From: MaxPlumm@aol.com
Date: Fri Jan 24 2003 - 13:14:33 MST
Samantha wrote:
> "Vietnam is a much less clearcut case. I have neither the time
> nor inclination to debate Vietnam when a much more pressing and
> immediate senseless war is staring us in the face. That is not
> "bobbing and weaving". It is recognizing priorities and
> meaningless tactics that it is pointless to spend precious time
> playing to."
>
>
> These are hardly meaningless tactics, when you suggest that we have a
> "more pressing and immediate senseless war" staring us in the face. You
> are thereby suggesting that the Vietnam War was senseless, and are
> attempting to tie in the fact that action in Iraq would be an equal
> mistake.
And then responded to me by saying:
"I don't have time for this. More senseless than war X does not
make a firm claim how senseless war X was. I believe it was
pretty damn senseless but I don't have time, energy or
inclination to debate that when we are about to do something
REALLY stupid. Can I make it any more clear without people
wasting their fine minds picking at every sentence?"
I am not picking at your every sentence, at least not in a nit-picking sense.
I have consistently questioned your general assertion that apparently every
US foreign intervention was inappropriate besides World War II. I have taken
particular issue with your dismissal of the Vietnam (more accurately the
Indochina) War as "senseless." I then proceeded to argue that it was not, in
fact, senseless, but one of our most noble enterprises of the 20th Century,
successful or not. I have then respectfully, in my opinion, challenged you to
justify your position on the conflict, which I feel is untenable. The reason
I have done this is simple. If you are unable to justify your position with
regard to Vietnam, something I assume you have had a few decades to do, why
should anyone regard your current dismissal of action in Iraq as anything
more than an emotional appeal with no basis in logic or fact?
"If you want something productive to do then show precisely how
this war is a really, really good thing and that nothing very
bad will come from it."
Again, given that rationale, we would have simply abandoned Afghanistan to
Bin Laden and Mullah Omar following 9/11 because the track record of foreign
armies in that country wasn't that great. But that thinking would ignore the
fact that the Taliban was without any sort of aid from a superpower,
something not true in the past. I have seen analysis on both a left-leaning
network (CNN) and a right leaning one (Fox News), in addition to foreign
policy journals which all suggest that Saddam's army is in weaker shape now
than in 1991. There was no obscene loss of life in the Persian Gulf War
against his forces. There is no logical reason to believe there would be one
now.
"Personally I haven't heard that really
done by anyone. Without that the charge of it being "senseless"
and a Bad Idea (tm) stands. The burden of proof is on those who
advocate this mess."
Let me start by saying that I always appreciate a good ™ joke. I see no
evidence that removing Saddam will result in a bloodbath. You have suggested
in another post, which I will address later, that we should be attempting
more diplomatic measures. I would argue that this avenue is not guaranteed to
succeed, and, as evidenced by Kim Jong Il (Everybody's Favorite Communist
Child Molester ™), it can also serve to embolden the totalitarian thugs.
Everyone's favorite devout anti-Communist,
Max Plumm
"At every turn, we have been beset by those who find everything wrong with
America and little that is right."
-Richard Nixon
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