Progress Being Made in Iraq (NY Times)

[kluge]

<p>

Which lies are you talking about? The truth that after the Dems abandoned Vietnam like they want to do with Iraq that hundreds of thousands/millions of civilians were slaughtered? We didn’t even need to provide them troops to fight - just the aid that was needed for them to fight back the onslaught of a Soviet/Chinese funded North Vietnamese invasion.

That has to be the single most bizarre mangling of history I’ve seen on CC - and there have been some doozies! Ignoring the premise that Nixon and Ford were Democrats, the idea that the Thieu regime would have successfully held and governed South Viet Nam if we’d just given him enough money is preposterous. But it fits the two requisities of the right wing blog fantasy world: *Its the democrats fault<a href=“!”>/I</a> and everything would have been just hunky-dory if we’d just kept wading deeper and deeper into the Big Muddy.
Never mind that the reason we supposedly were in Viet Nam - to contain the spread of Communism, i.e., fighting them there so we wouldn’t have to fight them here - never came to pass after we stopped fighting. This time the sky will fall for sure!</p>

[hereshoping]

<p>Vietnam had nothing to do with “fighting them there so we wouldn’t have to fight them here.”</p>

<p>

Our purpose in Vietnam is to prevent the success of aggression. It is not conquest, it is not empire, it is not foreign bases, it is not domination. It is, simply put, just to prevent the forceful conquest of South Vietnam by North Vietnam.

</p>

<p>Lyndon Baines Johnson</p>

[fundingfather]

<p>I guess the Sec of Defense has mangled the history as well. You should do some reading on the era - conventional wisdom is not always correct - especially when it comes from the media that was mostly responsible for the turning of public opinion against the war - like the way they turned the Tet offensive into a defeat for the US when it was actually the complete opposite, a disaster for the Viet Cong and NVA.

The truth about Vietnam that revisionist historians conveniently forget is that the United States had not lost when we withdrew in 1973. In fact, we grabbed defeat from the jaws of victory two years later when Congress cut off the funding for South Vietnam that had allowed it to continue to fight on its own. Over the four years of Nixon’s first term, I had cautiously engineered the withdrawal of the majority of our forces while building up South Vietnam’s ability to defend itself. My colleague and friend Henry Kissinger, meanwhile, had negotiated a viable agreement between North and South Vietnam, which was signed in January 1973. It allowed for the United States to withdraw completely its few remaining troops and for the United States and the Soviet Union to continue funding their respective allies in the war at a specified level. Each superpower was permitted to pay for replacement arms and equipment. Documents released from North Vietnamese historical files in recent years have proved that the Soviets violated the treaty from the moment the ink was dry, continuing to send more than $1 billion a year to Hanoi. The United States barely stuck to the allowed amount of military aid for two years, and that was a mere fraction of the Soviet contribution.</p>

<p>Yet during those two years, South Vietnam held its own courageously and respectably against a better-bankrolled enemy. Peace talks continued between the North and the South until the day in 1975 when Congress cut off U.S. funding. The Communists walked out of the talks and never returned. Without U.S. funding, South Vietnam was quickly overrun. We saved a mere $297 million a year and in the process doomed South Vietnam, which had been ably fighting the war without our troops since 1973.

<a href=“http://www.foreignaffairs.org/20051101faessay84604-p10/melvin-r-laird/iraq-learning-the-lessons-of-vietnam.html[/url]”>http://www.foreignaffairs.org/20051101faessay84604-p10/melvin-r-laird/iraq-learning-the-lessons-of-vietnam.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

[fundingfather]

<p>“Never mind that the reason we supposedly were in Viet Nam - to contain the spread of Communism”</p>

<p>Actually, our involvemet in Vietnam is credited for keeping countries like Indonesia from going communist.</p>

[weenie]

<p><a href=“http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2007/08/01/analysis_says_war_could_cost_1_trillion/[/url]”>http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2007/08/01/analysis_says_war_could_cost_1_trillion/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>

Analysis says war could cost $1 trillion
Budget office sees effect on taxpayers for decade
By Bryan Bender, Globe Staff | August 1, 2007</p>

<p>WASHINGTON – The war in Iraq could ultimately cost well over a trillion dollars – at least double what has already been spent – including the long-term costs of replacing damaged equipment, caring for wounded troops, and aiding the Iraqi government, according to a new government analysis…</p>

<p>…Those costs…are far more than US officials advertised when Congress gave President Bush the authority to launch the invasion in March 2003.</p>

<p>At the time, the White House and then-defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld predicted a quick, decisive victory and counted on Iraqi oil revenues to pay for the war. And when Lawrence Lindsey, one of Bush’s top budget advisers, estimated in 2003 that the entire undertaking could cost as much as $200 billion, he was fired…

</p>

<p>When I heard this story on CNN tonight it made me sick. Imagine what we could have spent that money on. I’ve never really thought much about impeachment before, but this puts me over the edge.</p>

[conyat]

<p>hereshoping, you’re right Vietnam wasn’t about the enemy following us home. Neither is Iraq.</p>

<p>In both cases, politicians claimed it was about the enemy following us home in order to justify what was otherwise unjustifiable:</p>

<p>Lyndon Baines Johnson:</p>

<p>

“If we allow Vietnam to fall, tomorrow we’ll be fighting in Hawaii, and next week in San Francisco.”

</p>

<p>Have you really never heard of the Domino Theory and how it was used to scare Americans into supporting the Vietnam war?</p>

[BedHead]

<p>

When I heard this story on CNN tonight it made me sick. Imagine what we could have spent that money on. I’ve never really thought much about impeachment before, but this puts me over the edge.

</p>

<p>And even Pollack and O’Hanlon admit that on the political front where the real progress must now be made is far away from resolved. Should we bet another $1 trillion and the lives of another 3,500 Americans on what was, in the beginning, a war sold on false premises and muddled thinking?</p>

[BedHead]

<p>

Actually, our involvemet in Vietnam is credited for keeping countries like Indonesia from going communist.

</p>

<p>Having studied Indonesia politics in depth, as well as Southeast Asian politics through this era, this is the most ridiculous poppycock I have heard in a long time. Vietnam was a distant sideshow in the face of the Indonesian military and the Ford Foundation-funded Berkeley Mafia. Talk about writing us into the drama in a ridiculously self-serving way. Last time I checked General Suharto was Indonesian, not American, and Indonesia is not located in the same spot with the same population that is Vietnam.</p>

[hereshoping]

<p>A bit of hyperbole, there. As it happens, I don’t remember “communists” attacking our country. The “domino theory,” right or wrong, is quite different from the situation we are in today.</p>

[BedHead]

<p>

A bit of hyperbole, there. As it happens, I don’t remember “communists” attacking our country. The “domino theory,” right or wrong, is quite different from the situation we are in today.

</p>

<p>But the same brand fear that has your panties in a wad about Iraq was similarly and fraudulently or hyperbolically stirred up to justify the war in Vietnam: “if we don’t fight them there, we’ll have to fight to defend our mainland here against their invasion.” Yes, on 9/11, terrorists did something terrible here – but it had nothing to do with Iraq.</p>

[hereshoping]

<p>Well, yes, that’s your opinion. Many others’ opinions, McCain’s and Lieberman’s included, differ.</p>

[fundingfather]

<p>

When the war became unpopular in America during the late 1960s, Halberstam, Sheehan, and Karnow stopped expressing support for the US defense of South Vietnam. They ridiculed the principal American rationale for war – the so-called domino theory, which predicted that the fall of South Vietnam would lead to the fall of the other countries in the region. When many of the dominoes did not fall after South Vietnam fell in 1975, they held it up as proof that they were right. </p>

<p>Implicit in their argument was the assumption that Asia’s international politics were essentially frozen in time between US intervention in 1965 and the end of the war in 1975. But the policies and capabilities of China and many of the region’s other countries changed dramatically during that decade, and in considerable measure as a result of American intervention in Vietnam. </p>

<p>A variety of old and new sources from the communist side confirm what most Southeast Asian leaders knew then: In 1965, China and North Vietnam firmly intended to collaborate in knocking over the dominoes once they finished off South Vietnam – an ambition they no longer had in 1975. </p>

<p>The military leaders of Indonesia, the most important Southeast Asian domino, informed the US in February 1965 that their future willingness to stand up to the pro-Communist President Sukarno and the massive Indonesian Communist Party would depend upon America’s actions in Vietnam. </p>

<p>“President Johnson should learn to use his power and should hit North Vietnam hard,” said General Marjadi in explaining why American inaction was discouraging the generals from taking a firm anticommunist position. “The prize for victory in Vietnam is all of Asia. Asia respects power, and has no respect for weakness or for strong people afraid to act.” Indonesian generals later said that US intervention inspired them to oust Sukarno and work to destroy the Indonesian Communist Party in late 1965. </p>

<p>These are just a few of the numerous cases where the writings of Halberstam, Sheehan, and Karnow got it wrong. The record shows they were wrong, as well, to portray North Vietnam’s revolutionary leader, Ho Chi Minh, as a xenophobic nationalist who put national interests ahead of global communism’s interests. They were wrong to accuse America’s military leaders of employing faulty military tactics. And they were wrong to claim that the US could not have won the war.

<a href=“http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/0122/p09s01-coop.html[/url]”>http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/0122/p09s01-coop.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

[conyat]

<p>

But the same brand fear that has your panties in a wad about Iraq was similarly and fraudulently or hyperbolically stirred up to justify the war in Vietnam: “if we don’t fight them there, we’ll have to fight to defend our mainland here against their invasion.”

</p>

<p>What’s worse, is now they’re trying to re-write history to pretend the “fight them over here” meme was never used to justify Vietnam. Sad.</p>

[bethievt]

<p>Always enough money for prisons and war; never enough for health care or education.</p>

[weenie]

<p>Imagine if we had decided to spend one trillion dollars on developing an alternative energy industry…</p>

[conyat]

<p>Bush is now saying the surge alone will cost 40 billion dollars. In January, the neocons assured citizens and Congress that it would only be about 5.6 billion. Already nearly 800% of what the costs were supposed to be. Would you trust these people to manage a popsicle stand?</p>

[hereshoping]

<p>Hillary might have to cancel her $28 billion universal preschool project.</p>

[conyat]

<p>The $28 billion dollar figure (assuming it’s correct) won’t be added to the federal budget. It’s a pay as you go. </p>

<p>

Clinton said she would fund the program by cutting more than 500,000 private contractors from government payrolls.

</p>

<p>And the economic benefits outweigh the costs:</p>

<p>

According to the National Institute for Early Education Research, only 800,000 of the country’s estimated 4 million 4-year-old children are enrolled in pre-kindergarten. Clinton said studies have shown that $1 invested early saves $7 in later payments for those who end up on programs like welfare or in prison.

</p>

<p><a href=“http://www.thenewhampshireprimary.com/news/2007_05_23_news_1.html[/url]”>http://www.thenewhampshireprimary.com/news/2007_05_23_news_1.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>It’s not just HRC saying it either:</p>

<p><a href=“http://www.epi.org/content.cfm/book_enriching[/url]”>http://www.epi.org/content.cfm/book_enriching&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>According to the researchers at the Economic Policy Institute, </p>

<p>

Investments in ECD programs pay for themselves over time by generating very high rates of return for participants, the non-participating public, and government. Good programs produce $3 or more in present value benefits for every dollar of investment. While participants and their families get part of the total benefits, the benefits to the rest of the public and government can be larger and, on their own, tend to far outweigh the costs of these programs. Thus, it is advantageous even for non-participating taxpayers to help pay for these programs.

</p>

<p>

Children in first, second, and third grade who had attended Head Start were com-pared to classmates in the same grades who had not attended Head Start…the non-Head Start comparison group had a higher percentage of special education placements…the non-Head Start comparison group had a higher percentage of children who were retained in grade.

</p>

<p>Paying for kids to repeat a grade and to have special education from 2nd or 3rd grade till age 22 costs more than a year of pre-K. A lot more.</p>

<hr>

<p>Unfortunately, the trillion we’re spending on the neocons’ adventure in resume burnishing, we’ll never get back. And that figure will probably treble when the costs of the disability claims are added in.</p>

[drb]

<p>

As it happens, I don’t remember “communists” attacking our country.

Neither did any Iraqis.</p>

[hereshoping]

<p>In a nutshell:</p>

<p><a href=“http://www.cfr.org/publication/13073/mccain_on_iraq_policy.html[/url]”>http://www.cfr.org/publication/13073/mccain_on_iraq_policy.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;