Posted on 03/12/2006 4:34:06 AM PST by Hannah Senesh
An adviser to former President Richard Nixon said military leaders in Iraq are repeating a mistake made in Vietnam by not applying the full force of the military to win the war.
"Every asset of the nation must be applied to the conflict to bring about a quick and successful outcome, or don't do it," Alexander Haig said. "We're in the midst of another struggle where it appears to me we haven't learned very much."
The comments by Haig, also a Secretary of State under President Ronald Reagan in the 1980s, were made Saturday at a conference examining the Vietnam war and the American presidency. But talk at the event that brought together advisers from the administrations of presidents Nixon, Lyndon B. Johnson, and John F. Kennedy turned to Iraq where the panelists saw parallels with Vietnam.
Former Nixon Secretary of State Henry Kissinger made a rare appearance at the conference. He was greeted outside by about 25 protesters who chanted "Kissinger should go to jail, no bail."
Kissinger spoke about the war in Iraq, saying he supported the invasion.
"We have a jihadist radical situation," he said. "If the US fails in Iraq, then the consequences will be that it motivates more to move toward the radical side."
But he was more reluctant to discuss Vietnam, dodging a question submitted by the audience about whether he wanted to apologize for policies that led to so many deaths in Vietnam.
"This is not the occasion," Kissinger said. "We have to start from the assumption that serious people were making serious decisions. So that's the sort of question that's highly inappropriate."
He added that the Vietnam War "has fundamentally affected my life in the sense that the Nixon debate doesn't ever seem to end and for many I am the surviving symbol of the Nixon administration."
Former Johnson adviser Jack Valenti said that the lessons of Vietnam have been "forgotten or ignored" in Iraq.
"No president can win a war when public support for that war begins to decline and evaporate," he said.
Valenti, former head of the Motion Picture Association, added there was no such thing as a good war, saying "all wars are inhumane, brutal, callous and full of depravity."
IV. We lost almost 100,000 KIA in III.
Neither do I.
I would have nuked Mecca and ended Islam forever on 9-11.
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NEVER FORGET
The same American Media and Anti-Freedom personnel that fooled us into leaving a then Free South Vietnam behind to their fate at the hands of invading bullies from the Communist North...
...brought for all of us to see in the end:
Pictures of a vietnamese Re-Education Camp
http://www.Freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1308949/posts
And they're doing it again now with our own Freedom now directly at stake right here at home.
Signed: "ALOHA RONNIE" Guyer
Veteran-1st Major Battles in the Fight for Freedom of the Vietnam War
http://www.lzxray.com/guyer_set1.htm
http://www.lzxray.com/guyer_collection.htm
NEVER FORGET
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Not all of them. We've learned not to trust the old media. To get the straight skinny from those wearing the boots on the ground, not from someone holed up "inside the wire", or in the Caravelle Hotel bar in Saigon.
We've also learned that the America haters are still with us, still able to put on their staged "demonstrations", and that the media will not reveal their true ties to forces from outside the country. But now we have Free Republic, and all the many blogs, to get the truth out. It's still an uphill battle but one I believe we can win.
Of course the one lesson that is different this time, is that the North Vietnamese never attacked us on our soil, never killed more Americans than the Japanese did at Pearl Harbor. That fact teaches some very different lessons.
We've also learned that what the media leave out of their stories is often more important than what they put in. Such as what sort of "adviser" Jack Valenti was. (He is the son of Silcililan immigrants, fairly unusual for a Texan, and practically fawned on Johnson. You know, LBJ, as in "Heh, Heh, LBJ, How Many Kids Have You Killed Today", but I guess it's different when it's a Republican who is CinC and winning a war, as opposed to a Democrat who was mis and micro managing one.
The liberal slant is apparent without even reading the rest of the article. Why is he a former Nixon adviser first, Secretary of State second? To give him some Vietnam cred? His title is still "Secretary Haig".
Second, there's nothing incorrect about Haig's statement. We should be focusing 100% effort on the war in Iraq. I happen to agree with him. Unlike the Johnson and Nixon administrations, the Bush administration is committed to victory and will achieve it.
Actually historically speaking, that sort of thing is an aberration. WW-II was like that, but most wars are not. Military officers study Carl von Clausewitz, who said "War is not an independent phenomenon, but the continuation of politics by different means" . . In a little longer expositioin he wrote "If war is part of policy, policy will determine its character. As policy becomes more ambitious and vigorous, so will war, and this may reach the point where war attains its absolute form. . . . Policy is the guiding intelligence and war only the instrument, not vice versa."
The war must be fought in such as way as to further the political goals for which it is being fought.That is true even when one is attacked and responding to that attack. of course the relationship is mutual and the politics (that is policy) must support the war effort as well.
So was George McGovern. Doesn't mean either one of them knew anything about war beyond the tactical level. It also doesn't mean that their sympathies, then or later, did not rest more in Moscow than in Dallas or Rapid City.
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What a great CLARITY post, w-13.
Freedom's Enemies No. 1 are still:
WALTER CRONKITE: Ex-CBS News TV Anchor, 2008 POTUS Candidate HILLARY's No. 1 Media Defensive Linebacker who called for our 11 Southern States to secede from our Union at a London World Conference in the year 2000
DAN RATHER: Ex-CBS News TV Anchor who lied on TV in order to defeat a sitting Commander in Chief in a new time of war while being a Friend of Communist Cuban Dictator FIDEL CASTRO
WILLIAM CLINTON: Ex-Oxford University "student" who was financially backed by the Communist Soviet Union as he organized Anti-US, Anti-Freedom demonstrations outside our American Embassy in London England
during the Vietnam War
DIANE "HILLARY" RODHAM: Ex-College Anti-U.S., Anti-Freedom student who actively supported a Communist Victory over Freedom for Vietnam during the Vietnam War
.
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If we returning Vietnam Vets had had http://www.Freerepublic.com & the Internet to share our hard won CLARITY with the American People,
...about what we were doing on behalf of the Freedom of others during the Vietnam War,
...a once Free South Vietnam would still be Free today..!!!
NEVER FORGET that...
...Freedom & LOVE are on their way back to Vietnam now,
...no matter what.
http://www.fc-oc.org/DesktopDefault.aspx?tavindex=0&tabid=134&itemid=1882
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My bones will have turned to dust LONG BEFORE we ever fight another WAR to WIN, without regard to political ramifications about civilian casualties. What the rest of the world FEELS about it or if we may take more casualties than the US public can handle!!
MISSION FIRST is no longer at the top of the heap in MILITARY PLANNING. Why, HELL, we LOST MORE MEN in D DAY TRAINING exercises than we did in the first two years of the IRAQ WAR.
How's business going with the Chicom's at COSCO, Al?
The first initial attacks indicated which way this was headed when vital infrastructure was left in place and not destroyed. Remember Bagdad Bob on day after day? Saddam is captured & his sons {IMO a larger threat then he was} are dead. That should have been the end of the military mission in Iraq and our forces should not be part of a multinational nation building force which is what this has now become.
There is a huge difference in supporting the taking out of Saddam & sons by military means as quick as possible and neutralizing Iraq as a threat and what is happening now. It has become another State Department ran war. Such wars give bad results and our recent post WW2 history tells us this is true.
Right now our capabilities to respond to other conflicts if needed is being significantly limited because of our downsized military status which is keeping a substantial portion of our defenses both troop wise and equipment wise tied up policing Iraq. I wish we had one such as Haig as Secretary of Defense who would have the guts to tell POTUS this. Not that he would listen though :>{
Should say Achieve the military objective as fast as possible.
Sure, suck the terrorists in and kill them. Leave an Iraqi security force able to deal with the remnamts, and move on to Iran, Syria or where ever seems appropriate at the time. Our military is too small to do it all at once. For that I blame Clinton and then the Compassionate Conservatives after him.
The thing I question is the lack of commitment of sufficient resources to the military. The cut backs in military R&D in the fact of an emergent ChiCom threat is also troubling. As are forthcoming cuts in the National Guard. This at a time when the rest of federal budget, the parts not authorized by the Constitution, are ballooning out of control.At least Reagan had guns and butter, as he built up the military from years of neglect.
Just like we left Japan and Germany right after we knocked them on their kiesters. Like that?
Amen. And the moment we find those roadside bombs are being made in Iran, we bomb'em back into the stone age. Wait. They're already in the stone age, we just bomb'em. And Syria as well. There need be no respect for British-made borders ever again.
It started under Compassionate Conservative Poppy actually. Clinton and DEM & GOP congress allowed it to go to the extreme we see today.
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