[TheForge] O/T Survivor

[Andy Vida]

schade@acegroup.cc wrote:
> 
> Armed citizenry (VietCong) won the Vietnam War with our war surplus .30
> cal. carbines and AK 47s. Many airstrikes and artillery barages were
> launched against 100lb guys wearing black pajamas. I saw them.

	What IRes was saying is that those people were heavily
	subsidized by foreign governments, and that is certainly
	so.  Nonetheless, one cannot discount the determination
	of those little pajama-wearing d00dz in having its effect.
	
	That said, I feel pretty certain that we would have wiped
	them out had the goal been to win.  I also do not believe
	that the stated goal of "containment" was in fact the real
	goal.  I strongly suspect that the goal was to have the
	conflict drag on for as many years as political expediency
	would support.  The MIC (military industrial complex) made
	HUGE profits from nine years of producing ordnance that was
	expended as rapidly as it was manufactured.  Who in hell
	cares if a few million little yellow commies bought it in
	the process?  Not they.
> 
> If you are in doubt that we actually lost remember the picures of us
> pushing Hueys overboard so that the last of our people could get out
> before the embassy was over run. 

	Those images are spooky as hell...  the images of Americans
	running, tail between their legs, across the ocean to leave
	it all behind.  It was very sad.  We ought not have been there
	to begin with, but once there, we should have spanked their
	little commie monkeys but good and been done with it, but that
	was not the goal.  It's a horrible thought that 58K of our
	pals died for NOTHING.  How would Joe Average feel about their
	deaths had they been taken randomly from our streets and shot
	against a wall?  That is effectively what we did to them and
	the thought makes me ill... which is why I don't think of it
	too often.
> 
> Armed citizenry are currently giving the US Army quite a bit of trouble
> in Iraq. Winner is yet to be decided.

	Too true, and being cause-oriented, they hold an inherent
	psychological advantage over the invading troops, much as
	VC and NVA held a similar advantage over us in SE Asia.
	Guys I spoke to about this who were there often mentioned
	how unnerving it was to know that they were not ever going
	to stop until either they won or were all wiped from the
	face of the earth.

	This is the same advantage the 9-11 hijackers held over us.
	Their extreme cause-orientation enabled them to overcome
	their relfex to preserve their own lives.  That is a very
	hard thing to fight against and that is what we fight
	today in Iraq and what the Israelis have been fighting
	for 58 years.  All "conventional" reasoning would predict
	that the Palestinians would have cried uncle perhaps 30
	years ago.  They have not and don't appear to be anywhere
	near it if the Israelis refuse to come to their senses and
	treat them with some measure of equity.  They all want peace,
	but not at any cost.  I cannot say that I blame them; who
	do you know wishes to be treated like crap?  Short of a few
	sexual perverts, I know of none.