That was then and this is now.

by Debi Jones

Vietnam was over 30 years ago. However, we have a mess on our hands today that has many similarities to Vietnam. So, perhaps a different type of Vietnam discussion is warranted.
1)The US tried to suppress a communist insurgency with direct military action, and today we're trying to suppress a Muslim/Islamic insurgency with direct military action.
2)The indigenious peoples made the enemy difficult to discern from noncombatants. Which war am I describing Vietnam, Afganistan or Iraq? All of them.
3)Our leadership insists on claiming victory while the body bags continue to stack up, the insurgency waxes and wanes, and whole cities are turned to rubble. Vietnam, Afganistan and Iraq. 4)Our military trains the in country military which suffers an 80% desertion rate. Vietnam, and Iraq.
5)The domino effect makes a come back. In Vietnam, "the dominio effect" was a policy position which stated that if Vietnam fell to communism then the surrounding states would follow. In Iraq, Bush Administration officials have stated that a democratic state in the Arab World would effect change in Iran and possibily other surrounding Arab states to become democracies.
6)The military is directed to occupy certain areas and chase uprisings, but prevented from a complete destruction of the enemy for political reasons. Vietnam, Afganistan, and Iraq.
7)The military is directed to "win hearts and minds" through the applications of artillery and bullets. In addition, the military is to train the local population to defend itself from fellow countrymen and the localized insurgents. Vietnam, Afganistan and Iraq.
8)Vietnam, Afganistan and Iraq are positioned as missionary endeavors on the behalf of democracy. The use of the military as missionaries and the installation of puppet regimes hasn't resulted in the successful growth of democracy.
9)The definition of insanity is to repeat the same behavior and expect a different result.
10)The US citizery is dupped - supplied with faulty/false information to gain its support for military action. Vietnam, and Iraq.
How much further down this familiar path do we want to continue? There are many people in the US government who have insisted that we have alternatives to war which deal effectively with the Islamic insurgency we face today. It's time to listen to the alternatives.
America should be the beacon of democracy in the world and not its missionary.
John Quincy Adams addressing congress on the 48th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence:
"She [America] is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all. She is the champion and vindicator only of her own. She will recommend the general cause by the countenance of her voice, and the benignant sympathy of her own example. She well knows that by once enlisting under the banners other than her own, were they even the banners of foreign independence, she would involve herself beyond the power of extrication, in all the wars of interest and intrigue, of individual avarice, envy, ambition, which assumed the colors and usurped the standards of freedom. The fundamental maxims of her policy would insensibly change from liberty to force.... She might become the dictatress of the world. She would no longer be the ruler of her own spirit."