Vietnam 30 years later - Any lessons learned ?

[EVDebs]

My prior post relating to the last ambassador Graham A. Martin

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=132&topic_id=1753425&mesg_id=1753425

shows that an established 'intelligence' effort doesn't guarantee success.

What ARE the lessons of Vietnam ? The Gulf of Tonkin incident, which provided pretext for the war, was a hoax; We learned that the government can and will lie to us (this merges with the revelations about the JFK assassination); We learn that 'the best and brightest' are not really the brightest guys in the room; That new rifles like the M-16 need to be pre-tested in the battlefield conditions to be used in FIRST; That the DoD functions under groupthink sometimes; That the Powell Doctrine is NECESSARY...

What else did we learn ?

[Fire Walk With Me]

1. 1. Make sure that the public doesn't have any idea of the cost in lives

Eliminate the ability to publicise photos or video of dying or suffering US soldiers. Create a virtual reality of flashing lights and impossible-to-find bad guys. Count the money.

[EVDebs]

3. They seem to have learned that one. I remember reading about

people on Bay Area buses on the Nimitz Freeway who were sitting up high enough to look down into the vans carrying flag-draped coffins. Some local writers commented on it, I think Herb Caen (the great local gossip columnist who was very antiwar).

I was so scared that the war was going to keep going...even had a guy in my dorm drafted just prior to Kissinger's 'peace is at hand' comments.

Just today someone in the paper filed a FOIA to get photos of the war dead coming home.

[DURHAM D]

2. The only lesson learned is that we have to learn the lesson over

and over again. No collective retainage.

[dogday]

4. Don't try to protest for peace if you are going to run for President?

[Jacobin]

6. Actually, that was the main reason I voted for Kerry

Because I was protesting Viet Nam, too and had friends killed there for nothing.

Have you signed up yet?

Your president says things are going great in IraqNam, Perhaps you'd like to go help out now that things are so much safer.

[dogday]

19. Actually I voted for Kerry

Was being sarcastic because of the way the republicans did him for trying to bring peace to this country. Bush is not my President and please don't try to put me there.

[Nikki Stone 1]

16. Yes.

That is exactly right.

[Jacobin]

5. Come up with really fun names to describe blowing up human beings:

Like ShockNAwe (tm), with lots of neat banners on the tv screens, marching bands, patriotic calls to arms, (please heavily include the democrats......most will come right along for the ride).....

[Fire Walk With Me]

8. "Shock and Awe"

1. The military gets to move inventory and order new kit, and also demonstrate the latest technology to potential buyers.

2. Halliburton and others get to move in and rebuild everything AGAIN (a closed circle, as Doonesbury pondered).

The military and intelligence and construction folks watch all of it like a fourth of july celebration built entirely out of cash. Oooh, Ahhh.

[Journeyman]

7. Danziger has a good take on this. . .

[laugle]

9. Can 't win.....can't lose.......can't leave

We said "NEvER AGAIN" and here we are....With a moron for a president and a PNAC agenda....when will we ever learn, oh when will we ever learn...

[gizmo1979]

10. It's funny because W's dad knew the lesson

of Vietnam.Colin Powell Knew the lessons of Vietnam.So why is it no one taught junior the lessons of Vietnam?

[EVDebs]

11. "Last resort...exit strategy...public support...overwhelming force"

From the Powell Doctrine:

"Essentially, the Doctrine expresses that military action should be used only as a last resort and only if there is a clear risk to national security by the intended target; the force, when used, should be overwhelming and disproportionate to the force used by the enemy; there must be strong support for the campaign by the general public; and there must be a clear exit strategy from the conflict in which the military is engaged."

www.pbs.org/newshour/extra/teachers/ lessonplans/iraq/powelldoctrine_short.html

And GHW Bush and Brent Scowcroft's rationale for NOT going into Iraq in 1991 at http://themoderntribune.com/george_bush,_sr__bush_41_1998_quote_book_reasons_why_not_to_go_into_iraq.htm

[omega minimo]

12. Yeah they learned Don't show the real war on TV at dinnertime

Back in the day when families sat down to dinner and the carnage was all over the news.

Oh yeah, and buy up all possible media outlets to be run from a centralized network.

Remember Bush War I? The censored war, the "clinical" precision attacks, the euphemistic doublespeak (now called "framing"). It wasn't that long ago. They perfected the craft and groomed the public to swallow whole Bush War II.

Now the generations raised on censorship and videogames are creating the censorship to be unreal and playing the videogames for real.

[kineneb]

13. No. current batch making same stupid mistakes

Never let politicans run a war. They will always screw it up. Listen to your generals and military. If they say it can't be done, stay home! Sheeesh. I was a kid then I and I figured it out.

"hip deep in the big muddy and the damn fool says push on"
-thank you Pete Seeger

[NinetySix]

14. Lessons to be learned from Viet Nam

First, there never was a Domino Effect.

Second, 50,000+ lives are worth more than saving face.

Third, if you want to fight an indiginous people on their own territory, you'd better be sure to give them an adequate suply of smallpox-infested blankets first.

Fourth, a nationalist movement which has already spent decades and a great deal of blood fighting several other imperialist powers (e.g., China, Japan, France) is unlikely to make conciliatory noises, no matter how much you bomb them.

And last, to effectively subdue such a movement in a foreign nation you must, absolutely must, resort to genocidal tactics. If you don't have the stomach for a good genocide, you'd better leave imperialism to the pros.

What do you think the Iraqis, who actually remember history, have learned?

[Lexingtonian]

15. okay, I'll play

1. Don't fight an Industrial Age war about ideology in a feudal/agrarian country, especially if it is also hugh, jungle-covered, wet, dusty, and full of swamps. The jungles and swamps aka rice paddies end up winning, hands down, and the native people invariably end up annoyed and the victims.

2. After losing the contest for and getting a massive, ego-damaging, scare from Cuba, a lot of Americans wanted to retaliate and defeat The Commies mano-a-mano. Never mind that Communism wasn't actually what Marx had talked about, or Capitalism (American style) wasn't really what Adam Smith had written about.

The United States was a colonial immigrant society that- it will seem truly bizarre to Americans of the future- considered itself the elite bit of Western Europe. It had just seen the ancient existential danger of Europe, the Asian Menace their ancestors knew (the Huns, Tartars, Mongols, Magyars, Awars, Turks, etc), eyeball to eyeball in the form of the Asian Face of the Russians. And the military methods and forms of might of the Japanese, 'North' Koreans, and Chinese in the previous 20 years.

3. The Sixties and Seventies were a geopolitically insane period. In the form of Nixon the country elected a fellow to lead it who had an appropriate form of mild insanity that made it possible for him to tolerate the situation better than saner people. The U.S. military brass conformed to the insanity, and its troops adapted to it, and the True Believers did too.

4. Yes, the present business in Iraq is analogous. I don't need to spell out the parallels fully, do I?

[Adelante]

17. Don't invade a country that hasn't attacked yours nt

[dbt]

18. Congre$$ hasn't learned a damn thing.

They can still be lied into giving up their war-making powers to clueless presidents (elected or otherwise).