Reply #12: You did really good [View All]

[Goldmund]

Only two things I didn't like:

1) In the "How long could Americans politically sustain the support?" segment, you should have called him on "the American people could stomach Vietnam for a decade" followed by the even more proposterous "the American people could stomach the defense of Korea for 50 years". One good point was made by one of the hosts, "there was no Vietnam before Vietnam"; another would be to point out that 6 months after the Gulf of Tonkin, there was nowhere near the level of opposition to the war that there is 6 months after the beginning of the Iraq mess, or the level of suspicion of the respective motives for military action. As for Korea, well, the "small" difference is that there isn't a flow of casualties nor perpetual armed chaos in Korea. In short, the political climate in reference to the present situation is completely incomparable to early Vietnam or to Korea.

2) The "we should abolish 'exit strategy' from the dictionary" comment, justified by "war is unpredictable" rhetoric. The response to that could have been "OK, let's abolish 'exit strategy'. Should we abolish "objective" too?". Yes, war is unpredictable, but the specific course of war shouldn't have anything to do with the necessity to state an objective. Every winnable war was won after its stated objective was accomplished. When is it, exactly, that the US has accomplished its objectives in Iraq?