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<DIV><FONT face=Arial>"you can't impose democracy at the point of a gun."
</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial>So, would this include Germany and Japan?? Why is it that
Vietnam is the only war some think about or remember?? We have been in so many
wars...Vietnam was not he most important thing we have done. Get over
it!!</FONT></DIV>
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<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial">----- Original Message ----- </DIV>
<DIV
style="BACKGROUND: #e4e4e4; FONT: 10pt arial; font-color: black"><B>From:</B>
<A title=auntiestablishment@hotmail.com
href="mailto:auntiestablishment@hotmail.com">Joan Opyr</A> </DIV>
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial"><B>To:</B> <A title=vision2020@moscow.com
href="mailto:vision2020@moscow.com">Vision2020 Moscow</A> </DIV>
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial"><B>Sent:</B> Wednesday, January 19, 2005 8:46
PM</DIV>
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial"><B>Subject:</B> [Vision2020] Re: The
consequences of losing the Iraq war</DIV>
<DIV><BR></DIV>
<DIV>Here's a news flash for you, Coop: we <U>are</U> losing the Iraq
war. We don't have enough troops to secure the country.
We don't have enough international military support and/or financing to
train Iraqi police and security forces to replace US soldiers in country; we
don't have enough to rebuild the nation's infrastructure and economy; we
don't have enough to ensure that the upcoming elections are free, fair, and
recognized as legitimate by even a slender majority of Iraqis. We
are now reaping the sad consequences of the Bush Administration's
inadequate, pie-in-the-sky, ideologically rigid and unrealistic
pre-war planning. Iraq is no longer a disaster in the making; Iraq
is a disaster</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>Recently, I've been re-reading a variety of histories of the Vietnam
War. They've been disheartening but instructive. From 1964 to
1972, militarily-speaking, we threw everything we had short of a
nuclear bomb at a small peasant country in Southeast Asia. We
dropped more than 7 million tons of ordnance on Vietnam -- nearly
one five-hundred pound bomb for every person living in the country.
We installed the "democratic" Diem regime, which grew increasingly unpopular
with every bomb we dropped and every "military advisor" we sent, and when his
hold on power became untenable, we sat back and allowed his generals (trained
and installed by us) to stage a coup. They drove Diem and his
brother out to the back country and shot them. Not
surprisingly, the generals who succeeded Diem proved to be even less
popular, so we sent more military advisors. And still we were
losing the war.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>In 1964, President Johnson used the CIA-fabricated Gulf of Tonkin
incident as an excuse to launch full-scale war on Vietnam. The Tonkin
Resolution, which gave Johnson carte blanche to do as he pleased
in retaliation for the "attack," passed unanimously in the House and with
only two dissenting votes in the Senate. Johnson sent 200,000 US
soldiers to Vietnam in 1965 and another 200,000 in 1966. At the height
of the war in 1968, there were 500,000 US troops in country. We dropped
almost twice as many bombs on Vietnam as we had dropped during World War
II on Europe and Asia combined. And, guess what? We were
still losing. Support for Ho Chi Minh and the Viet Cong
continued to grow throughout the countryside. We undermined our own
hearts and minds campaigns by being heartless and mindless. We razed
entire villages to the ground, established "free-fire zones" where
everyone and anyone could be and was shot on sight, and our government,
without deviation, lied to us wholesale about the conduct of the war,
our chances of victory, and our support within the country. By the
end of 1968, more than 40,000 US soldiers were dead and a quarter of a
million were wounded. And where were we in terms of winning
Vietnam? Nowhere.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>When Nixon came into office, he began withdrawing US troops. By
1972, we were back down to 150,000. The bombing, however,
continued. In fact, it intensified. Nixon launched an indefensible
invasion of Cambodia; he carpet-bombed that country and Laos; and we were
losing, losing, losing.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>What's the lesson here? What's the thing we haven't learned?
I don't know, but here's a wild guess: you can't impose democracy at the point
of a gun. The invading army of a far-away nation cannot
win a long-term guerilla war against a determined local resistance -- not if
that invading army wants to impose democracy rather than just flatten the
place. Some of you might argue, of course, that we should just flatten
Iraq: I believe the popular expression is "bomb them back to the stone
age." We might "win" that way, but then we'd lose all that lovely
oil. And perhaps the oil of all of Iraq's lovely neighbors.
And the costs -- not just human but, more important for the Bush
Administration, financial -- would be untenable.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>It's easy to argue that we can't afford to lose Iraq. It's
also easy to see that we can't afford to keep it. That's our conundrum,
isn't it? We've broken it, but we can't afford to buy it, and so we're
not allowed to leave the store. Here's my tragic prediction, ready to be
printed out and time-capsuled for your reading pleasure in the year 2034:
Iraq will be run by an oppressive Shiite militia. We'll do
business with them because we need their oil; they'll do business with us
because they need our money. There will be no democracy in Baghdad,
but there will be a new memorial wall in Washington, DC, and on it will be the
names of thousands of US soldiers, missed by their families, mourned by their
children, and forgotten by their government.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>Joan Opyr/Auntie Establishment <BR><BR>Auntie
Establishment<BR>Serving Idaho's liberal elite since 1993</DIV><BR clear=all>
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