5th January 2008, 5:57 PM
N-Man Wrote:You can hardly say that Giuliani is a "fascist" considering his stance on most social issues. He simply believes that Iraq can be (and Vietnam could have been) won with enough perseverance. I tend to think that the only viable exit from Iraq is victory - anything else will simply aggravate the situation in the ME. Ergo, viva Rudy.
Rudy "9/11" Giuliani is a neocon advised by people who think that the only thing Bush did wrong was that he didn't go far enough. Electing him would be like asking for more Bush, but even worse on everything except social issues. Civil liberties? He's all in favor of pretty much abolishing them. Bush has shredded civil liberties, and a Giuliani administration would do the same but worse... and given how horrific Bush is on the issue,, that's a huge problem. It's incredibly disturbing that people don't seem to care what this administration has done to our civil liberties and the Constitution... at this rate will there be any of it left? Giuliani is a fascist because of how strongly he supports restrictions of civil rights and liberties and the Constitution in favor of the impossible goal of perfect security. He (or at least his advisors) also think, just like the Bush team, that talking with people he doesn't like is a waste of time; that the war in Iraq was good idea; that we should seriously consider invading Iran; that Cheney made a great Vice President; etc, etc, etc.
Oh yes, and he also has had three marriages, had cancer, has children who can't stand him, was often an incredibly nasty person as mayor, used taxpayer dollars to fund getaways with his mistress(es?), supported his good buddy and indicted felon Bernie Keric and recommended the guy for Homeland Security chief (oh yes, and Keric also used taxpayer money to fund a love nest for him and his mistress...), is surrounded by the hardest of neocons, says "9/11" in EVERY SINGLE SPEECH HE GIVES while really he didn't do all that much on or after 9/11 except give nice speeches... he's a pretty unpleasant guy and a Giuliani administration would be a disaster just like the Bush administration is. We've suffered through over six years of Neocon rule now, and there will be one more, but four more after that would be so, so awful...
Oh yeah, and if you're wondering why "World War IV" is on that stone tablet next to Giuliani, it's a reference to Norman Podhoretz (father of the Neocons and major Giuliani adviser)'s recent book "World War IV", which rails against that nonexistent "Islamofacist" thing. (Note: Islamic people are about as far from being fascists as you can possibly imagine. The connection makes absolutely no sense.)
That article I linked does a good job of examining many of his Neocon ties
http://www.amconmag.com/2008/2008_01_14/cover.html
As for "won" and "perseverance", I absolutely believe that those are totally wrong terms. In both Iraq and Vietnam, our biggest, crucial mistake was getting in in the first place. In Vietnam in 1945, the Vietnamese government, led by Ho Chi Minh (who was a Communist, but was a nationalist above that and had helped the US in Vietnam during WWII), but involving many groups, wanted independence from France. They requested American support for their effort at the end of World War II. Ho Chi Minh wrote the Vietnamese declaration of independence deliberately in the model of the American one, in fact. We refused them, having no real understanding of East Asia, and instead supported French efforts to suppress the Vietnamese nationalists who we dubbed 'Commies'. This pushed the North Vietnamese into the hands of the Soviets, a relationship which over time moved them more and more clearly Communist. Had we had anyone who actually understood East Asia in a position of power in 1945, and had decided to not support France's efforts to reclaim its colonies despite the fact that they were our ally, the whole thing in Vietnam could have been avoided... it's really a tragedy that it did not, because it took 49 years (US opposition to the Vietnamese government lasted from 1945 (when we supported French efforts to reclaim it) all the way until to 1994 (when we finally ended the crippling economic sanctions that had destroyed Vietnam's economy)) and caused millions of deaths, virtually all of them Vietnamese.
Of course by the 1960s, when the "Vietnam War" started (really, all that happened was that the war that had been ongoing since 1945 entered a new phase as the South needed more assistance in holding off the North and the internal rebels we called "Viet Cong" but who called themselves the National Liberation Front, so American "advisers" started entering). The French had given up in 1954, but we wouldn't let the Communists win because of "domino theory" (which of course proved to be a completely bogus theory) and other suspect considerations so we escalated and escalated and escalated and bombed and bombed more and killed hundreds and hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians before finally realizing that we couldn't win after all, and we left. The North took over; certain groups who had supported the US were persecuted or sent to "re-education" camps, and forced collectivization of agriculture ruined the southern economy for a while, but considering the crushing pressure of the US blockade, or in comparison to China, they didn't do so badly... of course a few years later the Vietnamese economy collapsed because we refused to trade with them and they were being isolated by China too because they'd sided with Russia against China in the rivalry between those two nations that grew up in the early '70s, but that was okay, because we wanted the Vietnamese economy to collapse. I mean, think about it: if their economy collapsed it would show that Communists couldn't govern, right? We'll show them! No trade! And hence the boat people, created by anti-Vietnamese US policies.
As a note there, the North Vietnamese government, from even before they took over the south, had been trying to come to terms with the US and open trade again. They offered a slow, gradual reunification of the nation that would have slowly integrated the two very different halves together, lowering of trade barriers between the US and the new nation, etc... but the US would have none of it and said no way, so the North Vietnamese simply took over the South to worse effect. But like the US-supported Chinese invasion of North Vietnam in 1978-79 or the US-supported Khmer Rouge mass murderers of Cambodia (sorry, the China-supported Khmer Rouge mass murderers who we just happened to be supporting China in supporting), that was okay, because anything that hurt Vietnam was good American policy.
Since the final end of the trade embargo in 1994, of course, American-Vietnamese relations have become very good. The US finally realized that China and Vietnam were natural enemies, not natural allies, and being (rightfully) nervous about the Chinese, looked towards Vietnam for help... and now the US is by far Vietnam's largest trading partner. It is still authoritarian and a one-party state, though, and there are plenty of human rights abuses. But China is worse... a lot worse, really.
Anyway, the point is, we pretty much, through ignorance, manufactured the whole situation in Vietnam. Leaving was the only thing we could have done; "winning" was impossible. The NLF and North Vietnamese weren't going to give up. We could not "win", all we could do was kill more people with no gain. They wanted independence and their own government and were going to fight for it until they got it, no matter the cost. Saying that we could have "won" if we'd stayed longer is a very common neocon thing to say, but it's just so ridiculous... we could not have won, if "winning" even had any definition. What would be "winning" anyway, destroying North Vietnam? Couldn't do that, China threatened to invade if we went too far into North Vietnam (they threatened the same thing in Korea. We ignored them and took over all of North Korea. They followed up on their demand and invaded, setting off three years of pointless and bloody warfare that was most of the Korean War. The next time they threatened us like that, we listened...). So that's out. "Winning" must mean crushing the resistance in the south, then. This would reflect American policy, for most of our bombing actually fell on South Vietnam, the part we were supposedly ruling, and not the North. We did manage to totally destroy rural South Vietnam and either kill or dislocate (to refugee camps/cities) essentially the entire rural population of South Vietnam, but stopping the resistance? That we had absolutely no success at... and why should we have, when the people we had in power as the "South Vietnamese Government" were even worse than the guys in charge of NORTH Vietnam, policy and abuses-wise? The whole thing was just totally ridiculous, and leaving was the only thing we could do. And despite the decades of war and sanctions after we left in 1972, the lives of the Vietnamese people were improved overall by our action... and once the Cold War ended and we realized that the Vietnamese were actually potential allies, not enemies, things got even better. But could we have "won" the war if we had stayed? Absolutely not. It would simply have continued on until we finally admitted defeat and left. Either that or we'd have had to fight a war with China... which would obviously be a very bad idea.
Iraq is quite different from Vietnam, though. The biggest place where it is different is how to end it. In Vietnam, all we had to do was leave; there was a government in place to take over after we left. In Iraq, unfortunately, there is no such thing; if we leave the Iraqi government would be as likely to fall apart as anything, and then things would be even worse than they are now. I really don't know what we should do in Iraq... what we HAVE to do is get the Sunnis, Shi'ites, and Kurds to actually talk to eachother and come to a political agreement, but they want to fight, not do that, so that's virtually impossible. Even so, it is our only option. There is no military solution in Iraq -- even the US military recognizes that fact. There is only a political solution, and as things are now NO progress is being made on that political solution. Violence is down? Sure, that's true, thanks to the fact that the Sunni tribal leaders finally decided to stop supporting Al Quaida in Iraq. But don't let that fool you into thinking that anything is settled... it is not in the least, as there have been absolutely no political settlements. The surge has totally failed at its primary objective of creating a calm in which the Iraqi factions could negotiate, as they are not willing to negotiate as such. What can we do about that? Not much perhaps, given the realities of the situation, but more than we're doing I'm sure... get UN support, first, for instance. That would help immensely. But we also just have to make them talk to eachother... getting them to finally come to an oil sharing agreement is key. It's totally ridiculous that the Bush administration has failed to get them to come to terms on this absolutely vital issue. Before that deal is made nothing else can progress.