Comments on: When War Seems Unwinnable: Why Tet Matters

By: schnick

schnick — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

csmret:

I didn’t serve, for whatever that is worth. And I am no fan of McCain as a politician. But it is my understanding that McCain, while a prisoner, behaved in a truly courageous and heroic manner despite brutal torture and subhuman conditions.

I would not want to take that away from him nor dismiss it. As you point out, there is nothing de facto heroic about flying and dropping napalm and exfoliants on peasants. But faced with mano a mano brutality, McCain behaved much as we would wish an American officer to.

McCain was offerred release because of his father’s status, and refused until those men who had been captured before him were released. "…McCain was finally released from captivity on March 15, 1973, having been a POW for almost an extra five years due to his refusal to accept the out-of-sequence repatriation offer…"

-{From wikipedia article}

It is for this behavior and sacrifice that I consider McCain a hero.

The fact that as a politician he is a complete wanker is a completely different beast.

By: observer

observer — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

I wasn’t in Vietnam but my older brother was a Marine Lt. Straight from college to Qua. Va. to Vietnam. At 21 he went thinking he was doing his duty as a man and an American. I followed the war thru his letters for a year. I remember the exact one that made me realize all illusions of any victory or even just cause were gone and his fight was to keep as many of his men alive as possible.

When he came home he gave away his uniforms, his three purple hearts, his 2 bronze stars and his silver star. The only thing he would ever pick up a weapon for again or let his two sons fight against would be an invasion of the US proper.

Vietnam showed us what our government was and made us rightful cynics.

By: gingershot

gingershot — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

great article and terrific commentaries above -
Reading the article I was struck by the similarities between the neocon and Israeli-type propaganda explaining ‘why’ Islamic extremists are fighting against our neocon/sraeli-coordinated policies towards the Arab world and especially Palestine. The whole overarching Israeli and Neocon racist schtick

By: henrypelifian

henrypelifian — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Mr. Karnow shows how little our leaders understood about the world by getting into the Vietnam War. Now we have a another generation of poorly informed elected leaders and their advisors whose poor judgment equals those of the Vietnam era. Maybe that maximum that people tend to rise to the height of their incompetence in an organizational setting is true. The irony us that our government spend trillions of dollars and apparently accomplish so little in domestic and foreign affairs. Political and governmental accountability may no longer be operating in a significant fashion. Executive branch political fabrication from Vietnam to Iraq has not changed either.

I was in Vietnam during the Tet Offensive in Qui Nhon province and it was an unforgettable.

http://uniskywriter.blogspot.com/

By: archstanton

archstanton — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

"In Iraq, by contrast, we face a complicated diversity of ethic and religious sects, each striving to promote its own agenda."

Wrong, Stan. "We" face responsibility for a bloodbath bordering on genocide as a direct consequence of an ill-conceived imperialist scheme to control the planet’s oil spigot.

"Even if they could be curbed, we would be jeopardized by global terrorism, whose tentacles reach from Indonesia and the Philippines to North Africa into Europe and American itself."

The tentacles you’re referring to are the pentagon’s–the largest sponsor of terrorism in the world today (see below).

"…and I knew that I could never again raise my voice against the violence of the oppressed in the ghettos without having first spoken clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today: my own government."

–MLK "Riverside" speech

"So Iraq is a sideshow compared to that danger."

So about a million Iraqi deaths are a sideshow? Stalin would have loved that sentiment.

"And little we learned in Vietnam can avert it."

"We" learned nothing in Vietnam. But my hunch is that "we" will finally learn something in Iraq.

BTW, I’m sensing something missing in your little piece. You forgot to wax poetic and metaphysical about the awesome nobility of "our" intentions. My advice is that you consider retirement.

By: elkidsandiego

elkidsandiego — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

If there is one thing that I have learned in all my years of reading and studying history and politics, it is that nations DO NOT learn from their mistakes. The attitude of the U.S. government is, almost always, that Americans are somehow inherently better, smarter, more moral and have God backing us up, simply because we are Americans. Our national hubris has made us one of the most feared, yet least respected, countries on the face of the earth. Almost all of the Republican AND Democratic representatives in our government are still touting the status quo in terms of our foreign policy and so I am sad to believe that there will be no major changes in the forseeable future. In a nation with almost 300 million citizens, it is a sorry commentary on our national mentality, that the pathetic crop of political hacks vying for the Presidency, is the best that we can come up with.

By: csmret

csmret — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

I am a VN vet (2 one year tours as an infantryman) and I still do not like it when people who should know better (Karnow) refer to the people of Viet Nam as our enemy. I reckon it’s like those who refer to John Mccain as a hero. Since when are you a hero for driving a plane over a country with no air craft and little air defense to drop bombs on mostly civilian targets?? Please explain why we contnue to call war criminals HEROS!! If 5 years in jail makes one a hero we sure have a lot more of them in the US no, when we have over 1 or is it 2 million people in jail here and now.

By: walterjesse

walterjesse — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Mr. Karnow first says the Tet Offensive did not "galvanize the effort to sway American opinion." In the next paragraph he says "Opposition to the war mushroomed…" and goes on to cite the very broad coalition of organized groups that joined the anti-war effort. This double talk caught my attention. But the glaring absence from Karnow’s narrative about the relevance of Tet was the fact he completely ignored both the Vietnamese Declaration of Independence and the US Declaration of Independence. The Vietnamese modeled their war for Independence on the American one. The Iraqui factions may or may not learn from the American and the Vietnamese wars for Independence. But the American wrong in Iraq is solidly revealed by the American Declaration of Independence. We are losing in Iraq because we are violating our own national moral and political foundational principles. That fact needs no additional help to prevent us from winning anything in Iraq, Afghanistan, or any of the other places where our covert operators enjoy the financial and political blessings of our bi-partisan anti-American US Congress, Administration, and Courts. Those of us who believe we can turn Corporate America’s water boys and girls in Congress into patriots by yammering at them are the most seriously deluded.

By: nrmurray

nrmurray — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Iraq is lost because less than 150,000 soldiers are fighting the entire population. Years of brutality against the civilians in Iraq have made them entirely sympathetic to the insurgents (freedom fighters?). To save the country (from Saddam) we had to destroy it.

McCain, Lieberman and Bush are totally delusional. Its puzzling with McCain because he should know better. Did he defeat the Vietnamese from the Hanoi Hilton? Six years in captivity did not make him crazy, but running for president has. And Clinton is just as bad, in fact, wants to follow Lieberman into Iran. But would she encourage her daughter Chelsea to join the military and participate in these illegal invasions? Well, we all know the answer to that one. McCain and Clinton are both morally unfit to lead.

By: skulzfontaine

skulzfontaine — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Vietnam was lost, as is Iraq, by the sheer immorality of the conflict. Corruption ended the Vietnam war as corruption will end Bush’s Iraq genocide. Johnson lied about Vietnam and Bush and his gang of war criminal compatriots have lied 935 lies. It’s the freaking immorality, the torture, the illegal rendition, the illegal detention, the gross inhumanity of Bush, Congress, and the "support" of a distracted American people. Distracted? Gross dereliction of civic duty? Yeah, maybe that’s the one.