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04/08/2004 Archived Entry: "Sad. And damned infuriating."
Sad. And damned infuriating.
All you Republican congress-punks who were infuriated by Teddy Kennedy saying Iraq is Bush's VietNam, listen up. This is one of our brave fighting men speaking, not a senator.
Ten Iraqi insurgents and two US soldiers were killed as the marines met ferocious resistance in this restive town, several days into their offensive against Sunni Muslim fighters.The tough fight put up by insurgents in Fallujah, west of Baghdad, prompted the marine commander to make comparisons with the Vietnam War.
[...]
Throughout the day the marines inched forward block-by-block taking sniper fire and hit-and-run attacks with mortars and RPGs. A US medic said the resistance was more intense than in last spring's invasion.
[...]
After more than three days of ferocious fighting, the marines had managed to move just two kilometres (a little over a mile) through the industrial zone, which they had thought was largely abandoned.
[...]
"And this is like Hue City in Vietnam," he said, referring to the former imperial capital where in 1968 US troops faced the most ferocious street fighting of the communists' decisive Tet offensive.
[...]
Flies buzzed over the body of a middle-aged man with a mustache, shot in the neck by marines after he fired a RPG at them across the industrial wasteland of garages, factories and metal shops.
"We don't know where to move him," said a marine.
Replies: 8 people speak up
Bob Bevelaqua, on fox news, just said that we need 400,000 more troops in iraq, to replace the iraqi army that they fired (not that they would have been on our side anyway, but still...)
do we even have that kind of manpower? (i dont mean clerks and desk jockies, i mean actual soldiers) what is the size of our standing army at this point? i know its a lot smaller than it used to be. damn, if fox news is saying this, we are really fucked. really not good. expect the draft in december (if not the day after bush steals the election)
god, i hope they still cut off the draft at 27, i dont want to flee the country, i like it here (and my dad cant get me into the guard, hell he couldnt even get himself into the guard, he got drafted and went to viet nam) jesus we are fucked!
Posted by justin @ 04/08/2004 04:33 PM NY
wait, if we send even 100,000 more troups into this mess, bush will surely lose the election. he would have to be advised of the poor election strategy that maneuver would present. i may only be 33, but i remember enough of the vietnam legacy to hope that we, as a country, have at least learned that the troops are not expendable. you're right, justin, anyone that we do have left to send at this point will be clerks and desk jockies. lets hope it doesn't come to that.
Posted by cathcatz @ 04/08/2004 04:46 PM NY
Comparing Iraq to Vietnam at this point is hyperbole in the extreme. Kennedy is wrong to make the comparison the way he did. Iraq is not lost yet. When we are still there in 10 years and 50,000 american lives are lost on Iraqi soil and we have to tuck our tails and give up, then it will be a fair comparison.
I find it disrespectful to Vietnam Vets to draw that comparison. It was a debacle of yet incomparable failure over a considerably longer period of time. Lots of good men and women were wounded and killed in that crap bag, and the survivors were treated like shit on their return home. They served honorably in an utterly dishonorable conscripted action. It's not nearly as disrespectful to republicans to make this comparison as it is disrespectful to good and decent people who need to be revered for their service.
If Mr. Bush had been there, it would be disrespectful to him.
Posted by Murphy @ 04/08/2004 06:18 PM NY
...and one more thing. Making reference to past battles does not necessarily equate to comparing war to war. Commanders are taught the situations and strategies of previous battles so they may learn from it. This is not on par with Kennedy's comment.
Something about learning from history or being doomed to repeat it comes to mind...but that's another topic.
Posted by Murphy @ 04/08/2004 06:22 PM NY
iraq is clearly not viet nam. i think the main point of the comparison is to demonstrate that we are in an unwinable situation, not to draw an actual paralell. clearly we havnt lost 50,000 soldiers yet( although i thought it was closer to 70,000) and we certainly havn't killed 2 million iraqis yet. i think that the real point is, why should we? hasn't our country (and iraq even more so) suffered enough because of this misadventure? admitting that you are wrong when you are in fact wrong is not weakness, it is strenght of character, and a sign of national sanity.
the lesson that we learn from history should not be how to win wars better, that is a very poor lesson. the lesson we need to learn is how to avoid war in the first place, or else we will have very little history to learn from in the future.
and yes, i do think that it is disgracefull how viet nam vets were and are treated. my wife runs a food pantry here in chicago, and many of her homeless clients are vets who cant get help from the government, and cant function in society any more from the trauma they suffered. i dont think that anyone means any disrespect to them when they compare iraq to viet nam. much in the same way that every despotic ruler is compared to hitler, every stupid, unwinable war will always be compared to viet nam, its just the most recognizable archtype.
there is no honerable way out of this war, just as there was no honerable way out of viet nam. the outcome of any war, even a just one, is always tragedy. if we leave, thousands will die, if we stay, thousands will die. you can no more win a war than you can win an earthquake (im not sure who said that, but it wasnt me)
the fact is that iraq is our rape baby, and we are just going to have to do the time for our crimes, whether we stay, or go, we have already lost. the real question is how many of those people do we want to kill personally, and how many do we want to let die ( and how many of our troops we want to lose in the process)
Posted by justin @ 04/08/2004 07:39 PM NY
Take hime home and stuff him. A token of honor, courage, and liberty. You can pose him with his weapon just before he was shot. Better yet send him to wolfowitz or rumsfeld....chicken hawks have never had the personal opportunity to see war in "all of it's glory" Pray for his family...one more dead person who died for their beliefs
Posted by Aristophanes @ 04/09/2004 10:35 AM NY
I read an article on the Web yesterday that talked about a reporter in Iraq who came across a mass grave, filled with bodies of Iraqis killed by American forces. So, now we are the ones creating mass graves. How sad.
Conservatives, having no WMDs to justify this God-awful invasion, have been using the imagery of mass graves filled with Hussein victims to justify our invasion. Will they now acknowledge that the U.S. is the architect of mass murder of Iraqi civilians???
I do not consider this to be comparable to Viet Nam. It may be worse. Why? In Viet Nam, at least there was an army we were fighting against, although many, many civilians were killed as "collateral damage". However, in Iraq, we are not fighting an enemy army - we are fighting directly against the civilian population itself. This is a horrible turn of events and makes us all accomplices to mass murder. On this Easter weekend, may God have mercy on all of us.....
Posted by Stephen Kriz @ 04/09/2004 11:26 AM NY
I read an article on the Web yesterday that talked about a reporter in Iraq who came across a mass grave, filled with bodies of Iraqis killed by American forces. So, now we are the ones creating mass graves. How sad.
Conservatives, having no WMDs to justify this God-awful invasion, have been using the imagery of mass graves filled with Hussein victims to justify our invasion. Will they now acknowledge that the U.S. is the architect of mass murder of Iraqi civilians???
I do not consider this to be comparable to Viet Nam. It may be worse. Why? In Viet Nam, at least there was an army we were fighting against, although many, many civilians were killed as "collateral damage". However, in Iraq, we are not fighting an enemy army - we are fighting directly against the civilian population itself. This is a horrible turn of events and makes us all accomplices to mass murder. On this Easter weekend, may God have mercy on all of us.....
Posted by Stephen Kriz @ 04/09/2004 11:28 AM NY
