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Hagel:Iraq looking like Vietnam

scottyz

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http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20050821/ap_on_go_co/us_iraq_5

A leading Republican senator and prospective presidential candidate said Sunday that the war in
Iraq has destabilized the Middle East and is looking more like the Vietnam conflict from a generation ago.

Nebraska Sen. Chuck Hagel (news, bio, voting record), who received two Purple Hearts and other military honors for his service in Vietnam, reiterated his position that the United States needs to develop a strategy to leave Iraq.

Hagel scoffed at the idea that U.S. troops could be in Iraq four years from now at levels above 100,000, a contingency for which the
Pentagon is preparing.

"We should start figuring out how we get out of there," Hagel said on "This Week" on ABC. "But with this understanding, we cannot leave a vacuum that further destabilizes the Middle East. I think our involvement there has destabilized the Middle East. And the longer we stay there, I think the further destabilization will occur."

Polls show the public growing more skeptical about Bush's handling of the war.

In Iraq, officials continued to craft a new constitution in the face of a Monday night deadline for parliamentary approval. They missed the initial deadline last week.

Hagel, who was among those who advocated sending two to three times as many troops to Iraq when the war began in March 2003, said a stronger military presence by the U.S. is not the solution today.

"I don't know where he's going to get these troops," Hagel said. "There won't be any National Guard left ... no Army Reserve left ... there is no way America is going to have 100,000 troops in Iraq, nor should it, in four years."

Hagel added: "It would bog us down, it would further destabilize the Middle East, it would give
Iran more influence, it would hurt
Israel, it would put our allies over there in Saudi Arabia and Jordan in a terrible position. It won't be four years. We need to be out

I agree with Hagel 100%. I'm very happy to see that at least a few Senators still have minds of their own. I too worry there wont be enough National Guardsmen left in the U.S. to help out if a natural disaster or attack did occur. Don't tell me Hagel is a liberal or brainwashed by michael moore and moveon.org because you know that isn't true.
 
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Hagel is running for President in 2008.......Nuff said..............
 
If certain people get what they want...it WILL be another Vietnam...

From an earlier post of mine...

The protesters’ myth is really interesting. With every
passing year one gets the impression that virtually all
Sixties types were at antiwar protests. (They were all at
Woodstock, too.) It has become unassailable gospel that
the protests were noble and effective. They may have been
nobly intended, but there is nothing but aging egos and pure
wind to sustain the notion that they were effective in stopping
or shortening the war. There is evidence, however, that the
protests lengthened the war and that more people were killed
on account of them.

How so? Political scientists talk about the phenomenon of a
“negative follower group,” which is defined basically as any
group that ticks others off to the point that they become the
friend of that group’s enemy. All the data we have from the time,
and since, show that the obscenity, illegality, and raging
anti-patriotism of the antiwar protesters made them the most
hated group in America during the late 1960s and early 1970s.
When police beat up protesters in the park across from the Democratic
National Convention in Chicago in 1968, most people who were
watching on television sympathized with the police.

The backlash had significant repercussions on the national political
scene. Without the antiwar protests, which were associated in the
minds of the “silent majority” with a militarized black power movement
that had somehow metastasized from the civil rights movement, George
Wallace could never have become a national political figure, if only
for a while. Nor would Richard Nixon have won the White House in 1968.
Furthermore, the antiwar movement undermined the Democratic Party and
hurt Hubert Humphrey’s bid for the presidency in a very tight election.)
The political reaction to the radical antiwar protests aided both the
Johnson and Nixon administrations’ efforts to manage growing public
disquiet over the war. More Americans would have opposed the war sooner
had they not been put off by radical protest tactics.

The truth is that the antiwar movement actually helped elect Richard
Nixon to the presidency not just once, but twice. By 1972, the movement
had gained enough power in the disheveled Democratic Party to see that
George McGovern was nominated instead of a more mainstream candidate
who might have kept the party’s labor and middle-class constituency intact.
And who believes that a Humphrey administration or a Humphrey-like
Democratic administration that would have begun in 1969 or 1973 would
have fought the war in Vietnam with the intensity that the Nixon
administration did, looking for a “peace with honor” that fell to
ashes on April 30, 1975?
 
cnredd said:
If certain people get what they want...it WILL be another Vietnam...

From an earlier post of mine...
Was that you?

I could have sworn it was Adam Garfinkle

From Mythed Opportunities: The Truth About Vietnam Anti-War Protests
Foreign Policy Research Institute Volume 1, Number 8
June 2000

The protesters’ myth is really more interesting. With every passing year one gets the impression that virtually all Sixties types were at antiwar protests. (They were all at Woodstock, too.) It has become unassailable gospel that the protests were noble and effective. They may have been nobly intended, but there is nothing but aging egos and pure wind to sustain the notion that they were effective in stopping or shortening the war. There is evidence, however, that the protests lengthened the war and that more people were killed on account of them.

How so? Political scientists talk about the phenomenon of a “negative follower group,” which is defined basically as any group that ticks others off to the point that they become the friend of that group’s enemy. All the data we have from the time, and since, show that the obscenity, illegality, and raging anti-patriotism of the antiwar protesters made them the most hated group in America during the late 1960s and early 1970s. When police beat up protesters in the park across from the Democratic National Convention in Chicago in 1968, most people who were watching on television sympathized with the police.

The backlash had significant repercussions on the national political scene. Without the antiwar protests, which were associated in the minds of the “silent majority” with a militarized black power movement that had somehow metastasized from the civil rights movement, George Wallace could never have become a national political figure, if only for a while. Nor would Richard Nixon have won the White House in 1968. Furthermore, the antiwar movement undermined the Democratic Party and hurt Hubert Humphrey’s bid for the presidency in a very tight election.) The political reaction to the radical antiwar protests aided both the Johnson and Nixon administrations’ efforts to manage growing public disquiet over the war. More Americans would have opposed the war sooner had they not been put off by radical protest tactics.​


I don't know what exactly you meant when you wrote the same words, but Mr. Garfinkle was referring to a phenomenom that has not been widely repeated in this war. He's talking about the massive, chaotic and often violent "street activism" that has not been as prominent these days as it was in the sixties. There's been more than one commentator who has noted that this relative lack of the "foul mouthed, dirty hippie" influence in today's anti-war movement has prob'ly allowed the movement to become more popular, more quickly than it otherwise would have.

Mr. Garfinkle, takes the trouble to make some distinctions.

The Spirit of the New Antiwar Movement

Above all, antiwar street activism needs to be distinguished from antiwar sentiment...
The vast majority of people out in the street protesting, however, do not see the Iraq question as a “near” thing, and they are not humble. They are stridently certain not only that going to war is unwise, but that it is also morally wrong and even criminal. They have not done the careful analytical thinking that has led people like Brent Scowcroft, Morton Halperin and Gary Hart to disagree with the present policy— people who clearly cannot be accused of rank ignorance about the issues or of a lack of patriotism and courage.​

So, from this we can see that it's not at all clear that Mr. Garfinkle's comments were intended to apply to much more than sixties-style, street protests. Though it remains unclear if you meant the same thing when you said the exact same words.
 
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I see from where you posted it previously that you didn't save the source info to your hd.


cnredd:

"Here's an interesting peice about Vietnam...a war in which EVERY major battle was won by the US, but we lost the wardue tothe lack of resolve within our own borders...I saved it about ayear ago from another site, but I can't find the source."​

Have no fear, my google-fu is strong. I shall find that which has been lost.

Sorry for harshing on you.
 
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Its people like Hagel that make Iraq a new Vietnam... Hes wavered to the pressure of liberals, in the interests of his own political ambitions. In Vietnam liberals instigated so much pressure that politicians were forced to change their views, and hence we lost that war... not on the battlefield, but at home. Opposition to a war is always bad news... you can't win divided. Ted Kennedy, Dean, Moore, etc etc divided the country and opposed to war to turn public opinion. Why? They want America to lose. Thats why we lost in Vietnam... and I hate to say it but thats why we'll lose here too. I would give some credit to Bush though.. he hasn't done enough to shut liberals up. I think being a "profile in courage" as President Kennedy admired... is always best. Its part of American democracy... to defy the constuency to do whats RIGHT, not neccessarily POPULAR. I think Bush has sacrificed alot of political capital... to change the middle east into a haven for freedom, not terrorism. All that, despite the unpopularness of his decisions.
 
KevinWan said:
I think Bush has sacrificed alot of political capital... to change the middle east into a haven for freedom, not terrorism. All that, despite the unpopularness of his decisions.
There is has been more terrorist activity in the middle east since Bush decide to invade. Iraq is under marshall law and in case you haven't heard their official consititution and law will be based on Islam. All the other countries that base their laws on Islam are the polar oppoite of havens for freedom..
 
scottyz said:
There is has been more terrorist activity in the middle east since Bush decide to invade. Iraq is under marshall law and in case you haven't heard their official consititution and law will be based on Islam. All the other countries that base their laws on Islam are the polar oppoite of havens for freedom..

That all depends on how you define terrorist activity.
If you mean breeding, training and instigating, I'd have to disagree.
You can easily find a list of terrorist activities based on time and geographical location and you'll see America's response has nothing at all to do with it's existence.

If you're referring to the insurgency in Iraq, you'd be correct. But keep in mind that, while they victimizing their own people, for the most part, they're putting all of their training to work, fighting our military. As it should be.

It's real easy to act as though terrorism is what it is due to America reacting to a war declared against us 7 years ago, but the fact is, in my 37 years, this has been a constant in my everyday conciousness.
 
scottyz said:
There is has been more terrorist activity in the middle east since Bush decide to invade. Iraq is under marshall law and in case you haven't heard their official consititution and law will be based on Islam. All the other countries that base their laws on Islam are the polar oppoite of havens for freedom..

Turkey is a free country, with Islamic laws. So far, it appears Iraq will not become a Saudi Arabia or Iran-type country. It will have influences of Islam, like Turkey. Just as we have influences of Christianity.
 
I think Chuck Hagel dosen't want to be on a sinking ship. He, along with most of America, is realizing the horror of this war, and dosen't want to go down with Mr. Bush.
 
Navy Pride said:
Hagel is running for President in 2008.......Nuff said..............
....but that makes it ok for him to speak out against the war, but not Cindy Sheehan.
 
Simon W. Moon said:
I see from where you posted it previously that you didn't save the source info to your hd.


cnredd:

"Here's an interesting peice about Vietnam...a war in which EVERY major battle was won by the US, but we lost the wardue tothe lack of resolve within our own borders...I saved it about ayear ago from another site, but I can't find the source."​

Have no fear, my google-fu is strong. I shall find that which has been lost.

Sorry for harshing on you.

Thank you VERY MUCH!...I knew I could find it on this forum, (since I knew I posted it before)...But I figured I'd just throw it out from my notepad file I'd saved when I first saw it...It's one of two posts that I didn't have a source...

I'm at work, but when I get home, I'll add "Adam Garfunkle..etc..." in the file...

Thanks again!:2wave:
 
kal-el said:
I think Chuck Hagel dosen't want to be on a sinking ship. He, along with most of America, is realizing the horror of this war, and dosen't want to go down with Mr. Bush.

Like I said Hagel is running for president in 2008.......

I don't know how old you are but I think America realized the horrors of war long ago but cutting and running is not and option..........

Its President Bush and how is he going down? He is not running for president again.......
 
scottyz said:
....but that makes it ok for him to speak out against the war, but not Cindy Sheehan.

Cindy is doing a lot more then speaking out against the war..........
 
Simon W. Moon said:
So, from this we can see that it's not at all clear that Mr. Garfinkle's comments were intended to apply to much more than sixties-style, street protests. Though it remains unclear if you meant the same thing when you said the exact same words.

Keep in mind that what I posted was all I had...With other comments and quotes surrounding it, it MAY take on a different meaning, but I'm relating the overall theory that applying political pressure to a miltary action lengthens the military actions...

I also remember a Vietnamese General saying they were close to quitting if the protesters didn't get the US government to quit first....Now THAT'S a post I should've kept...with the source, of course!:2razz:
 
cnredd said:
Keep in mind that what I posted was all I had...With other comments and quotes surrounding it, it MAY take on a different meaning, but I'm relating the overall theory that applying political pressure to a miltary action lengthens the military actions...

I also remember a Vietnamese General saying they were close to quitting if the protesters didn't get the US government to quit first....Now THAT'S a post I should've kept...with the source, of course!:2razz:

Look what I found!...Listen up kids...

Before the British wire service quoted General Giap, it noted:

"The Vietnam War, known in Vietnam as the American War, has become a hot issue in the U.S. presidential race with Democrat John Kerry drawing attention to his service and President Bush's Republicans disparaging Kerry's later anti-war stand."

North Vietnamese Colonel Bui Tin, who served under General Giap on the general staff of the North Vietnamese Army, received South Vietnam's unconditional surrender on April 30, 1975.

In an interview with the Wall Street Journal after his retirement, Colonel Tin explicitly credited leaders of the U.S. anti-war movement, saying they were "essentially to our strategy."

"Every day our leadership would listen to world news over the radio at 9AM to follow the growth of the anti-war movement," Colonel Tin told the Journal.

Visits to Hanoi by Kerry anti-war allies Jane Fonda and former Attorney General Ramsey Clark and others, he said, "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," the North Vietnamese military man explained.

Kerry did much of the same thing in widely covered speeches like the one he delivered to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in April 1971.

"Through dissent and protest [America] lost the ability to mobilize a will to win," Colonel Tin concluded
.


http://www.9thinfantrydivision.com/html/actualenemy.htm
 
The majority of Americans already realizes that invading Iraq was a mistake.
The majority of Americans already realizes that we were deliberately misled in re the threat from Iraq.
The majority of Americans already realizes.

There's no longer an antiwar movement. This is the sentiment of the country. There's a merely a pro-war movement.
 
Navy Pride said:
Like I said Hagel is running for president in 2008.......

I don't know how old you are but I think America realized the horrors of war long ago but cutting and running is not and option..........

Its President Bush and how is he going down? He is not running for president again.......

Unfortuately, in our barberic and primitive world you may be right. But IMO, nothing justifies violence. Gandhi was prepared to fast to death and still was able to oust the English from India.

Those who use violence, am I am talking about some world powers who think they they are exemplary say this:" we will punish violence with violence and solve the problems by sending bombs over the populations."

Iraq, for example, is a sticky situation, because we have already started sliding down the slippery slope and find it practically impossible to stop. Once we have started, we have to justify the unjustifiable: If we have murdered so many civilians until now, then we have to kill even more to justify that we were indeed right, because stopping requires alot more wisdom than starting in the first place.

Violence never solves anything, Never. Violence just leads to more, and once it starts, it doesn't stop, and if we step in and get involved, we are obligated to carry on more.
 
Simon W. Moon said:
The majority of Americans already realizes that invading Iraq was a mistake.
The majority of Americans already realizes that we were deliberately misled in re the threat from Iraq.
The majority of Americans already realizes.

There's no longer an antiwar movement. This is the sentiment of the country. There's a merely a pro-war movement.

The majority of Americans polled believe that....I am not sure the majority of Americans believe that.......I think it depends on who and where you poll.......
 
Unfortuately, in our barberic and primitive world you may be right. But IMO, nothing justifies violence. Gandhi was prepared to fast to death and still was able to oust the English from India.


With all respect its a good thing that our leaders did not feel that way when we were attacked at Pearl harbor at the beginning of WW2 or we might all be speaking Japanese or german today.......
 
kal-el said:
Violence never solves anything, Never. Violence just leads to more, and once it starts, it doesn't stop, and if we step in and get involved, we are obligated to carry on more.

"Violence never solves anything" - a pious hope. Violence can solve lots of problems: the coercion of laws and the regulation of the state depends upon implied violence. Self defense must resort to violence when necessary: and so on and on...........

Orwell is supposed to have said, "People sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf": He was right.
 
KevinWan said:
Its people like Hagel that make Iraq a new Vietnam... Hes wavered to the pressure of liberals, in the interests of his own political ambitions. In Vietnam liberals instigated so much pressure that politicians were forced to change their views, and hence we lost that war... not on the battlefield, but at home. Opposition to a war is always bad news... you can't win divided. Ted Kennedy, Dean, Moore, etc etc divided the country and opposed to war to turn public opinion. Why? They want America to lose. Thats why we lost in Vietnam... and I hate to say it but thats why we'll lose here too. I would give some credit to Bush though.. he hasn't done enough to shut liberals up. I think being a "profile in courage" as President Kennedy admired... is always best. Its part of American democracy... to defy the constuency to do whats RIGHT, not neccessarily POPULAR. I think Bush has sacrificed alot of political capital... to change the middle east into a haven for freedom, not terrorism. All that, despite the unpopularness of his decisions.

I thought Hagel was a Republican? How on earth could he be "pressured" by liberals? Or making this up for his own political ambitions? How would the political ambitions of a Republican be improved by question the was of his own party's president?

It is political suicide for him to criticize the war effort. This guy has the biggest b*lls I've seen for quite a while, certainly not seen of the Demoflats side of the isle. Something I would expect from a true vet.
 
Alan Ryan said:
"Violence never solves anything" - a pious hope. Violence can solve lots of problems: the coercion of laws and the regulation of the state depends upon implied violence. Self defense must resort to violence when necessary: and so on and on...........

Orwell is supposed to have said, "People sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf": He was right.

That is exactly the mindset of someone caught up in this terifying logic. Non-violence Always comes out the victor. You just have to be patient though. It is true that some died defending non-violence.

The first Buddhists were slaughtered, but Buddha's message still got through. The first Christians were fed to hungry lions, but Jesus' message got through. The first Muslims were passionately persecuted, but the message of Muhammed still got through. Not everyone was killed, there are always some of the just who survive to ensure that non-violence lives on.
 
Iriemon said:
I thought Hagel was a Republican? How on earth could he be "pressured" by liberals? Or making this up for his own political ambitions? How would the political ambitions of a Republican be improved by question the was of his own party's president?

It is political suicide for him to criticize the war effort. This guy has the biggest b*lls I've seen for quite a while, certainly not seen of the Demoflats side of the isle. Something I would expect from a true vet.

Hagel is a Republican. Liberals are winning over the Independents more and more every day. The war gets more unpopular by the minute. You can't win an election without the independent vote. Hagel needs to distance himself from the Iraq War and the president, if he wants to win his re-election. I didn't say he was making anything up.. He simply is distancing himself from unpopular things. Republicans are going to distance themselves from the president and his policies, because of his unpopularity. They need to win re-election, and the unpopularity of the president gets in the way of that. I think this is smart politics, not political suicide. He looks more "moderate" and independent minded this way.
 
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