Useful Fools

This is 2004, John. A P4 2.4 Ghz Dell computer today can process gigabyte of bandwith in second, selling for $400 in USA, Internet access is available to every household of the Western world. That contrasts to black and white TV, transitor radioes, a corporate computer is nowhere a millionth of the power of a today household computer, and information is delivered to your door by the "honest like a car salesman" media. Information is no longer captive and is available at finger tip of everyone. Anyone who has internet access can read Iraqis blogs on his choice, can get the same information disclosed by Centcom to verify the spin by the press, one way or another, well can get Fox News instead the regular diet of CNN, CBS, ABC and BBC. There might be an information overload at the beginning of the era, but we will adjust to get the real meat. I doubt that American today is as blind as American of 1968. And American don't get to where they are today because they are gullible. Right?

There won't be a Tet Syndrome because there is no Tet. There is also no Lyndon Johnson, Robert McNamara or serious organized Left resistance to the war in Iraq, only the aging recidivist Left and their decadent clownish spawn.

A key difference also is that war has been declared upon us, upon The West in general. This is not a remote proxy war that the comfortable can resist and protest, but a war which will find them in their homes and places of business sooner or later. This would be true even if Kerry were President.

Ted Kennedy is by now the most ridiculous figure in public life. He is physically and mentally impaired, and while it is clear that even the Democratic Party is ashamed of him, a man of his "presence", shall we say, will be indulged until the last demented word has been said. Vietnam indeed. Time for the Democrats to move beyond the 60's into the 21st century.

When the history of Ted's party is written, it will include this last shameful chapter, from Bill Clinton to Kerry to whatever comes next. I give the party ten years before it fractures into several foolish and silly minority parties dedicated to single-interest issues.

It's over, and Kennedy is the clarion call for the funeral service, while all of them dance on the grave of Harry Truman and John Kennedy. What a revolting disgrace. History will not be kind to this intellectual and moral snakepit.

I posted on my site about this.

I don't think this will be like Tet because we have a resolute government, and because we knew this was coming.

The fact is, pundits go to and fro on a daily basis because they don't really know anything. Since I can't see the Administration caving to pressure on this one anytime soon, things will probably get better as they stay the course, and the pundits will change their tune.

With the transition of power coming in Iraq in three months, certain factions within Iraq are heading for a political trainwreck: The Sunni-Ba'athists, represented in Fallujah; and the Iranian controlled jihadists, represented by Sadr.

Each faction realizes that if a democratic majority gains control of the country, they're doomed. Their only hope is to try to derail that process - through anarchy if necessary.

The Sunni Ba'athists, in a sense, have never stopped fighting. There's been trouble in the 'Sunni Triangle' since Saddam was overthrown. Places like Tikrit and Fallajuh have been hotbeds of violent resistance ever since Saddam's overthrow. This region, after all, was his power base. There's a Shiite majority coming into power in Iraqi politics and the Sunni Ba'athists don't like that thought one bit. They're a small minority in Iraq, but brutally vicious. They gained control by their willingness to employ brutality, and they maintained control for thirty years through sheer brutality. Those days are soon over - for good. Unless, that is, they can frighten everyone into running away and leaving the country to them. Not gonna happen.

Muqtada al Sadr is, perhaps, a more difficult problem. But only if we allow it to be. It's no secret that Sadr takes his marching orders from the Iranian theocracy. He meets with Khameni himself. What does that tell you? The Iranian mullahs worst nightmare is a successful democracy on their border. Their own population is in borderline revolt against them as it is. And Sadr is their man in Iraq. His followers number in the tens of thousands. His base is in the Sadr City neighborhood of Baghdad, but he has many followers stretching all the way to Basra, a major Iraqi city on the border with Iran. Can he be contained? Absolutely. As long as we maintain our nerve. Why? Because the vast majority of Iraqis want no part of Iranian style theocracy. So while tens of thousands of supporters sounds like a lot, Iraq is a country of tens of millions. The majority won't follow him. They may cower and hide from him, but they won't support him. Can he make trouble? Absolutely. Will he make trouble? You bet. This is his only shot. Now, before Iraqis can entrench democracy. But there's no risk of his winning.

So remember, while tens, perhaps hundreds of people are going to be killed in the coming months, that will be the price of bringing democracy to Iraq. The alternative is chaos. Think Lebannon. Or Afghanistan. That's the abyss we're trying to avoid. And we will. So keep your eyes on the goal posts and prepare for a rough ride in the coming months. The tyrants are in their death throes. They're going to get violent. But democracy will prevail as long as we keep our heads - and our nerve.

Hey Lan,

this isn't you, is it.
http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/bal-te.obscenity06apr06,0,3004361.story?coll=bal-home-headlines

Mr. Hiteshaw:

Thank you for a wonderful and concise summary of the political and secular issues surrounding the visible "uprising" in Falujah...and the Iranian connection. This is a manifestation of the death throes of Ba'athism, and the terrible threat posed by Democracy in Iraq.

This is simply one dirty stop on the road to success in Iraq, and The Left, typified by the pitiful Edward Kennedy, are forever fixated on the fact of the moment. They always see one frame of the film and take it as The Reality.

Christopher Hitchens summed it up recently on the Dennis Miller show. He said simply that the resisters have to be CONVINCED that they have lost, which sounds innocuous, but the process of convincing them involves most of them dying and their leader dying ignominiously.

They have attempted to humiliate us by dragging our countrymen through the streets, and they need to be fully humiliated by death and defeat in return. By that, with a decisive and clear demonstration of the power of The West, the individual power of America, the individual power and devotion of American soldiers and our resolve to extinguish them. Completely. Decisively. Forever, and with extreme prejudice.

Actually, when you consider that ted left a girl to
drown in his car...
http://www.ytedk.com/
I cannot see how anyone takes his "moral" pronouncements seriously..

sheesh!

Capt'n Joe,
1) his first name is Lam while mine is Lan
2) am too old for that job

make sense, isn't it?

Michael Hiteshew,

Without internet how do people find you to read what you have said in particular, or many websites like this one in general. The internet is the most harmful medium to the annointed vision, the liars and the repressors. Ted Kenedy is the ghost of the past that refuses to go to hell.

Somebody should get Sen. McCain (dem's favorite republican) on TV right away and get his reaction to Kennedy's Speech.

This should be interesting.

Ironically, when the Mahdi was actually living among humankind, 1853-1892 (Micah 7:15) He taught that God does NOT want force, violence and coercion in religion or elsewhere.

Banished from His homeland after being forced to wear a 90-pound iron collar and its accompanying 90-pound chains, He was exiled for 10 years to Baghdad, held there under house-arrest, but His fame and reknown grew so powerful that He was again exiled to Constantinople and thence to Adrianople, and finally to the prison-city of Akka, where He established His Faith on God's Holy mountain, Mt Carmel.

The al-Sadr goons will taste America's wrath, for the Glory of God, the holy Mahdi, chose America for special praise!

While I hope that the Tet Syndrome is not repeated, I am concerned by the large number of Useful Fools in the Democratic party and media.

I hope that Rhod's prediction about the Dems is true, and that this is THEIR TET OFFENSIVE as well.

Of all the Kennedy brothers to leave alive why Teddy?? Proof of an unkind G-d.

I knew Tet. Tet was a very exciting time for me. This is not Tet.
Pace what John and some others have said, the military command was warning the press that the VC were capable of a big offensive. The press ignored the warnings and were shocked by Tet. See Peter Braestrup's The Big Story (summary of points here).
Also, we knew within a couple of months that the VC had been wiped out. Things actually seemed quieter, except for our operations.
What we have learned since the war, and especially after the Soviet archives were opened up, is that just about every claim that the US government made was right and everything that the anti-war left said was a lie.

Of all the Kennedy brothers to leave alive why Teddy??

Easy. He wasn't worth killing.

Great post.

I have some screenshots of last night's headlines on my site here:
http://www.murdoconline.net/archives/001190.html

Is it Vietnam yet? Is it Vietnam yet? How about now? Is it Vietnam yet?

You know, it IS awfully puzzling why Teddy is still alive. Many years ago, a journalist said that Teddy was always paranoid that "there might be some nut out there with another bullet." That was well put.

I'm glad he's not dead, though, because he's the archetype for the Pantheon of Liberalism. Rich, self-indulgent, glutton, alcohol demented, wife abuser, liar, cowardly complicit in the senseless death of a young woman he was probably sexually involved with while married to Joan,(and his first thought was to evade responsibility for it) living off the accumulated income of a bootlegging, Nazi sympathizer father who the Brits called "Yellow Joe", cheater at Harvard, disgusting pantless buffoon while pawing teenage girls with his own sons...There is more, you know. That's just on Teddy's business card.

Known to his sons and nephews as Uncle Keg, inventer with Tom Dodd of the Kennedy Sandwich, which involves Teddy, a waitress and Tom Dodd (who lives a stone's throw from my house), a bawling Daddy and Mommy's Boy and all around, general disgusting Loser.

And there's more. Mentor and competitor for John Kerry, owner of a gated compound patrolled and protected by local police and paid for by the tax dollars of Massachusetts residents. In poor standing with his own church but claims to be a practicing whatever...

And there's more, but right now can't think of it.

And Teddy calls George Bush a liar, and questions Bush's character. It is a surreal world where a man so debased, vulgar, selfish, corrupt and vile can be a hero to some....and called The Liberal Lion. You know, the Liberal Lion DOES describe him, at that. Only liberals could tolerate, no STOMACH, a human being so utterly lacking in redeeming value, much less praise him.

John, can you recommend any good historical book on the Vietnam war?

Thanks,

Eduardo

Eduardo,
There are a lot of books. The one I found most germaine to the later period of the war (post '68) is "A Better War" but I don't have it handy.

I also have "Stolen Valor" by B.G. Burkett and Glenna Whitley, but it focuses on the peace movement and post-war issues of Vietnam Veterans.

"A Viet Cong Memoir" by David Chanoff and Doan Van Toai is interesting for a view from the standpoint of a "useful fool" - although Lan thinks this guy was not fooled at all, and knew what he was doing. In any case, it has some interesting information about the post-war period and about the way the North controlled the "insurgency" in the South and fabricated the Provisional Revolutionary Government.

"How We WOn The War" by General Vo Nguyen Giap (the Communist commander until 1968 when he was demoted) is probably not worth reading. It is consists almost completely of communist propaganda (much of which is factually wrong) and little useful information.

There are many books and lots of different conclusions. For example, David Hackworth's "About Face" is book that attacks the US strategy in Vietnam. Hackworth is an extremely highly decorated officer who fought in several wars including Vietnam. He is also an occasional guest on TV. I happen to think he is wrong - he has the view of a Colonel when understanding this war requires the viewpoint of a strategist, but he is interesting. His book "Steel My Soldiers' Heart" is a very interesting book about his experience commanding a battalion in heavy combat in Vietnam.

It is only with hindsight that the Tet offensive in 1968 looks like the turning point of the Vietnam war. The biggest direct effect of the Tet offensive was to show that Washington was spinning the war.


Living as I do in one of the protectorates of the USA(the south pacific protectorate of Australia) I loathe to be critical of my learned betters so I would suggest revisiting the discussion in 12 months. It should be easier then to tell if this is like the Tet offensive.

Ed,
I must respectfully disagree. As De Borgrave makes clear the information about the military situation was easily available to the press, but ignored.

The biggest effect of the Tet Offensive was that the press decided they knew the story of the Vietnam War when they really hadn't a clue. The dishonesty of Walter Cronkite putting on a helmet to give a broadcast where there was no danger at all captures it in a single image.

Furthermore, Tet did not show that the US was "spinning" the war, although there was a lot of spinning going on. MACV (I have since found out) warned of a major action in their press briefings. An attack the scale of Tet was unanticipated only because it was militarily insane (which is why "genius" Giap was subsequently demoted), and I don't think they were expecting the enemy to violate the Tet truce that they had respected in the past.

Also, after 1968, with the election of a new president, the replacement of the field commander, and the destruction of the Viet Cong, the war was military won in 1970 (but the US was already too hobbled by the Tet Syndrome to take advantage of it) and it was won again in 1972, when the US forced the North to agree to an enforceable truce (which became unenforceable due to the treachery of the United States Congress). See here for some of the history of that (although at the time I wrote it I had not studied the military side of post-1968 and thus didn't know of how strong the US position was in 1970).

Once the press made up their minds, no amount of evidence would change their minds. They became lying bastards then and are still lying bastards today - with the same sort of anti-Republican, ant-US military action slant.

We don't have to wait a year to know this time when they are lying, because today we have much better access to alternative sources: non-consensus press, international press, and bloggers in the field of action including Iraqis and soldiers. We may have to wait until November to determine if the Tet Syndrome has shifted power from the fighters to the appeasers.

Since 18,000 Australian soldier fought in Vietnam and 504 were killed., I hardly thing you need a comment "be critical of my learned >betters." But I would suggest you read the link above to learn more about the original Tet Syndrome, so you can be a little more learned about what the Tet Offensive actually showed.

There is a way to get past all this mess. We can make our own oil. I know this sounds impossible, but if you look at the website www. changingworldtech.com, you can see how it is now being done. Or see Discover magazine, May 2003, or Scientific American, Dec, 2003 for details. The sooner we can stop importing oil, the fewer brave soldiers we will lose. Please help by looking into this and publishing what you find.

Vietnam War is the BEST war ever. So many americans died i am not happy for it.

The French were losing and the US had lost the minute it stepped into the fray, where it had no business being. The Vietnamese have been fighting off foreign invaders for centuries and would not have quick short of nuclear attack. Thanks for the napalm though, immoral rascist imperialist pricks.

I was surfing along and came across your website. I really enjoyed it. Thanks! This site is very informative. I hope to see more in the near future, Wishing you all the best!

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