Robert Scheer: Turning the Corner Into Madness (Truthdig)

[Up2Late]

(This is a truly GREAT piece, I don't know how we all missed it. If you've never read or heard of Robert Scheer, you should. And Check it out, it's got 36463 comments so far!)

Robert Scheer: Turning the Corner Into Madness

Posted on Oct 31, 2006

By Robert Scheer

The dire predictions President Bush is making about “cutting and running” from Iraq are almost identical to the horrifically inaccurate ones Presidents Johnson and Nixon made about Vietnam.

Every time I hear President Bush railing against those who would “cut and run” in Iraq instead of pursuing “victory,” as he does almost daily, I think back to similar claims being made for the Vietnam debacle when I reported from Saigon in the mid-’60s. Back then, the U.S. troop presence was lower and casualties fewer than now in Iraq, but the carnage, on all sides, would escalate for the next decade, as we waited miserably for the corner to be turned.

Then, as now, calls for setting a timetable for an orderly withdrawal were rejected as emboldening our enemy to attack America. Instead of a dignified withdrawal, we plunged ever deeper into the quagmire, leaving 59,000 U.S. troops and 3.4 million Indochinese dead as tribute to our stupidity. Finally, there was nothing to do but “cut and run” in the most ignominious fashion. With our U.S. personnel being lifted by helicopter from roofs near our embassy, it seemed like a low point for U.S. influence, and there were dire predictions of communism’s global dominance—just as there is today for the “Islamo-fascist” bogeyman the president has seized upon.

Those predictions, however, proved dead wrong. Communism did not advance as a worldwide force after our defeat in Vietnam. On the contrary, a victorious communist-run Vietnam soon went to war with the China-backed communists of Cambodia—overthrowing Pol Pot’s evil Khmer Rouge—and with communist China itself, in a bloody border war.

(more at link) <http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/200601031_robert_scheer/>

[texpatriot2004]

1. Stop the Madness, IMPEACH * nm

[Demeter]

2. Bush's Buddies Want Those Oil Fields--And They Don't Want to Pay for Them

so like the moron who grabs too big a handful and can't pull his hand back out of the jar, they're going to lose it all. And more.

If there is any balance of power in this world, the oil robbers are going down big time. This isn't the Gay Nineties with the unchecked robber barons, much as the GOP tried to bring back those "good ole days".

[Up2Late]

3. kick n/t

:kick: