This is the week that was: Saigon and our thirty year cycle of war.

[DemoTex]

On April 29 the people of Vietnam will celebrate the 30th anniversary of the hasty departure of the last American troops from Saigon (just hours before NVA tanks rolled into town). On May 8, 1945, the US celebrated V-E Day (Victory in Europe) with former European allies; it is now sixty years since WW-II ended (V-J Day was August 15, 1945). The end of WW-1, November 11, 1918 was outside of a perfect thirty year cycle; but the war itself was not.
Now, thirty years since the fall of Saigon we find ourselves in another dirty little war. Dear Leader proclaimed V-I Day (Victory in Iraq or "Mission Accomplished" Day) two years ago during that vainglorious strut on the flight deck of the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln. That was when the real war in Iraq - the war against the U.S. - really began to ramp up. The days leading up to the insurgency were our Blitzkrieg (Shock and Awe) against a hunkered-down Iraq. After Shock and Awe, a significant faction of Iraqis dusted themselves off, cleared the cobwebs from their ringing heads (and ears), and picked up their arms to try to kick our ass. Dear Christian Leader rallied the enemy with his mocking taunt of "Bring 'em on!", while ignoring the admonishment of Hosea 8: "Sow the wind; reap the whirlwind."
Meanwhile, the coffins of almost 1600 US service men and women have been spirited into Dover AFB under the cloak of figurative darkness. Life in this country, if the 2005 coronation of Dear Leader is any indication, is a cabaret old chum!
With the on-going war in Iraq, the thirty year war cycle continues. Will that nexus between the ends of WW-2 and Vietnam manifest itself this year? My money is on Dear Leader George II breaking the thirty year cycle, big time. Peace is not what he wants. Nor is victory.

[DemoTex]

1. Kick for the night crew.

:kick:

[DemoTex]

2. Strangest lack of interest of any of my posts in over four years.

Bad breath? Did I insult someone? If so, I apologize. Know what I mean, Vern?

[Jacobin]

8. It's hard for me to face the fact that Viet Nam is

something to be studied in school, or something most people remember vaguely being discussed as young children. I'm getting old. It's disheartening to see this generation going through the exact same damn thing, when you and I lived through the horror of the last debacle.

We never learn from our mistakes. I wish I were capable of communicating how godawful hopeless a guerilla war, started by an illegal invasion, done on a pretext actually is. We have NO moral standing, not having been attacked, to wage war on these people. We are bound to be run out, and the pain, carnage, death, squandering of resources, loss of tens of thousands of young lives for absolutely nothing is hard to take, again.

[dbt]

10. I somehow MISSED this post, Demo Tex!

I would've been all over it, agitating for votes for the Greatest page. It's like Viet Nam never happened somehow.

[Richardo]

3. I was just about to post this - and found yours with 'search'

Thanks, DemoTex...both for the post and for your service :patriot:

Thirty years, and so many idiots have forgotten already what a quagmire is like. Most of them opting out of the fight in VN. I myself was draft-eligible but did not turn 18 until late 1974 when thing were winding down. (My SSS status was 1-H and my lottery number in the mid 100s as I recall.)

[antigone382]

4. Excellent post, DemoTex.

:thumbsup:

A question: If we do start a war with another country within the next year or two, couldn't it still fall into the thirty year cycle? In World War II we were at war with three countries (granted, they were united in opposition to us, but B*sh will make the same argument this time, bogus though it may be); also, during Viet Nam we became involved in Laos and Cambodia.

And how does the Korean War fit into this picture? Is it another aberration of the cycle?

[DemoTex]

6. Korea was an aberration, indeed.

I looked at a 30 year cycle with my tongue in my cheek. Granted, I am not a historian. I shoe-horned four wars into my theory. But they more-or-less worked.
I will consider all wars by Bu$h to fall, more-or-less, in that 30 year cycle. I might eat words soon, though.

[sweetheart]

5. There is no cycle, in 30 years the empire will be mostly gone

Cycle sounds nice, as so many of us remember the striking similarities
between these to conflicts of lies; official reports of elections, and
the unreported insurgencies.

Perhaps as well, like macnamara (who Rumsfield looks like ---scary aah!),
the SecDef is ignorant of the will of the iraqi people to be free of
the infinite cycle of colonial invasion... once and for all... and that
perhaps that will is greater than the american dollar and the infinite
deficit of wasted war.

[DemoTex]

7. Much more important!

Like McNamara (who Rumsfeld looks like ---scary aah!), the SecDef is ignorant of the will of the American people to be free of the infinite cycle of war after war. Sorry I twisted your words. Your great quote just begged that change.

[sweetheart]

9. Johnson's war, macnamara was a pawn

The difference between these two cycles, to my mind, is that macnamara
was a geopolitical moron about the area where he was fighting, and did
not know the war was one of liberation from the cycle of colonialism,
with the vietnamese beliving that america was there to replace the
french... and wanting, much as in our own revolutionary war, to be
free from stupid colonialists.

Macnamara did not know this! He was a WASP from the ford motor company
and statistics executing the instructions of the scumbag Johnson, a
terrible democrat... or rather it seems, a typical one of the old school
"war party".

This new war, by contrast, methinks rumsfeld is rather well informed of
the geo-political situation around his opposition, and it is arguable
that the people of iraq are NOT fighting to be free of the cycle of
colonialism, that the insurgency is not such a grass roots effort.

But diffently, the "New MacNamara", is following orders from Cheney with
a casual rubber stamp from chimpy... so whilst chimpy is "in charge",
he really isn't... and the chain of command is so murky, that nobody
is responsible. We can pin it on the chimp of course, cuz that's what
the constitutional law says is responsible... but Rumsfield is much
more "running the show" than macnamara ever was. This collective
denial of responsibility, which the democrats tried as well over
viet nam, seems a trait of the warmongering cycle.

I guess when nobody is responsible, nobody learns and repeats happen.