It Is Only History.
Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.
George Santayana, The Life of Reason, Volume 1, 1905
—
Many years ago we did our duty, came home, and watched as Saigon fell. Some were still there.
History seems to be repeating itself yet again.
In Iraq cities are falling not unlike they did back then. Most recent updates suggest that Baghdad is next.
Small positive thing. The folks that went into Iraq didn’t get spit at/on when they came home. The rest remains to be seen.
Category: Geezer Alert!
This is why I opposed both war and santayana was right you never learn I do. Don’t blame me when bagdad is renamed bin ladin city
I’m sure some of us here have already informed you thusly, but grammar…yoo haz nonne. You should work on that. It’s hard to take you seriously when your written correspondence looks like it came from a retarded third grader.
VWP…this is a serious subject about things way over your head and way past your true concerns. Go take a hit off your bong and let the adults talk about meaningful matters. In other words, get lost today, go play in traffic and then GFY!
Your argument makes no sense.
War=Pull out=Fall of Iraq. Even you follow that.
So, what does No War do? It’d be the same as leaving Iraq, except that we weren’t there period.
Ergo, your argument would state: No War=Fall of Iraq.
Cogito sum Cogito, beeyotch (yeah, I know that’s not the quote, but it works).
(a is B is C) != (Nota is C)
Seriously bro, that guy is a prick but don’t pretend to know anything about philosophy. Just call him an asshole.
But I’ll teach you something valuable that is relevant to what you tried to express: Sublata causay tollitur effectus
I can smell the hippie stank right through my pc.Follow what cannoncocker says,or lay off that weed. Go play in the lib douche-bag forums.
GFY in Numbers:
1. You have never fought.
2. You have no idea what WE feel.
3. You have never been attacked.
4. You did not bury almost 3,000 from your hometown.
5. You and those like you caused what is happening.
6. You and those like you will call on US when our Nation is again attacked.
In review … GFY!
In Vietnam, did the government tell everybody in the newspapers, magazines and network TV that the South Vietnam military/Vietnamization strategy could handle the job once we left? Reason I ask is because when I was going on combat missions with Iraqi troops in 2006, we knew that they were unreliable. Like many others, I have lots of bad-Iraqi troop stories. Yet the talking points in our expanded media-sphere were always that they were making great strides in becoming a competent military force. I personally never saw that on the scale necessary to handle what is going on today.
JAGC…Lots of propaganda in Vietnam but I had no more confidence in the abilities and determination of the South Vietnamese Army than you guys report about the Iraqis. Especially their will to fight for their country without us behind them.
JAGC: One of the great mysteries of my life has been how the South Vietnamese, for whom I had damned little respect in 1965-66 because of their sloth, dishonesty, treachery and cowardice, were able to come to this country as emigres and become such productive citizens.
The day I landed at the airstrip at Phan Rang, while waiting for a jeep from my new battalion to pick me up. I watched a Vietnamese carpenter working on the roof trusses of a new structure. He was cutting a two by four with a hand saw. He would make a forward push with the saw and then pause to take a drag from his cigarette. Then he would draw the blade to him, pause again and take another drag. I watched him go through two more cigarettes following that regimen without ever getting through that two by four.
I said to myself, “Shit, if those are our allies, we are in big effing trouble.”
I know that some units had ARVNS who showed some fortitude but I never saw any.
But what a difference when they came over here, with my favorite being a lovely young Vietnamese woman who maxed her way through law school and worked in the same firm as my wife. To this day I still think of her as the lovely, soft-spoken but formidable Lotus Blossom.
Zero: Good to see an Old War Dog back in action.
The Vietnamese who came here and succeeded because of the same reason a lot of other immigrants. It wasn’t the people themselves, it was being in a country that had a government and culture that didnt reward the individuals for hard work.
Poetrooper, everything I’ve read on the subject leads me to believe that the fiercest warriors we had on our side then were Hmong tribesmen. They hated the commies with every fibre of their being. I’ve seen pics of their women patrolling their villages with M1 carbines while their men were off ambushing NVA’s and VC’s.
Poetrooper…I had a sympathy for the simple Vietnamese people who truly wanted freedom and came here. The guy that has mowed my yard for 12 years was sponsored by a former neighbor. I asked him if he wanted to do some hedge trimming since he was looking for work. He still struggles with English but is much better. But that hot day in July, 12 years ago he was walking from the backyard to the front to his truck with shoulders full of trimmings, pouring sweat. I said, “hey, Kim, take a break bud, you want some water?”. He looked at me and when the words came to him he said, “Joe…America, no work, no eat”. I was almost tearful. I said “God bless you Kim, I don’t hear that enough in our country.” I paid him the agreed price and a hefty bonus. He later got a job from the guy across the street cleaning up the maintenance shop of a concrete truck company. The guy told me the life span of a piece of trash on the floor was about 5 seconds for Kim. He said, “If I had 4 more like him, I could lay off 10 of the union guys”. He still works there and still does yard work and painting and anything he can find to do. Supports his family here and the older folks in Vietnam. Sent his kids to school and they graduated with honors. He is the immigrant like those we welcomed from Europe in the early 20th century. They wanted freedom and a chance to work hard for a good life for their families. Insisted their kids learn English and become citizens and instilled in them their good work ethic. I have great respect for Kim and all Vietnamese who came here, like him. Not the elite who fled Saigon with their suitcases full of cash and lived the high life here. My point to the subject is I had NO faith in the South Vietnamese Army and always felt exposed when they were near us for any type of “support”.… Read more »
Great story, Sparks. Thanks for sharing.
Yes. If you want I can provide several references. Ping jonn. Im on the road so it will be saturday.
Zero Ponsdorf…Well said. My concern now is in Baghdad. If it falls and I believe it will, our Embassy is in deep and dire threat. My questions. Are Obama and Kerry and all their minions planning right now to evacuate the Embassy and soon? Are they planning to send military support to defend it if needed until evacuated? Or are they still sitting on their hands with their thumbs up their asses in the “let’s wait to see how this plays out”, mode of action, which is the expected norm from them? If they let Baghdad fall without evacuating the Embassy, I guarantee my mortgage, the first place ISIS will be headed is there. To overrun it, kill all non essentials and take hostage the rest. It will be far, far worse than Benghazi. I tell you though, this is another bigger and worse Benghazi in the making and if action is not taken now to protect the Americans there, this nation and this administration are going to have a huge unrecoverable mess on our hands. I think 1979 again, when we had hostages in the Embassy. I fear that scenario again in a very real way and as a very real possibility. History, as you spoke so well, not remembered by Obama, will doomed this nation to repeat with American lives again. It is inevitable in Baghdad, if and when it falls and I believe it is only a matter of time. NOW is the time to take action. NOW. Not later. I wish the White House watched this blog and could read what I wrote. But who am I kidding, they do not care for American lives and have proven that time and again. God help this country and protect our people in Baghdad from this administration.
I have to agree with you, Sparks, after thr Bergdahl mess, the terrorists have openly said they now feel encouraged to take American Citizens as hostages, and I’m sure that many of them drool and slobber at the thought of executing another seizure like they did in Teheran.
About 36 hours from right now it will be 3PM Friday in Baghdad. The Shia and Sunni will have been whipped up by their Imams in the mosques and will have spilled out into the streets. I hope they get everyone out/protected in the next 36 hours. Ramadan starts June 28, they’ll want to fight while they can eat/drink in the heat of the day. I bet the white house already has a youtube video picked out that they can blame things on. Our best hope is that Bateman gets there ASAP and starts confiscating guns and drills.
It gets to the point that you start thinking that is a scenario, you feel you do not know what side they are rooting for. Plus they get what they want to empty Gitmo as a swap.
+10, Sparks. The people running the government have no clue what they’re doing.
It is those same people that were against the government when we were kids though. Just saying.
It makes me sick to say it but I think you are right. It started with the withdrawal from RVN, then Iran in 1979, Beruit, Somalia, Bengazi, the traitor swap and now this followed by Afghanistan. What the hell happened to America?
@ Xero : “Small positive thing. The folks that went into Iraq didn’t get spit at/on when they came home…….” I would argue that what WE the People have allowed to happen to our Veterans, their Families and the Sacrifices made by each of them, has been MORE than spit at/on by the current administration (and most of the msm) – and I am beyond sick by all of them…
Not convinced that the after care was better in any way for Viet Nam veterans. Most that I knew at the time simply came home and either withdrew from society (relatively few) or went to work somewhere (almost everyone else), speaking of their status as a veteran only among very close, trusted friends. For a couple of decades. Things didn’t change much until DS/DS/DS. There were some rumblings during the 80’s, but honest discussions really only began in 1990.
The VA was not particularly helpful. My impression is that they created more problems than they solved for my generation.
Warm up the helicopters on thereof of the american embassy! If you want to go fight for bin ladin city er I guess its still called bagdad go right ahead. Don’t expect the vietnam war draft dodging chicken hawk cowards of fox like john bolton or bill cristal to join you. Now you know why like vietnam we should never have gone in their in the first place! Mabe we can ask iran to help their puppet out. Hey they might!
The sad thing is, there are probably a million people in Iraq that communicate in English better than you do. How in the fuck have you managed to eat for the past 50 years? Blowjobs for meals?
that’d rate a *HIGH FIVE*
That’s the wacky tobacco writing, there. The sad thing about it is that pot users read that stuff afterward, and are proud of it. They think it’s creative.
Welfare spawn.
Booger-eating, bed wetting, glue-sniffing welfare spawn.
Go back to sucking on your hash pipe you illiterate buffoon. Come back when your head is clear and you can form a comprehensible sentence that relates a reasonable argument. Your blathering is reminiscent of the academic navel gazers I had to listen to in San Francisco at the Middle East studies association conference in 2002. At least they had the excuse of being brainwashed instead of brain dead. Try reading some Middle East history and actually understand the region and what is happening before spouting off on something you know nothing about.
I’m genuinely sorry that you’re a fucking retard.
VWP You are a worthless ass hole. No doubt about it. If Baghdad falls and Americans die you will probably be a happy leftist because you will spin it into some kind of “told you so” comment. VWP you should be glad I am not King of America. If I were, your sorry ass would be on the first chopper into Baghdad to evacuate the Americans and I WOULD leave you behind, not as a hostage but as a present to ISIS. I would enjoy watching their videos of you strapped to a chair trying to explain all your political support of them and anti-American rhetoric as they carve one of your ears off. I have money that says you would be converting to Islam for sympathy as fast as possible. By the way, they love that. Getting an American to confess Islam for mercy before they cut his head off really makes their day better. So GFY. These are matters that are important to American lives. Something you do not comprehend nor care about. Like most of your ilk, dead Americans, in your small mind, only prove your point. They hold no place of reverence or sympathy in your heart. So please just go away. Pick another thread that is not so serious as the possible loss of lives to spout your drug headed ideals on. Otherwise, if you are pulling chains here and sitting back laughing till your momma’s lunch milk shoots out of your nose, again GFY and find a different sandbox to shit in.
The Black Banners are popping up all over the ME. Guess the enemy didn’t get word from omumbles the war is over…and we all know how that goes. Should’ve focused on winning vice ending.
I’ve said that for 12 1/2 years.
Plain truth of the matter is, the anti-war left financiers (TIDES,et al) have been wanting their next Vietnam and now, come hell or high water it will be done. Something people overlook (and not so much that it is their fault for doing so) is this, there are still hardcore communists running around, within and without the USA stirring the pot every chance they get.
They, as Mr. Little Big Ears has demonstrated so often want to bring the United States of America to its knees. Don’t ask why of how but that is their wet dream. Maybe it is because of the freedoms we have and no other country is able to enjoy because of those countries individual situations and living under the thumb of dictatorship or whatever flavor of communism they have.
Bingo! They started calling it “just like Viet Nam” on day 1, and they finally made it so. It didn’t need to be that way, of course.
Unfortunately, my greatest fear is being realized. That also wasn’t necessary, but the self-serving fools practiced abandoning our own in Benghazi and have apparently perfected it now.
Arm the Kurds.
Recognize the Kurdish state.
Problem solved.
they’d take care of all the shit then kick the ass of all their neighbors
The Kurds won’t lift a finger to help Maliki and I don’t blame them. Instead they will consolidate their territory and borders. Maliki spent the last three years trying to build a Shia based dictatorship in Iraq with himself at the helm. He isolated and purged Kurd and Sunni politicians with Saddam lite tactics. He ran his military ragged up north in a stand off with the Kurds. I am not suprised at all that the Iraqi military melted away. They had no reason or motivation to fight.
The Kurds have a vested interest.
Why not?
Screw the Turks.
Recognize Kurdistan, if only on the Iraqi border.
Green Thumb…I’ve said that for a long time. The Kurds will defend themselves and be aggressive to neighbors if even threatened. They will fight to the last man, bayonet to bayonet if need be. Unlike the well trained, well equipped Iraqis we left to keep a democracy going. I say recognize the Kurdish state, equip and aid the them and screw the Iraqis.
I remember seeing videos of the Kurdish people online thanking America for kicking Saddam’s ass and stopping the oppression. They were looking for American companies to invest there… probably the best group over there that would kick the crap out of AQ/ISIS.
But the JEF has other concerns… like his next vacay or golf game…
Amen.
Our unit served with some of the peshmerga in 2003.
They weren’t the most disciplined troops we supported, but they were head and shoulders above most of the Middle Eastern fighters in enthusiasm, tenacity, loyalty, and heart. They were also smart, and the friendliest bunch we dealt with. Decent people for the most part.
I think MTFAO has the right of it though, I doubt the Kurds are interested in spending any more of their own blood to help out a regime that’s been universally hostile to them.
Amen.
Our unit served with some of the peshmerga in 2003.
They weren’t the most disciplined troops we supported, but they were head and shoulders above most of the Middle Eastern fighters in enthusiasm, tenacity, loyalty, and heart. They were also smart, and the friendliest bunch we dealt with. Decent people for the most part.
I think MTFAO has the right of it though, I doubt the Kurds are interested in spending any more of their own blood to help out a regime that’s been universally hostile to them.
I don’t like the idea of sending western tech to hadji. But it’s a better plan than anything I can come up with. The Iraq question has my brain in knots. Wish I was at the War College to gather some S2 from someone other than the MSM chatter boxes.
Thanks, Zero. It needed to be said.
WT Sherman, working for General US Grant, had the definitive view on war winning. You have won, not when you have your exit strategy in place, but when the enemy has had his will broken. When he begs you to quit, you have won and the war is successfully over. obama is a piece of shit, but not at all unlike demorats who have no idea regarding governance or survival in the world except that you are a racist. Or a sexist. Or have common sense.
I say get out our all of the Troops, evacuate all our Embassies there and then replay Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Of course the caveat is Little Big Ears is tided to one of them.
Iraq arabic for vietnam. And so will be afganistan!
Do you actually form sentences in your mind or is it just the infinite monkeys with typewriters in your head that get it right to form coherent thoughts about 2% of the time?
Oh, sorry. Let me translate so you can understand:
Words out come good. not,
+1 for “Words out come good. not,”
Iraq is Arabic for “Fertile land” or “well watered” you shit sucking ass-reaver.
Go tickle the front bumper of a semi going 60 MPH with your taint.
Of course our resident delusional spawn of multigenerational drug use and commune incest is thrilled, no, overjoyed that little brown people are getting killed, but without his country being involved!
Because nothing makes a hippie feel indifference than little brown people in other countries killing other little brown people.
For instance, look back at the waves of outrage and anger that the old antiwar movement did not display when Pol Pot was murdering people in Cambodia.
Bunch of racist.
vwp, what of Cambodia? You do know that your side, the anti Vietnam people do have the blood of the Killing Fields on their hands, right?
Kurdish forces in full control of oil city Kirkuk after Iraq army flees
ARBIL, Iraq, June 12 (Reuters) – Kurdish forces are in full control of Iraq’s oil-rich city of Kirkuk after the federal army abandoned its bases there, a Kurdish military spokesman said on Thursday.
Kirkuk lies at the heart of a long-running dispute between the federal government in Baghdad and the Kurds, who run their own autonomous region in the north of the country and have an armed force called the peshmerga.
“The whole of Kirkuk has fallen into the hands of peshmerga,” said Jabbar Yawar, referring to the Kurdish forces. “No Iraqi army remains in Kirkuk now”.
The move came after Iraqi soldiers fled their posts in the city of Mosul and several other towns and cities in the face of an onslaught by radical Sunni insurgents from the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL).
ISIL said in a statement it was now advancing on Baghdad. (Reporting by Isabel Coles; editing by Mark Heinrich)
http://www.trust.org/item/20140612085112-ivlnj
Kurdish Peshmerga fighters clash with ISIS militants
http://www.itv.com/news/update/2014-06-12/kurdish-peshmerga-fighters-clash-with-isis-militants/
Oh, the poor Iraqi gov’t. They wants us to help little old thems.
http://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/iraq-asks-u-s-help-quell-militant-uprising-n129091
I think there are two answers here:
1 – No.
2 – Hell, no, grow the eff up and do it yourself.
If the doofuss in the WH does manage to find time to take it in, he’ll most likely make the wrong decision about it, anyway.
As it is, people are fleeing places like Mosul in large numbers.
Ask the US govt for military help? Kerry and obama? What the fuck is wrong with you?
This is just the latest in a long list of reasons why we should never allow another candidate to run for office who will not open their lives up to scrutiny. Obama says he went to Columbia, but sealed his transcripts. Same with Harvard Law. How come no one at either school remembers him? How does one edit the law review without a single article under his name? This man is a phantom. Phantoms make lousy presidents, at least this one did. And what of Joe Biden? I thought the was supposed to have all of the foreign policy chops in this administration. He can’t even negotiate a Status of forces agreement. What, he doesn’t know how to write a check? And Hillary/Kerry, don’t even get me started on those winners!
It turns my stomach to say this, but it needs saying, and remembering…
We, as a nation/people/culture, can not even conceive of fighting a war to actually win it any more.
It is very nearly outside of “living memory” since we’ve done so.
Go fuck yourself, Grimmy. THIS generation of American fighting men DID fight to win. Our maneuver forces scattered the Iraqi Army and utterly crushed their great Republican Guard. We captured their capital and raised our colors. We seized their king and saw him hanged. What universe are you from where those conditions don’t count as a win? What do you think American forces were doing over there? Trying to lose?
Get that foot out of your mouth.
Learn to read, 10th.
I said our culture. The homefront, you numbnut.
Our homefront has been at the beck and call of enemy propagandists since the ’60s. We’ve got an entire wing of our political system that sympathizes, openly, with any enemy that comes against us.
Our military isn’t ALLOWED to win a fight, dumbass. Our military IS allowed to shed blood and body parts, right up until it’s damned near won for sure, then… our masters call them out and give it all over to the enemy.
That is the ONLY GOD DAMNED PATTERN this nation has displayed for going on half a century.
Pull your head out of your ass, stupid fuck.
Soldiers win battles. Politicians, and National will, wins wars.
Grimmy was not questioning the fighting ability of our armed forces, he was castigating the current culture of our country as a whole.
Simple fact, the majority of the country doesn’t have the stomach to fight a ‘total war’.
Would our troops do it if so ordered? I believe so, yes. Will it ever be ordered in our lifetime? I seriously doubt it.