Why is winning in Iraq so much more important than winning in Vietnam?

[Toots]

What I hear all the time is how vital it is to win in Iraq, that losing is not an option. We can not pull our soldiers home and save countless lives because we might be thought of as losers. Well to those folks that believe that I throw Vietnam in their face and say all evidence is on my side that America will not collapse if we withdraw from Iraq and that they may even, like Vietnam, become our friends in the near future if we stop killing them. Vietnam proved that we don't have to win at all costs and in fact I would venture to say that everyone actually won when we left Vietnam. The people there are happy and actually seem to like Americans now..The only ones that may have lost are the right wingers that thrive on war....

[hobbit709]

1. Because the neocons

all think Denial is a river in Africa so they cannot admit they were wrong.

[genie_weenie]

2. Because of the Reverse Domino Theory

In Vietnam "We" were trying to stop the dominoes from falling which would eventually lead to all of the Pacific Asian countries from turning to Communism and *allying* with China and the Soviet Union, excluding the US from those Markets.

In Iraq "We" are standing up Democracy which will in turn spontaneously induce Democracy through unknown means in Iran and Syria and Lebanon and Libya and Yemen and Kurdistan (oops scratch that last one). Which will open up the markets for US goods.

[Toots]

3. Which to me gives it even less credibility

The Domino theory which has been proved to be not valid was at least in Defense of our beliefs and country. This reverse of the Domino theory is forcing our beliefs upon others at the end of a gun which can not work. You can bring a horse to water but you can't make it drink....

[genie_weenie]

4. Of course and it gets worse.

We are setting the future up for another Iran 1979. Whatever leaders we prop up in Iraq, once we pull back our presence (we're not leaving), will be forced to use harsh methods to keep Iraqis from deposing them.

Then in 25 years a new generation, raised under the onus of Western Occupation and Extortion, will rise up with a fanatically anti-US government, which our either ignorant or disingenuous leaders will decry and point to as a failure to use American military might.

[bigtree]

5. Many of the same actors from that era are trying to reassert the power

they had before Nixon blew it for them and have cast our foreign policy as a rejection and reversal of the direction we took standing down and eventually withdrawing from Vietnam. They believe that if we had just fought longer and harder we could have 'won' that 'war.' That attitude is reflected in their entire foreign policy, most notably with Cheney and Rumsfeld, the two Nixon cronies and the rest of the PNAC gang, many of whom have left and are manipulating from the outside.

[leesa]

6. BECAUSE we lost in Vietnam. Some have never recovered from that shame.

The testosterone crazed monkeys are deeply ashamed of losing and can't face doing it again.

[lectrobyte]

7. Because Iraq has oil, Vietnam didn't?

[KansDem]

8. The greater the lie, the more desperate the liars...

The WMDs claim was a lie
The Saddam had ties to al Qaeda claim was a lie

We are still in Iraq due to inertia created by the frenzy of the neoCons.

[Bandit]

9. While I disagreed strongly with the Vietnam Conflict I was

extremely hurt by our abandonment of the South Vietnamese People. The USA gave them their word we would defend them and then just abandoned them to their fate. As it turns out that was not such a terrible thing but I have not yet got over the shame of our big LIE. I don't think Iraq is the same situation at all. There was no one to give our word to that we would defend them. There was no history as in Vietnam what with their fighting the Japanese then the French and then the USA. The situations are totally different and Iraq is far less important IMO. Everybody in the entire world knows we won't pick a fight with anyone that could actually fight back so it is like we are picking on a criple and the world is horrified especially by the wingers strutting around as if they were being bold and brave. We need to exit the Mid East immediately, IMO.