<p>But some Saudis did and look who gets the big weapon deal.</p>
<p>It’s fascinating to watch how the right can completely change direction, 180 degrees, and the faithful water carriers don’t miss a beat. WMD’s were in fact the excuse for the Iraq war; when that turned out to be phony the water carriers managed to convince themselves that it never was the reason. The domino theory was in fact the essence of the justification for the Viet Nam war; once it was proven to be a myth the water carriers painlessly changed their view of history. How does the right wing propaganda machine do it? These people aren’t stupid. But they can believe directly contradictory things with only a few weeks of indoctrination. It’s straight out of 1984. Amazing.</p>
<p>FF: Did it ever occur to you that Mel Laird might be just the tiniest bit interested in, say, shading things to make him look like less of a bonehead?</p>
<p>I don’t understand what “winning” would look like. Why would we have “won” if Vietnam had stayed divided in two. When we talk about “Communism” how can we be talking about anything but economic dominance? And why is propping up some puppet regime that supports our policies just as long as it needs arms “winning?” </p>
<p>How will any war protect us from rogue terrorist tactics? The 9/11 plan wasn’t exactly high tech and did not need the support of a government to succeed. War changes. Armies don’t line up and shoot at each other anymore. </p>
<p>We are creating a noose that the more we struggle, the tighter it gets. If we spend so much money that our society begins collapsing how is this winning? How does it benefit society to talk snidely about providing Head Start to disadvantaged four year olds?</p>
<p>Thr irony is that in many ways 9/11 did succeed by giving the right wing the fodder it needed to gain consensus for social repression: Patriot Act, Guantanamo, etc. Economic erosion is just the next step. A principle of Ju Jitzu (sp?) is to use the enemy’s strength against itself. It certainly is working.</p>
<p>What would “winning” in Iraq look like? A puppet state? How long would it last? How long was Noriega our man in Panama? Or Sadaam himself for that matter? </p>
<p>It seems to me that for many winning means always getting our own way, that our wealth and military might entitle us to this. I do understand that nations position themselves for their own economic advantage, but then why the self-righteous heavy breathing and sense of holy entitlement?</p>
<p>After 9/11 the most intellectually challenged of my students talked endlessly about beating up all Arabs. In one class a kid of Korean ancestry who had sustained racist smirks and sneers called these kids racist and blasted them for their cowardice. Turns out he was being deployed to Afghanistan. He said it was his fervent hope that he would not have to kill any Afghans. Seems to me our foreign policy could learn something from him.</p>
<p>Fundamentalist Islam and the terror tactics that sometimes accompany it are serious threats. It doesn’t seem to me that we are developing policy to deal with this threat. I think economic objectives and outmoded ideas of nation states are blinding leadership to the real problem, and this is preventing any real solutions. Again, what would winning look like? For me, one thing it would mean would be never having to send my son to Iraq. Another thing it would mean is having enough money to educate those head start kids. It would also mean starting real dialogue with people who do not share my ideas but do share my world. It would also mean the end to unnecessary deaths in Iraq, both civilian and military. Last, it would entail some political solution so Iraqis could stop killing each other. I don’t see how any of my goals are being addressed.</p>
<p>As a New Yorker, I certainly understand the threat that terrorism poses. As an asthmatic working 15 miles from Ground Zero my breathing was compromised for weeks. However, I don’t think any outcome in Iraq is going to prevent terrorist attacks. To address those I think we need to take an entirely different tack.</p>
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<p>Many studies have shown that the advantages of Head Start are lost by third or fourth grade. It’s my opinion that our present federal and state-managed public education system should get its k-12 house in order before it attempts to regulate pre-k education. The $28 billion, however she plans to get it, can be better spent in our failing k-12 districts. I’m all for all kids being well-educated; however, I disagree with Hillary’s various education ideas. I’m against her public service academy plan also.</p>
<p>“FF: Did it ever occur to you that Mel Laird might be just the tiniest bit interested in, say, shading things to make him look like less of a bonehead?”</p>
<p>Of course it did, but I prefer to have my thinking shaped by sound logic supported by facts than by those who stubbornly cling to a group-think point of view and call contradictory views “bizarre” or “ridiculous poppycock”. When the sound logic is backed up by analysis done by others, it gains even more weight. You should try it some time.</p>
<p>“Many studies have shown that the advantages of Head Start are lost by third or fourth grade. It’s my opinion that our present federal and state-managed public education system should get its k-12 house in order before it attempts to regulate pre-k education.”</p>
<p>Couldn’t have said it better myself. And btw, in case one should wonder, Why 3rd or 4th Grade? Parents of the Head Start population often have educations that are essentially equivalent to Fourth Grade. That’s just the baseline effect. Secondary effects are the absence of an education focus in the home, absence of continuing education of the adult(s), etc. Massive outside intervention programs have temporary effects (overall) unless the parental education is simultaneously addressed.</p>
<p>“I’m against her public service academy plan also.”</p>
<p>Why?</p>
<p>Today’s news out of Iraq……</p>
<p>Sunni Faction Quits Iraqi Cabinet</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/02/world/middleeast/02iraq.html?th=&emc=th&pagewanted=print[/url]”>http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/02/world/middleeast/02iraq.html?th=&emc=th&pagewanted=print</a></p>
<p>So anyway, two non-Democrats - with very different views on the situation -have now contributed $200 for medical aid for Iraqi children. (Thank you, FundingFather!) This is something we agree on.</p>
<p>Can we now interest any Democrats in joining us?</p>
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<p>Written by a person who believes that Vietnam was a winnable war, depending only on military and not political victory (same problem as in Iraq) and who believes in the domino effect which history has clearly repudiated but which is now being used to bolster (incredibly inappropriately I might add) similarly mistaken notions about Iraq.</p>
<p>American’s actions in Vietnam did not loom so large in Indonesia. I don’t care what your right wing message machine, historical revisionists think. US actions were a sideshow. General Suharto, a powerful and savvy operator within Indonesia’s army and ambitious climber, did not need US permission to take on Sukarno or to fulfill his personal or political ambitions. Nobody who has any understanding of Indonesia would put US actions in Vietnam in a position of great centrality to motivating what Suharto did. </p>
<p>There is probably no end to people in Asia would try to flatter our own notion of our power and try to salve our sense of defeat from the poorly conceived Vietnam (or Iraq for that matter). Vietnam’s loss did not achieve much except to show Asians a real limitation to US power. It was not lost for lack of stamina; it was lost well before a Democratic Congress decided to pull the plug on a misguided effort. </p>
<p>The reason why your right-wing message machine is pushing this line about Vietnam is they are setting themselves up to make the same point about Iraq, another war which is already lost but which right-wing apologists will spend the next half century arguing was lost owing to a failure of will by people on the left. Contrast the rosy notion of “we’ll be greeted as liberators” and “Mission Accomplished” to how this war has actually gone; the failure was with those who conceived and planned this war. The fact that the war didn’t follow this rosy path is not the fault of observers who pointed out these failures; it will always lie with those who didn’t conceive of or contingency plan for the long slog that this war has become. Maybe if they had dealt honestly with the possibility that we would be in a war that has already lasted longer than our involvement in WWII, we either wouldn’t have gone or we’d have a populace perhaps that was more prepared to try to press on in spite of a Mission Failed.</p>
<p>Fundingfather, you are really impressionable. You should develop independent judgement. CC is a good venue for you; choose a college and go back to school and learn something.</p>
<p>^^^^ Just to put a fine point on points about Suharto’s motivation. Sukarno’s disastrous managing of the Indonesia economy had put the country in a crisis which Suharto was motivated to resolve. This was a lot closer to Suharto’s motivations than any geopolitical Cold War logic and the Vietnam War; that is, on the ground failure by a Socialist ideologue causing a crisis leading to intervention.</p>
<p>A group of economists trained at UC Berkeley funded by the Ford Foundation helped stabilize the country’s economy. They were called the Berkeley Mafia.</p>
<p><a href=“http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berkeley_Mafia[/url]”>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berkeley_Mafia</a></p>
<p>The U.S. didn’t lose the war in Viet Nam. The Vietnamese won. Sure, the U.S. could have killed a couple of million more, and delayed the Vietnamese victory a bit longer. But the Vietnamese would have won eventually. The U.S. lost the hearts and minds of the people, and no amount of military action was going to regain them. </p>
<p>That’s the real parallel with Iraq. Clinton murdered a million, half of them children (the equivalent of 12,000,000 children in the U.S.) There isn’t an extended family in Iraq today outside of Kurdish territory that didn’t have a child killed by Bill Clinton. Then came the war, which ended in 2003. Then the hostile, aggressive occupation. Then Bremer decided to divide up the government along ethnic/religious lines (which was wholly unnecessary). Then two million people - including the most secular, pro-Western, potentially pro-U.S., most professional (doctors, lawyers, engineers, teachers) - became refugees, and will curse the U.S. with their dying breaths. Then the U.S. started ramping up Al-Qaeda, which didn’t exist prior to the occupation, providing them with weapons through Saudi Arabia (the vast majority of Al-Qaeda weapons are of American origin), and then began to back the Sunni warlords. Then they tortured people. Then they began to erect walls in Baghdad neighborhoods. Then they began to “train” the military that turns around and uses the weapons against the Americans, so common, that now the U.S. is more willing to arm militias than the puppet government they set up. </p>
<p>The story ends badly.</p>
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<p>We disagree only in terms of semantics. I share your view about all the rest, on the basic facts of what happened. I would only say that the war had already been lost by the US long before we actually left the country. I think essentially you are saying the same thing, but would only mark it all differently.</p>
<p>And given the facts of what you point out about Iraq, for all useful purposes, we have lost. We won the war, but have lost the occupation. Resolutions will come in the political arena.</p>
<p>From post 64….”Many studies have shown that the advantages of Head Start are lost by third or fourth grade.”</p>
<p>Can you direct me to these studies so that I can read them for myself???</p>
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<p>We are only getting somewhere with regard to the lower death toll for our soldier (the same can’t be said for Iraqis) due to our (belated) change in strategy of letting the Sunnis manage their own security instead of forcing them to accept the Shia-dominated police/military.</p>
<p>The vast majority of Iraqi Sunni insurgents were fighting us b/c they saw us helping the Shia increase their power over not only Shia neighorhoods, but Sunni areas as well (yeah, they still don’t like the fact that we are over there, but they hate the Shias more than they hate us).</p>
<p>We should have adopted this strategy from the start (instead of wasting 4 years) - after all, the Iraqi Sunnis really have no love for the al Qaeda-affiliated foreigners who kill anyone who disagrees with their ultra-orthodox positions.</p>
<p>The problem is that this “stability” has done absolutely NOTHING to get the Shias and Sunnis to work together.</p>
<p>Btw, Bedhead is right with regard to how the situation in Vietnam had virtually no impact on Indonesia.</p>
<p>Vietnam was a blunder due to our leaders looking at the situation through their “cold war” glasses instead of looking at it from the viewpoint of the Vietnamese.</p>
<p>To the Viets (and Ho Chi Minh) - it was first and foremost a war of independence/nationalism from foreign interlopers (Wilson and Truman should have never turned away Ho Chi Minh when he asked for help with regard to independence for Vietnam - rejected, he turned to the Soviets).</p>
<p>Furthermore, there wasn’t a Communist hegemony - the Viets repelled a Chinese invasion shortly after we left.</p>
<p>With regard to Diem - unfortunately, he was simply one of the many - in a long line of corrupt, incompetent dictators that our govt. has supported - much to the chagrin of the local populace (it’s amazing how our leaders seem INCAPABLE of learning from history and the mistakes of their predecessors).</p>
<p>How are we getting somewhere when 72 families in July welcomed home their loved ones in body bags? Are we supposed to be happy that it wasn’t over 100, as it has been in past months? Some progress!</p>
<p>The new slogan of the donkey party: “Good news is bad news. Bad news is good news”.</p>
<p><a href=“http://cato.org/research/education/articles/prebenefits.html[/url]”>http://cato.org/research/education/articles/prebenefits.html</a></p>
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<p>In my evaluation of Hillary’s universal preschool program, I prefer to be guided by the facts, rather than feel-good prescriptions that don’t work, even if it results in my being called a big ol’ meany. :rolleyes: This is what I meant by the definition of insanity (and often liberalism) as doing the same thing over and over with the same (lack of) results. To make these decisions based on feelings, rather than the evidence, is simply irrational.</p>
<p>Btw, if you don’t trust this article because it was put out by the Cato Institute, just do a few googles and you’ll find a dozen studies supporting the ones mentioned above.</p>
<p>Yes, you can mini. PM me the link if it’s not to much trouble, or just the web address is fine.</p>