i very much doubt there will be anything like peace in that part of the world for a very long time, if ever.

I don't think 'in a hurry' means anything after half of a decade of 'cut-and-run' political rhetoric.

Nope, probably not as long as they keep clinging to thousand-year-old beliefs as if they're scientifically proven facts. I want for nothing more (as far as global affairs go) than for the developed world to move beyond fossil fuels not only for the purpose of helping out the environment but also to remove any interest in that backward wasteland. When they're broke but there's no foreign presence to blame it on, maybe they'll grow up a bit and embrace modern thinking (tolerance, equality, science, those sorts of things).

Another humiliating withdrawal for the Yanks after achieving sod all. The only difference between the two is the Yanks ran from Vietnam.

It seems that right wing cunts of all nations tend to think of war in the naive terms of courage and humiliation. It a sport to them, isn't it. How exceedingly vulgar.

i wish i could hear you say that
exceedingly vulgar
sounds good

i hope you talk like that all the time, i really do.
I guess maybe in asia not so much.

The draft was going on during Vietnam. Most soldiers didn't want to be there. They were treated like total shit when they returned home. Many became homeless...several still are.

From a soldiers perspective, both wars were/are very different.

I look at things from that angle.

We could have kicked 'Nam's ass. There's NO disputing that issue. Thankfully, we didn't. I'm glad we left, and I'll be glad when everyone returns home from this current mess, too. I'm also glad these soldiers are being treated better than their Vietnam brothers/sisters.

that is a very defeatists attitude.. by the way, with the amount of violence and poverty in the industrialized world, can we really claim anything like peace in our own homes? ;)



umm, I do believe the British were involved in Iraq for at least 6 of the past 7 and half years...


I beg to differ, there were more explosives dropped on East Asia then all of Europe in WWI and WWII combined, and yet it didn't "kick Nam's ass", hundreds of people a year are still maimed and killed by unexploded ordinances..

we poured out millions and millions of toxic chemicals for years over the landscape, and we still didn't "kick Nam's ass", today these chemicals give cancer and acid trip birth defects to tens of thousands of people..

Foreign troops and billions of dollars were there since the 1940s (when Ho Chi Mihn was an official agent of the pre-CIA OSS) through the 1970s, and we didn't "kick Nam's ass"

I think it is very safe to argue that that was truly an unwinable war for the simple reason that there was nothing to win. 90% or more of the Vietnamese (and probably the same figures in Laos and Cambodia) were against the US. What were we to do, genocide the entire population?



amen.

As the one who first brought up the point of American corruption, the thing that differs is those other countries you're talking about are corrupt regimes that are in charge and known to all.
American corruption is hidden and runs through all walks of life from politics, to business, to the justice system and law enforcement. Until recently OJ Simpson still walked the street of America how many other people with money have gotten away with murder? More than I care to count. Tell me what's going on in New Orleans with all the supposed funds for rebuilding the city? Pharmaceutical drug companies, oil companies I could go on for days and still not cover all the different corruption in America.

Sometimes I can't understand the difference between the concepts of corporation and corruption. Perhaps there isn't one.

the way we (America and UK) went into Iraq was haphazard and poorly planned, and thats a legacy of shame. But the status of Iraq as it is now shouldnt be dismissed, there are amazing people that we should be supporting as they try and rebuild Iraq

wow your right peace will break out there soon of its own accord.

We had HUNDREDS more times SERIOUS explosive during 'Nam than we did WWII. Technically, we could have blew the whole place up.

It was a sick war, designed at lasting a long time because there was a lot of money to be made. It wasn't a war the powers that be had any real intention on winning. Many people are still suffering because of that shit.

^^^ forget all that, and consider something very simple...we could have fought the entire war from the sky. We could have. We had the technology to do it...they didn't.

Us leaving had nothing to do with us losing. If it was really that type of war, one country vs. another (which it wasn't, we should have stayed the fuck out) we NO DOUBT could have/would have "won"....whatever the hell that means.

Good or bad, America isn't a place to fuck with. We won't be for a long time. I just hate that greed has forced us to sometimes be bullies. Whatever, I for one still love this place.

no, it won't. but at least we will not be directly contributing as much to the violence, and every small victory counts when it saves even a single human life. never lose sight of that my friend, even a single human life is worth monumental tasks..



amen. (literaly, I agree deeply and intuitively from my heart)


But doesn't keeping it a secret make it that much more dangerous and insidious (by definition)? I mean look at California for example..

Right now 150,000 state workers, all the essential public service workers who maintain our communities are taking 15-30% pay cuts, meanwhile the State is pushing for a $300 million death row facility at San Quentin, because of the immense power of the prison guards unions and the whole prison/law enforcement industry (all of which is deeply and frighteningly corrupt) and the budget that Governor (who actually has been a pretty decent in many respects, very surprisingly) is pushing entirely cuts out State welfare benefits for over a million and half women and children? What the fuck? The people don't even KNOW what is going on behind those closed doors, and yet it directly affects them as they lose their essential wages and the poor lose their critical life-lines..

Or look at this Bell controversy which I am sure has gotten national attention. This is a shitty, gang infested, poverty stricken ghetto in the heart of the the Eastside.. when I was growing up we were poor, and we went over to Bell to go the grocery store, and on extremely luxurious occasions that was where the only Toys R Us was :)

While the city neglects the essential public services like education, parks and recreation to give kids a positive alternative to gang violence which would also provide local employment and community development, any number of possible intervention programs from city hall for the crippling levels of gang violence and indemic poverty, instead in a single year a handful of corrupt local politicians collected almost $8 million dollars in compensation, vacation packages and undisclosed and illegal personal loans? That money could have easily made BIG waves in the community to tackle serious, day-to-day problems, and yet it just lined the pockets of less than 10 people.... fuck! that shit exasperates me, especially when people try to pretend and even scoff at the negative impact of corruption here in the US..

The reason we have insane problems like poverty, homelessness and gang violence is because the corrupt businesses and politicians and government agencies all WASTE billions of dollars that could have been better spent directly in the communities that need it...

but fuck that, 70,000 troops left Iraq this week. We are that much closer to at least ending a horrifying disaster which we both started and continued across the world in the name of various corrupt military contracts, corrupt hawkish politicians, and corrupt Iraqis looking to make a quick buck with a bunch of corrupt Americans and British...

Jah! I am so happy... 70,000 down.. 50,000 in Iraq to go, but at least we are on the right track for the first time in how many years?

They kicked your ass. That's why after ten years of trying to defeat the Vietcong by throwing everything but nuclear weapons at them you buggered off with your tail between your legs.

[quote=Keeping It Simple]They kicked your ass. That's why after ten years of trying to defeat the Vietcong by throwing everything but nuclear weapons at them you buggered off with your tail between your legs.[/quote

ok.

[quote=ann ashtray]
I hate to say it, but you know he is absolutely, 100% correct, and Keeping It Simple, it was not merely ten years, the US first involved themselves in French Indochina in 1944, maintained a covert presence backing the re-establishment of the French colonial control through the 40s, open funding and training and weapons through out the French war from approx 1950-1956, then fully backing the puppet Diem regime until 1963.. shortly after THEN was the final decade (which was actually 12 years from 1963-1975 of open, declared war with troops in declared combat roles, though they had been coming home in body bags since the 50s, it got real hard particularly for Kennedy to explain things as the body-count rose to hundreds of US soldiers a year, though honestly, that was not as bad as Bill Clinton, who as Commander-and-Chief lost the lives over 15,000 US military personal over in secret and covert and supporting operations over-seas, thats 3 times as many as under Bush II in two declared wars by the way..)

but again. FUCK YEAH! 70,000 troops gone will result in less death across Iraq, this is EXACTLY what Vietnam proved if anything, that the sky does not fall when the US extricate themselves from fucked up, needless wars, in fact it makes things better in both the short and long term.

We def. left, we def. "lost" as far as the war itself is concerned...we did not "sheepishly leave with our tails between our legs". It doesn't work like that.

I think its clear from the three decades of heavy American military involvement in the region (perhaps the longest war since the Hundred Years' War..) that there was absolutely nothing sheepish about it, besides that was just trolling talking, don't let that shit provoke some kind of americana machismo, war is hell, regardless of everything..

The reason we left Vietnam when we did was because the beloved corrupt President Richard Nixon was in danger of loosing the election to peace loving George McGovern. McGovern's platform for election was that he would end the war. As the election grew near and McGovern's poll number's jump, Nixon panic switched his position and started the peace talk. Signed in Paris in 73 and the final 10 Marine left in 75. The famous helicopter evacuation that you feel is us leaving with our tails between our legs.

This sums up my feelings as well.

THERE IS NOTHING BEAUTIFULL OF A WAR

it makes me angry and unpatient

what happend there is indescribable

the warpschose of those people who want to make war
is the problem

and i know that war drives people crazy

i think everyone needs to help to make things better
in a slow positive way out of war

i believe that can be done

you have the unhealty pressure
that goes away when surroundings change

i see the problem also in other wars

some say it's a fear of modernity
i don't that

at is a situation of a long during war
where there was no way for peacefull people to build something

and sychronize with other peacefull people in the world

War is just another way of making money for the Rich. You know that 1% that get people elected, that funded all the different Lobbies in Washington.

the US is still well entrenched in Iraq.

Uncle Sam still effectively occupies Iraq, still rules the roost there. They gesture at 50,000 US troops in 94 military bases, "advising" and training the Iraqi army, "providing security" and carrying out "counter-terrorism" missions. Outside US government forces there is what Jeremy Scahill calls the "coming surge" of contractors in Iraq , swelling up from the present 100,000. Hillary Clinton wants to increase the number of military contractors working for the state department alone from 2,700 to 7,000. Of these contractors 11,000 are armed mercenaries, mostly "third country nationals, typically from the developing world. “The advantage of an outsourced occupation,” Milne writes, “ is clearly that someone other than US soldiers can do the dying to maintain control of Iraq.
http://www.counterpunch.org/

In the article they state how MLK and his folks were giving JFK a lot of flack about his stance on civil right basically dragging his feet. JFK's from Boston
there's that hidden prejudice that runs rampart here in the North. my my my