Newsweek's Anna Quindlin: We've Been Here Before (Iraq War and Vietnam)

[Pirate Smile]

We've Been Here Before

What was the cause, the point, the strategy? Suddenly many Americans started to realize that there was no good answer.

By Anna Quindlen
Newsweek
Oct. 31, 2005

-snip-
The Vietnam Memorial stands, in part, as a monument to blind incrementalism, to men who refused to stop, not because of wisdom but because of ego, because of the fear of looking weak. Not enough troops, not enough planning, no real understanding of the people or the power of the insurgency, dwindling public support. The war in Iraq is a disaster in the image and likeness of its predecessor.

During each election cycle, we ponder the question of whether character matters. Of course it does. Does anyone doubt that the continued prosecution of this war has to do with the personality of the commander in chief, a man who is stubborn and calls it strength, who wears blinders and calls it vision? When he vowed to invade Iraq, the advisers he heeded were those who, like him, had never seen combat. The one who had was marginalized and is now gone. The investigation of who leaked what to whom, of what the reporter knew and how she knew it, may be about national security and journalistic ethics, but at its base it is about something more important: the Nixonian lengths to which these people will go to shore up a bankrupt policy and destroy those who cross them on it.

-snip-
Perhaps the leaders of the Democratic Party should take time off from their fund-raisers and visit the Vietnam Memorial, too. They should remember one of the most powerful men the party ever produced, Lyndon B. Johnson, and how he was destroyed by opposition to the war in Vietnam and bested by those brave enough to speak against it.

At least Johnson had the good sense to be heartbroken by the body bags. Bush appears merely peevish at being criticized. Someone with a trumpet should play taps outside the White House for the edification of a president who has not attended a single funeral for the Iraqi war dead. As I am writing this, the number of American soldiers killed is 1, 992. By the time you read it, it may have topped 2,000. Will I be writing these same things when the number is 3, 000, 5, 000, 10,000? If we are such a great nation, why are we utterly incapable of learning from our mistakes? America's sons and daughters are dying to protect the egos of those whose own children are safe at home. Again.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9785746/site/newsweek/

[rfranklin]

1. We need a military coffin shipping system, computer controlled...

from the moment the coffin is loaded on the airplane until final resting place everything is automated. With a state-of-the-art RFID embedded in the container, an electronic bugle which makes playing Taps a snap and an animatronic George W. Bush with a recorded message complete with "war on terra" and "stay the course" quotes to "honor" the fallen soldier. This would free George of the criticism that he doesn't care and create greater efficiency.

Oh yea, and the families could be notified by telemarketers in India.

[stilpist]

2. Better late than never, I guess

It's a fine article, right on the money.

But Newsweek wasn't publishing anything like this a year ago, when it might have made a difference.

[marylanddem]

3. She's dead wrong

that Iraq or Vietnam failed in part because of "not enough troops,
not enough planning." And this error is very dangerous. Thousands upon thousands of troops were sent to Vietnam, and there was plenty of planning. It's just that the war was wrong. Morally wrong. Like Iraq.
No amount of troops or planning could change that.

[cassiepriam]

4. yes, it failed because the other side cared a heck of a lot more

for that piece of land than we did. Just like Iraq.