Posted on 08/26/2005 5:37:13 AM PDT by TheForceOfOne
Every time I turn around, another anti-war person is saying how much he or she "supports" the troops. No matter how vicious the attack on the policy in Iraq or the Afghanistan situation or the proactive strategy to confront worldwide terror, it always seems there's a "support the troops" caveat at the end of the blistering dissent. Okay, fine, opposing the Iraq war doesn't mean disrespect for the military, that's true. But the benefit of the doubt only goes so far. Now there's a litmus test, a way to expose the folks who really don't support the troops no matter what they tell you.
As you know may know, the American Civil Liberties Union is demanding the release of all Abu Ghraib photographs and videotapes and any other damning evidence of prisoner abuse by the American military. The ACLU filed suit last year and the case is now coming to a head in New York City.
General Richard Myers, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, testified in front of the judge that any further public exposition of prisoner abuse could endanger the lives of U.S. and allied troops. He is livid about the ACLU's action.
Of course, Myers is right, and the Newsweek Quran fiasco proved it. Looney Muslims rampaged in a number of countries after that magazine falsely reported the holy book had been abused at Guantanamo Bay. At least 15 people were killed, hundreds injured.
Myers, himself, has seen the abuse images that have not been made public and says, "The release (of them) would aid the recruitment efforts and other activities of insurgent elements, weaken the new democratic governments of Iraq and Afghanistan ... and increase the likelihood of violence against the United States interests, personnel, and citizens worldwide."
(Excerpt) Read more at billoreilly.com ...
He is definitely right about the anti-war crowd doing their best to damage our troops.
When they claim to be supporting the troops, but undermine the will of the people to maintain the fight, they are lying.
There are two ways to get out of Iraq.
1) Win a decisive victory, set a government up, let it take care of itself.
2) Announce(or begin) a withdrawal and watch the insurgents gear up to full speed as they gain recruits. Everyone wants to be a winner. If they think they are winning, their recruitment will soar and they will try to bloody our nose as much as possible on the way out.
You're correct.
I think the left is preparing for the petering out of the Cindy in the ditch story. This will top the MSM news in the near future.
The REAL story of Cindy Sheehan...
I suspect that her mom did not have a stroke, but rather called her home and tried to persuade her to stop, and failed.
The next event will probably be that Cindy goes on a hunger strike, or has some form of medical condition on her own, to raise the media attention level as they start to move on to other stories.
I heard yesterday that she is now channeling her dead son and HE thinks Bush is an idiot... OOOOO KKKKK.... time to up her meds!
Every time some lame-brain gives me that line, I am going to ask, "Just how do you support the troops? What does that action look like?"
How North Vietnam Won The War
Taken from The Wall Street Journal, Thursday August 3, 1995
What did the North Vietnamese leadership think of the American antiwar movement? What was the purpose of the Tet Offensive? How could the U.S. have been more successful in fighting the Vietnam War? Bui Tin, a former colonel in the North Vietnamese army, answers these questions in the following excerpts from an interview conducted by Stephen Young, a Minnesota attorney and human-rights activist. Bui Tin, who served on the general staff of North Vietnam's army, received the unconditional surrender of South Vietnam on April 30, 1975. He later became editor of the People's Daily, the official newspaper of Vietnam. He now lives in Paris, where he immigrated after becoming disillusioned with the fruits of Vietnamese communism.
Question: How did Hanoi intend to defeat the Americans?
Answer: By fighting a long war which would break their will to help South Vietnam. Ho Chi Minh said, "We don't need to win military victories, we only need to hit them until they give up and get out."
Q: Was the American antiwar movement important to Hanoi's victory?
A: It was essential to our strategy. Support of the war from our rear was completely secure while the American rear was vulnerable. Every day our leadership would listen to world news over the radio at 9 a.m. to follow the growth of the American antiwar movement. Visits to Hanoi by people like Jane Fonda, and former Attorney General Ramsey Clark and ministers gave us confidence that we should hold on in the face of battlefield reverses. We were elated when Jane Fonda, wearing a red Vietnamese dress, said at a press conference that she was ashamed of American actions in the war and that she would struggle along with us.
Q: Did the Politburo pay attention to these visits?
A: Keenly.
Q: Why?
A: Those people represented the conscience of America. The conscience of America was part of its war-making capability, and we were turning that power in our favor. America lost because of its democracy; through dissent and protest it lost the ability to mobilize a will to win.
Q: How could the Americans have won the war?
A: Cut the Ho Chi Minh trail inside Laos. If Johnson had granted [Gen. William] Westmoreland's requests to enter Laos and block the Ho Chi Minh trail, Hanoi could not have won the war.
Q: Anything else?
A: Train South Vietnam's generals. The junior South Vietnamese officers were good, competent and courageous, but the commanding general officers were inept.
Q: Did Hanoi expect that the National Liberation Front would win power in South Vietnam?
A: No. Gen. [Vo Nguyen] Giap [commander of the North Vietnamese army] believed that guerrilla warfare was important but not sufficient for victory. Regular military divisions with artillery and armor would be needed. The Chinese believed in fighting only with guerrillas, but we had a different approach. The Chinese were reluctant to help us. Soviet aid made the war possible. Le Duan [secretary general of the Vietnamese Communist Party] once told Mao Tse-tung that if you help us, we are sure to win; if you don't, we will still win, but we will have to sacrifice one or two million more soldiers to do so.
Q: Was the National Liberation Front an independent political movement of South Vietnamese?
A: No. It was set up by our Communist Party to implement a decision of the Third Party Congress of September 1960. We always said there was only one party, only one army in the war to liberate the South and unify the nation. At all times there was only one party commissar in command of the South.
Q: Why was the Ho Chi Minh trail so important?
A: It was the only way to bring sufficient military power to bear on the fighting in the South. Building and maintaining the trail was a huge effort, involving tens of thousands of soldiers, drivers, repair teams, medical stations, communication units.
Q: What of American bombing of the Ho Chi Minh trail?
A: Not very effective. Our operations were never compromised by attacks on the trail. At times, accurate B-52 strikes would cause real damage, but we put so much in at the top of the trail that enough men and weapons to prolong the war always came out the bottom. Bombing by smaller planes rarely hit significant targets.
Q: What of American bombing of North Vietnam?
A: If all the bombing had been concentrated at one time, it would have hurt our efforts. But the bombing was expanded in slow stages under Johnson and it didn't worry us. We had plenty of times to prepare alternative routes and facilities. We always had stockpiles of rice ready to feed the people for months if a harvest were damaged. The Soviets bought rice from Thailand for us.
Q: What was the purpose of the 1968 Tet Offensive?
A: To relieve the pressure Gen. Westmoreland was putting on us in late 1966 and 1967 and to weaken American resolve during a presidential election year.
Q: What about Gen. Westmoreland's strategy and tactics caused you concern?
A: Our senior commander in the South, Gen. Nguyen Chi Thanh, knew that we were losing base areas, control of the rural population and that his main forces were being pushed out to the borders of South Vietnam. He also worried that Westmoreland might receive permission to enter Laos and cut the Ho Chi Minh Trail. In January 1967, after discussions with Le Duan, Thanh proposed the Tet Offensive. Thanh was the senior member of the Politburo in South Vietnam. He supervised the entire war effort. Thanh's struggle philosophy was that "America is wealthy but not resolute," and "squeeze tight to the American chest and attack." He was invited up to Hanoi for further discussions. He went on commercial flights with a false passport from Cambodia to Hong Kong and then to Hanoi. Only in July was his plan adopted by the leadership. Then Johnson had rejected Westmoreland's request for 200,000 more troops. We realized that America had made its maximum military commitment to the war. Vietnam was not sufficiently important for the United States to call up its reserves. We had stretched American power to a breaking point. When more frustration set in, all the Americans could do would be to withdraw; they had no more troops to send over. Tet was designed to influence American public opinion. We would attack poorly defended parts of South Vietnam cities during a holiday and a truce when few South Vietnamese troops would be on duty. Before the main attack, we would entice American units to advance close to the borders, away from the cities. By attacking all South Vietnam's major cities, we would spread out our forces and neutralize the impact of American firepower. Attacking on a broad front, we would lose some battles but win others. We used local forces nearby each target to frustrate discovery of our plans. Small teams, like the one which attacked the U.S. Embassy in Saigon, would be sufficient. It was a guerrilla strategy of hit-and-run raids.
Q: What about the results?
A: Our losses were staggering and a complete surprise;. Giap later told me that Tet had been a military defeat, though we had gained the planned political advantages when Johnson agreed to negotiate and did not run for re-election. The second and third waves in May and September were, in retrospect, mistakes. Our forces in the South were nearly wiped out by all the fighting in 1968. It took us until 1971 to re-establish our presence, but we had to use North Vietnamese troops as local guerrillas. If the American forces had not begun to withdraw under Nixon in 1969, they could have punished us severely. We suffered badly in 1969 and 1970 as it was.
Q: What of Nixon?
A: Well, when Nixon stepped down because of Watergate we knew we would win. Pham Van Dong [prime minister of North Vietnam] said of Gerald Ford, the new president, "he's the weakest president in U.S. history; the people didn't elect him; even if you gave him candy, he doesn't dare to intervene in Vietnam again." We tested Ford's resolve by attacking Phuoc Long in January 1975. When Ford kept American B-52's in their hangers, our leadership decided on a big offensive against South Vietnam.
Q: What else?
A: We had the impression that American commanders had their hands tied by political factors. Your generals could never deploy a maximum force for greatest military effect.
Ask the anti-war people if they supported the war on Afghanistan and they'll say no. They don't support any war waged by a Republican president, although they were curiously mum when Clinton went to war against the Serbs. The word is starting to get out that these anti-war, anti-military, people are backed by far left, Communist sympathizing groups who despise President Bush and will do ANYTHING to undermine him.
Sheehan's financiers are Ben and Jerry, moveon.org and Code Pink. That's all you need to know.
And as stated in Bill's commentary "In a "friend-of-the-court" brief, CBS, NBC, The New York Times and a few other media outfits"
The same people who produce the polls that scream Bush is losing his favorable rating and polls that say get out of Iraq. They manipulate these polls for there own talking points.
The presidents favorable may very well be down with the problem on the border but I wouldn't take that answer from the MSM which without a doubt is nothing more than a 527 group for the DNC.
The left has no morals, no idea what national security is, and could care less if their actions cause military deaths or those of American citizens. They want power back at all cost and that is sad and dangerous.
If you 'support the troops', why don't you want them to win?
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