Losing the peace

Bill Whittle.

12 comments:

Grim said...

A matter of some deep irritation to yours truly.

Ymar Sakar said...

Well, it would be losing the war. Except the war will be in the US, in some time.

The Left, including Americans in the US that owed their total allegiance to the Leftist alliance, won in Vietnam, certainly. And they will or tried to do the same to Afghanistan and Iraq.

When the Left wins one battle over humanity, they will not stop the next time.

Elise said...

Whittle says (transcript) near the end:

But, as Iraq falls before our eyes, as the murders accelerate, and as we lose the peace we won due to this President’s inablilty to conclude a simple agreement to keep troops stationed in Iraq – as we did and continue to do to keep the peace in Korea, for almost 65 years now, and Europe, for almost seventy – the man responsible for losing the peace in Iraq will be the same man so responsible for losing the peace in Vietnam – the man who has a plaque in a Hanoi Museum dedicated to his invaluable help in winning for the left the peace in the face of the war they lost.

Is he talking about a specific man having the plaque, or is he using "man" to mean "the Left" or "Democrats"? (Picky point, I know, but this reference really threw me.)

Matt said...

Is he talking about a specific man having the plaque, or is he using "man" to mean "the Left" or "Democrats"? (Picky point, I know, but this reference really threw me.)

Pretty sure he's talking about John Kerry, who supposedly really does have a place of honor in the Hanoi Museum for his public opposition to the Vietnam War.

Cass said...

I bow to no one in my contempt for John Foregainst Kerry, but it's hard to see how we can blame him for losing Iraq.

I don't know what to say about blaming Obama for failing to negotiate the SOF agreement. Maliki's refusal to grant immunity was pretty much a deal killer. I blame him for inattention and lack of effort, but it's not clear to me that more effort/attention would have sufficed.

Sending Biden over there was just plain dumb and tone deaf.

Winning wars is a great example of how democracies/representative government aren't up to certain tasks. There's plenty of blame for Obama, but I'm not sure he deserves all the blame. And I'm certain Kerry isn't - he's just the opportunistic messenger.

Grim said...

I think the space between you and Whittle on this issue is that Whittle doesn't think the war is over yet, Cass. :) As Kerry is the SOS now, it's his ball -- especially since we don't have a SOFA, and diplomacy is our chief tool (besides the SOS himself, as Sly might say).

Elise said...

Pretty sure he's talking about John Kerry, who supposedly really does have a place of honor in the Hanoi Museum for his public opposition to the Vietnam War.

I did some poking around and that's open to debate at least (see Snopes vs WinterSoldier). This drives me nuts. Whittle is a bright guy making an interesting point but can't resist dragging in Kerry in references that are questionable both in terms of Iraq and in terms of being honored by the North Vietnamese.

If what you want is to preach to the choir, this is fine. If what you want is to get anyone who doesn't already agree with you 100% to buy what you're selling, this is a really bad idea. I'm sympathetic to Whittle's overall argument but all I'm going to remember about his talk is that he insisted on dragging in Kerry, whether Kerry fits or not.

Cass said...

I think the space between you and Whittle on this issue is that Whittle doesn't think the war is over yet, Cass. :)

I think the space between me and Whittle is that I wouldn't have made that argument despite the fact that I loathe Kerry and the very thought of him makes my head explode.

Kerry's a popular punching bag ...err... pompous gasbag. I spent years writing about this guy. Back in 2003-2004 I was mildly obsessed with countering the media's constant whitewashing and hagiography about the Junior Senator from Hanoi. But even I wouldn't have tried to blame him for the debacle in Iraq.

I blamed him for grandstanding during the Clinton years and blathering on about sending in ground troops, then doing a 180 as soon as Bush was elected and acting as though his former stance was some kind of violation of international norms. I blamed him for his prodigious feats of cognitive dissonance, where he talked out of both sides of his mouth and several parts of his nether regions (all at the same time).

And I will never stop blaming him for his shameful behavior wrt to Vietnam. But this? Even I can't get there.

Grim said...

I think it's a useful reminder that Kerry is the kind of person who should never be entrusted with a high office, or a position of honor.

It's to the enduring shame of our nation that he has been made our Secretary of State.

Cass said...

Kerry's political views are pretty much identical to this administration's, so it's not surprising to me at all. The shame is that we elected Obama - a man with absolutely NO executive experience - to the highest executive position in the land.

DoS isn't much use, but it can't do much harm either. My fear was that they'd put Kerry in at DoD. Hard to imagine a more demoralizing choice, or one more antithetical to pretty much everything military culture is based upon.

Though Hagel is almost as bad.

Grim said...

I think there are two shames at work. It's a shame on the nation that it elected Obama, though in a way it's an understandable shame: so many people were motivated by a laudable desire to prove to themselves and the world that America was ready to put racism behind itself forever.

Kerry's career is a much less forgivable shame. It speaks to the judgment of the whole people of Massachusetts, to the political culture of the Senate -- which had the right to expel and refuse to seat a man who had either confessed to being a war criminal, or was a liar and betrayer of his brothers in arms -- as well as to the character of this administration for considering him for such a position of high honor as he now occupies.

Yes, SECDEF would have been worse.

Ymar Sakar said...

The Left likes Berg so much because most of the Left's political branch evaded the draft or betrayed their oaths. So Berg feels like a Hometown Boy to them, like if their kid looked like him.

DoS isn't so harmful? One wonders how it tanked Iraq in 2003 then if it was so powerless.