I will argue,
Declaring victory is not the same as winning. The body bags are coming home
and in Vietnam we had a portion of the population that had an active
government.
Seriously, I do think that what was happening in Vietnam was harder to obfuscate. We took over from the French in Vietnam -- not an auspicious beginning. We did not take over from the Russians in Afghanistan. We started with a "clean slate" in Afghanistan. In Iraq we started on the base of over a decade of real successes (kicking them out of Kuwait; the sanctions; the 2 no-fly zones....
I cannot understand why, from a military perspective, we should not have been happy to keep Saddam Hussein cooped up between the 2 no-fly zones (which also provided freedom to the Kurds -- no mean accomplishment!).
> Today we have a radical fundamentalist group that like the
radical fundamentalists here at home, preach daily and weekly about the "Great Satan" and his representitives patroling the streets. It will not be long before every testasterone laden teenager will want to try his gun fighting ability against the local GS representitives. That's us. There are plenty of "Billy the Kid" clones in Iraq and meeting them on the streets is a lot different from dropping bombs. We might very well find that Sadaam's solution is our solution, as well as the Asaad and Sharon solution. It would have been better not to have gotten involved but we did.
Of course I agree we should not have got involved (maybe we should not have got involved with Israel, either, but that's a less popular speculation).
As for myself, I try to avoid places which persons looking for your "GS representatives" are likely to frequent.
When I attended Teachers College, I did take the risk of walking from the 125th St. MTA station across town. I was always afraid and I would have been very hurt but not surprised to be mugged. On the other hand, I didn't make that trek wearing a Brooks Brothers suit, either.
I try to keep out of harm's way, because I know that, for all my problems, there are a lot of people with a lot more basic problems, for whom I am potential revenues on the hoof, or just a handsome face to mutilate.
[snip]
You can bet that Homeland Security will eventually extend to the Democrat Party in the minds of Republican radicals.
When the going gets rough, I think that I, unlike Galileo, will stick to expressing my thoughts in latin (so to speak, mutatis mutandis, etc.) -- I don't have much problem leaving the vulgar tongue to the vulgar.
Let me end by repeating a bumper sticker I saw one day in 1976, as I was walking to work from where I'd parked my car early on a Sunday morning, near the Capitol (the streets were "deserted"):
I hate you as much as you hate me.
I perceived an attempt to communicate.
\brad mccormick
--
Let your light so shine before men,
that they may see your good works.... (Matt 5:16)Prove all things; hold fast that which is good. (1 Thes 5:21)
<![%THINK;[SGML+APL]]> Brad McCormick, Ed.D. / [EMAIL PROTECTED] ----------------------------------------------------------------- Visit my website ==> http://www.users.cloud9.net/~bradmcc/
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