Matt Wuerker for May 03, 2011

If it were only so ! Hope is still alive.

Democracy, eh? So we elect someone who tells us what to do and takes us to war…..what’s the difference?

Democracy, without good moral principle, is just another form of tyranny.

^ ^^ ^^^^

You Libs!

There you go blaming Bush again!

^ ???? what are you talking about????

while some you pointed to may be libs and some may not be (as if it matters), your claim “There you go blaming Bush again!” is unfounded.

I can only hope it was a poor attempt at a joke.

Jim… I didn’t exactly say that and you may be crediting both of us improperly. My point on democracy was far more philosophical. But I understand your point.

As far as Nam is concerned, my best understanding on the issue (which is virtually all via hindsight) is that it was essentially a war against Communism (as was Korea). A war which we initially, in some sense, won (or at least partially) as we forced the North signed a peace agreement to stop action against the South.

However, we then failed the South as the North returned to its attack against the South after we had left. And we failed because we had committed to the South to aid them if the North broke their agreement (as we have been with S Korea), but we didn’t… and the Vietnamese people suffered for generations because of our failure.

So I don’t see the same principled correlation as you do, though I once believed the same till I learned more about Nam.

But there is a possibility that some of our other conflicts in the area could bare some semblance of the end result… I just hope not.

Poor as it may have been, the descriptions preceeding it brought to mind the prior administration.

Dj, your “hindsight” on Viet Nam is totally blind. I was there. WE betrayed Ho Chi Minh, who helped us drive the Japanese out of Indochina, in 1945 when we shattered our promise to keep the French out , and let the Vietnamese have their independent nation. We betrayed him again in 1954 after Dien bien Phu, dividing the country and installing a bunch of migrant “northerners” and Catholics in the south.

There are a number of good books on the history, but the above is the political score. The other REAL reason we were there was for mineral resources, timber, oil, and rice- otherwise known as “profit”. The “domino theory”, and the Gulf of Tonkin incident, was a total fraud, just like “WMDs” many years later.

^OK. So?

Maybe the point is that pan Islamic terror is not the all the rage it once was.

^OK. So?

Maybe the point is that pan Islamic terror is not the all the rage it once was.

^OK. So?

Maybe the point is that pan Islamic terror is not the all the rage it once was.