Petraeus, Pentagon Repeating the Mistakes of Vietnam

Reader Comments
Back to blog

What a total moron and clueless idiot this author is. He is stuck in a 60's leftist mind-warp.

robg of AL 12:27PM February 01, 2012

Not sure which Vietnam this author writes about but as I recall when Abrams took over in 1968 we had 500,000+ troops there. In 1972 during the Easter Offensive, we had only 40,000 troops there and the US and S. Vietnam alliance still beat the commies so bad that they came to the Paris Peace talks ready to deal. If not for Watergate and the damage to Republicans, and the short sighted spineless jellyfish among the Democrats [not to mention Ford]...we would have lived up to our obligations to provide air support to the South Vietnamese and today it would look something like South Korea.
The 'Vietnam War was not winnable' meme should be about as dead as JFK... but alas, never put it past a lefty to hold on to long since discredited ideological statements.

Gideon539 of CA 5:17PM July 22, 2011

Deny the Taliban from controlling Afghanistan, job done, deny al-Qaida a safe haven to launch global terror attacks. It is not some child's fairytale with candy hills, chocolate rivers, this is the most dangerous country in the world.
Denying the Talib and al-Qaida from regaining control is not a small effort, but that is what was asked and that is what was promised and that is what we delivered. Otherwise Obama would have agreed and given the 5 years and troops.
There is going to terror attacks but similar to NI and more recently al-Qaida in Iraq they cannot take control of the country via their attacks. Thus the insurgency has been contained, from an insurgency that threaten to take control of the country to terrorism.
Unlike the IRA which used such attacks in NI to launch and force dialogue of the UK, the Talib do not want to talk. So such attacks unless you want to force dialogue are useless, that is not strategy that is desperation.
These guys are not the NVA/VC, this is not Nam, they do not have the capability.

Matt of TX 11:19PM July 21, 2011

This fellow starts with a facile conclusion and then cherry picks a few "facts" to support it. The reference to McClellan, is assessing Gen. Petraeus, was an early tip off to the author's murderous intentions. Why not cite Washington, Jackson, Grant and Eisenhower, who were all far less ambitious and better soldiers than "Little Mac" ever was -- and even better presidents as well?

CORDSman of VA 10:30PM July 21, 2011

I won't waste my time other than to say that just about every conclusion and statement in this article is pure BS or close to it - to explain fully would take more time and space then it is worth.
Unbelievable.

junior of DC 9:58PM July 21, 2011