Peace prize

[homer13j]

Do you believe Vietnam was winnable? Under what definition of "win"?

No. Not because it wasn't possible, but because our own political leaders were far more worried about polls, approval ratings and relentless chanting throngs of pissed-off hippies than actually getting the job done.

During the Tet Offensive the Viet Cong threw everything they had at us and failed miserably losing more than 45,000 troops in the process. Hindsight being what it is we now know that an immediate and thorough counteroffensive could have easily delivered the knockout punch and toppled the North Vietnamese government. That would be my definition of "win." But it did not and was not allowed to happen for purely political reasons.

Throw in the fact that our own news media was lying to us all along. The "most trusted" anchor Cronkite told us following Tet: "Who won and who lost in the great Tet offensive against the cities? I'm not sure. The Vietcong did not win by a knockout, but neither did we. The referees of history may make it a draw." Sure, it was pure BS, but it worked. It turned public opinion solidly against the war and eventually gave the hippies exactly what they wanted: a humiliating defeat for the US.

Today we have elected idiots like Harry Reid openly cheering for another humiliating defeat for the US.

It irks me that liberal Europeans do not realize their very existence and freedoms are only afforded by the actions of a Western superpower willing to fight for the Western world. All the while, the liberal European will daily denounce that power as an illogical rogue state, undermining, and hazardous to the peace of the world. As I said, it is easy to take the high road (talk the talk) if you have someone to take the low road for you (walk the walk).

Irksome, yes, but not at all hard to understand.

European history is full of war and bloodshed that culminated in the two biggest, bloodiest wars in human history inside of three decades. After the second time the US decided Europe could not be trusted to behave themselves so we left a few divisions behind in western Europe to ensure they would play nice together while the Soviets did the same to eastern Europe with the added bonus of instituting communist oppression. Western Europe was quite happy to be relieved of the burden of maintaining standing armies, navies, defense perimeters, etc, but was not happy about the ensuing cold war as peace and stability became the two most important things in the European mind. The cold war standoff was the single biggest threat to peace in Europe. Western Europe could not control what the Soviets did, so they tried their best to influence America...

I remember distinctly when President Reagan gave his famous speech at the Brandenburg Gate calling on the Soviets to "tear down this wall" it sent western Europe into conniptions. Reagan's words were considered to be "inflammatory" and "destabilizing" yet it was those very words that started the chain of events that ended with the fall of that wall and eventually communism itself. Today Reagan is barely mentioned at all during the 20th anniversary celebrations marking the end of the German divide because they just might have to admit he was right about the Soviets all along.

Fast-forward to 2004. Europe saw the US invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan as yet another threat to their own peace and stability. They desperately want a say in US policy to prevent such threats and they get rather agitated when we don't listen. They don't realize (or want to acknowledge) the fact that they have been lecturing us for 200+ years on how we're "doing it all wrong" and like you would do with a nagging wife who won't shut up we Americans have learned to simply tune out whenever the lectures begin yet again.

THIS is what pisses off Europe.