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August 26, 2007
SouthAmerica: The enclosed article forgot to mention the other books that these historians are also working on such as:
In the new rewrite of history Adolf Hitler is the winner of World War II.
I guess Adolf Hitler would love the new revisionist history which maintains that Germany did not lose the war, but the will to win.
I canât wait for what these historians have to say about World War I.
The other project that these historians are also working on it will be a blockbuster â on the new version Napoleon defeats the Duke of Wellington in Waterloo.
The French are going to love that.
Anyway in fantasyland anything it is possible â no wonder Hollywood is so successful with its Fairy Tales.
Sorry, not Hollywood, I mean Washington D.C.
**************
From The Sunday Times - UK
August 26, 2007
âVietnam historians give Bush reason to stay in Iraqâ
Sarah Baxter, Washington
WHEN President George W Bush invoked the memory of Vietnam to justify staying in Iraq, he was drawing on a new wave of revisionist history which maintains that America did not lose the war, but the will to win.
âThree decades later there is a legitimate debate about how we got into the Vietnam war and how we left,â Bush said in a speech to army veterans last week. White House insiders admitted it was a risky topic which had previously been left to the antiwar movement. Americans generally prefer to forget Indochina and remember who won the cold war.
Yet as the prospect of victory in Iraq has receded, the lessons of Vietnam have provoked intense discussion among historians and in current affairs magazines such as the neo-conservative Weekly Standard.
Bush has been quietly paying attention and had been thinking for months about the right moment to bring Vietnam into the debate, according to a White House official.
In Triumph Forsaken, published last year, the historian Mark Moyar claimed that South Vietnam could have survived had the Americans not acquiesced in the overthrow of President Ngo Dinh Diem in 1963, plunging the country into an âextended period of instability and weaknessâ.
Moyar is now working on a book about the second half of the war, in which he argues: âIn the offensive of 1975, the North Vietnamese are moving around huge conventional forces that would have been pulverised by our air power.â By then, however, Hanoi was well aware that America was turning against the war and doubted that the US military would be able to act decisively.
Supporters of the Iraq war have also been delving into Lewis Sorleyâs book, A Better War, which was rereleased in paperback this year. The war, Sorley wrote, âwas being won on the ground even as it was being lost at the peace table and the US Congressâ.
The North Vietnamese have given this argument a boost over the years. In an interview after his retirement, Bui Tin, who received the South Vietnamese armyâs unconditional surrender in 1975, recalled that visits to Hanoi by Jane Fonda, church ministers and other antiwar protesters âgave us confidence that we should hold on in the face of battlefield reverses . . . through dissent and protest [America] lost the ability to mobilise a will to winâ.
James Q Wilson, a social scientist who is revered by conservatives, argued in The Wall Street Journal last year:
âWhenever a foreign enemy challenges us, he will know that his objective will be to win the battle . . . among the people who determine what we read and watch. We are in danger of losing in Iraq . . . in the newspapers, magazines and tele-vision programmes we enjoy.â
Antiwar historians have hit back at Bushâs invocation of Vietnam. âWhat is Bush saying?â asked Robert Dallek, the biographer of John F Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson. âThat we didnât fight hard enough, stay long enough? Thatâs nonsense.â
The debate is not just academic for Senator John Warner, former chairman of the Senate armed services committee, who called last week for Bush to begin pulling out 5,000 troops from Iraq by Christmas. The 80-year-old Republican is still haunted by the memory of Vietnam.
âThe army generals would come in [and say], âJust send in another 5,000 or 10,000â,â Warner recalled. âYou know, month after month. Another 10,000 or 15,000. They thought we could win it. We kept surging in those years. It didnât work . . . You donât forget something like that.â
Senior generals, including Peter Pace, chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, and George Casey, the army chief of staff, are believed to support reducing the number of US troops in Iraq to below 100,000 by the end of next year.
Robert Gates, the defence secretary, is also thought to favour the idea of drawing down 3,500 soldiers every other month or so and accelerating the pace after April, when troop shortages will make the surge impossible to sustain at current levels.
However, General David Petraeus, the US commander in Iraq, is likely to demand more time for the surge to work when he reports to Congress on the progress of the war next month.
Last year, in his previous job as head of the army college at Fort Leavenworth in Kansas, he made a point of examining the âlessons learntâ from the Vietnam war.
One lesson was that it takes time to âclear and holdâ communities and build a political settlement. Major-General Rick Lynch, who is based south of Baghdad, said on Friday that pulling out American troops would allow Sunni and Shiâite fighters to regroup within 48 hours.
The enemy would start âbuilding the bombs again . . . and we would take a giant step backwardsâ, he said.
Ultimately, Iraq could experience the maelstrom that overtook Vietnam and Cambodia. âOne unmistakable legacy of Vietnam,â Bush warned last week, âis that the price of Americaâs withdrawal was paid by millions of innocent citizens whose agonies would add to our vocabulary new terms like âboat peopleâ, âreeducation campsâ and âkilling fieldsâ.â
A humanitarian disaster on this scale would cast a pall over Bushâs decision to invade Iraq. It may be some comfort to him to imagine that, 30 years on, intellectuals may launch a revisionist movement that would look more kindly on his war record.
Source: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/iraq/article2327806.ece
.
August 26, 2007
SouthAmerica: The enclosed article forgot to mention the other books that these historians are also working on such as:
In the new rewrite of history Adolf Hitler is the winner of World War II.
I guess Adolf Hitler would love the new revisionist history which maintains that Germany did not lose the war, but the will to win.
I canât wait for what these historians have to say about World War I.
The other project that these historians are also working on it will be a blockbuster â on the new version Napoleon defeats the Duke of Wellington in Waterloo.
The French are going to love that.
Anyway in fantasyland anything it is possible â no wonder Hollywood is so successful with its Fairy Tales.
Sorry, not Hollywood, I mean Washington D.C.
**************
From The Sunday Times - UK
August 26, 2007
âVietnam historians give Bush reason to stay in Iraqâ
Sarah Baxter, Washington
WHEN President George W Bush invoked the memory of Vietnam to justify staying in Iraq, he was drawing on a new wave of revisionist history which maintains that America did not lose the war, but the will to win.
âThree decades later there is a legitimate debate about how we got into the Vietnam war and how we left,â Bush said in a speech to army veterans last week. White House insiders admitted it was a risky topic which had previously been left to the antiwar movement. Americans generally prefer to forget Indochina and remember who won the cold war.
Yet as the prospect of victory in Iraq has receded, the lessons of Vietnam have provoked intense discussion among historians and in current affairs magazines such as the neo-conservative Weekly Standard.
Bush has been quietly paying attention and had been thinking for months about the right moment to bring Vietnam into the debate, according to a White House official.
In Triumph Forsaken, published last year, the historian Mark Moyar claimed that South Vietnam could have survived had the Americans not acquiesced in the overthrow of President Ngo Dinh Diem in 1963, plunging the country into an âextended period of instability and weaknessâ.
Moyar is now working on a book about the second half of the war, in which he argues: âIn the offensive of 1975, the North Vietnamese are moving around huge conventional forces that would have been pulverised by our air power.â By then, however, Hanoi was well aware that America was turning against the war and doubted that the US military would be able to act decisively.
Supporters of the Iraq war have also been delving into Lewis Sorleyâs book, A Better War, which was rereleased in paperback this year. The war, Sorley wrote, âwas being won on the ground even as it was being lost at the peace table and the US Congressâ.
The North Vietnamese have given this argument a boost over the years. In an interview after his retirement, Bui Tin, who received the South Vietnamese armyâs unconditional surrender in 1975, recalled that visits to Hanoi by Jane Fonda, church ministers and other antiwar protesters âgave us confidence that we should hold on in the face of battlefield reverses . . . through dissent and protest [America] lost the ability to mobilise a will to winâ.
James Q Wilson, a social scientist who is revered by conservatives, argued in The Wall Street Journal last year:
âWhenever a foreign enemy challenges us, he will know that his objective will be to win the battle . . . among the people who determine what we read and watch. We are in danger of losing in Iraq . . . in the newspapers, magazines and tele-vision programmes we enjoy.â
Antiwar historians have hit back at Bushâs invocation of Vietnam. âWhat is Bush saying?â asked Robert Dallek, the biographer of John F Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson. âThat we didnât fight hard enough, stay long enough? Thatâs nonsense.â
The debate is not just academic for Senator John Warner, former chairman of the Senate armed services committee, who called last week for Bush to begin pulling out 5,000 troops from Iraq by Christmas. The 80-year-old Republican is still haunted by the memory of Vietnam.
âThe army generals would come in [and say], âJust send in another 5,000 or 10,000â,â Warner recalled. âYou know, month after month. Another 10,000 or 15,000. They thought we could win it. We kept surging in those years. It didnât work . . . You donât forget something like that.â
Senior generals, including Peter Pace, chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, and George Casey, the army chief of staff, are believed to support reducing the number of US troops in Iraq to below 100,000 by the end of next year.
Robert Gates, the defence secretary, is also thought to favour the idea of drawing down 3,500 soldiers every other month or so and accelerating the pace after April, when troop shortages will make the surge impossible to sustain at current levels.
However, General David Petraeus, the US commander in Iraq, is likely to demand more time for the surge to work when he reports to Congress on the progress of the war next month.
Last year, in his previous job as head of the army college at Fort Leavenworth in Kansas, he made a point of examining the âlessons learntâ from the Vietnam war.
One lesson was that it takes time to âclear and holdâ communities and build a political settlement. Major-General Rick Lynch, who is based south of Baghdad, said on Friday that pulling out American troops would allow Sunni and Shiâite fighters to regroup within 48 hours.
The enemy would start âbuilding the bombs again . . . and we would take a giant step backwardsâ, he said.
Ultimately, Iraq could experience the maelstrom that overtook Vietnam and Cambodia. âOne unmistakable legacy of Vietnam,â Bush warned last week, âis that the price of Americaâs withdrawal was paid by millions of innocent citizens whose agonies would add to our vocabulary new terms like âboat peopleâ, âreeducation campsâ and âkilling fieldsâ.â
A humanitarian disaster on this scale would cast a pall over Bushâs decision to invade Iraq. It may be some comfort to him to imagine that, 30 years on, intellectuals may launch a revisionist movement that would look more kindly on his war record.
Source: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/iraq/article2327806.ece
.
