What - No GOP Presidential Debate Thread?

Ragu,

If you don't see the lie I don't know what to say. Ray Charles could see Boom's lie.








Regarding your larger point, if the next Democratic president escalates the war in Iraq instead of moving our combat troops out of harm's way, then come talk to me.

 

Why do you always have to frame your response to political arguments in divisive terms like "honest" or "dishonest?" It's needlessly accusatory. Do you have the market cornered on intellectual and historical honesty?

By invoking Eisenhower, I'm merely rebutting Boom's assertion that the Vietnam war was solely the creation of LBJ. Or even JFK. Rather, like all of history, it's merely part of a continuum, and has a momentum and a reach beyond any one man's capacity to entirely redirect it. If Boom wants to argue that Clinton's lethargy and inaction led to 9/11, as he has done, then he has to be prepared to allow that world events preceding the arrival of JFK or LBJ in the White House led to the quagmire in Southeast Asia. If he wants to say that a Democratic president "lost" the Vietnam war, then he has to be prepared to say that a Democratic president "won" World War II. It's the worst kind of anti-historical partisan absurdity.

Certainly Eisenhower's foreign policy decisions and the positions we staked out because of them - to say nothing of the postwar OSS/CIA operations we were running there - contributed to Kennedy's decision to send in advisors. So without Eisenhower you don't get Kennedy. Without Kennedy you don't get Johnson. Without Johnson you don't get Nixon.

Did Kennedy escalate our involvement in Vietnam? Of course he did.

Was Johnson most responsible for the disastrous widening of the war and its inept prosecution under McNamara and Westmoreland? Of course he was.

But Boom asserted that 58,000 US servicemen and women died on JFK/LBJ's watch. That's the lie. At least 21,000 of those were killed in the 6 years after Nixon took office on a promise of "Peace with Honor."

A war is the possession of no single man.

And there were plenty of spooks in Vietnam under Eisenhower, Ragu.

 

Last week fenen was telling us it was perfectly fine for Nancy Pelosi to go to Syria.

 

No-- what I asserted is that without Kennedy and Johnson misguided plan we don't have Viet Nam - Hence we don't have 58,000 troops killed.

As much as all you liberals hate to admit it Nixon got us out of Viet Nam.

 

Boom, here's your original quote. We weren't completely out of Vietnam until 1975. Nixon had 6 years to get us out and didn't. By your absolutist accounting of presidential responsibility, 21,000 of those headstones go on his ledger.

 

By the tone of that I assume you believe that to be a good thing.

Fine.

But why are Democrats called "Defeatocrats" and being accused of wanting to "surrender" if they want us to get out of Iraq . . . another unwinnable conflict?

This is where your argument falls apart. Every time.

 

American Vietnam War-Related Deaths by War Years and Post-War:

Year Recorded Deaths
1956-60 9
1961 16
1962 52
1963 118
1964 206
1965 1,863 LBJ
1966 6,143
1967 11,153
1968 16, 592
1969 11,616 Nixon
1970 6,081
1971 2,357
1972 641
1973 168
1974 178
1975 161
1976 77
1977 96
1978 447
1979 148
1980 26
1981-90 34
1991-98 11
Totals 58,193

 

We're bitching about six years of Nixon and we've been in the Iraq war for four. Does that mean you guys can shut up until Bush has served his full term?

 

It was a month ago and we're not at war with Syria -- hence Condi's visit this week -- and...oh, fuck it.

 

Debating Boom can tucker a fellow out. Maybe you need a wilderness retreat.

 

What role did Nixon play in getting us into Viet Nam?

 

If you want to split hairs: I guess someone else served as VP under Eisenhower, who did indeed start sending advisors.

But if Nixon takes office in 1969, and we're not completely out of Vietnam until after the next election, then gee, he sure took his sweet time getting us out. I never said he deserves blame for getting us in, but it was on his watch that it lingered.

And two years from now, when our troops are still dying in Iraq and we have a Democratic White House that is having trouble figuring out how to solve this mess, who will be at the front of the chorus screaming about the Dems every time more deaths are reported?