Nixon
Joined: 01 Dec 2005
Posts: 2602
Location: Purgatory
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| Posted: Sat Nov 18, 2006 8:58 pm Post subject: Dems aiming for Vietnam-like retreat |
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The only thing the Vietnam and Iraq Wars have in common is the left's determination to turn both conflicts into complete failures for the United States. The only difference is the enemy and the location.
Quote: Since critics always evoke Vietnam, we should carefully examine its three phases: (1) 1963-1969, a phase of constant troop increases; (2) 1970-73, a phase of a steady downsizing of the American presence as Vietnamization took hold and counterinsurgency improved; (3) 1974-5, a phase of abandonment of the South Vietnamese government, followed by the conventional victory of the Communists. The second phase was the wisest course and should be the closest to our present strategy.
One can see why our military would expect 500,000 Americans to battle a North Vietnamese army of one million, with Soviet and Chinese advisors manning batteries in the North, along with another couple of hundred thousand Viet Cong guerrillas in the South.
Even generous estimates of the number of insurgents in Iraq conclude there are about 10,000 active killers — a fraction of just the irregulars in the south of Vietnam alone. Why then, when the numerical disparities are so much more favorable to our cause than during the Vietnam War, are we, rather than our vastly outnumbered enemies, lamenting the paucity of troops? That we have not secured the country may be due to the limitations put on our soldiers rather than their number; and to our preference for conventional rather than counter-insurgency fighting.
-Victor David Hanson |
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