The legacy of the killer doves
Many do not know that Vietnam was a war controlled from beginning to end by liberals. When the war first started liberals controlled both the legislative and executive. Even after Nixon won election to the presidency liberal democrats still controlled congress and the purse strings. Which they often threatened to cut off if Nixon attempted decisive action against the communist and their sanctuaries.
At first the liberals were of two minds about the conduct of the war. A small minority opposed any involvement. The rest opposed the war to varying degrees, but understood that if they did nothing, the American people would throw them out of office. They then ignored the advice of the military and engaged the war in such a way to create a "quagmire." They did this by limiting the number of troops the US would put in country as well as limiting their ability to attack sanctuaries and supply lines.
Lyndon Johnson in a tape conversation with Senator Richard Russell indicated early on that he was backing a losing strategy. This was after rejecting on several occasions a more effective strategy put forward by military advisors. The losing strategy was to fight the war as an insurgency that would "show the communist that they could not win." In other words their strategy was to play for a tie.
Ironically, the US military and the CIA, successfully executed the strategy. By 1973, even the communist recognized that they could not win with their "revolutionary warfare" strategy. Despite misreporting, particularly of the Tet offensive, the communist lost every major battle with US forces.
So how do you win every battle and still lose a war. You have a strategy that is a loser. The strategy limited US forces to interdiction of supply routes by raids. Raids are by definition a transitory use of force. All that can be limited is what is hit on any given raid. The Johnson administration refused to mine the harbor at Haiphong where most of it supplies were brought in. The Dems always rejected the use of combat persisting forces that would cut the communist main supply line--the Ho Chi Minh Trail. In the early stages of the war the government and most of the reporters seem to buy into the fiction that the "Viet Cong" were an indigenous group who armed themselves by capturing government supplies.
While the communist eventually started bringing in supplies through Cambodian ports also, all their virtually all their reinforcements came down the trail. The Dems also had an irrational fetish about "controlling" the scope of the conflict and not attacking sanctuaries in Cambodia and Laos.
The liberal Dems never accepted responsibility for the mess they made in Vietnam. Instead they blamed the military and later the Nixon administration.
Since the end of the war, the Dems have a heavy dose of "quagmire" syndrome. Every potential conflict is a potential quagmire. This is one of the reasons they opposed President Reagan's attempt to get the communist out of central America as well as the first war with Iraq. After the first Iraq war, there was some belief on the part of the Dems that wars need not be a quagmire, but there was still a great reluctance to take on an insurgency or an enemy with a raiding strategy like al Qaeda. Instead of getting into a war that could be won or lost, they opted to "pop and posture" as Clinton did after the embassy bombings in Africa as well as his '98 attacks on Iraq. This had the political benefit of looking like they were doing something without making any commitment to take decisive action. The reason John Kerry and the French supported the '98 attacks is that they both knew it was a bluff. However, Saddam also knew it was a bluff so he just hunkered down and kept on doing his thing.
There is some evidence that Saddam thought the same thing would happen in 2003. This would explain in part his lack of preparation of a defense. The '98 conflict appears to stem in part from Saddam's frustration with being unable to account for all his declared WMD and a calculation that Clinton would be politically unable to react because of his impeachment. However, unlike today's liberal Dems, the Republicans supported Clinton's actions against Iraq despite the timing events.
John Kerry's vote in favor of the authorization of the use of force against Iraq and subsequent criticism of the Bush administration, suggest he favors the "pop and Posture" approach that while ineffective, can get support from France and the rest of the UN. Kerry and other liberal Dems have also criticized the administration for a "lack of postwar planning." They never say exactly what they mean by this, but it is safe to assume they are trying to take political advantage of the Saddamite insurgency. None has ever suggested how prewar planning could have prevented an insurgency or produced a reaction to it that is better than the one the US military is currently pursuing.
The media has also done a terrible job of reporting on the insurgency. It is in similar to their misreporting of the communist military defeat during the Tet offensive. By any standard, the insurgency in Iraq is weak. The insurgency is incapable of mounting a militarily significant attack that would effect the US and coalition forces ability to operate. On only two occasions have I seen reports where insurgency forces mounted attacks with units as large as a platoon, approximately 50 to 60 men. In both cases the insurgents were decisively defeated. In contrast, in Vietnam, the communist routinely operated in division size units made up of thousands of men. Have you seen any of the media critics give this perspective?
There is also a tendency on the part of much of the media to disregard or downplay evidence of al Qaeda activity in Iraq. Newsweek, for example, has been downright hostile to such evidence. While their maybe some honest skepticism, the overall picture suggest that some in the media were against the liberation of Iraq and they are reluctant to accept any evidence that the war was justified as a part of the war on terror.
One of the things that is at stake in the coming election is whether the US will take on a force of insurgents and defeat them. Clearly there are some in the Democrat party who have been routed by the weak insurgency in Iraq. Their accomplices in the media help them by attempting to magnify the significance of attacks. In reality insurgents in Iraq are probably smaller in number than Klu Klux Klan members after the US Civil War. Their goal is the same, to reverse the outcome of a war they lost. For the sake of the world this insurgency too should be defeated. So far none of the remaining Democrat candidates has said anything that would indicate they would seriously prosecute the war against the insurgents. In fact, their base appears to want to lose the war with the insurgents.
Many do not know that Vietnam was a war controlled from beginning to end by liberals. When the war first started liberals controlled both the legislative and executive. Even after Nixon won election to the presidency liberal democrats still controlled congress and the purse strings. Which they often threatened to cut off if Nixon attempted decisive action against the communist and their sanctuaries.
At first the liberals were of two minds about the conduct of the war. A small minority opposed any involvement. The rest opposed the war to varying degrees, but understood that if they did nothing, the American people would throw them out of office. They then ignored the advice of the military and engaged the war in such a way to create a "quagmire." They did this by limiting the number of troops the US would put in country as well as limiting their ability to attack sanctuaries and supply lines.
Lyndon Johnson in a tape conversation with Senator Richard Russell indicated early on that he was backing a losing strategy. This was after rejecting on several occasions a more effective strategy put forward by military advisors. The losing strategy was to fight the war as an insurgency that would "show the communist that they could not win." In other words their strategy was to play for a tie.
Ironically, the US military and the CIA, successfully executed the strategy. By 1973, even the communist recognized that they could not win with their "revolutionary warfare" strategy. Despite misreporting, particularly of the Tet offensive, the communist lost every major battle with US forces.
So how do you win every battle and still lose a war. You have a strategy that is a loser. The strategy limited US forces to interdiction of supply routes by raids. Raids are by definition a transitory use of force. All that can be limited is what is hit on any given raid. The Johnson administration refused to mine the harbor at Haiphong where most of it supplies were brought in. The Dems always rejected the use of combat persisting forces that would cut the communist main supply line--the Ho Chi Minh Trail. In the early stages of the war the government and most of the reporters seem to buy into the fiction that the "Viet Cong" were an indigenous group who armed themselves by capturing government supplies.
While the communist eventually started bringing in supplies through Cambodian ports also, all their virtually all their reinforcements came down the trail. The Dems also had an irrational fetish about "controlling" the scope of the conflict and not attacking sanctuaries in Cambodia and Laos.
The liberal Dems never accepted responsibility for the mess they made in Vietnam. Instead they blamed the military and later the Nixon administration.
Since the end of the war, the Dems have a heavy dose of "quagmire" syndrome. Every potential conflict is a potential quagmire. This is one of the reasons they opposed President Reagan's attempt to get the communist out of central America as well as the first war with Iraq. After the first Iraq war, there was some belief on the part of the Dems that wars need not be a quagmire, but there was still a great reluctance to take on an insurgency or an enemy with a raiding strategy like al Qaeda. Instead of getting into a war that could be won or lost, they opted to "pop and posture" as Clinton did after the embassy bombings in Africa as well as his '98 attacks on Iraq. This had the political benefit of looking like they were doing something without making any commitment to take decisive action. The reason John Kerry and the French supported the '98 attacks is that they both knew it was a bluff. However, Saddam also knew it was a bluff so he just hunkered down and kept on doing his thing.
There is some evidence that Saddam thought the same thing would happen in 2003. This would explain in part his lack of preparation of a defense. The '98 conflict appears to stem in part from Saddam's frustration with being unable to account for all his declared WMD and a calculation that Clinton would be politically unable to react because of his impeachment. However, unlike today's liberal Dems, the Republicans supported Clinton's actions against Iraq despite the timing events.
John Kerry's vote in favor of the authorization of the use of force against Iraq and subsequent criticism of the Bush administration, suggest he favors the "pop and Posture" approach that while ineffective, can get support from France and the rest of the UN. Kerry and other liberal Dems have also criticized the administration for a "lack of postwar planning." They never say exactly what they mean by this, but it is safe to assume they are trying to take political advantage of the Saddamite insurgency. None has ever suggested how prewar planning could have prevented an insurgency or produced a reaction to it that is better than the one the US military is currently pursuing.
The media has also done a terrible job of reporting on the insurgency. It is in similar to their misreporting of the communist military defeat during the Tet offensive. By any standard, the insurgency in Iraq is weak. The insurgency is incapable of mounting a militarily significant attack that would effect the US and coalition forces ability to operate. On only two occasions have I seen reports where insurgency forces mounted attacks with units as large as a platoon, approximately 50 to 60 men. In both cases the insurgents were decisively defeated. In contrast, in Vietnam, the communist routinely operated in division size units made up of thousands of men. Have you seen any of the media critics give this perspective?
There is also a tendency on the part of much of the media to disregard or downplay evidence of al Qaeda activity in Iraq. Newsweek, for example, has been downright hostile to such evidence. While their maybe some honest skepticism, the overall picture suggest that some in the media were against the liberation of Iraq and they are reluctant to accept any evidence that the war was justified as a part of the war on terror.
One of the things that is at stake in the coming election is whether the US will take on a force of insurgents and defeat them. Clearly there are some in the Democrat party who have been routed by the weak insurgency in Iraq. Their accomplices in the media help them by attempting to magnify the significance of attacks. In reality insurgents in Iraq are probably smaller in number than Klu Klux Klan members after the US Civil War. Their goal is the same, to reverse the outcome of a war they lost. For the sake of the world this insurgency too should be defeated. So far none of the remaining Democrat candidates has said anything that would indicate they would seriously prosecute the war against the insurgents. In fact, their base appears to want to lose the war with the insurgents.
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