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History Breeds Futility
Fear is the foundation of most governments.
-John Adams
Saturday, December 30, 2006
  GET THE FUCK OUT
DEPT OF DOOMED TO REPEAT DEPT

Editor's Note: This is part of a series drawing ideas from the book "Nobody Wanted War: Misperception in Vietnam and Other Wars" by Ralph K. White and published in 1968, reprinted in 1970. All blockquotes are from the book.

Part I can be found here.

---

During the later years of Vietnam, when it was obviously not only tragedy but vicious mistake, there were five different "solutions" presented to the American people, who would have no say in the matter: escalation, reclaiming, coalition, partition and withdrawal.

---

The most recent idea of a troop "surge" has been correctly identified as a policy of escalation.

The escalation idea is not coming from the President's military advisers, but from clueless politicians who long ago abandoned any rationality toward Iraq and threw their lot in with Bush's own fairytale view - a Maxwell's Demon situation in which we are neither winning nor losing, and can never know.

"Those who favor escalation are not 'war-makers' in their own eyes. On the conscious level, at least, most of them feel that their desire for peace is as great as anyone's, but that they care more about freedom than some of the appeasers do, have more courage, and, above all, have a more realistic view of the brutal realities of the present situation. Even the 'reclaimers,' as seen by the escalators, are not fully realistic . . . As the escalators see it, the war in the South has bogged down and become an interminable, indecisive stalemate. A decisive victory in the South that would end the loss of American and Vietnamese lives, preserve South Vietnam's freedom and teach Communists all over the world to stay where they belong is simply not possible unless we have the courage and realism to strike at the heart of the beast, in Hanoi. That can be done - with some danger, but with no great danger - and it would quickly end the war. Let's get it over with. If we're going to fight, let's fight to win."
"Off the top of my head, I would say that Ethiopia is not afflicted with a pernicious and defeatist media machine that is capable of manipulating public opinion, and even if it was, it doesn’t look like the Ethiopian president would give a damn in any case. The word that comes to mind is resolve. When a leader resolves to send men into battle, he is obligated to withstand the criticism of the media so that the troops who are withstanding hostile fire from the enemy are able to decisively defeat that enemy."
-by Froggy, posted at Blackfive

---

Reclaiming is a fool's errand. Just as reclaiming all of South Vietnam was an impossibility.


"The Communist-led anti-foreign movement in South Vietnam has actually been very strong ever since 1945. Those who do not realize this are indulging in an expanded territorial self-image."*
Battles in Iraq, such as they are, are fought over and over again. Somehow there is no army to be defeated, only insurgents who are indistinguishable from civilians and are replaced as soon as they fall.

How many times has Fallujah been "taken." How many times Ramadi?

How many more times?

---

"Most Americans have cherished an image of the kind of democracy we want for the South Vietnamese. It is an image based on our Western experience: a unified country, with free speech and free elections, not intimidated by either side, in which the majority would win and the minority - still generously permitted by the majority to live and to carry on political activity - would accept the electoral verdict. As applied to Vietnam that image is radically inappropriate, both because of the non-Western traditions of the country and because over twenty years of civil war have inflamed factional hatred and suspicion. We can promote democracy in South Vietnam, but not by pretending that our kind of democracy is now feasibly for the South Vietnamese."
"Those purple fingers point in accusation to those who doubt the power and desire of freedom, who claim that all forms of government have legitimacy depending on the kinds of people over which they rule. The purple fingers pull the mask off a global media effort to cast the situation in Iraq in the worst possible light to belittle the effort made by the West to rescue millions from hopeless tyranny and in so doing, keep their own people safer.

"The purple fingers point the way to change the Middle East and turn it into a dynamo of philosophy, production, and freedom. They tell us we're winning, if some of us would only listen."
-by Captain Ed, posted at Captain's Quarters Blog

Remember all those purple fingers?

They're stained red. As are our own.

Coalition will not be implemented by the United States. The last person to be successful at quelling the infighting between rival clans and religions is now officially pushing up daisies.

---

"It is an immediately attainable and workable policy - unlike coalition, which is probably neither attainable, nor workable if attained."
In light of the first three possibilities, partitioning seems to be largely neutral. It should be noted that it has been successful in the past, in terms of providing relief from direct conflict. However, it does not address the underlying causes of conflict and therefore can result in back-and-forth border disputes or even larger conflicts.

As well as the possibility of a major grab for influence between the larger Middle East.

"Unlike our present policy, it realistically scales down our goal to what is possible, given the limited nature of the resources we are now prepared to invest. It seems feasible even with a substantial reduction of American troops."
The President, however, seems determined to think only of escalation, or however it will be branded in the new year.

Of course, the partitioning could occur no matter what he decides.

---

"If withdrawal is compared with escalation or with the present reclaiming policy, the arguments for it include all of the strong arguments cited above in the case against the reclaiming policy: cleanly ending the war, with all its cost in American lives and treasure, and in suffering for the Vietnamese; ending the alienation of American youth; ending the poisoning of our relations with allies, neutrals and potential enemies."
Get out now. Get out now. Get out now.

Hell, partition before we do it, just get out now.

-THE MANAGEMENT


*This is in reference to the idea that people come to associate their nation with a body-image, particularly in a virile sense. Anything seen as an infringement of territory diminishes a person's feeling of self arising from perceived ownership of that territory.

"All of this makes psychologically interesting the apparent assumption of a great many American militants that South Vietnam is self-evidently "our" (the Free World's) territory, that North Vietnamese Communists who cross the line as we defined it are self-evidently invading "another country" rather than, as they claim, trying to "liberate" their countrymen from foreign rule, and that to regard our presence in Vietnam (from 1950 to the present) as an infringement on Vietnamese soil is fantastic."


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MATTER
The Two Things about History:
1.
Everything has earlier antecedents.

Corrolary: all culture, including religion, is syncretic; there is nothing purely original.

Second Corrolary: there's no question that a historian can't complicate by talking about what led up to it.

2. Sources lie, but they're all we have.

-Jonathan Dresner, "The Two Things"
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