--- Warren Ockrassa <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > On Dec 12, 2004, at 8:44 AM, Gautam Mukunda wrote: > Yes, interpretation of historical events is at least > partly objective. > Given that I can see how some things that might be > clear to me may not > be to others.
Or, alternately, why things you think are clear are very clearly wrong to others. > Nothing about them specifically is a lesson from > Nam, but I listed more > than their names as lessons. I brought *them* up to > point out that > once-failed leadership was in charge of this second > debacle, and that > should have been a point of concern before the > invasion of Iraq. It > wasn't. Well, first, Cheney was part of the Nixon Adminstration for about a week, since he was on Gerald Ford's staff. I'm not sure Rumsfeld was _ever_ part of the Nixon Administration. He was, again, Ford's SecDef. Beyond that, however, Nixon got us _out_ of Vietnam. You keep talking about "once-failed" leadership, but _this doesn't make any sense_. Unless you want to point out how Cheney and Rumsfeld failed during Vietnam - and I'm pretty sure you can't - it's just a nonsense statement. > Viet Nam was about trying to resist or overthrow the > Communist > government of North Viet Nam. That's conquest. (Show > me any war, by the > way, that is not about conquest.) South Viet Nam as > an independent > country with at least two political factions at odds > within it. And it > was in danger of not being independent much longer. I'm sorry, this is just nonsense. If Vietnam was about overthrowing the government of North Vietnam, _we would have invaded North Vietnam_. That might even have been a good idea - Vietnam might be a free state today if we had. Whether it was a good idea or not, though, we _didn't do it_ because that _wasn't our goal_. > > > By your standard, I point out that _World War 2_ > was > > about "nothing but conquest", as it too was about > > "liberating the people" of the natoins of Europe > and > > Asia. > > All wars are about conquest. I'm not sure what you > mean by the rest of > your point here. Well, they're usually about conquest _by one side_. The side that's trying to prevent itself from being conquered is not usually described as fighting for conquest. My point was that if you believe what you write, then you oppose the American involvement in the Second World War as well. After all "all wars are about conquest." > I'm not sure how. Germany and Japan were at least > loosely allied. > Pounding Japan would have left us with the > undealt-with problem of the > Nazis. So what? They were all the way over there in Europe. > > Mmmmmaybe. Certainly we were a thorn in their side. > But they would have > been foolish to overlook us; they would eventually > have got tired of > having Europe, Asia and Africa all to themselves, > don't you think? I don't know. My point is that it was a good thing we got involved - because we weren't fighting to conquer anybody, any more than we were in Vietnam. It's only you who is making the nonsensical statement of claiming that we _were_ trying to conquer people in Vietnam. Well, by the standards you have suggested, if we were conquering people in Vietnam, we were doing it in the Second World War as well. > > Most > > historians of the Cold War think that the American > > reaction was _defensive_ - that's why our strategy > was > > called "Containment". You've heard of it? We > were > > trying to stop them from conquering us. > > I've not only heard of it; I was around for part of > it. Then, since the lessons of history are immediately apparent to you, Warren, tell me how you managed to learn from containment that we were trying to conquer the Communist countries. Words have meanings - that is, actual meanings, not just whatever you want them to mean at this particular moment in time. Conquest has a meaning. There isn't any definition of conquest in which we were trying to conquer North Vietnam - or, for that matter, any part of Vietnam. It does not exist. ===== Gautam Mukunda [EMAIL PROTECTED] "Freedom is not free" http://www.mukunda.blogspot.com __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Read only the mail you want - Yahoo! Mail SpamGuard. http://promotions.yahoo.com/new_mail _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
