Quote:
Originally Posted by roachboy
a sense in which iraq is a rerun of vietnam except without the draft--the forbidden lightening rod around which neo-con "strategizing" has danced, the line they cannot cross, their explanation for everything that happened during the vietnam period--well that and allowing uncontrolled press access to battle areas.
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The problem is that they have no viable explanation for what happened in Vietnam.
As for the control of the press issue, this, too is part of the blindness of fading empires. The current restrictions on the press are an outgrowth of denial and disavowal of the military's failures in Vietnam. It's always someone else's fault: hippies, SDS, black panthers, Muhammed Ali but also the draft, tv, Walter Cronkite, the press in general... So many stabs in the back.
Even if the generals had had everything they wanted and nothing but showers of rose petals at home, they still would have lost. This is because they didn't understand what they were fighting against, which was basically the people of Vietnam. There was no military solution except killing everyone in the whole country -- something that Lt. Calley (a la Kurtz) tried on a small scale.