SO, I finally have a few calm minutes to persue the editorial pages of IBD on the LONG train ride home and, lo and behold, another absolute editorial home run. But, once again, are they reading my work here? Again, I'm going to ask the question: are the editors of the great Investors Business Daily frequent patrons of Jeff's Garage & Ale House? I'll let you decide (chuckle).
JG&AH, May 22, 2007:
The second editorial from IBD today is number three of a series of truthful looks on the Bush Presidency, this one focusing on the progress in Iraq. Folks, I thought someone had plagiarized one of my writings when reading this. Fantastic work, IBD. Here's the most important segment of the editorial entitled "Bush's Exit Strategy in Iraq is Victory":
IBD: "The jihadists in Iraq, like the Viet Cong, know they cannot win on the battlefield. But they hope, as in Vietnam, that nightly scenes of carnage on our plasma TVs will help them win in the media and in the halls of Congress. As al-Qaida's No. 2 thug, Ayman al-Zawahiri wrote in a 6,000-word letter dated July 8, 2005: '(W)e are in a battle, and more than half this battle is in the media.'"
JG&AH: WOW! Could it be the editors of the great IBD are among the patrons of Jeff's Garage and Ale House? HI GUYS! Seriously, this echos my comments from this post back in March entitled "The Wornout (and Inaccurate) Analogy of Vietnam.""During (the) Tet (Offensive), the 'Vietcong troops reached the U.S. embassy in Saigon, where they (contrary to popular movie renditions) were killed to a man... for every American Soldier or Marine killed, 50 North Vietnamese died, a ratio 'approaching the horrendous slaughter....between the Spaniards and Aztecs in Mexico or British and Zulus in southern Africa.' At the old capital of Hue 'the surprised and outnumbered U.S. Marines evicted 10,000 Viet Cong and Vietnamese regulars from a fortified city in less than three weeks and at a loss of only 150 dead.'""More: 'A U.S. military historian, Robert Leckie, referred to Tet as 'the most appalling defeat in the history of war' for Hanoi-an 'unmitigated military disaster'. Even General Tran Van Tra, a top-ranking communist, agreed, 'We suffered large sacrifices and losses with regard to manpower and material, especially cadres at the various echelons, which clearly weakened us.' How did the circa-1968 Useful Idiots report Tet? Schweikart and Allen continue:'....yet the media reported this as a communist victory. 'Embassy in Saigon Captured!' read one erroneous headline.... Scenes were cut and spliced in the studios into thirty-second clips of marines and body bags, with an accompanying text, 'American troops mauled (p. 694 of A Patriots Guide To American History, Schweikart and Allen).'
The great IBD echoed the sentiments of my post "The Wornout (and Inaccurate) Analogy of Vietnam" again. Some snippets from IBD on August 28th (bold emphasis mine):
- "The U.S. military was never defeated in any battle."
- South Korea was no Athenian democracy back then, and yet we did not throw it to the wolves. Bacevich says we should look at "the condition of Vietnam today." He should look at the condition of South Korea.
- It was these failures (by North Vietnam and the VietCong) that led to the January 1973 Paris Peace Accord. But when a Democratic Congress legislated an end to U.S. operations in Indochina that summer, it also stopped U.S. air support of a friendly Cambodian government under siege by Hanoi and the Khmer Rouge.
- (quoting Schweikart & Allen) More: "Having won every major military encounter in the war, American armed forces withdrew and Vietnamized the war, as had been the intention since Kennedy."
- South Vietnam, today, would still be a free and most likely vibrant nation with a north/south contrast similar to Korea.
- However, once Nixon was run from office and Congress pulled the plug on the fledgling but surviving government in the South, all was lost.
Also, compare "The Korean Parallel" (9/20/2007) to my references above (point 2).
Lastly, a great piece today from IBD.The fact is that soon, earlier than 2015, an Iranian freighter in international waters off, say, California, could launch a nuclear-armed Scud over the American heartland. The warhead would detonate high in the night sky, unleashing an electromagnetic pulse frying the Times' presses and sending the U.S. economy back 100 years. The war on terror would be over, and we would have lost.
Recounting a "nightmare" I've often had, I posted this on July 8th:
"Then, late night in April of 2011, a flash is seen from what appears to be an Iranian merchant vessel. It was allowed to approach the American coastline because, under the new rules of engagement put forth by now subservient US military, it is not approached and questioned unless a detailed level of criteria has been met. Within 60 minutes, a remote plains town in rural Missouri is crushed by a nuclear explosion. The Electromagnetic Pulse, or EMP, creates what is known as an "EMP Laydown." America's infrastructure, powered by computer, struggles to survive. Even our spy satellites lack needed computer support. We are now more vulnerable as a nation than ever."
Don't get me wrong, I love IBD and am glad people are saying these things. But come on, guys, give me a staff job if you're going to parrot me!
Check them out here. Good stuff.
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To summarize ( I wrote this very quickly last night, amidst a thousand barking and nagging distractions), points that I routinely make that I hear almost no one else in the blogosphere or in right-0f-center talk radio make are these:
- Vietnam was not a "loss" for the US, but a misreported victory
- South Vietnam would be a mirror, virtually, of South Vietnam had it been reported correctly and supported financially by the US Congress.
- The jihadi's know they can use the Useful Idiots in the MSM to win by manipulating the mentality of the Xbox Americans
- The biggest fear I have of a nuclear, suicidal Iran is the thought of a crudely fired Scud missile creating an EMP laydown and opening the US up to vulnerable invasion.
Yet no one ever seems to make these points. Then my good friends at IBD show up after I've already written about it and make the points as I have made on these pages. I'm not vain enough to think these guys "learn from me", plagerize me other such nonsense, but it really makes me chuckle.
