Lebell

Discussion is fine, but most of TFP avoids the Politics board because it ISN'T discussion, it is browbeating each other until one side gives up out of shear fatigue.

This is what is not enjoyable to me anymore and one of the reasons why I have been extremely scarce.

If you choose to believe that's a copout, I can live with that.

Since you asked a simple question without the embellishing sarcasm (another thing that is endemic to this board and something I've given into more than once, to my shame), I'll answer you.

The enemy in Vietnam was not only the VC, but also the North Vietnamese. These were the people who were supporting the rebels and destabilizing the South.

As it was, we dealt with the simptoms, not the disease, while the fifth column was hard at work in America undermining support for the war.

As you said, Tet was a huge loss for the VC, but if you ask the average semi-informed US adult, they think that we lost big...and we did where it mattered, in the arena of public opinion.

So the VC won not because they were better but because they used basic game strategy: they caused us to keep from committing all our forces while they strung out the war, undermining support for it back home...which is what the left is trying to do now in Iraq.

So in that regard, yes, Iraq has the potential to become another Viet Nam.

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"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience." – C. S. Lewis

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