, para bellum Those who beat their swords into plowshares will plow for those who don't Rebellion to tyrants is obedience to God. if you look around, we have gone so far down the the rat hole, the almighty is going to have to apologize to Sodom and Gomorrah, if we don't have a judgement come down on us. President Obama is the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people. --Clint Eastwood "I am concerned for the security of our great nation; not so much because of any threat from without, but because of the insidious forces working from within." -- General Douglas MacArthur
Yeah. They also have a similar T-15 Armata Infantry Fighting Vehicle. Similar platform to the T-14, but they put the engine up front. The Aliens turret in back is remotely controlled with a 30-mm auto cannon, a 7.62- mm machine gun and a bank of two anti-tank guided missiles on either side.
In those days supporting the communists was a symbol of being "the best and the brightest."
Because Kennedy had Diem assassinated and replaced him with a succession of incompetent figureheads.
This goes into the proof file that former military, second amendment believers and "right wingers" are not the dangerous ones. It is ALWAYS those on the "left", anarchists, communists, fascists, Kings, Queens, Lords, dictators ALL, that will kill to advance a political goal. Those on the "right" hate fighting, are tired of it always coming to them. When the situation calls for it though, they want no back stabbing, wheeling and dealing bullshit. They want to blow stuff up, kill lots of enemies and go back to being at peace. Exercising rights is only radical to two people, Tyrants and Slaves. Which are YOU? Our ignorance has driven us into slavery and we do not recognize it.
And they did. Which means we lost. That amendment was passed BECAUSE the American people did not support the war. No modern war is fought until an entire people is wiped out. Wars are fought until one nation's will breaks. The nation whose will breaks loses the war. We are a democracy. Our will broke. Congress, elected Congress, by a supermajority, refused to continue the fight, and everything we were trying to do there fell to ashes and conquest. The North Vietnamese broke the will of the American people. They won the war and we lost it.
Kennedy didn't replace him with a succession of incompetent figureheads. Kennedy died in 1963 and was out of the picture. The Americans committed military force in earnest in 1965, that's when the war began for us. 1965, 1966, 1967 and 1968 was under a Democrat. But the war went on for seven more years under two Republicans, Nixon and Ford, and throughout almost that entire time South Vietnam was under one leader: Thieu. Most of the war was fought under Republicans, and South Vietnam fell on the watch of a Republican President.
They were stopping North for several years. There is such thing as cutting losses and accepting defeat - it is not a shame. America did not need Vietnam same way as French did not. The latter made a stable South with Diem at the top. See the movie "Quiet American".
Kennedy didn't replace him with a succession of incompetent figureheads. Kennedy died in 1963 and was out of the picture. You don't read much history or have much contact with it.
Arrest and assassination of Ngo Dinh Diem - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Look for the role of Kennedy, pay attention and analyse.
And they did. Which means we lost. Since the whole point of the war was a policy of containment, designed to stop the spread of Soviet communism, and the Soviet Union is long defunct and defeated, I would say we easily won. Obama has played at being a president while enjoying the perks … golf, insanely expensive vacations at tax-payer expense. He has ignored the responsibilities of the job; no plans, no budgets, no alternatives … just finger pointing; making him a complete failure as a president
That certainly looks more formidable than our Bradley. Si vis pacem, para bellum Those who beat their swords into plowshares will plow for those who don't Rebellion to tyrants is obedience to God. if you look around, we have gone so far down the the rat hole, the almighty is going to have to apologize to Sodom and Gomorrah, if we don't have a judgement come down on us. President Obama is the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people. --Clint Eastwood "I am concerned for the security of our great nation; not so much because of any threat from without, but because of the insidious forces working from within." -- General Douglas MacArthur
You would like to over-simplify the issues to Democrat versus Republican and the death of JFK so as to skirt around real problem areas. One of them was Robert McNamara. McNamara was an impressive looking man scowling behind his granny glasses who could even intimidate presidents. In fact, his micromanagement was inept and hopelessly out of date. He had no business being secretary of defense. He was kept there almost to the end of the Johnson administration. One of our principle South Vietnamese military advisors was a South Vietnamese major general who was also a clandestine major general in the North Vietnamese army. After the war he said he boasted he had given us advice that was so stupid and self defeating he was surprised that we were dumb enough to take it. The Buddist problem was another issue that was inaccurately reported. At the end of Johnson's term a losing situation was palmed off to Nixon and the attempt is made to blame him for 60,000 deaths, tens of thousands maimed and wounded, and the loss of a war. Don't believe your own bull shit, sir fictitious Vicomte nobleman. Start by reading William Colby's book Lost Victory.
Diem was assassinated on November 2, 1963. Kennedy was assassinated on November 22, 1963. Diem was replaced by a military junta in Vietnam. But that junta was replaced by President Thieu, and Thieu was the President of South Vietnam throughout the 8 years of Nixon, and right up to very near the end. So, your assertion that Kennedy replaced the Vietnamese President with a whole series of incompetents is factually wrong. Kennedy may have had a hand in the assassination of Diem. But then Kennedy was gone. After that, there was a military dictator, no doubt installed by the US, and then there was a civilian President, and he was there for a long time. You have a thesis: America didn't lose. It's based on pride - on the desire to find a way to assert that we didn't get shellacked in front of the world. I understand that desire and that emotion. But what you believe isn't true. And to then turn and simply assert that I don't know anything about history is just insulting, and foolish, and quite wrong. In Vietnam, we essentially recreated the mistake we made in Korea (we didn't win there either), but in a place that was geographically unfavorable to a Korean solution. Korea has sea flanks: stop the Chinese at a line, and they cannot flank you. Vietnam has a dense jungle flank to the west of it, and unstable governments there unable to stop the Communist power from moving forces through. COULD we have won? Sure. By declaring war and mobilizing and sending in World War II levels of troops. We didn't do that, so we DID NOT win. We have largely repeated that error again in Iraq. We broke the place, toppled the leader, have never been able to stop insurrection on the flanks, and have ultimately lost the government to pro- Iranian Shi'ites. And we're doing it yet again in Afghanistan. We don't learn from our defeats. And we never will learn a damned thing if we pretend we have not been defeated over and over and over again. I know plenty about history, and I am in exceptionally good contact with it. History is not a happy place for American imperialism in Asia. We lose. Then we lose. Then we lose. And we're in the process of losing yet again. It doesn't work. We're not strong enough militarily or politically to engage in major police actions abroad. The forces we send in every case are insufficient overcome really determined enemies. The enemies find major allies - our global adversaries. They dig in, they wear us out, and in the end, the will of the American people breaks and the US forces are withdrawn home, defeated again. "It is not good for the Christian's health to hustle the Aryan brown. For the Christian riles, and the Aryan smiles, and he weareth the Christian down. And the end of the fight is a tombstone white with the name of the late deceased. And the epitaph drear: 'A fool lies here who tried to hustle the East." - Kipling
Maybe somebody should have told that to the SV who were tortured and murdered or had to take to the high seas on makeshift rafts after the Democrats reneged on our promises. Obama has played at being a president while enjoying the perks … golf, insanely expensive vacations at tax-payer expense. He has ignored the responsibilities of the job; no plans, no budgets, no alternatives … just finger pointing; making him a complete failure as a president
Nixon was elected President in 1968. Vietnam fell in 1975. Nothing that was done in the four years of the Johnson Administration by McNamara had to continue to be so under a new President for the next seven. Nixon was not bound by the mistakes of the past. He made his own mistakes. The was was lost by Democrats and by Republicans. But America always loses such police actions. You can't send a few hundred thousand men to conquer nations of millions. You need millions, big armies and permanent forces. America was nowhere willing to commit to such a thing, so we send thousands to face millions, and we lost. Over and over and over again. You want to believe America has not been defeated again and again, It's a matter of pride. You want to believe that with better political leadership that it all would have been better. Thousands do not conquer and hold millions. It doesn't work. We try to do these wars on the cheap, and we rile up millions and we lose. Every time. I'm surprised that you are unable to see the pattern. You're blinded by nationalism and arrogance. Arrogance is what lets you write what you wrote in the last sentence, to be so insulting. I start factual, but when people start getting insulting because they don't like what I say, I can be insulting too. It's pointless. You can read Monday morning quarterbacks all you like, but they cannot change the stark result: WE LOST. We lost for very identifiable reasons. The same basic reason we lost in Korea, lost in Iraq and are going to lose in Afghanistan. War is bloody, traumatic and expensive, and you cannot win wars against millions with thousands. You have to send millions. But THAT takes a full engagement of the American people and economy, high taxes, declarations of war. And that, in turn, cuts into the business-as-usual profitmaking of the elite donor classes. So we don't declare war, and we don't hike the taxes to 90% like we do to win wars. We don't unify and mobilize the American people for war. We don't raise multi-million man armies. We send in professional forces of tens of thousands, who are good at fighting, but who do not have the manpower to hold the ground. So the war goes on forever, drains money and blood, and the people get tired of it and eventually end it. And the enemy wins. Every time. THAT is our history. Learn that, and apply the lesson, and you won't have to cover for the future American defeats that will inevitably come if we continue to fight wars in the half-assed way we have since Korea.
So, to be clear, it was the DEMOCRATS fault that Saigon fell, even though the White House and the Supreme Court were both in the hands of the Republicans. And this was because the Democrats were in control of Congress. That's the assertion. Explain to me, then, how everything that Obama has done is not the Republicans' fault, considering that the Republicans control Congress, and the Supreme Court to boot. The Republicans have greater control over our government than the Democrats did in Nixon and Ford's day, and yet Obama advances across the board. That is because the Obama policies are really the polices of the Republicans, right? Ford was President and the Supreme Court was Republican when Saigon fell. Just the Democrat control of Congress is sufficient to shift blame. By those standards, Obama is blameless, for the Republicans control Congress and have controlled the Supreme Court throughout his Presidency. Right? Or does the standard of blame shift so that it always rests on Democrats? That's what partisans always do. It's why they don't have a lot of credibility. It's always the other guy's fault.
We PROMISED we would not allow NV to take action. It wouldn't have even been that hard to prevent it either. Send a number of B-52s to turn Hanoi into a parking lot, and there is no way an invasion would have been conducted. The Democrats had veto proof majorities in the House and Senate. Hell, even the Republicans were pretty much Democrats. The Democrats wanted to say the US lost. They rejoiced in that mantra. It seems to be what you doing too. Explain to me, then, how everything that Obama has done is not the Republicans' fault, The current GOP does not have a veto proof majority. Obama has played at being a president while enjoying the perks … golf, insanely expensive vacations at tax-payer expense. He has ignored the responsibilities of the job; no plans, no budgets, no alternatives … just finger pointing; making him a complete failure as a president
The Democrats wanted to say the US lost. They rejoiced in that mantra. It seems to be what you doing too. So US won or lost?
As I said before, The entire issue here was a policy of containment, first declared by Truman. Since the Soviets are now gone, I would have to say we won. Beyond that, we had a responsibility to the people of SV. Yes we lost on that. Way to to go, you fucking Democrats. Obama has played at being a president while enjoying the perks … golf, insanely expensive vacations at tax-payer expense. He has ignored the responsibilities of the job; no plans, no budgets, no alternatives … just finger pointing; making him a complete failure as a president
I don't rejoice in it. But yes, when the US goes into major wars without the necessary constitutional declaration of war that we need to bind our laws, our private contracts and our civil society to the specific national security and censorship and rationing and taxation and mobilization rules of wartime, then it is important that the US lose the police action. It is important that the United States be punished with defeat every time we go to war without formally declaring it, formally binding the people to total war, formally binding the economy to 90% taxation, massive mobilization, and censorship to maintain morale. War is a bloody and terrible thing, and it's supposed to be hard to do it. It's supposed to require enough support of the people to require Congress to declare it. To win modern war means that the profit-seeking activity of peacetime must stop, and all excess of private profit beyond regular subsistence needs to go into the war effort, to massively mobilize and win the thing. That way fewer people die and fewer people are crippled. America has pretended that we can have a full throttle private profit-seeking capitalist economy, with accumulation of wealth and regular uncensored life, AND at the same time send professional troops over to die and be killed. When we have done it, and it's all we have done since 1945, we always lose. We always will. It is very important to rub Americans' noses in their defeats and disasters, again and again and again, so that they will SEE the insanity and stupidity of our approach to police actions, and so that we will understand that we're not great enough, strong enough, or good enough at war to actually WIN anything unless we go all out. Then (and only then) do we win. We lost Korea. We lost Vietnam,. We lost Iraq. We're in the process of losing Afghanistan. We "won" Kosovo...meaning we established a Muslim state in Europe - so, it was an easy win, because we fought FOR evil that time. We lost. And we're going to keep on losing. And whenever we enter into police actiona instead of declaring wars, we always will lose, and that's a good thing. Because it would be terrible if America got away with winning wars on the cheap. We engage in a lot of them, and if we actually won and got advantage out of them, we'd engage in even more police actions. As it is, though, we always lose and spend a fortune, and have "wounded warriors" and terrible political turmoil internally. And this is the just punishment of an arrogant nation that does not even follow its own Constitution, which requires a declaration of war. Instead, we just let Presidents commit us to mass murder on executive orders, and then we always get our asses handed to us in the end, with grand strategic debacles - like Vietnam, or Iraq - or endless deployment, expense and drain, for nothing, as in Korea, Kosovo and Afghanistan. We're trying to have our way in the Ukraine. We were wrong from the beginning. Putin has been right all along there. We are frustrated and not winning. And that's good. Aggressive imperialism is evil, and when we do it, it's good that we lose. That SHOULD teach us the lesson that we were stupid to get involved in it in the first place. When Americans want to pretend we WON wars that we lost, that's just trying to save face, which ends up just giving cover for the same aggressive morons to do it AGAIN, and AGAIN. We had our ass handed to us in Vietnam, and the whole world knows we lost. We propped up a government, fought for almost a decade, lost 55,000 and had a quarter million crippled, went into debt over a trillion dollars, all to abjectly lose everything. The Soviet Union got the benefit of our naval base at Cam Rahn Bay. Because we were defeated. Like Napoleon at Waterloo. Didn't matter that he won almost all the battles before that, did it? The image of Vietnam is of people hanging onto the skids of the last helicopter out of Saigon, as the last Americans fled for their lives with their tail between their legs. We got whomped. We lost it all. We should not have been there in the first place. If we were going to be there, we needed to declare war. If we were going to fight the wrong fight, against the wrong enemy, in the wrong place, at the wrong time, then at very least we needed to declare and spend the money and lose the profit and accept the restrictions on our own liberties necessary to win. We didn't. So we lost. And it's good that we did. Teach us a lesson. Maybe. If we'll learn it. We didn't learn it. Which is why we went into Iraq and lost it to the Iranians in the end. And why we followed the USSR into Afghanistan, where we're just waiting to get exhausted enough to retreat, defeated, and let the country go back to the Taliban who sheltered Bin Laden.
We PROMISED our own people, via the Constitution, that we would not go to war without Congress declaring it. We broke that promise to ourselves. Breaking the promise made to a dicatorship we created is simple by comparison.
You're going to hate it if Hillary wins, aren't you?
Did the Soviet Union fall or did it not? We won. The only thing we lost is the promise to protect the SV people. Obama has played at being a president while enjoying the perks … golf, insanely expensive vacations at tax-payer expense. He has ignored the responsibilities of the job; no plans, no budgets, no alternatives … just finger pointing; making him a complete failure as a president
You are a master of avoiding facts that you do not wish to see. I assume this gives you a sense of destructive superiority.
We won. We weren't fighting the Soviet Union, we were fighting the North Vietnamese, and many South Vietnamese. The Vietnamese drove us out of their country, and are still ruling it. The Vietnamese won the Vietnam war, and the Americans lost it. The Vietnam war, like Korea, was more of a proxy war with Communist China than with the Soviet Union. The Chinese fought us to a draw in Korea. And they achieved their objectives in Vietnam.
Back at ya on that.
Chairman Mao is on record for saying he wondered why we did anything as foolish as assassinate Diem.
The whole war was a foolish fiasco. Wrong war, against the wrong enemy, in the wrong place, at the wrong time.
According to you with suppression of valid information contradicting your subversive argument.
My argument isn't subversive. That's the language of then old, dead fools like Nixon who pretended that the people who didn't agree with their idiotic approach to war and their destructive choices of "national interests" were "subversives". Truth is, Nixon and the rah-rah gang did more to damage America permanently, by saddling us with debt in imperial wars we lost, and by their illegal behavior that rightly destroyed the ability to have faith in the trustworthyness of our government. My argument is that of a patriot. Vietnam was stupid because we lost. We killed 55,000 Americans losing. We crippled a quarter million Americans losing. We wrecked our domestic peace with a class-based draft, for a war we lost. And we spent a trillion dollars (two trillion in modern money) losing, You try to hang a fig leaf on the intellectual, military, political, economic and moral failure of your political belief system and the things you supported and still support. YOU are the subversive, and it is people like you, with your imperial beliefs but bungling serial incompetence, that laid this country low. Had the country followed my belief system, Vietnam would be what it is, but we would have those 55,000 people and their kin, and those 250,000 limbs, and that $2 trillion, and our institutions would not have been trashed by shits like Nixon and LBJ and their military supporters. My way would have left us stronger. Your way left us cratered in a smoking hole so bad that 40 years on you STILL have to lie about it and do a fan dance with the facts, and pretend that the people who oppose your tomfoolery are the "subversives". You are the subversive. I am the patriot.
By self declaration and calculated blindness to contradiction only. You are a self obsessed subversive by inclination.
If we had won, would it have been an intelligent war? And if we would have won, how many more casualties? We had the same draft since before WWII. You're outing yourself again with the 'class based' crap. At best, you're a socialistic patriot.
Whatever.
The draft during Vietnam was class based. Go to college? Don't have to go to 'Nam. It was a good dodge for white boys. No luck for black boys.
That's strange. I'm white and I was drafted out of a chance to attend medical school. The bitch in charge of the local draft board said she thought I needed the discipline of being in the army.
Guess you didn't have the connections of a Clinton or a Cheney.
Or a Trump.
A government strong enough to impose your standards is strong enough to ban them. You're outing yourself again with the 'class based' crap. Good grief, now you're playing the race card.. For shame.. Nam didn't require a full mobilization, so a college deferment made sense. ---- Unless you lack common sense, that is.
Vietnam DID require a full mobilization...if you wanted to WIN it. To do as we did - not fully mobilize, send in forces, get 55,000 killed, 250,000 crippled, spend a couple of trillion - and all the while NOT drafting college students (who skewed richer and much whiter) - means that you lose the war in the end, AND you lose your national social cohesion and create racial and class reverberations, and debts, that linger on like poison forever. That's the whole point: Vietnam DID require a completely mobilization. It required a declaration of war and full commitment. We didn't, so we lost and inflicted massive, ongoing damage on ourselves. And we're doing the same thing all over again in our "Police Action on Terror".
Trump is speaking right now, advocating full mobilization on our war on terror. You approve?
You approve? Yep. Go big or go home. Go big means: Congressional declaration of war, full mobilization, alliance with Russia, and slaughter. Go home means: pull forces out, shut off Muslim immigration, shut down every mosque involved in anything subversive (which is a great number of them).
Yes we were. That was the whole point of the war. and many South Vietnamese Those people were very much all gone by 1968. Tell the boat people how much they wanted the Soviets and NVA to win. The Vietnamese drove us out of their country They absolutely did not. We left after the linebacker operations that showed what we could do to them. We left of our own free will. Nixon did prevail. Of course you and the Democrats want to paint us as the losers. How shameful of you. Obama has played at being a president while enjoying the perks … golf, insanely expensive vacations at tax-payer expense. He has ignored the responsibilities of the job; no plans, no budgets, no alternatives … just finger pointing; making him a complete failure as a president
Yeah, and the Soviets didn't lose in Afghanistan either. When your enemies conquer the country you've wrecked a third of a million of your own people's lives, and spent ten years struggling before the whole world to hold onto, and spent a trillion dollars doing it, you have lost. No propaganda can reverse the reality. Woulda shoulda coulda is backing and filling. The last helicopter out of Saigon had people hanging off the skids to escape an enemy that asserted his will and defeated ours. If one looks at 1940, Germany beat France and Britain, and in 1941, Germany beat the USSR, overran everything, destroyed whatever resisted them. But that didn't last, did it. In 1945 they lost their capital and their government. Doesn't matter how many victories they had before that. They lost. Same thing with us in Vietnam. The American people were not longer willing to fight that war. Our will had been broken. Vietnam fell, and the Americans did not return to fight, because there was no political will to do so. We lost. The enemy won. We should admit it, because by admitting it we learn that military success is not enough. We defeated the Iraqi army and Saddam...only to turn Iraq into an Iranian satellite. That was not a win. Napoleon crushed the Russian Army and slept in the Kremlin. Did he win? No. The final outcome of the war determines who won. Napoleon beat everybody time and time and time again. Nobody could stand up to him. But in the end, he was deposed. He lost. He lost because the French people were no longer willing to follow him into more ruinous war. The same is true of the Americans in Vietnam. We won almost all of the battles, if "winning" is defined as holding onto the ground over which we fought. And after 10 years of "winning" our people were exhausted, protesting, having riots, and no longer willing to cash the checks that our arrogant leaders were writing. So the political will crystallized to end it. We did. The enemy attacked. The Americans did not come because the American people, expressing themselves through their democratically elected Congress, did not LET US come. The people decided. And they decided that, regardless of the decisions of leaders, we were not going to continue to throw good lives away, and good money after bad. We chose to lose, because to lose it now was better than to go on losing lives and money endlessly in a third world shithole. Our aura of invincibility was breached. The whole world saw us fly out with survivors clinging to the helicopter skids. We lost. And we need to learn the lessons of our defeat. Persuading ourselves that somehow we won, as you would do. is delusional. It's delusional and will lead (and actually has already led) to us making the same stupid mistakes again. We're doing it again in Afghaistan. Eventually we will leave and the Taliban will still be in charge. We have already been defeated in Afghanistan and we can't hold it. The only question is how long we want the defeat to go on, at the cost of American lives, limbs and money we don't have. We broke Iraq and handed it over to the Iranians. This was a short term military "win", followed by a catastrophic strategic loss that leaves us weaker than we were before, and without thousands of our fellow Americans, tens of thousands of their limbs, and another trillion dollars, thrown away for what? We're still in Kosovo, so I guess we "won" that. We successfully carved a Muslim state out of Serbia, and are now protecting it. We're still in Korea. All of this adds up to trillions. We didn't defeat the USSR in the field and drive them off defeated. We caused them to spend themselves until their economy broke. We had more money than they did to start, but we've burnt through that ourselves. We're still fighting the Cold War, and our economy is swooning. So, the USSR failed FIRST. But we are continuing down the same imperial path they dead, and destined to fail SECOND. In the end, behave like they did and like we did and still are, and both sides lose. We need to stop it and rethink. That can happen with men like me, who think. With men like you, who pretend that defeats were victories, we can only continue to stagger down the path to eventual national bankruptcy.
Saigon fell 2 years after we were gone. The SV wished we were still there. It wasn't freedom fighters in SV rising against us. The SV were slaughtered by the Communists after the Democrats reneged on the withdrawal promises. This was a communist backed massive invasion from NV that the communists knew the Democrats would do nothing to stop. It would have been easy to stop and wouldn't have required any troops on the ground. The Democrats wanted the communists to win (and apparently you too). These are the same people who wanted a world wide nuclear freeze after the Soviets deployed medium range nuclear missiles aimed at Europe. The Soviet missiles would have been "frozen" in place with no counter action from the West. Luckily Reagan, Thatcher, and Kohl were able to put a stop to these lunatics. It wasn't America that lost, it was the Democrats assuring a SV (and Cambodian) loss in the aftermath of Watergate. And they didn't give one fuck about the millions murdered by the Communists after that. Obama has played at being a president while enjoying the perks … golf, insanely expensive vacations at tax-payer expense. He has ignored the responsibilities of the job; no plans, no budgets, no alternatives … just finger pointing; making him a complete failure as a president
The Congress of the United States IS America. The Democrats had a crushing majority in Congress because the crushing majority of American people VOTED FOR THEM. They represented America, because they were elected to do so. America wanted out of Vietnam, so they put Democrat supermajorities in there to oppose the war. When Congress rejected a US return to Vietnam, that WAS the American people speaking, in supermajority numbers.
The Congress of the United States IS America. Those assclowns never spoke for me. There were many reasons other than the war as to why they were elected. Obama has played at being a president while enjoying the perks … golf, insanely expensive vacations at tax-payer expense. He has ignored the responsibilities of the job; no plans, no budgets, no alternatives … just finger pointing; making him a complete failure as a president
There was another election a year later. They were not turned out of office. They were returned to office, and the Republicans lost the White House for good measure. So yes, what Congress did with regards to Vietnam was not rejected by the American people. Ford was.
Barely, and only because of gaffes by Ford. This was at a time when Southeners voted for Democrats simply because they were Democrats. Of course, by 1980 everyone realized how full of it these numbnuts were. Obama has played at being a president while enjoying the perks … golf, insanely expensive vacations at tax-payer expense. He has ignored the responsibilities of the job; no plans, no budgets, no alternatives … just finger pointing; making him a complete failure as a president
When the US invaded Vietnam, it did not expect to be outfought and outsmarted by a bush-world country.
#2. To: Stoner (#0)
suppurating corruption she represents
my
many
u's
America
great
spell
check
again
boris
#3. To: rlk (#1)
" During Viet Nam, the real enemy was at home in the Kennedy and Johnson administrations. Our military was sent there to lose. "
#4. To: Stoner (#3)
" During Viet Nam, the real enemy was at home in the Kennedy and Johnson administrations. Our military was sent there to lose. "
#5. To: no gnu taxes (#4)
" 2 years later, the Democrats here gave the commies the political victory they so craved. "
#6. To: rlk (#1)
#7. To: Stoner (#0)
Never heard of this guy before.
#8. To: no gnu taxes (#4)
It annoys me to this day when people talk about how we lost Vietnam. The US left in in 73 WITH A VICTORY -- a real victory.
#9. To: Vicomte13 (#8)
We lost the war. A Republican was President when the North overran the South.
#10. To: Stoner (#0)
"... having a 125mm smoothbore firing APFSDS long-rods to the Abrams 120mm."
#11. To: misterwhite (#10)
#12. To: misterwhite (#10)
#13. To: Stoner (#12)
"Well, the new Russian tank does sound pretty wicked."
#14. To: no gnu taxes (#9)
It was passed by a veto proof majority. It prohibited the US from taking any military action to stop NV. The fucking Democrats WANTED the communists to prevail.
#15. To: Vicomte13 (#8)
We fought it stupidly, took bad casualties, were unable to set up a government capable of defending itself.
#16. To: Stoner (#5)
Hanoi Jane. I am still surprised some Nam Vet has not caught up with her & gutted the bitch like a fish.
#17. To: no gnu taxes (#9)
It prohibited the US from taking any military action to stop NV. The fucking Democrats WANTED the communists to prevail.
#18. To: rlk (#15)
Because Kennedy had Diem assassinated and replaced him with a succession of incompetent figureheads.
#19. To: no gnu taxes, Vicomte13 (#9)
Ford begged Congress to provide funding to stop the invasion of the North, and they refused.
#20. To: Vicomte13 (#18)
Because Kennedy had Diem assassinated and replaced him with a succession of incompetent figureheads.
#21. To: Vicomte13, rlk (#18)
Kennedy died in 1963 and was out of the picture.
#22. To: Vicomte13 (#17)
It prohibited the US from taking any military action to stop NV. The fucking Democrats WANTED the communists to prevail.
#23. To: misterwhite (#13)
" T-15 Armata Infantry Fighting Vehicle. "
#24. To: Vicomte13 (#18)
Most of the war was fought under Republicans, and South Vietnam fell on the watch of a Republican President.
#25. To: rlk (#20)
You don't read much history or have much contact with it.
#26. To: A Pole (#19)
There is such thing as cutting losses and accepting defeat - it is not a shame.
#27. To: rlk (#24)
#28. To: no gnu taxes (#26)
Maybe somebody should have told that to the SV who were tortured and murdered or had to take to the high seas on makeshift rafts after the Democrats reneged on our promises.
#29. To: Vicomte13 (#28)
So, to be clear, it was the DEMOCRATS fault that Saigon fell, even though the White House and the Supreme Court were both in the hands of the Republicans.
#30. To: no gnu taxes (#29)
Hell, even the Republicans were pretty much Democrats.
#31. To: A Pole (#30)
#32. To: no gnu taxes (#29)
The Democrats wanted to say the US lost. They rejoiced in that mantra. It seems to be what you doing too.
#33. To: no gnu taxes (#29)
We PROMISED we would not allow NV to take action.
#34. To: no gnu taxes (#31)
Way to to go, you fucking Democrats.
#35. To: Vicomte13 (#32)
#36. To: Vicomte13 (#27)
#37. To: no gnu taxes (#35)
Did the Soviet Union fall or did it not?
#38. To: rlk (#36)
You are a master of avoiding facts that you do not wish to see. I assume this gives you a sense of destructive superiority.
#39. To: Vicomte13 (#37)
(Edited)
The Vietnam war, like Korea, was more of a proxy war with Communist China than with the Soviet Union. The Chinese fought us to a draw in Korea. And they achieved their objectives in Vietnam.
#40. To: rlk (#39)
Chairman Mao is on record for saying he wondered why we did anything as foolish as assassinate Diem.
#41. To: Vicomte13 (#40)
The whole war was a foolish fiasco. Wrong war, against the wrong enemy, in the wrong place, at the wrong time.
#42. To: rlk (#41)
#43. To: Vicomte13 (#42)
(Edited)
I am the patriot.
#44. To: Vicomte13 (#42)
My argument is that of a patriot. Vietnam was stupid because we lost.
We killed 55,000 Americans losing. We crippled a quarter million Americans losing.
We wrecked our domestic peace with a class-based draft,
#45. To: rlk (#43)
By self declaration and calculated blindness to contradiction only. You are a self obsessed subversive by inclination.
#46. To: tpaine (#44)
You're outing yourself again with the 'class based' crap. At best, you're a socialistic patriot.
#47. To: Vicomte13 (#46)
The draft during Vietnam was class based. Go to college? Don't have to go to 'Nam. It was a good dodge for white boys. No luck for black boys.
#48. To: rlk (#47)
#49. To: Vicomte13 (#48)
#50. To: Vicomte13 (#46)
The draft during Vietnam was class based. Go to college? Don't have to go to 'Nam. It was a good dodge for white boys. No luck for black boys.
#51. To: tpaine (#50)
Nam didn't require a full mobilization, so a college deferment made sense.
#52. To: Vicomte13 (#51)
And we're doing the same thing all over again in our "Police Action on Terror".
#53. To: tpaine (#52)
Trump is speaking right now, advocating full mobilization on our war on terror.
#54. To: Vicomte13 (#37)
We weren't fighting the Soviet Union,
#55. To: no gnu taxes (#54)
#56. To: Vicomte13 (#55)
#57. To: no gnu taxes (#56)
It wasn't America that lost, it was the Democrats
#58. To: Vicomte13 (#57)
It wasn't America that lost, it was the Democrats
#59. To: no gnu taxes (#58)
There were many reasons other than the war as to why they were elected.
#60. To: Vicomte13 (#59)
They were returned to office, and the Republicans lost the White House for good measure.
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