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Vietnam?

Reader comment on item: Further on Israel's Winning Its War

Submitted by rick (United States), Apr 9, 2006 at 15:21

Pipes says... :

"To which I reply that I experienced in 1975 the only defeat in U.S. history, when American troops retreated from South Vietnam. They did so not because the U.S. economy had tanked, the last bullet had been spent, or because of battlefield defeats – quite the contrary, military analysts agree that the U.S. side was winning the war on the ground – but because the body politic's will had been sapped. If the North Vietnamese and their allies could defeat the United States, why not Israel the Palestinians?

1. "the only defeat in U.S. history"?
Tell that to the South in the Civil War. However you frame it the North and the Unionists defeated Americans, not some foreign nation.

2."military analysts agree that the U.S. side was winning the war on the ground "?
Winning what war - the one left over from French imperialism after they were defeated in 1954? The US had no war to win. The only ones fighting to win a war were the Vietcong and North Vietnamese. The same people who defeated the Japanese, the French, then the Americans and later gave the Chinese a very hard fought "win" for the thier "victory" and then deposed Pol Pot - whom the Americans supported together with the Chinese in one of the strangest "bed fellow" stories one could imagine.

3. f the North Vietnamese and their allies could defeat the United States, why not Israel the Palestinians?

...There is no similarity. There are no "Vietnams" in the Middle East to begin with. One could make certain similarities in Iraq bit even there the analogy fails miserably. The "insurgents" are not national heros like Ho Chi Mihn but rather deposed Baathists who want a return to the depostism of Saddam and the subjugation of the Shi'ites. And Bush despite his very poor understanding of the Middel East has a more concrete plan than did Johnson in Vietnam. I don't think it will work because Arabs have such built in hatreds, intolerances and distrusts of any society remotely "open" but saying that compared to Vietnam it is "brillant".

Johnson, a Democratic, fought the worst war in American history. Iraq abounds with critical problems but Vietnam was a failure from its very beginning under Eisenhower and Dulles.

The "better" comparison is Lebanon and the Israeli retreat from the Hizbollah. That is the example that Hamas and others like. Of course, Israel in Lebanon is not Israel in Israel and that is Hamas' mistake. Israel weighed its options in Lebanon and decided to leave. There is no leaving Israel.

In fact, one could make a better argument for Israel to be the North Vietnamese than they are the Americans. Israel is fighting a nationalist war and the palestinians have just popularly elected in a free and open election, a party which doesn't even recognize the "Zionist Entity".

Palestinians supported the destruction of Israel in 1948 and now in 2006 are going backwards to 1948. No where else in the world do you have the lack of reality and ostrich-like thinking than one sees by the palestinians. And how can it be otherwise as all of their "ideas" are founded on distortions, outright lies and hate. Even so, the world has given them a legitimacy they do not deserve, funding that exceeds any other group in the world, special UN organizations which no other group has and so forth.

With a record like that it doesn't make a difference how cruel, unworkable or delusionable their methods and proposals are.
Submitting....

Note: Opinions expressed in comments are those of the authors alone and not necessarily those of Daniel Pipes. Original writing only, please. Comments are screened and in some cases edited before posting. Reasoned disagreement is welcome but not comments that are scurrilous, off-topic, commercial, disparaging religions, or otherwise inappropriate. For complete regulations, see the "Guidelines for Reader Comments".

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Reader comments (22) on this item

Title Commenter Date Thread
Re Gods war [60 words]franklinMay 15, 2006 06:0645635
Gods war [25 words]franklinMay 14, 2006 14:3545585
Winning an Unjust Colonial War [57 words]Fred SchlomkaApr 21, 2006 04:2443698
Reply to the Jerusalem Post's 4/18/2006 article "Peace is better than the West Bank" [129 words]Tzvi Ben-davidApr 18, 2006 15:5943501
Don't be too hasty and don't jump to conclusions [49 words]Ibrahim RamadanApr 11, 2006 17:1442959
Israel and its Victory Problems [146 words]Al OrtizApr 10, 2006 22:4642889
Waiting [254 words]orange yonasonApr 9, 2006 18:4142807
Vietnam? [585 words]rickApr 9, 2006 15:2142802
Israel has accepted being in eternal war since Entebbe 1976 [155 words]Nabil ShwarmaApr 8, 2006 11:2742724
Understanding the Moslem world [271 words]F. ShakkiApr 8, 2006 09:1542710
F. Shakki Nails Muslim "Charities [151 words]orange yonasonApr 9, 2006 19:0442710
to orange yonason: islamistic charities are a real problem [252 words]Farid H.Apr 12, 2006 23:2142710
Maybe Jabotinsky isn't the best writer to quote [302 words]GeorgesApr 8, 2006 06:2042703
"...Israel was founded on the dispossession of its original indiginous majority."????? [247 words]bernard rossAug 16, 2006 12:2142703
No 1975 retreat in Vietnam [135 words]Ross HowardApr 7, 2006 21:4442682
Because the Palestinians have nowhere else to go. [101 words]anonymousApr 7, 2006 16:5542651
the minor premiss [271 words]john w mcginleyApr 7, 2006 16:5442650
1Jabotinsky and Pipes are right [143 words]Richard MILLMANApr 7, 2006 16:0542645
Memo to Israel: encourage Islamic Jihad and Hamas to fight each other [183 words]Dr RJPApr 7, 2006 15:5342642
Israel & Its Victory Problem [130 words]Adina KutnickiApr 7, 2006 15:2242638
Limits of Force [264 words]SteveApr 7, 2006 11:5042620
The lost endless war [204 words]ramsesOct 3, 2006 13:5342620

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Note: Opinions expressed in comments are those of the authors alone and not necessarily those of Daniel Pipes. Original writing only, please. Comments are screened and in some cases edited before posting. Reasoned disagreement is welcome but not comments that are scurrilous, off-topic, commercial, disparaging religions, or otherwise inappropriate. For complete regulations, see the "Guidelines for Reader Comments".

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