An Interesting Take on Bush Presidency

Ragu: If Ike doesn't make the committment, we aren't in Viet Nam. In the first part of the Viet Nam series on public television, they stated that right after World War 2 ended there were people in the State Department who thought the US should back the Viet Minh who were fighting the French. There was a point, because that might have established a US influence in the area - Mao was fighting to make China a Communist country so there would have been a US base in that area. In the end, the policy of the time wasn't going to go against Western imperial powers. Britain decided to move toward independence for their colonies, while France fought to keep control in southeast Asia and Algeria.

If you are going to say LBJ made worse decisions than Ike, OK. I would probably say that decisions got worse as things went along and that Nixon was even worse than LBJ. But the reason this happened is the mindset of people at the time.

Ragu, it's easy to say now that the Viet Nam war was a disaster. But from that time, it didn't look that way. Readers Digest would always put on their cover every six months a story about "How We Are Winning The War In Viet Nam". We'd have Bob Hope specials about tours of our soldiers in Viet Nam - what wonderful young men they were and these guys wouldn't be defeated. And they were good people in general, just like the people who fought in WW2 and the current troops are. That isn't the issue. In Viet Nam just as in Iraq, eventually American soldiers have to go home. Unless we are committed to having troops there for 10 years or more, like Great Britain did in their colonial era, the troops have to come home some day. The supporters of the Iraq war say that by setting a timetable, you are giving the enemy a victory because they know they can hold out until that day. Well, the other side knows that anyway.

If you ever see the movie, Gandhi, a British officer says to Gandhi something like, "Do you think that if you protest we will pick up and leave?" and Gandhi responds by calmly saying, "Yes, that is exactly what will happen." That is the situation.

 

Beat that, Daddy Ho!

 

I'm not saying it was Ike's war, but there was a line of committment that started with Ike. The only reason it didn't start with Truman is because the French were fighting the war when he was president. The point I would make is that the mentality was the prime reason for the Viet Nam war.

the only person elected President who opposed the Viet Nam war was William Jefferson Clinton. George W. Bush supported it, but not enough to enlist. And make no mistake about it, joining the National Guard during the 60s and early 70s was a way not to go to Viet Nam.

 

Still another interesting take on the Bush presidency.

 

Gold, Ragu.

I think we'rep picking nits here.

You're both right.

Without Ike's committment, Kennedy wouldn't have sent in troops and LBJ and Nixon wouldn't have turned it into a clusterfuck.

 

Yeah, if you can overlook the fact we didn't get the perp.

If he even is the perp, that is.

I question everything now. I'll be curious to see if the next president even tries to get Osama, or just continues the Bush policy.

 

I think you've got to get al Zawahiri, too, Jack.
If I read Lawrence Wright's book correctly, he's the tactical and operational genius of the two. bin Laden's the charismatic leader and, of course, the bankroll.

 

Does it ever strike you that maybe they're all straw men?

 

We're busted, Osama.